Looking Out To Sea

We got to see James Cameron’s new epic on Tuesday night, Avatar in 3D.

The three-dimensional aspect was very well done — much better than Beowulf in 3D which was hampered by terrible graphics. It looked fabulous and, who knows, maybe the added depth helped to make the action clearer.

Unfortunately the plot was fairly boring and the characters were about as shallow as it’s possible to get. In fact, it was largely the characters from Aliens — including Sigourney Weaver herself — fighting the Corporation and their unethical ways. They had a knuckle-head military guy, who appears to be a subtle blend of Duke Nukem and Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. No, I tell lie, there was nothing subtle there at all. They had a sleazy company guy and they had a mining operation set up to gather Unobtainium. I couldn’t help but snigger that they actually called their precious metal unobtainium. I wonder if they use it to make MacGuffins?

Last weekend Mat invited us round for an evening of bad — nay, terrible — movies, centred around his bargain purchase of Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. We also saw a bit of Batman & Robin that was telly at the time, and I Know Who Killed Me, a horror movie.

Mega Shark really was as bad as we all imagined. The acting was just short of terrible, but the overall artistic vision was disastrous. It’s amazing how many “armed guards” there were in this movie, standing in the background in laboratories and offices, all wearing dark glasses despite the moody lighting.

I took particular enjoyment from the “science” scene, in which the marine biologists mixed arbitrary liquids in test tubes until they found that right combination that luminesced. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t all taxing science in the laboratory: there was time for a sex scene in the supply cupboard. Unusually, it’s legitimate to say that it was a necessary part of the plot.)

The shark and octopuses were a bit lacklustre. I was hoping for some old-school giant rubber tentacles reaching over boat decks and maybe some stop-motion or something. Instead we were treated to the same three clips of shark swimming, shark fighting octopus, octopus swimming, in various combinations. It was just like watching Saturday morning cartoons again.

The sizes and capabilities of the monsters are ludicrous to say the least. How fast does a shark have to be swimming when it leaves the water in order to overtake — and maul — a cruising 747? Answers on a postcard.

The title Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus doesn’t hide any aspect of the film from you. It’s exactly as you imagine. I Know Who Killed Me is another daft title but this one was apparently meant with all sincerity. Lindsay Lohan is abducted by a serial killer and then Lindsay Lohan turns up a few days later claiming to be a different Lindsay Lohan but bearing all the wounds which identify this particular serial killer.

This film wasn’t as bad as I expected. I don’t know if that’s because of drastically lowered expectations, or whether the elements of goodness shone through the rubbishness. Lohan did win two Golden Raspberry Awards for it, tying first and second place for Worst Actress, which I think is a bit harsh. She was far from the worst thing about this film.

Last night I saw a pilot for a modern version of the 80s classic Knight Rider. It was about as rubbish as you’d imagine, though the Hoff got a little cameo as the main dude’s absent father. And they ended on the original theme tune. But the rest of it was still crap. Reimagined, reworked and rebooted series can work very well — see Star Trek: TNG, Battlestar Galactica — but the real work is not done by the computer graphics people. You need good stories, believable plots, interesting characters! Wikipedia reveals that the series had one (shortened) season and was dropped. Hardly surprising.

I’m looking for more so-bad-it’s-good movies if you have something to recommend(!). Fixed in my mind is Battlefied Earth. Any others?

We’ve been pretty rubbish at doing stuff in the Festival this year. We’ve seen a couple of things and only managed that because Helen’s dad arranged everything. In the last fortnight we saw:

• Looking for Eric

  This doesn’t really count as a Festival event because it’s just a film which was on at the Filmhouse. But it was really good so I’m putting it here.

  It’s got Eric Cantona guest starring as Eric Cantona, as the fairy godmother/spirit guide for a struggling postman. It’s directed by Ken Loach, and is that typical triumph-over-adversity plot which makes for funny and warming cinema.

• Polly Paulusma et al.

  An acoustic night at Medina, and all the acts were completely unknown to me. Polly headlining and support from various others including local newbies Mayhew. I’m sure I recognised two of the band members.

• Nick Harper

  The second unknown. I really enjoyed his show, though I’m easily drawn to an artist who’ll sing the intro to a song unaccompanied while restringing their guitar. He played with just an acoustic guitar, and a mixture of floaty, shoegazing songs and angry, energetic songs.

  He was a bit pissed and very garrulous, but wasn’t nearly as drunk and annoying as some of the audience. I can kind of forgive Helen and Ken not enjoying themselves so much because of the twerps sitting behind, stomping out of time on the ricketty seats. I had a lot of fun though.

