The blind cave of eternal night.

Currently watching the Ian Richardson film of Hound of the Baskervilles.

Lestrade is the Peter Lorre knock off from Raiders. Watson appears to be educationally sub-normal. Doyle from The Professionals is Sir Henry, putting up a brave but losing fight with a Texan accent, while Stapleton is all sideburns and butterfly net. Meanwhire Polly from Fawlty Towers, Eleanor Bron and Soolin from Blakes 7 are lurking around the Moor.

And Brian Blessed is being Brian Blessed. It's a moot point whether he was written into the script or whether he just turned up on set and no one dared to tell him to leave.

Observed on twitter today.

Man with 400,000 followers responds to news that woman was raped during making of film by tweeting that it was a rubbish film anyway.

Woman with fewer than 1% his number of followers quotes his tweet and asks whether that was really the most important point to be made here.

Man with 400,000 followers quotes her tweet, angrily denying that this was in any way what he meant and then blocks her while engaging in conversation with people who agree with him and also men who disagree with him.

You see that Twitter pile up? That's your best argument, that is.

Moments when you think a film may not be going well.

A character asks “Do you know who I am?” and I think “No, I don't. Am I supposed to?”

10 minutes after I thought the film was drawing to a close, a character asks “How much longer is this going on for?”

Suicide Squad is an odd film. Something that feels like it might have been an anarchic mid-size space filler between epics has been retooled into a summer tent-pole movie. The idea is straightforward. Criminals with particular talents are co-opted by the government to act as an off-the-books black ops team. If they refuse, small bombs which have been implanted in their necks will explode and kill them. Any similarity to Escape from New York is probably not co-incidental.

The structure at first seems to be tolerably straightforward too. As security bigwig Amanda Waller introduces each of her prospective team members, we get a flashback showing them in action. Or a few of them anyway. The rest get left to one side, their flashbacks coming later, or – in one case – not at all. This latter is Slipknot – a man introduced with the single line “He can climb anything”. Going by his example, unusual abilities do not necessarily go hand in hand with intelligence. After 90 seconds screen time, one of his less intelligent colleagues convinces him that the bombs are faked and his escape attempt is ended somewhat squelchily.

It'd be tempting to think that the increasingly random placement of flashbacks is a deliberate collapse of narrative structureas the chaos of the characters overtakes the film. However, rumour has it that the film was heavily re-edited after the hostile reception given Batman v Superman, as the studio wanted something more fun. One of the main victims of this is apparently Jared Leto's Joker. Myself, I'd say this is all for the better. The Joker can portrayed in many ways – Cesar Romero's camp clown, Heath Ledger's anarchist terrorist, Jack Nicholson in white face paint. One thing he really can't be is boring. Leto's Joker is visibly desperate to impress. He has “damaged” tattooed on his forehead and lies artily posed in the middle of concentric circles of knives. He comes across as a Marilyn Manson fan boy who has spent far too much time watching The Dark Knight and Breaking Bad, all metal capped teeth and gangsta tattoos. Reports from filming say that he remained in character permanently, leading to him sending severed animal heads to other castmates and pissing on Will Smith's breakfast. One might wish that Smith had similarly stayed in character – one suspects that Deadshot's reaction to having his morning oatmeal violated would have been quite final.

Smith is one of the film's strengths. It's not one of his better performances, but the level of charisma he brings still draws the gaze whenever he's on screen. The standout performance comes from Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. She and Smith remain detached from the film – he commenting on it's stupidity, she varying from childlike reactions of joy to explosions to off handedly diagnosing Smith as textbook sociopath after he denies feeling any emotions. She also manages to give the character a sense of depth – she gets a moment to mourn the Joker's apparent death, before putting her game face back on when the remainder of the squad catch up with her. In all, a character it may be interesting to see develop.

