No Shit Sherlock

I liked it. I liked it a lot. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movie ticked my box office and then some.

I’m aware that some other bloggers – other bloggers whose opinions I deeply respect – didn’t think much to the movie. Some even gave it a right good drubbing.

And so it was that, with no trifling sense of trepidation, I accompanied my good lady wife to the cinema on Saturday to sample Ritchie’s latest offering for myself.

I loved it. There. I’ve said it. I liked Robert Downey’s Holmes. His performance was captivating. Jude Law was also excellent as Watson. This is the first film I’ve seen Law in when I haven’t wanted to repeatedly punch his smooth smarmy little face until it resembled a blister pack full of Ibuprofen. Maybe it was the moustache? It suited him. Made him less smug. It’s why I have one, naturally.

But of course, I’m not at all precious about the Sherlock Holmes shtick. I’ve never bought into it. Never read the books. Never watched the various TV series and films that regularly pop up on our screens. I’m aware of the legend, of course, but... I’m quite happy for it to be played with. Quite happy for it to be sullied, profaned, pimped and perversely tweaked.

A good job really because this is precisely what Ritchie has done. The fiddle has been kept but the deerstalker and the droopy pipe have gone. The genius intellect is naturally there – it’s intrinsic to the character – but it’s been shackled to a manic, emotionally inept, impulsive, child-man who plainly has ADD and an extreme sports’ addiction to thrills and danger.

And it works. I’ve long believed that any genius must surely plumb the depths as much as he soars to the heights. There must be a balance. The obsessive compulsive behaviour of Downey’s Holmes makes him more real to me. More flesh and blood. More man. There was always something too... stiff, automaton-like about Doyle’s original creation. He was far too “literary”. He couldn’t possibly be real. But Downey’s Holmes – superhuman brawling abilities aside – could be.

And I know others have suggested that Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood in the movie) would have made a better Holmes. But I disagree. As good an actor as Strong is (and he is) there is something too... measured, too chained down about him. His Holmes would have been flat and bland. Downey’s portrayal was rich in suggestion and paradox. Again this makes him more real. More human.

Lastly, although much of London in the movie was CGI’d, I thought it done with care and love. Ritchie obviously knows London. Knows it intimately. This came over in the beautifully crafted establishing shots of the city. The views were true. They weren’t some awful Mary Poppins cartoon approximation of London and “her famous landmarks”. There was something real about them too. And I loved the detail: the ordure on the streets, the filthy glass in the windows of the horse drawn carriages... grit, grit and more girt. All keeping it real.

Ultimately of course the film was just a romp. Good natured. Fantastical. Rumbustious. Honest. With the odd bit of discombobulation thrown in for good measure. I needed something light-hearted and fun and that was what I got. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might be spinning in his grave but I was clapping my hands on the cinema seat with sheer pleasure.

Would I go again?

Elementary, my dear Watson.

Half Blood Prince

+++ SPOILER WARNING +++

So. The difficult 6th movie adapted from the difficult 6th book.

I took to the Harry Potter movies from the offset (yes, even with the occasionally irritating kiddy acting) but came to the novels late. In fact, up to the last movie (The Order Of The Phoenix) I’d staunchly avoided reading any of the books. I’d enjoyed the films so much I wanted my enjoyment of them to continue unalloyed and I didn’t want to join the miserable members of the “oh it wasn’t as good as the book” club.

However, the complete boxed set on Amazon last summer put paid to that and I ended up reading all 7 novels straight through in a matter of weeks.

So I went into this film fully armed with the gospel truth according to J. K Rowling and my membership card to the “oh it wasn’t as good as the book” club all ready to be stamped and issued.

And have I joined the whining members of that club?

No. I haven’t.

I will say this though: the movie isn’t as full as the book – but then that is inevitable. Movies can never be as full or as all encompassing as the books they are adapted from. And thank God for that, I say. It is a fact that should be embraced. Movies are a different beast entirely and should be / must be accepted as such.

They are a different discipline. A new thing entirely. They are a filter, not a mirror.

And David Yates, the director of The Half Blood Prince, has proved himself to be a very adept filter.

The Half Blood Prince is an odd book. Unlike the other novels there is no overriding mission or endeavour – the book focuses on relationships, on romance with the activities of Voldermort (via Draco Malfoy) very much on the back burner. The threat remains hidden until the last scenes when suddenly the whole world comes crashing down with the shocking violence of Dumbledore’s murder.