Have you seen any interesting new musicians lately?

Within the last week we’ve seen Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, two science fiction movies with a great deal of difference in the craftsmanship put into them.

Star Trek could also be called The Young James Kirk Chronicles, but in a good way. I’m not mocking Indiana Jones here, after all. This story creates an alternate history for James Kirk and the original crew of the Enterprise, and follows their story from Starfleet Academy. But don’t worry, it’s not the Hogwarts School of Exploration and Astrophysics. They quickly head out to war rather than staring into their own navels.

All the characters from the original set appear, with subtly altered stories to suit the new timeline and to make things a bit more interesting. Kirk’s a tearaway, Spock’s been suffering some playground abuse for being half-human, and Bones… we’ll he’s still a cantankerous pessimist so that’s okay.

It was a really great movie, neatly treading the line between the high camp silliness of the original Star Trek series and a modern action movie. At one or two points they veered into Galaxy Quest territory but they also balanced this with some heavy emotional stuff. Well worth seeing at the cinema.

The contrasting X-Men Origins: Wolverine was terrible on almost every level. The script was leakier than Rab C Nesbitt’s semmit, and you have to use a lot of brainpower not to think about all the ways these people with superhuman powers could have solved their problems earlier.

The story was long and lumpy, which only frenetic action scenes can disguise. The editing was woeful. If you care about spoilers, jump to the end of this paragraph. But there is no good reason why Victor is seen climbing up the outside of the building in Africa because he does nothing up there. There is no good reason why Gambit being elbowed in the face should leave him running across the rooftops. But those scenes still happened, completely without context or explanation.

Even the individual scenes were so terribly cliched it’s hard to remember them without cringing. Surely Hugh Jackman’s got bored of cradling people in his arms and screaming at the sky?

The big secret about this movie is the two separate teaser endings. We didn’t know about them and left the cinema early (very unusual for us, and doubly irritating because of it). The two different prints are distributed randomly between cinemas and the idea is that you see the film twice to catch both endings. Either that or it’s an attempt to create interest in the pirated films, which will probably be available with both endings. Cos really, who’s going to see this dreck twice for the thirty seconds of extra footage?

Yesterday afternoon we saw the eagerly-awaited-by-some comic adaptation, Watchmen. The first laugh comes in the opening credits with the line “Adapted from the graphic novel co-created by Dave Gibbons”. Yep, that’s Alan Moore staying well out of it, as usual. And, as usual, he was right to do so.

The real flaw for Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen is that he doesn’t seem to realise he’s directing a film, instead of filling in the gaps between storyboard frames. I’m sure if you read the script you could easily find the 12 discrete episodes that made up the original, faithfully translated into the new medium. The result is disjointed, lacking in momentum and somewhat emotionless.

Tragically, what ruins the overall film is what makes each individual scene so good — the faithful rendering of the original. Most of the characters and their complexity came across quite well. I was really worried that Rorschach wouldn’t translate well to the screen, so I was really impressed with his character in particular.

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We saw Good Bye Lenin! yesterday, the second film in the Filmhouse’s little series of German films. This one was also about pre-unification Germany, but it was a comedy. So not at all like The Lives of Others.

It’s about a family whose father escapes to the West. The mother throws herself into the communist society and becomes a recognised idealist and champion for improving society. But she falls into a coma and sleeps through the fall of the Wall, and all the other changes that came along with it. When she wakes up the doctors advise that she not be made to suffer any excitement… so the grown-up children decide to hide her at home and pretend that the German Democratic Republic is the same as always.

This gives great scope for embarrassing social situations, awkward moments as you think the cat will be let out of the bag, and so on. It was a very funny film and a neat counterpoint to the misery and paranoia of The Lives of Others. Really recommended.

We’ve just received the new Filmhouse catalogue for February, and now that we have memberships we have to go more often to make it worthwhile. Feel free to join us at any of the following:

• The Educators (5.45pm, 11 February). German comedy (I think) about pranksters who sneak into rich peoples’ houses to rearrange the furniture. The last in the German Film Season. The other two have been really good.
• Inherit the Wind (5.45pm, 16 February). Classic Spencer Tracy court-room drama with Bible-lovin’ good-ol’-boys and such. There’s a talk afterwards from some science bloke about science and such. I’m looking forward to this one.
• I’m Going Home (6pm, 24 February). Family dies leaving small boy and grandfather alone in the world. Probably quite moving. French, I think. I’m writing this with the guide in the other room…
• Hunger (6pm, 9 March). Bobby Sands and hunger strikes in prison. It’s probably quite miserable, but who knows.
• The Counterfeiters (6pm, 17 March). About the people brought together to produce forgeries for the Nazis — I guess making fake newspapers, currency, whatever else seemed useful for propaganda purposes. Sounds pretty good, anyway, like a heist movie but without the heist. Just lots of random people with different skills doing intricate stuff.

