Alice in Wonderland - now in 2D!

This is one of those films that when it came out I wasn't particularly interested in, mainly because I've never seen what's so amazing about the Alice in Wonderland story but also because I was having one of my more militant anti-3D phases at the time. I found myself proved right yesterday as I watched the film in the classic 2 dimensional format without silly glasses and without a £2 charge for the privilege of having a screen force false perspective on my eyes.

The film is the story of Alice returning to wonderland. She is 13 years older than the original story and now about to be married off. However - she's a modern-thinking girl in a bygone age so despite all the trappings and social conventions of her time she eschews her suitor and runs off to think about her future. Within seconds she spots a magic rabbit and has fallen down a big hole into what fans of the book will no doubt recognise as yet another adaptation of their favourite story. When she falls down the hole I was baffled by several odd moments when the camera focuses on inconsequential things such as a piano flying at Alice. We then get an Alice-eye-view of the piano. It took me several seconds to work out that of course in the 3D version of the film the piano probably flew out at people and induced a number of yelps from the yokels. The effect was totally lost on the 2D screen.

From that moment on I think the movie was fairly lost on me. I watched the whole thing with one part of my brain systematically cataloguing the bits of the film that exist purely to make 3D tech look good. For example, there's a part when Alice flies through the air on the Mad Hatter's hat with lots of swooping and things flying past her. It's as if people making 3D films can't think of any way of making the tech improve their film, so they're resorting to just chucking stuff at the screen.

It's not that Alice in Wonderland doesn't have its merits. I'm a self-stated rookie when it comes to the Alice story, but even I can appreciate what Tim Burton has done here. As you would expect from a Tim Burton re-envisioning of the Alice story, everything has been stylised and warped into a darkened and slightly crazy version of the original. You've got Helena Bonham Carter screeching her way through her lines, Johnny Depp letting rip his insanity and an intriguing redesign of the Alice character, here a gothic stylised sword and sorcery heroine complete with pale white skin and a destiny to slay the dragon. And he's certainly sexed the character up too; all those dresses that keep falling off her? Indeed.

Aside from the styling there's not really anything that happens in this film. Alice goes here, talks to odd people, goes there and talks to mad people, becomes tall then small then tall then normal-sized and then decides to 'save' wonderland from a queen that the locals all acquise to. I don't get why this inconsequential wackiness is that interesting, which probably means I was never really going to warm to it. I think this is going to have to go down as my least favourite Tim Burton film.

Clerks - roofers in the Death Star

Someone at work reminded me last week about this scene in Clerks, the one where Randal explains his theory on how the contractors on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi were innocent bystanders in a war they cared nothing for.



Great stuff

Buried

I turned down the opportunity to go and see the re-released 'Back to the Future' with my mates on Wednesday night in order to make sure I saw 'Buried' before it vanishes out of the cinemas. I reasoned that a film entirely set inside the confines of a coffin would be hugely better viewed inside a massive dark room with surround sound than in my house. Winnersh Showcase have stopped showing it already, so me and 9 other randoms spread ourselves liberally around the Odeon in Bracknell (I snuck into one of the 'Premier' seats - how naughty am I?!) for 90 minutes of buried-alive trauma.

At least trauma was what I was expecting. 'Buried' has been marketed and reviewed as something of a game-changer for thrillers. Being buried alive is many people's worst fear (one of my own too), and you would think that by filming the experience in such an up close and personal way the fear would be more physical and terrifying than ever. I was disappointed that I didn't feel much in the way of fear at all, since the directorial style (always in a box) left me feeling somewhat bored.

Bored is not a word that I like to use lightly when describing a film, but when I look at my watch and then look again later to discover that only 5 minutes have passed, something is wrong. To put it simply, not enough actually happens in the film for it to be interesting. Guy is in a hostage in box, guy has frustrating phone calls while in box, guy wishes he wasn't in box - that's basically it. Ok so at one point there's a snake in his coffin, and at another point he is sent a video of another hostage being shot, but I didn't feel like I was part of the story. Seeing everything from inside the box kind of removed any context from the plot, something that ultimately left me feeling tired and willing the end on.

When the end comes it's no surprise. There is a nice part near the end that hints at a metaphor of the US government and corporations selling out their soldiers and citizens when the going gets tough - but it was too little too late to grab my attention. I was very disappointed.

Made In Dagenham

Ever since I first saw the posters of 'Made in Dagenham' I have been excited. I was first made aware of the film by the poster (rare these days) and was interested immediately - a film with 'Dagenham' in the title! I come from just up the road of Dagenham in nearby Ilford, so anything that is 'Made in Dagenham' had to be exciting. Then I found out what the film was about, the true story of a group of female 'unskilled' workers go on strike for the right to equal pay - and win! It was as if I'd commissioned the British Film Council to make my perfect film!

Trouble is that expectations get too high. The reviews were mixed, some were saying that it was trying to be like 'Full Monty' and failing, others said that it was being a too idealistic and right-on with its portrayal of the women. Thankfully Mark Kermode thought it was great - but then I have a history of disagreeing with him when he likes things. I was nervous.

