Quantum Physics

Karen and I reintroduced ourselves to cinema life last night by calling in our trusty babysitter, T, and heading off to see the new Bond movie "Quantum Of Solace".

"Casino Royale" had impressed us hugely – Craig’s taciturn but intelligent thug at last restoring the Bond franchise to something approximating its glory years when Connery was at the helm / trigger. Craig didn’t so much as hold the screen as pin it down in a head-lock, bloody its nose and then pour an expensive but rejuventating cocktail down its throat.

Viewers choked in ecstacy. Had Bond ever been this good?

But that was then. This is now. The question last night was: could Craig do it again?

Cut to the nodding dog from the Churchill adverts. Oh yes.

Craig has brought a good old fashioned physicality to the role that Bond had been missing for years. Since Connery in fact. Timothy Dalton did his best to give Bond a raw edge but he was too stiff, too stilted – the scripts didn’t allow for any depth or humanity in Bond’s psychological make-up. Dalton’s bond buckled under the pressure.

Not so with Craig. There’s a living, breathing human being behind the suit, behind the gun sights. One that is damaged, finding it difficult to process his emotions. His taciturnity is due to emotional trauma rather than robotic detachment. It speaks volumes as opposed to obscuring any sense of the man.

But it’s not overdone. Bond isn’t a soap and never should be. Bond’s inner feeling are very deftly, very lightly touched upon but never exploited for a quick bit of meaningless shmaltz. We see a flash of emotion but then it is masked – an action that in itself hints at a profound inner vulnerability – and then Bond (over) compensates with some breath-taking, "horribly efficient" violence. Bond hides behind his suit, behind his job. Behind his duty. His depths have complicated shadows and I’d much rather see those as Bond’s 'schtick' than Moore’s wetly debonair tailor’s dummy quips and eyebrow jerks.

I like the fact that there are fewer gadgets in this incarnation of Bond. The opening car chase is a case in point. No bullet proof glass. No missile launchers hidden behind the headlights. No oil jet hidden beneath the exhaust.

Just hard-crunching steering wheel action, lethal slivers of glass peppering the lens and a quick grab for the machine gun lying on the passenger seat. Bang bang. You’re dead. Eff you.

There’s a continuity to the plot that works too. It has the effect of widening the scope of the Bond world, fleshing it out. Gives it a much needed integrity. Nothing is happening in isolation. Some of the characters – both heroes and villains – reprise their roles from "Casino Royale". This both hints at and creates a sense of history, a sense of place. There’s a bigger story unfolding in the Bond world that isn’t going to be snappily concluded in the destruction of the bad guy’s base.

Because behind this bad guy is a bigger bad guy. Or in this case a whole group of them and there isn’t a white pussy cat to be stroked between them. Bond’s new arena of espionage and spy chasing owes much to the Bourne films, I feel. This world is muddy grey not black and white. There’s a tacit acknowledgment of double dealings by the UK government, paying off bad guys where necessary, funding coups, allies screwing each other over out of self interest that would have been unthinkable in early Bond movies. But these murky waters allow Bond to embody an amoral purity. He doesn’t do deals. He doesn’t care about the money. He hasn’t got a retirement plan. His methods are direct, irreverible and (cinematically) just.

He’s a rogue agent. But he’s our rogue agent and that makes everything alright. He’s both the underdog and the superior overlord.

Nobody can touch him.

But the impact can be felt from miles away.

Welcome back Mr Bond.

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.

Packing Some Heat

Can I just point out that ordinarily I do not belong to a Heat Magazine reading household? It’s just that yesterday, on route to the dentist to sort out her troublesome tooth, Karen stopped off at a newsagents and picked up a copy to help take her mind off the awful ordeal ahead. Then once the magazine was brought into the house and left lying around I just happened – purely by chance – to glance into it.

As expected it was infested with endless drivel about Big Brother, D list celebrities, dieting fads and stories about unfeasibly amoral housewives with a penchant for PVC and bakelite.

Ok. I made up that last bit.

But one thing that did catch my eye and genuinely made me laugh was a Big Brother lookee-likee section.

There were the usual comparisons: Shabnam looking like Ken Dodd, Tracey looking like Sean Bean, etc.

But the best one of all was the revelation that Seany actually looks like Chunk from The Goonies...

Na-ha-ha-ha!

I can’t wait to see his Jabba impression...

X Rated

Being a rainy Monday morning and having submitted to the burden of total and utter boredom, I have been lately musing on the way modern movies are certificated.

When I was a kid it was all very austere and straight forward. “12”, “15” and “18” told you all you needed to know and all the really good films were inevitably rated “X”. Hmm. You know, I never saw enough X rated movies as a kid. I feel heartily deprived.

Nowadays though it’s not enough to simply slap an age label onto a film. No. As a tiresome bonus we also get a load of PC-hogswhallop, soft-soap terminology thrown into the mix for free.

Stuff like:

• “May contain mild violence.”


• “Moderate language.”


• “Occasional sexual references.”

Der? What is moderate language anyway? Ecclesiastical Latin?

Anyway, it made me think how infinitely fuller and more rich our lives would be if such gradings were also applied to television programmes.

• Nigella Bites would be rated as “extreme vegetable peril of a sexual nature”.


• How To Look Good Naked would be “may contain immoderate baps and strong baptitular references.”


• Celebrity Big Brother would be “may contain nuts”


• The Apprentice would simply be “contains twats.”


• Deal Or No Deal would be “gratuitous boredom and beard.”

Hmm...

I’m sure you could think up loads more. But only if you’re bored.

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!