Author: saxonbullock2000

TV Review: Doctor Who S6 E02 – ‘Day of the Moon’

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Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillen, Arthur Darvill, Alex Kingston, Mark Sheppard ~ Writer: Steven Moffat ~ Director: Toby Haynes ~ Year: 2011

Doctor Who Matt Smith Day of the Moon Still

[xrr rating=3.5/5]

The Low-Down: An episode that asks more questions than it answers, Day of the Moon is weird, inventive and packed full of highlights – but is Steven Moffat in danger of making Doctor Who a show that’s too clever and complex for its own good?

What’s it About?: Three months after the events of The Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor is imprisoned and Amy, Rory and River Song are on the run, trying to find out about an enemy they can’t even remember. The truth may lie in an abandoned orphanage – but is Amy pregnant or not? And what has Neil Armstrong’s foot got to do with this all?

The Story: (WARNING: As with most of my Doctor Who reviews, the following contains a hefty load of spoilers…)

Two words of warning for Steven Moffat: Ghost Light. For those out there without an encyclopaedic knowledge of Classic Who, Ghost Light was one of the last broadcast stories of the original series run, back in 1989 – a fascinatingly ambitious and dark story that layered on the complications as if they were going out of style, but seemingly forgot to tell the audience exactly what was happening. Result? A Doctor Who adventure that was easier to admire than like, which ended up as rather more baffling than genuinely creepy – and while the Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon two-parter is streets ahead of Ghost Light in terms of ambition and execution, there’s still the sense that the show is aiming a bit too far ahead of its audience, and so busy being ferociously clever and dark and scary that it’s in danger of forgetting to actually entertain.

It’s mildly bizarre to find myself criticising Doctor Who for being too intensively complex and clever – after all, one of the main criticisms of the RTD era was that there was too much bombast and emotiveness, and not quite enough of the kind of dark smartness that Moffat regularly delivered in his stories. Trouble is, I think we’re getting shown what happens when the needle swings too far in the opposite direction, added to which Moffat has now loaded the series with enough ongoing mysteries to fill an entire season of Lost, and I’m not sure if doing that to a show like Who is a good idea, when there’s the very good chance of annoying the hell out of your audience.

All this makes it sound like I didn’t like Day of the Moon, when I did – it’s a stylish, gripping episode with some fantastic sequences, and I have the feeling that when we know exactly where all the events within the episode fit in with the overall arc, it’ll be even better. Trouble is, right now it’s not a completely satisfying story – the actual tale of the Doctor finding a way of overturning the presence of the Silents is really good, and the final twist of using the ‘One Small Step’ transmission combined with the Silents’ own words is a genuinely brilliant one, but at the end we’re still perplexed, and I never watched Doctor Who to be perplexed. I take my hat off to Moffat for trying something seriously ambitious, but it’s also kind of weird to find myself looking forward to next week’s episode simply because it looks like it’s going to be a nicely self-contained tale of Pirates on the high seas that’ll be fairly light on the arc (even if it’s also written by the man who wrote the not-especially-good middle episode of last year’s Sherlock).

There are decisions in Day of the Moon that are daring – most especially shifting forward three months without any warning, and never really giving us a clear resolution of the final cliffhanger (we get a couple of flashbacks, but that’s it) – but there’s also a lot in Day of the Moon that we have to take on trust, and stuff that simply doesn’t seem to make sense (like the way that the Doctor goes from an imprisoned fugitive to working with President Nixon again without any kind of join). Now, this isn’t the first time Who has had a light attitude to plots making sense – RTD would pull this kind of thing all the time, but it’s less of a problem when you’re telling big bold and brassy blockbusters. Complex plots that make the audience pay attention have to make sense, and the end result is a story that’s compulsive but doesn’t quite earn what it’s reaching for.

The Lost comparison is, unfortunately, a fairly strong one – I didn’t have anywhere near the problems everybody else had with the finale (although I do feel the entire sixth season is massively flawed, and that the finale is a piece of television that regularly switches between massively misconceived and strangely brilliant, frequently within a few minutes of each other), but the feeling I got from this two-parter is very similar to the sense I got from the less satisfying sections of Lost, where it was more about heightening the mystery than advancing the story, and where the component parts of the drama didn’t all feel like they fitted together. Because in Day of the Moon we have some great components – a spooky villain, some fantastic setpieces (especially the gun battle in the Silent control room), another great turn from Matt Smith, some well-played shocks (especially the opening teaser sequence, and the brilliant end scene), and a couple of nicely played emotional sequences (most notably the material between Rory and Amy, as well as the brief scene between Rory and the Doctor).

But by the end, we still don’t know exactly how all these components fit together. Yes, we know that the Silents are the Silence that was referred to throughout S5, but we don’t know why – neither do we know how the Silents’ plans fitted in with the fact that the Doctor is due to be killed in 200 years (and that one of them seemed to be still alive in 2011), or with the crashed spaceship in The Lodger, or with the fact that they apparently blew the TARDIS up in order to destroy the Universe in The Pandorica Opens… Well, there’s a massive list of things that we don’t know, and I honestly don’t feel that piling a whole selection of ongoing mysteries on top of the ongoing mysteries we already had (Who is River Song? Why was the TARDIS blown up? Who exactly are the Silents?) is a great idea. It’s as if the episodes had to be edited down too much and a little too much connective tissue was lost in the process, and I can’t help crossing my fingers that a whole selection of these mysteries are going to be at least reasonably wrapped up by the mid-season finale, otherwise Who is going to be in real danger of becoming a show that’s more clever than it is fun. Which would be a crying shame…

(Okay – brief theory time. The Silents appear to be utilising TARDIS-like technology, and now they seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time on Earth getting Humanity to the point where space-suit technology was possible (was that *really* the only thing they were aiming for?). Plus, they’ve now been in charge of either transforming or supervising a child who we now know is at least part Gallifreyan – is this Amy and Rory’s baby? (The obvious concept is “It’s the Doctor’s baby!” but I really can’t see Moffat going down that road) The question is – is someone attempting to reboot Gallifreyan civillisation, possibly using the Earth in order to carry this out? Is that why the TARDIS explosion happened – did they know that the Doctor would find a way of ‘rebooting’ the Universe, and use that to their advantage, working something into the fabric of the newly ‘booted’ Universe at the same time? Are the Silents merely pawns in a bigger game? A game that’s possibly being played by whoever said ‘Silence will Fall’ back in The Pandorica Opens?)