Yates builds up to this nicely in the film – there is plenty of humour and laughs but the darkness is never too far away. The duel between Potter and Malfoy is short, brutal and bloody. The horror and shock of it is well handled – as is Malfoy’s attack on Potter in the early stages of the film. And yet I felt that Yates pulled his punch with Dumbledore’s murder. I felt that, compared to the book, it had been sanitized. A little fluffed. Instead of the sickening lurch of Rowling’s prose (that isn’t a comment on her writing style) we got a tasteful floaty-fall from the highest tower reminiscent of Gandalf falling into the mine of Moria.

It’s just a small gripe and is part and parcel of the whole franchise being aimed at kids I suppose. Or maybe I’m just being too bloodthirsty?

The only other gripe I had was that Snape’s part of the story (which is rather essential) was downgraded far too much in the film. He should have had way much more screen time but I’m honestly not joining the “Oh it wasn’t as good as the blah blah blah” club, honestly I’m not.

‘Cos these gripes aside I thought the film was superb and well worth the wait. Jim Broadbent was perfect as Slughorn and the usual triumvirate of Radcliffe, Grint and Watson were a joy. There is such subtlety to their performances now, especially Watson as Hermione, that their interlinked relationships carry the film without any apparent effort – they must look back at their performances in the earlier films and cringe. Bonnie Wright as Ginny Weasley stepped into the limelight as Harry’s love interest and exuded a strength and confidence which was a perfect foil to Radcliffe’s / Potter’s bumbling abashedness. She also should have been given much more screen time in my opinion.

It took me a while to get used to Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. Richard Harris had such a warmth about him that Gambon seemed cold in comparison but he seems to have softened himself into the role over the last two films. In The Half Blood Prince Gambon IS Dumbledore and I found his performance poignant and sensitive. The failing health, the fading strength, the acceptance of his fate was all there in the way he moved – which is something I have never expected from Gambon before. Suddenly in The Half Blood Prince I notice him as an innately physical actor rather than just verbal.

So. The difficult 6th movie is a success. As good as the last film? Hmm. I’ll be honest and say perhaps not. To be fair, it never could be. The Half Blood Prince is a scene setter. The final moves before the end game begins. The antechamber to the great hall of the finale.

Yates has set the dominoes up nicely.

I’m packing my mixed metaphors into an old kit bag and booking my seat on the front row right now.

Belatedly Batman

A week ago, as part of the spectacular birthday celebration that heralded my 39th birthday (apologies if the fireworks kept you awake) Karen took me to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I’d quite enjoyed Batman Begins – as superhero movies go it was nice ‘n’ dark, gritty and packed a hard hitting punch or two. But for me the story was too fragmented, too intent on ticking as many bat-boxes as possible within the classic Batman framework... it tried to do too much and felt frustrated and frustrating. So despite the hype it was with some trepidation that I settled into my seat to watch The Dark Knight.

I needn’t have worried. It totally blew me away.

The sets, the backdrops, the stunts, the action... all on target. The story – despite the length of the film – felt tight and compact (like a well defined six-pack). And the humour... ah the humour was so dark it felt beyond black. I actually felt a twinge of regret when it was all over.

Michael Caine was a joy to watch and I’d at last fully accepted the bat-voice without wondering at what point in the movie Bruce Wayne had smoked a hundred Columbian cigars... Gary Oldman too was effortlessly believable as Gordon. The man is such a chameleon – he manages to change his physicality in every film I’ve ever seen him. How else can he go from the emaciated Goth cool of Sirius Black to the fustiness of Gordon and yet still look like himself?

But all this is just the nuts and bolts of the movie, the framework – the skeleton – albeit a very impressive one. The flesh, the heart, however is The Joker. Was Heath Ledger as good as the hype? For me: yes. Definitely. All the clichés are at least meaningful and fresh – a commanding performance, hypnotic, mesmerizing. In any scene where he didn’t appear I found myself pining for him to pop up in front of the camera.

I liked the fact his performance doffed its cap to the classic Joker and yet also managed to contemporize it so fully. The lies, the tricks, the surety that he will always, always play you false, the certainty that even the truth from his lips will inevitably be a lie. My favourite part of the film was The Joker’s self-deprecating speech to Harvey Dent: he dismisses himself as a mad dog, too chaotic to plan, to organize, he merely acts on his every whim, it’s not personal... it is the police, Batman, the authorities who plan and plot, who connive and conspire.

