Game of Thrones - At Bloody Last!

I could barely contain my excitement last night as I waited for 9pm to roll around. Once again being a satellite TV subscriber was about to pay off, because last night was the night when after some years of anticipation the HBO adaptation of George R R Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' series was going to start.

Book one of the series - Game of Thrones - has been made into a 10 part HBO TV series and is being screened on Sky Atlantic over the next few months. 'A Song of Ice and Fire' is an epic fantasy series set in a medieval European world in which characters whose motivations lie somewhere between the Borgias and the Sopranos scheme and betray each other for control of the Iron Throne - the seat of power for the realm of Westeros. I am hesitant to describe the series as belonging in the fantasy genre, since to do so evokes expectations of Elves and Hobbits and orcs running amok. Not a bit of it. The fantasy elements in 'A Song of Fire and Ice' are almost always alluded to or described by the characters therein as part of ancient myths that have no impact on the real world. Battles are fought without wizards or fantastic creatures, the cut-throat world of political machinations is fought over with words, blades and poisons rather than magic rings and spells. The characters in this world don't believe that the fantastical creatures of the Tolkien cannon exist - so when something otherworldly does finally happen, it has a huge impact.

What all this means is that the stories told are closer to what happens in The Wire than anything that would normally sit on the fantasy shelves as a book store. With a huge ensemble cast, plots that carry over multiple books and a healthy disregard of the lives of any and all characters, when reading the books you never know when a main characters is for the chop or when something said in an aside 500 pages ago is going to came back and be significant. Which makes it perfect material for HBO.

Last night's opening episode was dark and did as good a job as I could have hoped at introducing the characters that - with luck - will put the whole series up on the small screen (assuming George RR Martin ever gets around to finishing it - book 5 of 7 is out in July). Sean Bean and Michelle Fairley look every bit like the tortured souls Ned and Cat Stark should be given the strife and violence they've lived through. Lena Headey did a great job of not appearing to be the power-hungry schemer that fans of the book know Cersei Lannister to be, a few nice surprises coming up for anyone new to the series. Not just the casting, but also the sets, costumes and pacing were just about spot on - nothing cheesy, nothing that looks like it'll be dumbing the plot down for TV.

Maybe I'm too much of a fanboy to have a sensible opinion of this series (when Sean Bean first said "Winter is Coming" I gave an internal cheer - such is my fanboy-ness), but I thought this first episode was bloody great. I don't see why the series wont continue to be true to the book and bring its Machiavellian characters to a new audience. Hopefully I'll be able to post loads more about it as it progresses.

Your Highness - Stoner LARP

Natalie Portman sure is getting around at the moment. I can think of four recent releases that she's starred in. I guess that's what happens when you decide to have a baby and need to make some reddies before putting your career on hold for a bit. She must have a strange agent, as she's been in an odd collection of films. At the start of the year she put in an outstanding performance in the exemplary 'Black Swan', now she's playing the classic fantasy fiction female warrior role in 'Your Highness' and seems to be in it for the pay cheque. And you wouldn’t believe the number of pictures of Ms Portman that come up when you google “Your Highness Film”, or maybe you would.

Directed by the same guy who did 'Pineapple Express' and starring Danny McBride (of 'Tropic Thunder' and 'Pineapple Express') and James Franco (who was also in 'Pineapple Express' - can you spot the theme?), you know what type of film you're in for with ‘Your Highness’. 'Subtlety' is not a word I'm going to have to use too often in this review, 'nob gag' is more like it. The plot is that in a far far away standard fantasy world of Dwarves and magic there is a rightous and noble prince Fabius (Franco) and his not-so-impressive stoner brother Thadius (Mcbride). Fabius' newly-recued bride-to-be is captured by the evil wizard Lezar and the brothers must quest to rescue her - with hilarious consequences. Not exactly genre-breaking stuff up to this point, but of course the fantasy plot isn't what 'Your Highness' is all about. It's about putting a modern stoner comedy in a Tolkienesque setting, giving your characters plenty of anachronistic things to say then sitting back and laughing at crude nob gags. Of which there are many.

I read something on one of the IMDB message board by someone who thought that 'Your Highness' is more of a spoof of LARP culture than the fantasy genre in general. I think that makes a lot of sense, since a lot of the characters in the film seem deliberately not to take their own roles seriously while others are being massively over-acted. I think I've watched enough films to tell the difference between bad casting and a good performance that looks like bad acting - so I think this is probably something the film makers were planning. Fabius is a spoof of the LARPer who love the roleplay, his brother the guy who's just there for the drinks, Portman's character (Isobel) the lone girl in the LARP group overcompensating by taking everything way too seriously, Lezar the nerdy gamesmaster. Suddenly it all falls into place.

See - IMDB message boards aren't always total drivel.

In the end though 'Your Highness' is a funny film. I'm not sure why watching medieval characters behave like 21st century stoners is as funny as it is, but it is. What more can you want than that?