Moffat is a writer who thrives on complications – this often makes for brilliant, immensely satisfying television, but sometimes he needs reining in, because otherwise you start getting complications for complications’ sake. One of the reasons I loved The Eleventh Hour so much, back at the beginning of S5, was that it was surprisingly simple, giving the Doctor a relatively clear objective and allowing the audience along for the ride (which is vital – and one of the reasons why, despite their spookiness, the Silents aren’t as scary as the Weeping Angels – as the audience, we don’t actually know what their intention is). The Eleventh Hour was also an unashamed crowd-pleaser, and I’m a little concerned that I’ve yet to spot an upcoming episode that looks clearly like that kind of all-out colourful romp. Doctor Who needs that sort of episode – 13 weeks of dark, weird and scary might start getting a little repetitive, especially if the major arc keeps piling on the mystery and tying the timeline in ever-more complicated knots.

I don’t want Who to trip over its own feet. I don’t want it to get too complicated, and start alienating the audience that rediscovered it back in 2005. I hope these are just initial teething troubles for S6, and it’s very possible that when I next revisit Day of the Moon, my mind will have seriously changed, and I’ll be able to enjoy the episode on its own terms, rather than getting slightly vexxed by the mass of flapping plot-threads. But right now, I’m a bit worried about the show’s future – and that’s something I never expected to be feeling after a Steven Moffat two-parter…

The Verdict: An episode that feels like it should come with its own flow-chart diagram, Day of the Moon is daring and almost brilliant – but gets held back by its own elliptical nature, and the sheer number of ongoing enigmas. Here’s hoping that the show can bounce back, and that the quest to out-do Lost in the head-scratching mysteries stakes only lasts so long…

Previous Doctor Who Season 6 Reviews:

S6 E01 – ‘The Impossible Astronaut’

TV Review: Doctor Who S6 E01 – ‘The Impossible Astronaut’

/ saxonbullock2000 / 3 Comments

Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillen, Arthur Darvill, Alex Kingston, Mark Sheppard ~ Writer: Steven Moffat ~ Director: Toby Haynes ~ Year: 2011

Doctor Who Series 6 Matt Smith Utah Filming The Impossible Astronaut

[xrr rating=4/5]

The Low-Down: Bold, bewildering and more than a little barmy, the opener to Season 6 of Doctor Who‘s new incarnation is an attention-grabbing adventure that may be a little too complicated at times, but certainly sets up one hell of an ongoing story arc…

What’s it About?: Mysteriously summoned to the Utah desert, the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Professor River Song are soon involved in a bizarre quest back to 1969, where dark events are occurring in the White House, and a sinister alien force lurks behind the scenes…

The Story: (WARNING: As with most of my Doctor Who reviews, the following contains a hefty load of spoilers…)

The RTD era is over. I mean, yes, it’s been over since The Eleventh Hour hopped onto our screens a year ago, but if there’s one thing that this opener to S6 brings home, it’s that this is very much a different show now. The Impossible Astronaut plays more like a season finale (which is a deliberate choice), and it’s about as far as it’s possible to get from the light, fluffy runaround nonsense of RTD opening episodes like Partners in Crime and Smith and Jones. In fact, it’s rather as if we’ve already leapt to Moffat’s equivalent of S4 continuity-fest The Stolen Earth with the sheer level of interconnections and fan service going on, and there’s a part of me that’s a tad concerned at this (especially as it’s always been the mix of daft showstoppers and brainier episodes that have kept the show’s popularity up) – but, admittedly, the rest of me is well and truly along for the ride.

And it’s certainly an eye-catching ride, managing to pull-off an epic, American adventure far better than the distinctly lacklustre Daleks in Manhattan two-parter in S3. There’s spectacle, there’s some great visuals- but on top of the gorgeous US location footage (which is sparing, but about as much as I figured we’d be getting, to be honest), there’s the major twist in the first ten minutes of the episode. Now, I already knew that one of the regulars ‘was going to die’ thanks to spoilers on the front of Doctor Who Magazine, and my money was on the Doctor, but not in the way it happened – a stark, bizarre and powerful scene that managed to have vague (probably deliberate) echoes of 1981 adventure Logopolis, where the soon-to-regenerate Doctor talks to the mysterious Watcher (who’s actually a projection of the Doctor’s future self). It’s really nice, very well acted, and is best because from then onwards it places all the characters in a really interesting emotional situation – the story does seem to be building up that everyone’s going to be keeping secrets from everyone else, and Moffat is also finding new wrinkles to the idea of having a married couple as TARDIS companions (especially if the ‘I’m Pregnant’ line is anything to go by).

Of course, there’s a get-out clause – and the Doctor being secretly enlisted by his own future self to possibly prevent his own death is a great set-up for a story, leading us in an admirably nutty direction while also giving Matt Smith plenty of chances to shine, showcasing the Eleventh Doctor’s comedy and his darker edges (along with his new status as Biggest Flirt in the Universe(TM)). The Impossible Astronaut is a fun, enjoyable and intriguing episode with plenty of standout moments and a great support performance from SF TV veteran Mark Sheppard, but in spite of the incredibly fast dialogue and the multitude of well-timed gags, it is a slow-burner – we’re more in character-building territory than all-out adventure, while the various enigmatic plot-threads have yet to connect up, meaning the final cliffhanger is more bemusing than thrilling simply because we don’t know yet what the hell is going on, leaving us with far more questions than answers (Why exactly is the Astronaut also a little girl? Why is Amy telling the Doctor right then that she’s pregnant? Is it because of what the Silent said? Why was the Future Doctor on the run for 200 years? Why are both Amy and River feeling ill after witnessing the Silents?).