Part of the effect of the last minute reworking of the film seems to have been to make the Joker/Harley relationship less abusive. Given that as it stands, the relationship includes Harley being offered to another gangster as a bribe and also being tortured with the words “I'm going to hurt you real bad”, how successful this was must be open to doubt. The film has a familiar problem in that women are often seen to be a reward for good behaviour or something to be denied someone as a punishment. Besides the Joker who spends much of the film chasing the Squad to reclaim Harley, Rick Flag, leader of the Squad, is looking to get back his girlfriend, June.She's been possessed by an ancient witch, known as the Enchantress. At the film's close, he kills Enchantress, which he knows will kill June, and for his heroism is rewarded by having June come back to life. Team member El Diablo, who can control fire, is in mourning and lives with the fact that he burned his wife and children to death in a moment of frenzied rage. He is given a form of tragic heroism as he learns to trust himself and his control over his ability once again. Take away the fantasy elements of this though and we get a man who killed his family , plain and simple. Would Deadshot be given the same level of sympathy had he used his own special ability and shot his family? Given that he describes his ex-wife as a whore and advises Flag to control June/Enchantress by “beating her ass”, I wouldn't bet against it. Add casual displays of misogyny such as Slipknot being introduced by punching a woman in the face and explaining that “She had a mouth on her” and the film does not leave a good taste.

Simply by looking at the cast, the film seems to achieve a better level of diversity than many. Deadshot and Amanda Waller are black. There is also a Japanese woman, a Latino man and other women in Harley and June/Enchantress. Sadly, the film has a tendency to go for the stereotype. The Latino character is a gang member with rage control issues. The Japanese woman is a ninja called Katana. One of the squad is an Australian called Captain Boomerang who swills lager. No stereotype left unturned.

And yet, the film is still not as bad as Batman v Superman. This is a low wall to hurdle. Should a director's cut of Suicide Squad emerge, it may yet be an interesting film. A director's cut of BvS was never going to be anything other than longer.

Very good piece by Andrew Hickey on why we can't take having good things for granted.

http://mindlessones.com/2016/05/04/howl/

Partway through BvS, Ben Affleck, playing Bruce Wayne as Donald Trump if he had a personal trainer and some self-discipline, shouts at his butler, Alfred, played by Jeremy Irons in the style of Professor Yaffle on a bad day, "If there is even a one per cent chance that he is our enemy, we must take it as an absolute certainty." Time was when the Adam West Batman used to take the piss out of the likes of Dick Cheney, not quote him approvingly. It says something of the attitudes of the makers of this that, not only does this appear in the film, it is also one of the lines singled out to appear in the trailer. Zack Snyder has history with superhero comic book movies. Sadly, by and large, it's not a particularly inspiring history.

( Read more... )

Oh well. The film opened in the UK today. Apparently, Batman v Superman merchandise is already reduced in Sainsbury's. Hardly a vote of confidence.

Because thus far, it's really not been good enough. David Bowie and Alan Rickman within the space of a few days.

As someone on line observed, you know things are going badly when Alan Rickman's death isn't the biggest cultural loss of the week. Someone else suggested that the other thousands of people who died this week are nudging each other and muttering "Isn't that David Bowie?" All except one, I'd suggest, clad in floor-length robes of night that drink the light, pale face highlighted against long black hair, who is muttering, "This is frankly unacceptable", each syllable enunciated to within an inch of its life and resisting the temptation to just drop a pinch of something unmentionable into the water cooler. Or possibly dressed in an immaculately cut suit, neatly bearded and announcing to the assembled masses "I am an exceptional thief." One gets the feeling that, had this happened three weeks earlier, Christmas really might have been called off.

Think of the performances that we never saw. We've just lost two of the great never-were Bond villains. Rickman telling Brosnan "For England, James." A bleached-blond Bowie sparring with Grace Jones, with no-one noticing the accumulated charisma entirely wiping Roger Moore off the screen. 1988's film of Dangerous Liaisons for some reason thought that John Malkovitch would make a more convincing amoral seducer than Alan Rickman. No. Me neither.

But then there are the moments we have. Rickman's spoon-related threat as the Sheriff, with the explanation "Because it'll hurt more, you twit!" and his reaction to the resulting Bafta - "This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn't everything!". Bowie's slightly cracked tenor crooning "Because my love for you would break my heart in two, if you should fall into my arms and tremble like a flower," the line delivered almost casually and reaching such a pitch of intensity on the last word. Rickman - well, Rickman saying almost anything with that voice of mingled sweetness and threat, like honey poured over broken glass.