It is of course another delicious lie but one that hints at an interesting subtext of the movie. The Joker is the most organized agent in the story. To tell a good joke, to perform an effective trick takes eons of planning, post production, preparation... It is The Joker who connives and conspires more effectively than anyone. The Joker allows himself to be captured by the police or at least plans ahead for it – how else explain his henchman with the bomb-phone sewn into his guts?

The mad dog, the man who acts on his whims is, of course, Harvey Dent. Stripped of his suit and tie, the façade of law and order, he merely becomes another one of the Joker’s slathering canines, maddened, hungry, blindly animalistic but leashed and very carefully directed. Controlled completely by The Joker.

But isn’t Batman himself also a creature of instinct and whim? Isn’t Batman too something of a mad dog? He reacts emotionally, personally to all of The Joker’s plots and machinations. He considers giving up his Bat alter ego on an emotional whim and returns to it without a second’s regret. His explosions of violence match those of The Joker and he is just as apt to change the rules of engagement to suit his current requirements... The Joker was correct when he told Batman that he completed him (though it was a corny line). The correlation between these two characters is intriguing and gives the film its distinctive resonance.

Where they go from here in the regretful absence of Heath Ledger is a mystery but I’m awaiting the next film with a pleasurable amount of excitement. Just what kind of morning will follow this dark night? I can’t wait to find out.

On The HP

The definition of a good book: you don’t want it ever to end but you’re unable to stop yourself racing through at breakneck speed to the final page...

I completed Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows over the weekend and I feel quite bereft now that it’s all over.

It sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? It’s just a kid’s book for Christ’s sake! And years ago I was one of those people who steered myself away from the HP books with an avidity that now seems ridiculous. There’s too much hype, I thought. Too much hysteria. Too many people rave about it therefore the books can’t possibly be any good.

That kind of thing.

Then I got into the movies.

I confess, I love them. They get better and better and I’m already excited about the new one that is currently in production. I’m a HP movie devotee.

But even up until the last film – The Order Of The Phoenix – I still refused to read the books. In fact on this here very blog I proudly pronounced that I would not read the books until the film franchise was fully completed.

What rot!

Once I spied the books on Amazon – the complete 7 in a nice embossed boxed set – I had to own them. And once I owned them... well. What’s the point of having books sitting around the house and not reading them?

So a number of weeks ago I pitched in with the first and kept at it until the final page of the final book...

And it’s been great. It’s been wonderful. Yes, they’re kid’s books but they’re not just kid’s books. They work on many different levels. I’m amazed at how deeply I was sucked into them. How intense the journey has been. Maybe I need to get out more but a series of books hasn’t gripped me like this since I was a teenager. I gave myself willingly to the entire HP world and was happy to lose myself there.

My respect for J.K. Rowling is immense. Speaking as someone who is three quarters of their way through their first novel I take my hat off to someone who can plot 7 so deftly and so completely and still keep the reader hanging on until the very end. It might not be Shakespeare. It might not be Rushdie. It might not be the stuff of a lot of “worthier”, more intellectual writers but you know what? I don’t care. There’s a lot to be said for a good story written so well that you actually wish it were real. For characters that you become emotionally attached to.

Harry Potter for kids? Pah! Why should kids get all the good stuff? It’s too good for ‘em I say.

For those of you who are still cynically resisting the lure of HP... give it a go. You will be surprised. For those of you who are already in the know. Well, just say hi and smile.

As for what I do now... well, I need to start prepping for my final Uni module next academic year. Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” is next on my reading list. Karen tells me it is excellent.

And I’m sure it is.

But my heart is still at Hogwarts...

Phoenix Nights

Karen and I took the boy to see Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix last night. Well. That’s not strictly accurate. We took the boy along with us to cover the fact that it was we who both wanted to go.

I absolutely love the Harry Potter films though I’m probably one of the few people in the UK not to have read any of the books and I don’t, in truth, intend to until the film franchise is fully completed.

That might sound odd coming from a confirmed bibliophile but I actually have a deep reverence for the cinema. You’re never going to hear me complaining that a movie adaptation of a book is inaccurate or has “left out the best bits”. I don’t expect or want to see a movie that is just a slavish rendition of a novel. Both are entirely separate art forms and should function according to the rules and demands of their own separate disciplines.