I suspect that this’ll play much better once we’ve seen episode 2, and that maybe this story should have been shown as one big, attention-grabbing 90 minute special rather than a two-parter. With a new and intimidating enemy in the Silents (whose sequence in the White House bathroom is brilliantly spooky, even by Who standards) and a massive mystery (which is connected to the TARDIS-like craft from S5’s episode The Lodger, and may feed into the supposedly game-changing mid-season finale that’s coming in six weeks time), this is a different kind of Who opener that’s dark and demanding, but possibly a little too complicated at times. There’s also the feeling that Moffatt needs to be careful with the trans-temporal shenanigans from now on, as there’s the distinct danger of repeating himself and losing any freshness the concept had in the first place. A gripping opener, The Impossible Astronaut may not have won me over 100% in the way that The Eleventh Hour did, and much is going to depend on how Day of the Moon pans out (from the end-of-episode teaser, it certainly looks demented) – but Doctor Who is still a wildly inventive adventure, and one of the most unabashedly fun SF shows around.

The Verdict: Season 6 is go – and we’re already off to a head-spinning, complex start. Despite a few reservations, this is a strong opener, and if Moffatt can keep focus and not let things get too over-complicated, this could be a seriously impressive Who adventure. Now all we need is episode 2…

TV News: Farewell, Sarah Jane – A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen (1948-2011)

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Elisabeth Sladen Sarah Jane Smith Doctor Who Companion

I don’t like doing R.I.P./Memorial posts – because very often, even if famous/well-loved performers or actors have died, I don’t have much to say other than “Oh dear, that’s sad.” But news hit last night, on the 19th of April 2011, and frankly I’ve got to say something about this one, because this one feels terribly personal. It was bad enough when we recently lost Nicholas Courtney (the actor who portrayed Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), but now Elisabeth Sladen has died, aged only 63. She was the actress who played the tremendously popular assistant Sarah Jane Smith from 1973-1976 in the classic series of Doctor Who, and who ended up returning to the role more times than anyone (especially her) expected, going on to appear several times in the relaunched version of Who,  and getting her own children’s TV spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Of course, the question is – why? Why was Sarah Jane quite so popular and remembered as a Who companion? My Twitter feed over the last twelve hours has been a genuinely touching outpouring of disbelief, sadness, and a genuine affection for a performer who brought a serious amount of warmth and happiness into people’s lives – it’s a testament to how much impact Doctor Who has had, and it’s also a testament to exactly how bloody good Sladen was in the role.

Because, let’s be honest, when you’re looking at the classic series of Who, the companion is pretty often a fairly thankless role – they’re there to ask questions, get into danger, be kidnapped, undergo hypnosis, almost be sacrificed, and generally be an audience identification figure. There’s not much depth, and it’s up to the performer in question to actually make this slightly thin collection of ticks and story devices into a character the audience cares about.

There were few actresses in Classic Who who were as good at this as Elisabeth Sladen – Sarah Jane starts out in her first year (Jon Pertwee’s final season as the Third Doctor) as a deliberate ‘Women’s Lib’ character, a bolshy journalist who pokes her nose in places and willingly gets into trouble, but she soon settles down into a far less deliberately spiky character, and it’s in her first season with Tom Baker that she truly starts to shine. It’s partly because Sarah Jane is the prototype for what the companion would eventually become – she’s the point where the Doctor/companion relationship goes from one that had been largely parental in nature (especially with characters like Victoria and Jo Grant), to one that’s on a rather more equal footing, with the Doctor and companion as genuine friends. There are companions who followed who were even more capable, violent or intelligent than Sarah Jane, and one (Ace) who got a far more detailed emotional life than she ever did – but there’s something effortlessly likeable about Sladen in the role, coupled with the very obvious onscreen chemistry between her and Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Sladen and Baker got on really well, and it truly shows in their stories – the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane are a pairing who are such fun to watch, it’s hard not to be charmed silly by their adventures (a fact that’s helped by Sladen’s run on the show being largely in the Phillip Hinchcliffe era, a hugely acclaimed run of stories which features few (if any) actual duds, and several stone-cold classics).

It was lovely seeing her return to the show in 2006’s ‘School Reunion’ (I’m not a huge fan of the episode, but Sladen’s work is sensational), and everything I’ve heard and seen of Sladen’s offscreen persona suggests that she was an impossibly lovely person to work with. It’s tremendously sad that she’s gone, and a piece of my childhood is gone tonight – but her work, and Sarah Jane, will live on as a part of Who’s imaginative and thoroughly British history.

R.I.P. Elisabeth Sladen. You really will be missed.

The Thursday Trailer: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes Movie Poster Weta Digital Effects

I’ve been wondering for a while exactly why Rise of the Planet of the Apes exists (beyond, of course, the fact that Tim Burton’s uniquely awful Planet of the Apes remake still managed to make a healthy amount of money). It has seemed to be a terribly pointless film for a long time, but we’re in the era of the reboot, so I guess the fact that we’re essentially getting a big budget remake of ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’, of all films, shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise. Well, the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes trailer is up in High-Def at the Apple website, and the results are… interesting. Admittedly, there’s a worrying amount of cheese here, especially as it’s yet another tale of EVIL scientists tampering with NATURE ITSELF (and it’s nice to see that scientist James Franco has named his genetic virus therapy after his favourite Goth band), but there’s also some striking effects work from Weta Digital, and some impressive imagery in here that does at least suggest that there might be a few moments of genuine heft, and that Rise of the Planet of the Apes might be a little bit more than just a completely cynical cash-grab. Not that I’m getting myself too excited, of course…

Honourable Mention:

This gets in out of sheer weirdness – Roland Emmerich, the man who most recently blew up most of the world in the frankly rather dreadful 2012, has suddenly decided to make an Elizabethan-era conspiracy thriller that suggests William Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by somebody else. No, really, he has – and here’s the trailer on Apple. The visuals are great and the use of the Radiohead track is even better – but this is Roland ‘Independence Day’ Emmerich, for heaven’s sake…

Dishonourable Mention:

This actually seems to be a brief sales reel that’s ended up on IMDB by accident, and doesn’t even have a proper ending (it seems to conk out about ten seconds early), but this teaser for the extraordinarily well-intentioned Mozart and the Whale has to go here, simply for the fact that someone looked at a script about an Aspergers-affected emotionally troubled savant falling in love, and said “Hey! Get me Josh Hartnett’s number!”   The results are not, shall we say, ideal….