Source Code

Reviews of Source Code have been exceptionally good. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian - who usually serves as a definition of the artsy mainstream-hating reviewer - gives it 5 stars and glowing praise. Mark Kermode on Radio 5 was similarly positive on last week's podcast - likening it to Inception and comparing it favourably with director Duncan Jones' first film Moon. High praise indeed.

After trying to suppress expectations of a masterpiece of modern science fiction, I paid my £8 on Monday and hoped for the best. The film sets itself up as follows - Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a US army pilot who wakes up in another man's body riding a train in suburban Chicago. After 8 minutes of confusion he is killed in an explosion on the train, then transported back to his own body inside a pod from which he can communicate with mysterious army scientists. These scientists explain to him that he is part of an experimental program named 'Source Code' - which is capable of putting him inside the mind of another person minutes before their death. The explosion he has just experienced happened earlier in the day, Stevens is expected to return to the train and re-experience events in order to work out who the bomber is and prevent a similar attack. The more times Stevens does this, the more times he becomes attached to events on the train and suspect that his minders in the real world aren't telling him everything they should.

The film is part action thriller and part romantic drama, but mostly a rehash of science fiction ideas from all over the genre. Most obviously the film owes a debt to Quantum Leap, but from a style point of view it feels like a very good episode of The Outer Limits - with its hard science fiction plots and traditional 'hmmm' moments at the end. 'Source Code' ends with what is trying to be one of those 'hmmm' moments, but in trying to appeal to the mainstream with a happy ending it gets derailed slightly. Where 'Inception' left the audience with a number of unanswered questions about its ending, 'Source Code' is very much straightforward by comparison. Although some people would probably consider a discussion of it to be a spoiler - so I wont go into it here. Seriously though, there's not much of a mystery to it.

What we have is nothing more than a pretty decent science fiction action thriller, I can't work out where all of the love in the press has come from for it. Perhaps merely bringing science fiction like this to a mass audience is worthy of heaped praise? The big difference between this and 'Moon' is that there's a lack of atmosphere in 'Source Code'. Where 'Moon' had claustrophobia and a sense of impending, inevitable and unspecified doom - 'Source Code' has explosions, a love story and a way for its main protagonist to avoid the doom. To call 'Source Code' a Holywood cop out would be too strong criticism - it's not that bad. I just feel like I've seen it before - although not necessarily done any better - and that 'Source Code' is hardly the revelation in the genre that some reviewers have suggested.

Glenn Beck

I don't know if many people over here in the UK have heard of Glenn Beck. He is a nutcase right wing conspiracy-obsessed Fox news presenter who has recently been given the sack. Thank Christ for that. Here is John Stewart on the Daily Show (sadly no longer available on More4) royally taking the piss out of Beck's overly-dramatic buddy buddy presenting style and generally applauding his departure from the network.

Indeed. Here for good measure is a clip from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe in which (from ~6:30 mins) he deconstructs Beck's messianic style.



Good riddance.

Cross of Iron - A Proper War Film

People who know me - and let's face it, only people who actually know me read this blog - will know that I am avidly interested in Second World War history. I discovered 'Cross of Iron' relatively recently while looking through a list of classic war films somewhere on the internet. It's a curious little film, made in the late 1970s and telling the story of a fictional unit of German soldiers on the Eastern Front at the beginning of the end in late 1943.

From the outset the film is stubbornly anti-war. An opening montage splices footage of the pomp of Nazi rallies against the grim reality of Germany's war against Russia; the promises of glory and conquest dashed by the terrifying truth of mechanised warfare. That's what the film is about. Maximilian Schell plays Captain Stransky, a man whose proud military upbringing forces him to abandon his comfortable post in France to come to the Russian front in search of glory and an aware of the Iron Cross. James Coburn plays Sergant Steiner, a reckless noncom stuck in a war he didn't want. Neither men are Nazis, but each fights for Germany for different reasons; Stransky for honour and his family's approval, Steiner because he's a working class man who happens to be really good at his current job. The men come into conflict after a Russian assault leads to Steiner being hospitalised and a number of men dead. Stransky claims he led a counter-attack against the Russians, but Steiner wont corroborate his story.

I didn't know what to expect from this film. There are a number of very tough scenes of battle and a lot of throw-away moments that pick up on the impersonality of industrial warfare. Particularly well-done is a 20 minute sequence in the middle act where Steiner convalesces in a military hospital before returning to the front. His shell shock is barely understood by the doctors and wilfully ignored by the generals who want him back on the line. Some excellent editing puts us in Steiner's head as his mind flits between various versions of his present reality combined with his nightmare memories of the recent past.

The film ends in a way that is very strange, initially it's unsatisfying as it provides no closure on the outcome of the brewing conflict between Steiner and Stransky. But given the point the film is trying to make, it's a perfect way to end. After all, what is the relevance of this personality clash in the grotesque and uncaring theatre that is the the Eastern Front? The machinery of war cares not which of these characters ends up besting the other, all the war cares about is relentlessly consuming another couple of unfortunate souls.