It's been suggested that Christopher Lee, now that he's passed over, has decided to call his warriors to him for the onset of Ragnarok. Lemmy, Bowie and now Rickman. They said that the face of Helen launched a thousand ships. How many would set forth for the voice of Rickman?

I think if Capaldi goes with the kind of nuclear detonation that heralded Matt Smith's departure, I'd quite like his successor's first words to be a series of groans followed by "No more curried eggs for me!"

As for Capaldi's final words, if we get the standard Murray Gold schmalz fest and general sobbing, I'd quite like him to finish with "Gotta go - it's my turn in the barrel."

Any suggestions?

Very much saddened to see that Herbert Wise has died.

He'll be mainly known for his work as director of I Claudius, the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves' books about Rome under the Julian dynasty of emperors. It's also something which I'd suggest as an example of the quality TV can ascend to. It's one of the last examples of something which doesn't really exist anymore - a televison drama series which is recorded theatre rather than a smaller scale film. The Roman empire is portrayed using some pillars, a curtain and a sound effects record - plus brilliant acting and scripting with Wise as the mastermind behind it all.

While this was the highlight of his career as a director, he was also responsible for episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Tales of the Unexpected, the ITV adaptation of The Woman in Black and far more.

Until reading his obituary a few minutes ago, I had no idea he was one of the children brought over from Vienna as part of the Kindertransport.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/aug/12/herbert-wise

In the light of the current attitude of hostility towards migrants and refugees, I can't help but feel that there's a point to be made here somewhere.

Channel 4 in its early years was something of a goldmine. It showed an awful lot of old ITV and American TV as well as vintage films - presumably because the programme budget was a bit short to fill it with original programming. Hence, it's where I first saw films like the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame as well as TV shows like Thriller, Callan and The Avengers.

Pat Macnee was not the typical hero for a spy series - by and large they tended to be either more physically imposing - the likes of Patrick McGoohan or the various incarnations of James Bond - or more ordinary everymen - Alec Guinness's Smiley or Edward Woodward in Callan. Macnee's genius was to turn the originally rather bland John Steed into a character who would not have been out of place in an Oscar Wilde comedy.

There's something rather fitting that he should die a matter of days after Christopher Lee - they were the same age, had been schoolmates and had acted together in episodes of The Avengers and also as Holmes and Watson. Their styles were pretty much mirror images - Lee often playing outwardly forbidding figures who revealed moments of frailty, while Macnee seemed harmless at first glance, but hid something much more ruthless at heart. His most famous stage role was the deluded games player Andrew Wyke in Shaffer's play Sleuth - someone who appears playful and harmless but proves to be far more dangerous.

He will be sadly missed. One can only hope that wherever he is, there is a magnum of champagne on ice and he is keeping a watchful eye out for diabolical masterminds.

Gunter Grass, author of The Tin Drum, Dog Years, The Flounder and many other books, has died. His novels formed a sort of social history of Germany since the rise of Nazism in the 1930's up to the post-reunification Germany we have today. The best comparison I can think of is James Ellroy's attempt at an underworld history of America in the 20th century in his LA Quartet and the sequence of books starting with American Tabloid.

The similarities end there though. While Ellroy's books make a fetish of gritty realism, Grass is happy to include elements of the supernatural. Talking rats and fish appear and a 3-year old boy is able to stop growing at will, to write on glass using only his voice and to communicate only through his tin drum. Grass also likes his characters and is happy for them to have simple pleasures in their lives - whether it be food or sex or friendship. The easy comparison to make is with Salman Rushdie - both interweaving the everyday, the supernatural and the grotesque into magic realis picaresque fiction. One of my German literature tutors at university reacted badly to the suggestion though. As I am a poor man and not totally at ease in my grasp of the libel laws, I shall not go into detail, although Rushdie did not fare well in the comparison.

Grass was considered by many to be the conscience of post-war Germany - something which attracted a deal of criticism, particularly after his confession in 2006 that he'd served in the Waffen SS towards the end of the war. I'll simply observe that Grass was a boy of 17 and that I would not fare well if judged by the choices I might have made at that age.

Pretty much everything I enjoyed about my first degree came from reading Grass, so I'm left with a sense of regret that somewhere, Oskar's drum has finally fallen silent.