Movie Review: Sucker Punch (2011)

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Cast: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens,
Jamie Chung, Scott Glenn ~ Writers: Zack Snyder, Steve Shibuya
Director: Zack Snyder ~ Year: 2011

Sucker Punch Zack Snyder Movie Poster[xrr rating=1.5/5]

The Low-Down: A schizoid mix of Shutter Island, Brazil, Inception, Moulin Rouge and Caged Heat, Zack Snyder’s geekfest opus Sucker Punch is an ambitious failure of jaw-dropping proportions. It’s also firm proof that it takes more than a gun, a sword and a midriff-exposing schoolgirl outfit to make an empowering kick-ass heroine…

What’s it About?: Sentenced to a grim lunatic asylum by her evil, EVIL stepfather, Babydoll (Emily Browning) is a traumatised teen who’s facing a personality-wiping lobotomy in five days, thanks to a corrupt orderly. Or is she the latest addition to an opulent bordello, where the girls all dream of escape? Or is she a superpowered action heroine, questing her way through lurid and explosive universes of the imagination?

The Story: In an odd kind of way I can’t help but slightly admire Zack Snyder. After all, this is a man who said “I want to make a film where nubile warrior vixens in suspenders battle giant samurai, dragons, and steampunk Nazi zombies”, and actually got someone to pay him to make it happen. It’s just a pity the end result ends up so ferociously boring, as well as being possibly the most misguided and wretched example of a director trying to prove themselves since Guy Ritchie’s hilariously awful 2005 oddity Revolver.

Sucker Punch Emily Browning Publicity Photo Zack SnyderAt the least, it’s hard to fault Sucker Punch in terms of ambition. In an era where big-budget original projects are the exception rather than the rule, it wants to stand out from the crowd. “Hey,” it says, “why can’t I be a reality-altering tale of a quest for freedom and the transformative power of the imagination, refracting my ‘escape from a girl’s mental institution’ plot through three separate realities?” It’d be a great idea, if all the ingredients of Sucker Punch weren’t crammed artlessly together in an indigestible stew that functions more as a sequence of music videos than an actual story, giving us a film that isn’t much more than a hyper-stylised guided tour through Zack Snyder’s personal scrapbook of geek fetishes.

From the evidence here, he’s definitely one of those directors who’s only as good as his material, and should on no account be allowed to write his own stories, as he barely seems to know how to create a believable emotional reality on camera. From the soundtrack of nu-metal cover versions (which somehow manages to choose songs that are both thunkingly obvious and staggeringly inappropriate) to the wildly inappropriate tone (which was obviously never meant to be tailored for a PG-13 certificate in the States), you’ve got a film that simply lurches from one scene to another, feeling like a teenager’s crazed recreation of some film they saw once that they really liked.

Amber Jamie Chung Character Poster Sucker Punch Zack SnyderThis needn’t have been a fatal problem – after all, plenty of films have been massively flawed but coasted by on the strength of their eye candy and some exciting battle sequences. And yet, one of the greatest acheivements of Sucker Punch is that Snyder takes the concept of sexy girls fighting Nazi steampunk zombies, dragons and ninja robots, and actually make it dull.

All of these sequences take place in the head of our main character, the vacuous and completely uninteresting Babydoll (Browning) while she’s performing lewd and lascivious dances that have the power to turn all the men in range weak at the knees. These sequences are supposed – in theory – to be heightened versions of the missions the girls have to perform in order to escape, metaphors for their imagination triumphing over adversity.

Trouble is, it’s impossible to care – these sequences are spectacular, but there’s never any sense of reality, never any stakes, and never any reason to emotionally connect with these ‘superhero’ versions of the characters. Parallels with Inception have been made – but while Inception has its flaws (and excessive exposition is definitely one of them), the one thing it does have is a genuine sense of risk, of something being at stake. We know the rules, and we know how the multiple worlds connect to and relate to each other. Sucker Punch’s multiple worlds exist simultaneously but only rarely connect – once the fantasy sequences start, we’re basically in a different movie for the next ten minutes, one that only rarely links up to anything resembling actual drama. Stuntwork, CG and absurdly overblown slow-mo are the order of the day, but presented without any explanation, any reason, any reality.

Sucker Punch Movie Still Zack Snyder Abbie Cornish Vanessa Hudgens Jena MaloneYes, Snyder is capable of rendering some amazingly energetic and imaginative battle sequences – but half of his tricks are ripped off from other directors, and the rest are worn to the ground in Sucker Punch to such an extent that he’s effectively robbed me of any fleeting interest in seeing a Zack Snyder-directed Superman movie (especially in the train-attack and subsequent robot fight, where the CG-assisted speed-ramping is cranked up to such a ludicrous extent, I almost thought it was a Zucker Brothers-esque parody of how insanely stupid CG-assisted fight sequences have finally become).

Sucker Punch ends up playing as if someone had edited videogame cutscenes into a Baz Lurhmann remake of a Seventies girls prison flick, and the grinding repetition (nu-metal cover version, briefing, kill footsoldiers, fight boss, rinse, repeat…) soon becomes incredibly wearing – the insane spectacle loses its novelty, and simply becoming noise for noise’s sake.