This is an excellent film that deserves its place on any list of 'great' war movies.

Whip It - (not Whippet)

A young and bright-eyed girl in boring town with dull family yearns to get out. Girl discovers by chance something she loves doing and is good at. After much perceverence and conflict with parental figures, girl learns about life through her newly-found passion and comes of age.

Don't worry dear reader, I'm not talking about 'Dirty Dancing' - although the format for such films is so ingrained that often I barely even realise I'm seeing it these days - I'm talking about Drew Barrymore's directorial debut 'Whip It'. Cards on the table time - I was drawn to this film after I saw a trailer last year that consisted mostly of roller-chicks skating around in fishnets to Weezer's 'Pork and Beans'. Sometimes making an effective trailer isn't rocket science.

'Whip It' stars Ellen Page as Bliss, a young 17 year old with a stuffy mother and a football-obsessed father who yearns desperately to get out of her hometown. After seeing a flyer for a roller derby in the bright lights of Austin Texas she persuades her best friend to take them there. She's suddenly in love with the sport, tries out for a failing team and - well you can probably fill in the rest of the plot for yourself.

Watching the film last week made me feel like I assume many women must feel when watching many Holywood movies of any genre. The standard convention is for most female characters to be foils to the male leads. Films where this isn't the case are notable mainly because of it. The main characters in 'Whip It' are exclusive women, with the male characters interacting with Bliss in a peripheral way (and never with each other). I think I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this made me feel a bit uneasy. Perhaps I'm so liberal that I was uneasy with this inversion of sexism as much as I would be with sexism in the traditional sense? More likely I'm so indoctrinated with film convention that this inversion of it freaked me out. Or possibly I felt subconciously cheated by the film - wasn't this meant to be about girls skating around in slutty clothes rather than being some kind of 'who needs men anyway' coming of age tale?

If it wasn't for the subversion of convention in 'Whip It', the film would be pretty bland. As is it though, it's a kind of alright bit of fun movie that you can enjoy after a long day's work without having to turn your brain on. Ellen Page is solid in the role but needs to break out of the habit of being cast as teenagers. She was good but underused in Inception last year, I don't want to see her getting stuck in an acting rut.

The Eagle

A friend of mine seemed extremely excited about this when she saw the trailer - apparently it's an adaptation of a kids book - so when the opportunity to see an advance screening at the Winnersh Showcase came up last night I thought it sounded like a good use of Orange Wednesdays. 'The Eagle' is based on the teen-fiction novel 'The Eagle of the Ninth' - which in turn is loosely based on the mysterious disappearance of the Ninth Hispanic Legion from Rome's annals in mid-second century Britain. Marcus Aquila is a Roman centurion whose father lead the Ninth and disappeared with the entire legion 20 years prior to the events of the film. He has a one-tracked mind, to recover the golden eagle of the Ninth legion and restore his family's good name.

The film becomes a standard band of heroes tale in which Marcus (Channing Tatum) and his British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) travel to Scotland to search for the Eagle. Esca is honour-bound to serve Marcus, but will his loyalty to his own people undermine each man's confidence in the other? The film is tight-lipped on the subject of who the 'bad guys' are here, though Marcus represents the Roman invasion force, Esca's people are often savage marauders who admit to killing their wives rather than allowing them to become Roman servants. Nice bit of 'grey area' work there - slightly undone by a moment towards the end though, but I wont dwell.

Every time I felt I was getting into 'The Eagle', it started to undermine itself by trying too hard to give the story a context for the modern viewer. A good example of this is when Marcus's uncle (Donald Sutherland) narrates a gladiatorial contest - "Hmm, a slave against a Gladiator, the slave often does badly here". No shit? Also the final scene teeters on the edge of turning into an Adam West Batman episode - always ending with a joke and a smile and a "I wonder where our next adventure will come from Robin...". Is this the kind of thing teenagers need? I thought that the modern teenager was supposed to be a savvy creature?

I was frustrated by the way that Roman Britain was portrayed in the film. There is a lot of historical debate over the level of integration of Roman society into Britain and the impact of rebellious elements like the Brigantes, the historical consensus seems to be that much of Britain was a place that largely embraced Roman rule. The film's suggestion that native Britons lived as slaves under rule by foreigners is almost certainly wrong. And they definitely didn’t have American accents.

Despite much of what I've said here, I recognise that the film isn't intended as a history lesson and that it is based on a novel aimed at a teenage audience. There are some brutally realistic battle scenes (although most of the audience seemed more freaked out by Esca eating a rat then the general carnage) and a huge amount of attention to detail with regard to costume and language. It's a perfectly respectable way to spend 2 hours in a cinema. Especially when it's a preview showing and there aren't any adverts or trailers - genius!