Put plainly, a movie is never going to be a novel and a novel is never going to be a movie. And neither should they be. I’m quite happy for directors to run a bit with an idea and change it, reshape it, prune it, mould it… sculpt it into something new. For those that want the novel… well, there you go. It’s there. But the film must be accepted as a thing entire and integral to itself.

For that reason I was one of the few people among my friends who loved V For Vendetta. I also loved the last Harry Potter film, The Goblet Of Fire and found people’s comments about “this has been left out” and “there was so much more in the novel” really tiresome. To enjoy a film adaptation properly you almost have to forget the novel. Give the film a fresh start and a fair go. Hence, I have chosen not to read the novels. There’s too much hype around them. I’m sure they’re excellent and I shall enjoy reading them a few years down the line. In the meantime I’m enjoying the films immensely.

Talking of which, The Order Of The Phoenix, continues the gradual darkening and greying up of the main character’s moral outlook started with The Prisoner of Azkaban. This is a good thing. The world is not a simple black and white place and the politicising of the Harry Potter world is a good thing. It adds more depth to both the characters and the plot.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Emma Watson (Hermione) and particularly Rupert Grint (Ron) have very much upped their game in the acting stakes and their performances are a joy to watch. They work well together and their (obviously) real life camaraderie spills over onto the screen in abundance and adds a good deal of warmth to the macabre goings-on. My only complaint is that Hermione’s dancing eyebrows – much controlled in the previous film – are now wildly river dancing in every scene and are very, very distracting! Other than that her performance as Hermione is superlative and the slow burning attraction between her and Ron is just charming.

Ron for me is the real star: though Daniel’s Harry has now beefed up both physically as well as emotionally and has developed a very real, very strong screen presence, Ron’s comic timing is absolutely flawless and his delivery so natural that you are utterly convinced by him. He does however look like he’s just stepped out of the 1960’s music scene. I could easily see him in the Rolling Stones or The Small Faces. Lazy Sunday afternoon’s anyone?

It was also good to see Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Richard Griffiths, Gary Oldman and Ralph Fiennes reprising their roles although a fair few of them are looking decidedly creakier than in previous outings. I just hope the older ones are still alive when they to get to the seventh and final film. They’re totally free to cark it after that point obviously. Richard Griffiths as always looked particularly grotesque as Harry’s guardian, Vernon Dursley, but Karen and I were alarmed at how ill he looked. I suspect it was not all make-up and gloy which is rather worrying. Gary Oldman is superb as Sirius Black and there’s a very real warmth between him and Daniel’s Harry that benefits the film immensely.

Some of the new characters are notably excellent too – Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood was fantastic and, as expected, Imelda Staunton was untouchable as the torturing Dolores Umbridge. She was like an unhinged version of Her Maj The Queen.

My favourite though is still John Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy. His tightly controlled cruelty and superiority is always delicious to watch. His sneers drip acid and his voice is like a serrated knife coated in honey.

I could go on for hours but I will spare you all that. Suffice to say the film is excellent. Unlike The Goblet Of Fire though there’s not such a sense of crescendo towards the end. Instead the pace and tension are wound tighter and tighter as the film proceeds to its conclusion and there is no true sense of release. It feels like it’s part one of a two-part story almost. There’s unfinished business. Threats are left hanging. Promises are left to keep. None of this is a criticism. Real life isn’t about tidy, happy endings and I like the fact that the Harry Potter story doesn’t always take the safe kiddie option of nice, neatly packaged conclusions where all the loose ends are tied up. This is a dangerously adult world; not a kid’s world and there is a surprising amount of gravitas and food for thought in that one, single realization.

The Order Of The Phoenix is immensely satisfying and leaves you thirsting for more. That should be a thumbs up in anybody’s book. Roll on number 6 I say.

My Top Ten Films

With marvellous adeptness my Blog Buddy, Old Cheeser, tagged me over the weekend to produce a potted account of my top ten movies.

Easy, I thought. No problem.

Except to narrow my positively obese DVD collection down to a carrot stick thin top ten proved harder than I thought possible. Nevertheless. Here, compiled in no order whatsoever, are my favourite top ten movies. Or, at least the ones that are in top ten right now. Ask me again tomorrow and it could be completely different (though The Land Before Time IX is never going to make the list – no matter how hard you look).

1) Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain – Audrey Tautou. Paris. A travelling gnome. Perfect.

2) Bladerunner – still, after all this time, the film refuses to look dated. And it still hits me right in the guts. Roy Batty’s final speech is one of cinema’s finest moments and I’m led to believe that he improvised much of it.

3) The Company of Wolves – being a massive Angela Carter fan it’s a real treat to see her literary genius transfigured into an amazingly evocative manifestation of every childhood fairy tale you were ever told. The Brother’s Grimm and then some...

4) The Outlaw Josie Wales – I like a good Western and this is one of the best. Great one liners too: “Hell’s come to breakfast”, “You gonna reach for that iron or just stand there whistling Dixie?” and “What we have in Texas is something called the Mississippi boat ride...”

5) Enchanted April – a lesser known Film Four production of the novel of the same name. It’s just a really lovely movie that makes the whole world seem much better. Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson put in breathtakingly gorgeous performances.

6) Donnie Darko – this film effects me on so many different levels I can’t even begin to describe them.

7) Unbreakable – I preferred this to Sixth Sense because it was so off the wall. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson both put in bruising yet vulnerable performances. A film that stays true to itself right to the last frame...

8) Lord Of The Rings – what can I say? It did the job for me. End of story.

9) About A Boy – I like the occasional chick flick and there’s just something about this that grabs me. I like the way the relationships within the film are handled. And it stars Toni Colette. That’s enough for me!

10) Memento – Guy Pierce is so good in this it’s untrue. Few films get this uncompromisingly dark. Not an easy film to watch but worth the effort.

Also vying for top ten places were: Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Unforgiven, Le Pacte De Loup, Plunkett & Macleane, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Get Carter, Elizabeth, Nil By Mouth, Akira, Planet Of The Apes (original), Kill Bill, L'Apartement, True Grit, Pulp Fiction, Muriel’s Wedding, LA Confidential, The Usual Suspects and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Like I said, narrowing them down to a mere ten is nigh on impossible... and a top hundred would take far too much of my time to write up!

Up The Spears Of Sparta!

Karen and I experienced the visual butch-fest that is 300 the other day – the latest film by Zack Snyder based on the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller.

And what a visual feast it was too. Beautifully restrained colour palettes, titan-esque picture composition, manly voices deeper than Barry White’s g-string and a super baddy who was camper than Charles Hawtrey in a pink tent pitched by the side of a Cornish Maypole.

There are definite homoerotic motifs present throughout the film – the Spartans are all incredibly muscular and spend the entire film prowling about with hardly any clothes on, thrusting their mighty spears into an unending host of enemies. The main bad guy himself, Xerxes, is a 9ft giant who in the words of one reviewer (whose name I forget) looks and acts more like RuPaul than a Persian God-King-Warrior. He is also in charge of a grotesque harem of carnivalesque and misshapen concubines that reminded me more of a monster-mash of creatures from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser films than a true Persian harem. But hey – what do I know?

The audience is therefore presented with the implied effeminacy, homosexuality and fetishism of the Persians and the manly, strength-as-virtue, battle honour heroics of the hugely outnumbered Spartans. For me such over-simplified divisions are a little too uncomfortable to palate. I was also uncomfortable with the politics of the film – the West (Greeks) versus the East (Persia) – given the present world predicament, though the whole premise could easily be turned upside-down when you consider that the West / America has more in common with the vast hordes and fire power of Xerxes than the poor outnumbered Spartans facing invasion by a foreign enemy...

The film also shamelessly glorifies violence and death in battle. I realize the film makers are merely trying to give us a flavour of the Spartan ethos that led 300 men to face an entire army but in the morally conscientious world of 2007 such machismo carries undertones of foolhardiness – for all the Spartan’s stand is deeply heroic and truly admirable.

Despite my problems with the film though I really enjoyed it. Yes it is violent but there is something cartoon-like about the violence that stays true to the visual nature of the original graphic novel: it’s cartoony but not in a desensitizing sense although it does allow the audience to offset the horror of bloodshed a little. That sounds like a paradox but I can’t really explain it any better. Go see the film and you’ll understand what I mean. Visually the film is stunning – it is sumptuously photographed – and provided you disengage your politics and any historical knowledge beforehand it’s a film that most people I think will enjoy.

You’ll never see a big man’s spear handled so well...