Emily Browning Sucker Punch Zack Snyder Movie StillIt’s not as if we’re given anything much to care about outside of the action. Lead actress Emily Browning is a complete cypher, spending most of the film looking awesomely photogenic and slightly dazed, and while Abbie Cornish (the angry one) and Jena Malone (the spunky, rebellious one) make a vague impression, it’s not as if they’re actually being given characters to play.

The only performers who really make an impression are Scott Glenn, channelling the late David Carradine as the wizened Wise Man who guides Babydoll through the various missions (and also manages to make some of the clunking dialogue sound almost bearable) while Oscar Isaac as evil orderly/evil brothel owner Blue actually pulls off a genuine performance (one that’s certainly stronger than Carla ‘Enjoy my eccentric European Accent’ Gugino).

Sucker Punch Promo Pic Zack Snyder Emily Browning Vanessa Hudgens Jamie Chung Abbie Cornish Jena MaloneEveryone else is essentially playing paper-thin cartoons and eye-candy, but while the Girls-prison-flick meets Moulin Rouge tone runs out of steam pretty quickly, the biggest failure of all in Sucker Punch is that this overblown, pretentious, chin-stroking nonsense actually thinks it’s empowering. Note to Snyder: When your film has its main character spend virtually the entire film being menaced by men, exploited by men, admired solely for her gorgeousness (and her ability to harness the power of Sexydance), not having anything resembling an interior life, and regularly escaping into a fantasy world where she gets told what to do by a man – that’s not empowering in the slightest.

It’s really no worse in this regard than any Hollywood film in the last ten years that’s tried (and usually failed) to do a decent action heroine (aside from rare examples like Kill Bill), but if you’re going to make a lurid exploitation flick, just come out and say it. Sucker Punch wants to be saying “Free your mind!” – but its only real message is: “Yes, dear, you can go killing dragons and zombies, but do make sure that you’re wearing something incredibly skimpy that shows off your arse, won’t you?”

The Verdict: If you want two hours of things going KA-BOOM and skimpy outfits, then Sucker Punch will intermittently push your buttons. Otherwise, this ambitious failure is the working definition of ‘a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ – a mish-mash of influences that’s too busy throwing CGI and opulent production design in the audience’s faces to give them anything to care about.

Movie News: Dear Zack… (An Open Letter to Zack Snyder, on the occasion of casting Michael Shannon as Superman villain General Zod)

/ saxonbullock2000 / 2 Comments

Superman Logo Alex Ross Art Comic

Dear Zack Snyder,

STOP CASTING ACTORS I LIKE IN YOUR SUPERMAN FILM!

I mean it. I was okay with Henry Cavill – after all, he’s the kind of mostly unknown actor who’s still notched up plenty of experience, and could work out very well. Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Kal-El’s adoptive father? A brilliant, almost blindingly obvious choice. Diane Lane as Martha Kent? Hell, yes – even if the attractiveness of Superman’s mother just shot through the roof. But so far, I wasn’t too invested. After Superman Returns not working out at all, I wasn’t going to let myself get excited about another Superman film. All was well.

Then Amy Adams got cast as Lois Lane. I’d been expecting a twentysomething, and probably someone who’d be slightly miscast (as in Superman Returns, with poor old Kate ‘I look about twelve in this film’ Bosworth). Lois is one of those deceptive roles that looks easy but isn’t, and even Teri Hatcher in the Lois and Clark show never got close to besting Margot Kidder in the original Superman movies. However, Adams could conceivably do it – and suddenly, I was in a bit of a bind. After all, this was Zack Snyder’s Superman we were talking about – a film I was in no rush to see before I saw Sucker Punch, and after which all I wanted to do was grab a Warner Bros exec by the scruff of the neck and scream “Why? Why would you do this? WHYYY???”

And then, you had to do it. You had to cast Michael Shannon as General Zod.

Michael Shannon Casting News General Zod Zack Snyder Superman Man of SteelThat’s an incredibly good choice. If you’re going to do Zod (especially after the simply magnificent job Terrence Stamp did in Superman II), you’ve got to get it right. There were rumours that it might be Viggo Mortensen, but Michael Shannon is just as good, if not better considering he doesn’t have the visibility and foreknowledge that comes with Viggo. Shannon has, up until now, been one of those quietly impressive character actors who occasionally turn up in big films, but do most of their work in quiet, intense indie dramas (the most notable films I can think of featuring Michael Shannon are Grand Theft Parsons, Shotgun Stories, and The Woodsman – all of which feature him in very different roles). He’s an intense, dedicated actor, capable of bringing real fierceness to the role, and this will certainly catapult him into a much-deserved bigger league. It’s a great bit of casting.

I just wish it wasn’t for a Zack Snyder film.

I didn’t see your Dawn of the Dead remake. 300 was attention-grabbing, but shallow as a puddle. And I was burned with Watchmen – which was a decent, admirable effort, but did feel like a two-and-a-half hour thesis on why adapting Watchmen into a movie was a very bad idea. I recently made the mistake of seeing Sucker Punch, and am still reeling from the experience (it’s taken me a long time to write a review, just to fully express my slightly rambling feelings on exactly how unempowering this supposedly empowering fantasy was).

You may be a really nice guy – but your directorial style is, to be honest, borderline insane. You don’t seem to have any idea how to create a consistent emotional reality in your films (you managed it occasionally in Watchmen, but then, you had an excellent blueprint to work from). You throw eye-candy at the audience whether it’s necessary or not, bludgeoning them into submission. Your ability to select a completely inappropriate or thunklingly obvious pop song for your film soundtracks is unparalleled. (From the awfulness of the Leonard Cohen-scored sex scene in Watchmen, to the non-stop “Oh dear god…” experience that was the Sucker Punch soundtrack, your musical taste is truly the gift that keeps on giving). There doesn’t seem to be a single shot that you don’t think couldn’t be at least slightly improved by slow-motion, or funky CG speed-ramping. You were convinced the world was ready for an 3-D CGI animation starring armoured owls (A hint: it wasn’t). You actually managed to somehow make a film where sexy girls in kinky underwear fight Nazi steampunk zombies into one of the dullest, most repetitive things I’ve seen in a cinema for years.