As the film opens we see the girls of Ford Dagenham laughing and getting on with their jobs. They have a camaraderie and show little or no militant tendency. This is the summer of 1968 though, and with revolution happening over the world it is the most normal thing for them to have a day's stoppage when they are downgraded from semi to un-skilled. Only after management use heavy-handed tactics to scare them into submission does Rita emerge. Respected by the others, she argues for and leads them into an indefinite stoppage. At first all they want is to be re-graded as semi-skilled, soon though the issue widens into equal pay.

It was pointed out in the Guardian that 'Made in Dagenham' follows in a long line of British comedy / drama films set around the economic hardships of layoffs, industrial unrest and a changing world where skilled manufacturing labour is told it is no longer wanted. To name but a few - The Full Monty, Billy Elliot and Calendar girls. But what sets 'Made in Dagenham' apart is that the the characters fight back against the cuts and layoffs - and win! The women in the film recognise the injustice of their situation and stand up to do something about it. Rita is a wonderful character, not once does she spout left-leaning slogans or call anyone comrade, she is simply an ordinary person forced into extraordinary things by circumstance. Rosamund Pike's character tells her about how she read history in Cambridge and was fascinated by the people who make history, she then asks Rita to tell her what it feels like when she does the same. The message is clear: history can be made by normal people just as much as it can by kings and queens.

Making history is not an easy process though. Rita is harassed by her own union wanting to not rock the boat, the Ford bosses screaming that equal pay would destroy profitability (that old lie) and finally her friends and husband who - although trying to support her - struggle to cope with the economic realities of being on strike. The cracks in Rita's marriage and friendships demonstrate the truth of striking and put to bed the myth that it's all about workers being lazy and trying to get time off. It's one of the film's strongest themes.

The film does have a couple of downsides. Mostly that the feminist message is rammed home a little too strongly at times. The moment when one of the girls writes 'equal pay now' or some other slogan on her midriff during a photo shoot for Ford cars is a little odd. And did we really need Rita's husband shooting himself in the foot quite so emphatically by telling her what a paragon he is simply because he's never hit her? "That is as it should be!" she is right to exclaim in response, and though this is the main point of the film it just ends up making him look like a dick.

Thankfully these are very minor faults, and the film faithfully tells a tale of ordinary people struggling through hardships to win something that these days we all accept as a right. It reminds us that almost everything good and progressive in our society is something that someone had to fight tooth and nail to get. From the universal voting rights to women's suffrage to the creation of the NHS to the right to trial by jury, someone had to suffer hardship to get it.

The world is a different place now to what it was in the 1960s, but when Rita stands up in front of the TUC and addresses the dinosaurs of the union movement her question struck a chord with me - when did we in Britain forget how to fight? "Made in Dagenham" is nothing less than inspirational.

Cemetery Junction

If ever there was a case of a film being redeemed by its ending, it is Cemetery Junction. It is very rare that I get through 80 minutes of a film thinking a big fat 'MEH' and at the end find myself with a smile on my face and a glint in my eye - but it happened on Wednesday this week, and I'm here to tell you all about it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, 'Cemetery Junction' is a film that purports to be about being young and having to grow up in small-town England in the 1970s. So we get to see lots of stuff about what it was like growing up in the 1970s - if you live inside Ricky Gervais' brain of course. Three youngish lads bum around town with starry eyes having a laugh, fighting with the townies and sometimes doing an honest day's work while winding the coppers up and swearing liberally with their parents - you could have a laugh back then of course, not like today. There's Freddie the earnest leader, Bruce the good-looking fighter and Snork the endearing thickie. They still think and act like they're in school, if only someone could come along and teach them that there's more to life than living in Reading and drawing graffiti on billboards! If only someone could open their eyes to the big wide world and give them a reason to get out and spread their wings! If only!

Thank Christ a pretty girl from Freddie's childhood turns up to tell him all about travelling the world. Praise be that her Dad / Freddie's boss is an insufferable career-minded twat who treats his wife like a waitress and crushes the life out of everyone he meets - thus teaching Freddie the importance of getting out of a rut while you can. Without these people to teach him the wisdom of following your dreams while you're young - who knows what might have happened!

For 80 minutes 'Cemetery Junction' is about as close to a sentimental paint-by-numbers coming of age 'drama' as I'm willing to get without turning the DVD off. In fact it's only the comedy (fart jokes, but funny fart jokes - although there is one great line Freddie says about not knocking his Nan's hair cutting "... it's cheap cos of the Parkinsons") that makes it worthwhile. Everything is predictable and conveniently-plotted, every character fulfils a specific and message-delivering role.

That's what I was going to write in this blog until the very last 7:30 minutes of the film. "7:30 minutes is an odd amount of time" - is something you might say. Well is so happens that it's the length of Led Zeppelin's Rain Song, a song which plays out over the final scenes of the movie. A song to which the events of the final scenes of the movie are edited to perfectly match the movements of. A song that I love. A song that melted my stern heart and made me smile. This is what movie making is all about; anyone who can be bothered to get a Led Zeppelin classic and write a story around it is worthy of praise no matter how saccarine sweet that story might appear to be.

So Ricky Gervais might still be a silly smug tit, but he's our silly smug tit - and so I'm going to stand up for him. Good work mate.