Finally, this Sunday there’s a screening of Hero at 1pm to mark the Chinese New Year. Be there (if you want).

I’ve been saving these up, so it’s three movies in one post today.

The Lives of Others or Das Leben der Anderen

This film is a few years old but we only just got round to watching it. There was a German film season at the Filmhouse, which was a great opportunity. Just before the screening, a lecturer from the university gave a small introduction to the film and its relevance to the political landscape in Germany. By her interpretation, it had done a lot to bring the topic of East German affairs into the public again.

This is an amazing film, and if you haven’t seen it you really ought to. This is also the first time I’ve felt some anger that there is a special award for foreign films at the Oscars. This film could have taken best movie from The Departed, I think.

Slumdog Millionaire

This is a Danny Boyle movie though it’s a bit of a departure from everything else I’ve seen of his. Fewer heroin addicts and zombies than I’m used to.

It’s about a boy from the slums of Mumbai who gets on the Indian edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and does extremely well. Is he cheating? Is he really a genius? Was it all luck?

His interrogation forms the framework on which the film hangs the little vignettes from his life that “made” the boy who he is. A mixture of dark comedy and romance in an unusual setting. It deserves to make the term “chai-wallah” a household word, too.

The Wrestler

The first Darren Aronofsky film I’ve seen since Pi, the amusingly-clichéd but interesting debut about numerology and the stock market. This one stars Mickey Rourke, making a come-back after his career as an old boxer… to play an old wrestler.

Some martial arts movies make a big deal about the action. This is not that kind of movie — after all, this is American pro wrestling we’re talking about here. The appeal, or whatever you call it, is in its showmanship. The heroes and the villains, the staged fights, the comedic action.

The point of this one is, I suppose, what happens to old warriors. People who can do nothing else, but who are too old or decrepit to do what they want. It’s quite a slow film, without any sense that it’s stopped or spinning in circles. Mickey Rourke is excellent as the lugubrious Randy “The Ram”. Watching him ruin his life and his body and his relationships, to the point where the only thing he can do is carry on, is a little bit heart-breaking.

We’ll be watching more films this year. Helen got us a joint membership at the Filmhouse, which gives us a bit of a discount at the box office and at the bar. We hope to make good use of it, and we’ve been marking the calendar with stuff that we’d like to see.

I suppose there are plenty of mediocre films which have won an award or two, but it’s rare to find a film that’s generated so many awards and is so uniquely bad. I recently had the dubious honour of being introduced to just such a film — Children of a Lesser God.

It is a romance: a study of the relationship between a “hot-shot” speech therapist moving to a deaf school in New Brunswick, and a deaf woman who works at the school.

It fails to impress on nearly every point that it makes an effort — as a romance, as a statement about deafness and as entertainment. The characters are either uninteresting or hateful. I could find no redeeming features in the leading man. I could see no reason why the leading lady would want to have anything to do with him.

Some points in particular really rubbed me the wrong way. The treatment of ASL, both as a language and as an important part of the characters’ identity, was downright shoddy. Many of the shots were framed so that the signer’s hands were offscreen msot of the time. There were no subtitles for the signed speech. Instead, the leading man provided a tedious running commentary whenever someone signed to him. As if we didn’t hate him enough, we now have to listen to his voice for all the other characters too!

For some reason the two main characters fall for each other. The reason for their affection remains a complete mystery to me. I would guess that she is the ultimate difficult student for him, while he is a suitable target for the anger she feels as an outsider. How all this translates into romance is a complete mystery to me. Their relationship seems to be based entirely on mutual antagonism. But unlike stories like The Shop Around The Corner it seems utterly unlikely that the animosity is just a front. They really do hate each other.

It seems the film was adapted from a play. I only hope the play wasn’t nearly as bad as this.

We saw Ben Stiller’s new comedy, Tropic Thunder, on Thursday night and it was much better than I imagined. The trailer I saw looked silly, but in a really dumb way. The real film was much wittier than I expected. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a better Ben Stiller movie. Keith will be very pleased, I’m sure.

Now I want to go back and watch some of the movies whose scenes it parodies — Platoon, Apocalypse Now and (surely a comedy already?) Predator. Also, for no reason in particular we should probably be watching Top Gun again, because it’s just that good…