You are quite plainly completely out of your mind.

Even with the new title – just ‘Man of Steel’, no Superman – your new movie fills me with a sense of foreboding. I’d like to think that maybe you’ll ratchet your style back and approach the film in a calmer perspective. But I really doubt it. A Zack Snyder Superman film isn’t something I wanted. But I’m getting it anyway. So…

PLEASE STOP CASTING ACTORS I LIKE IN YOUR SUPERMAN FILM!

You’ve made your point. Go nuts from hereon in. Perry White and Jimmy Olsen? Go nuts. Cast the most ludicrous actors you can think of. I don’t mind. Just please- don’t let me look at another casting notice and think “Damn that’s a really good choice,” followed by a Wrath of Khan-style cry of “SNYYYDERRRR!!” Okay?

I’m glad we had this little chat. And I’ll be watching you, you slo-mo lovin’ motherfunster…

Yours grumpily,

Saxon.

Comics Review: Jimmy Olsen (One-Shot Special)

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Jimmy Olsen Cover Art Amanda Conner Nick Spencer SupermanWriter: Nick Spencer ~ Artists: RB Silva, Dym, Amilcar Pinna ~ Colours: Dave McCaig ~ Publisher: DC Comics ~ Year: 2011

[xrr rating=5/5]

The Low-Down: Simply one of the best mainstream superhero comics for a long time, Jimmy Olsen is an energetic romantic comedy and a hugely enjoyable ride from start to finish, while also giving a long-neglected comics character the treatment he deserves.

What’s it About?: He’s Superman’s best friend. He’s a Daily Planet reporter. He’s the guy who wears a bow-tie. Jimmy Olsen is all of these things, but he’s also been dumped by his girlfriend – fellow reporter Chloe Sullivan, now paying a worrying level of attention to handsome LexCorp junior executive Sebastien Mallory. With Superman absent from Metropolis, Jimmy has to try and get Chloe back, throw a spanner in Sebastien Mallory’s plans, and maybe also foil an alien invasion…

Jimmy Olsen Art DB Silva One-Shot Special Nick Spencer SupermanThe Story: If there’s one character that was definitely harmed by the “Hey kids! Comics can be gritty and violent and for adults!” bandwagon, it was Jimmy Olsen. Superman’s youthful reporter sidekick is one of those characters who’s been part of the world of Metropolis almost since the beginning of the story in the early 1940s – but when DC Comics decided to reboot their continuity and straighten out some of the kookier edges in their fictional universe with the mid-1980s epic Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jimmy was one of the characters hit hardest, mainly because at his best – in the craziness of comics’ Silver Age during the 1960s – Jimmy Olsen was the absolute definition of kooky.

Whether he was time-travelling to the Holy Land circa 1000BC (and accidentally starting a Beatles craze), acquiring Elastic-Lad powers, encountering punky motorcycle gangs in a secret underground hippie commune under Metropolis, or accidentally ending up as a Nazi War hero, Jimmy Olsen’s Silver Age adventures are infamous for their sheer imaginative craziness. As a result, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s incredible (and continuity-free) All-Star Superman served up a Jimmy Olsen that was a brilliant distillation of everything fun about this particular geek-hero in the Silver Age – but now, Morning Glories writer Nick Spencer has done the same for the Jimmy of the official DC Universe, with an end result that’s so much fun, it’ll have you clamouring for an Olsen ongoing series by the final page.

Jimmy Olsen Art Chloe Sullivan portrait Smallville DB Silva One-Shot Special Nick Spencer SupermanMore than anything, Spencer gets that Jimmy Olsen works best when he’s knee deep in the most ludicrous trouble imaginable, and so this seven-part story (collected here from back-up strips that originally appeared in Action Comics, and finished especially for this collection) serves up trouble in spades. Following a week in the life of Olsen and packing in a ferocious amount of invention (as well as some nicely played digs at recent events in the main Superman comic), this is a fast-paced comedy romp that delivers a multitude of gags but also has plenty of heart. Spencer understands that this wouldn’t work unless we actually care about the characters, and makes Jimmy a charming and daring disaster-area, while giving his relationship with Chloe Sullivan (a character making her DC Comics debut, having appeared on the absurdly long-running Smallville for the past ten years) the right level of whip-smart, 1930s Screwball comedy-style wit.

Modern-day DC Comics do plenty of harking back to the Silver Age, but often that just means straight-faced superheroics with added gore – it isn’t often that we get a comic as bright, funny and downright charming as Jimmy Olsen. It’s the most accessible and downright fun superhero comic I’ve read since Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s run on Power Girl, but it also gets pretty damn close to All-Star Superman levels of invention, fun and well-played emotional warmth. A self-contained comic that tells a brilliant story and doesn’t claim that NOTHING will EVER BE THE SAME by its climax, this is a dazzling piece of work that will leave you with a goofy grin slapped across your face, and desperate for more comics of this kind of barmy invention and quality.

The Art: Imagine driving along a straight open road, not a care in the world – and suddenly, out of nowhere, you hit a speed bump that sends you almost bouncing into the roof of your own car. That’s roughly the experience that happens artistically when you hit the final chapter of this collection – it’s not so much that Amilcar Pinna’s pencils on the fill-in pages she handles are bad, they’re just not as strong and a very noticable change (especially when the credits are at the end of the chapter, so there isn’t even any warning), and they’re particularly noticable because penciller RB Silva does such an incredible job on the rest of the story. Showcasing an equal mix of expressive cartoonishness and stylish layouts, Silva’s work is brilliantly pitched throughout, handling all the comedy with ease, and adding some cool visual flourishes. Backed up with excellent inks and some gorgeous colours by Dave McCaig, this is a bright, breezy and gorgeous-looking comic – just be prepared for that sudden change in the final chapter, and everything will be fine.

The Verdict: A comic that seriously outshines the high-profile but deeply flawed current Superman story ‘Grounded’, this Jimmy Olsen special is an outstanding piece of work, while Nick Spencer is continuing to prove that he’s a name to watch. Get yourself to your nearest comic shop as soon as possible, and pick a copy. You won’t regret it…

Movie News: Lanterns-a-Go-Go (New footage from Green Lantern)

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Green Lantern Ryan Reynolds Movie Poster Wondercon Teaser Footage

Only yesterday I was talking about how the production schedule and effects work on Green Lantern has kind of slowed down and caused problems with the marketing push, resulting in us only getting a not-exactly-stunning trailer so far. Well, it seems like Warners have woken up to this, as the footage that’s recently premiered at US Convention Wondercon has also been put up online in sparkling high definition at the Apple Trailers site. It’s a sensible move, considering how often comic convention exclusives almost always get leaked onto Youtube as crappy cameraphone videos, and how awareness of Green Lantern as a movie property is not exactly at an all-time high right now.

And the footage? Well… it certainly proves that Warners dropped the ball with the first ad, and really should have gotten more effects-work done in time, as this is a much more impressive trailer than the first one, giving a far greater sense of scale and easing back for the most part on the cheesy humour. It certainly looks like it’s going to be colourful and fun, but with a major streak of straight-faced sci-fi cheese that seems to be – at least from my perspective – part and parcel of the whole Green Lantern experience (To be honest – it’s going to be absurdly hard to make the kooky and poetic Green Lantern oath work dramatically, and it doesn’t look like they’ve cracked it here (and I’m deeply worried about sequels and potentially getting to all the other colour Lantern Corps, all of whom have their own ridiculous poem-oath)). The costume looks better here (even if the mask is still going to be a tough sell – an alien energy costume, and the best thing it can think of to protect his identity is a domino mask?), although much of the footage on Oa, home of the Green Lantern Corps, looks like it’s way too skewed for the whole 3-D experience with CG shots that are good, but not always looking brilliantly immersive. I’m more onboard than I was before, but I’m still not entirely convinced (I’m nowhere near as sold as I was on the Captain America trailer), and I do reckon it’s going to be very interesting to see what sinks and what swims in this upcoming superhero-overloaded blockbuster summer…

The Friday Linkfest (1/4/2011): Links on my Mind

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Justice League of America adaptation film for 2013 news Batman Superman Wonder Woman

Warner Bros are aiming for a Justice League of America movie by 2013. The question has to be asked – what the hell is going on with the Warners and DC-related superhero films? They’ve previously said that ‘we’re not doing crossovers’ – that the Nolan Batman films wouldn’t cross over with any other motion pictures, and that neither would Snyder’s Superman – each series would tackle them as the only superhero in their world. Now, this is a step away from the Marvel ‘grand plan’ to culminate in The Avengers (which hasn’t always worked – Iron Man 2 being a case in point), but did seem to make sense at the time (especially with how aggressively realistic the Nolan films have been). Now, however, they’re saying they’re aiming for a JLA film in 2013 (which is absurdly quick), and that the JLA will feature Batman and Superman, but not Henry Cavill as Superman, and not whoever inherits the Bat-cowl when the franchise is rebooted following The Dark Knight Rises (which I’m willing to bet will embrace a slightly more comic-booky direction once Nolan departs).

Now, if they weren’t going to use Batman and Superman, I could understand it – while they’re the two big heavy-hitters, it would be possible to cope without them (in a similar way to how Marvel Studios films have to cope without crossovers with Spider-Man, the X-Men or The Fantastic Four, because they sold the rights). It’s also not impossible to have two different live-action versions of the same character around – Superman Returns was made while Smallville was on the air, and if the Wonder Woman TV series is a success, there could be both a TV and a film version of Wonder Woman, as one concept is for the JLA film to launch characters that could then go on into standalone movies. But this has never happened in movies before – two different versions of the same character, possibly appearing within months of each other? Warners experimented with this in 2008, when a JLA film came very close to being made (and which would have mostly starred unknowns, including The Social Network’s Armie Hammer as Batman) – it was a weird idea then, and it’s a weird idea now. Presumably, any spin-offs from JLA would be taking place in the same universe – so some DC films will cross over, but others won’t? Are they seriously trying to create an onscreen version of the DC multiverse? Are they out of their minds? Well, 2013 is a very optimistic date for a film that big (It’ll be interesting to see how well Green Lantern does on release – that could have a major effect on how the DC Universe films progress, especially if it doesn’t end up doing well…), and I suspect minds could be seriously changed if The Avengers turns out to be a giant-sized monster hit…

Green Lantern’s publicity is being delayed by the extensive effects work. Some recent superhero films have been quieter in the pre-publicity stakes than others – Captain America only just unveiled its first full trailer, while Thor has been giving us all kinds of images and trailers since late last year. Green Lantern hasn’t exactly been doing brilliantly – the first trailer has its moments but didn’t exactly blow me away, and given that this is a long, long way from the relatively earthbound action of Iron Man or The Dark Knight, you’d think they’d be doing more to sell the film. Well, they would be, only the combined problems of major sequences taking place on fully CG alien planets, plus the added problem of doing all this in 3-D, means that the whole process has been delayed, and the next trailer for Green Lantern won’t be ready until the release of Thor on May 6th – and that’s only about six weeks before the movie itself is out on June 17th. They’re even still casting voice roles (with Michael Clarke Duncan strongly tipped for the slightly-awkwardly-named Killowog), and given that the summer is already stuffed to bursting with blockbusters, it does at least put a big question mark over whether Green Lantern is going to sink or swim.

The Wonder Woman costume for the TV pilot has been modified – the version spotted in a location shoot doesn’t have funky PVC trousers, and the boots are red now, instead of blue. Now, this may be as a result of the ludicrous level of fan complaints when the costume was unveiled, but it of course hasn’t done anything to quell the somewhat hilarious tide of people bitching online that “it still looks like a Halloween costume” (because of course, the Lynda Carter 70s TV costume in no way looked ridiculous) and generally moaning about how of course the show’s guaranteed to be completely terrible anyway. There are times when I love fandom, and there are times when I don’t.

Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane in the upcoming Zack Snyder version of Superman. Now, this is both really good news – Adams is a great actress, and a surprisingly good choice for Lois Lane – and really annoying, as I’d much rather she was appearing in a Superman film not directed by Zack Snyder. At the least, it’s a surprise to have a Lois who’s actually eight years older than the guy playing Superman (Adams is 36, Henry Cavill is 28), plus it’s really nice that Adams will actually look old enough to be an experienced reporter (as opposed to poor old miscast Kate Bosworth in Superman Returns, whose version of Lois looked about twelve years old).

And, to coincide with this in a rather sadder way, Deadline posted a letter from Joanne Siegel – widow of Superman creator Jerry Siegel, and original model for Lois Lane – written two months before her death, asking the head of Time Warner to actually pay the money the company legally owes the Siegel family (and to stop the crappy legal delaying tactics they’ve been using). Yes, we all know that most corporations are going to act in crappy underhand ways – but the Superman legal saga is an epically complicated one, and it’s just a pity it couldn’t have been resolved before Siegel passed away.

Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who episode is called – shock, horror – ‘The Doctor’s Wife‘!  Now, I’m pretty sure, if I’m remembering correctly, that this is a bit of a meta-in-joke as well, as the production team did at one point (in the classic era) try to identify a leak to the fan press by falsely putting out the completely bogus title ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ just to see what happened. It’s certainly not what I expected – the initial thought is that obviously, it’s going to be another ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ where it turns out that the Doctor hasn’t actually had a secret daughter stashed away all these years, and it’s unlikely to be a River Song-centric story considering Moffat’s bound to be handling that side of things. Actress Suranne Jones is playing the character ‘Idris’, so I’m mildly perplexed – especially considering that Gaiman has actually said that his story brings back someone (or something) we haven’t seen since the Sixties (or, to be more precise, the 1969 story The War Games). Of course, the Doctor has actually already been married onscreen – he accidentally acquired an Aztec wife in the sixties historical story ‘The Aztecs’, but I can’t imagine Gaiman is constructing a whole story around that. I guess we’ll wait and see…

Also Gaiman related – his novel American Gods has been optioned, apparently by a director with ‘many, many Oscars’. Who knows what this means, but it’s a challenging idea – American Gods is a fascinating, occasionally tricky book (one I struggled with on my first reading, but eventually came to really love), but it doesn’t strike me as especially filmable. But then, neither did Stardust, and look what happened there…

Continuing the recent theme of Hollywood adaptations that completely miss the fecking point of what they’re supposed to be adapting, Hollywood are plotting a modernised version of Miss Marple – and have cast Jennifer Garner. Yes, the star of spy action series Alias. My mind is reeling at exactly how much of the original material just got thrown out of the window. Alright, Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost may be involved, but will someone please find the other people who are involved in this and then punch them? (And then sit them down in front of the BBC Joan Hickson Marple adaptations and go “LOOK!”?)

And as if that wasn’t depressing enough, the Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits may be remade as an ‘action franchise for kids’. No. No. NO. I’m sorry, but that’s entering territory where I may have to hunt down and kill anyone who’s responsible for bastardising the wonderful, quirky and barmy world of one of my favourite films. And again: NO.

HBO drama series The Wire, re-imagined (rather well) as a Victorian-era novel.

The BBC4 pilot episode adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books has been comissioned for a series of 3 1-hour episodes. As you’ll see from my review of the pilot, I’m not exactly delighted by this. I guess it’s possible that writer Howard Overman might iron out the issues with the first episode given more time, but I doubt it. Whether I have the patience for another three hours of vaguely tiresome comic shenanigans that bear a vague passing resemblance to books I really, really like remains to be seen…

And finally, news of a slightly more promising movie remake – director David Gordon Green is helming a US version of utterly barmy Italian Horror movie Suspiria. Now, this would normally strike me as a bad idea, especially since Suspiria is a genuinely demented, eye-searingly colourful and hyper-violent movie, one of the few horror movies I’ve seen that genuinely qualify as nightmarish, but David Gordon Green strikes me as a director capable of bringing something interesting to the table (especially in the way he’s bounced from lyrical arthouse dramas to stoner action comedies like Pineapple Express). He’ll have to go some to match the sheer lunacy of Suspiria, but at least he is planning to use significant amounts of the original progrock-tastick Suspiria score by Goblin, a major element of the original’s unique atmosphere, as you can hear from the attention-grabbing, barmy and deeply unsettling main theme:

The Thursday Trailer: Doctor Who, S6 (2011)

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Okay, I know it isn’t a movie trailer, but I’m allowed to stretch the rules when I feel like it, dammit, so here’s the full trailer for Season 6 of Doctor Who:

As usual, crammed full of stuff that makes me go “Oooh!” (including what looks, bizarrely, like a split-second glimpse of the previous control room – or is this possible another TARDIS, or an off-shoot of the mysterious semi-TARDIS spacecraft seen in S5’s ‘The Lodger’?), although I’m not completely certain about all the dialogue clips – it reminds me of the way certain chunks of the ads for S5 actually worked much better in context than they did in the trailer. Anyhow, I am most definitely looking forward to the upcoming season – and just for anyone who missed it, here’s the brief but atmospheric ‘prequel’ to episode 1, The Impossible Astronaut:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf

Dishonourable Mention:

If I was going to ask for a remake of The Three Musketeers, I wouldn’t want it in 3-D. And I definitely wouldn’t want it directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, one of the slickest yet dullest directors around, the man who managed to take turn what should have been a surefire success – Aliens Vs Predator – and actually turned it into a deeply boring movie. Nevertheless, the first trailer debuted this week, and from the nonsensical deathtraps to Orlando Bloom’s terrifying hair, this looks like nicely shot, well-designed and absolutely missable: