New Year's Hot Guy

The byline says Film stuff and hot guys but my relentless obsession with Doctor Who was bound to start blog-clogging. Anyway, here's a hot guy - Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Ford was at his physical peak around this period, and it didn't hurt that he was lovingly photographed by master cinematographers such as Douglas Slocombe (the Indiana Jones films), Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner) and Peter Suschitzky (The Empire Strikes Back).

Classic Who - 'The Robots of Death'

...from 1963 to K9, Doctor Who was important and from 1977 to 1989 it wasn't.

Kim Newman, in his book Doctor Who: A Critical Reading of the Series

Kim Newman blames Mary Whitehouse, K9 and Douglas Adams for what he refers to as the show's 'decline into cult nichedom', and I'd have to agree that if you wanted to find the moment where the original Doctor Who jumped the shark, it would have to be sometime during season 15. This coincided with the release of Star Wars raising the bar for audience expectations in science fiction film and television, but the elements for the decline of Doctor Who - such as incoming producer Graham Williams often finding himself second in authority to an increasingly garrulous Tom Baker, and script editor Douglas Adams emphasising humour to the detriment of the drama - were already in place. In the three years prior to this decline, however, the show was at its most popular - 'The Robots of Death' was watched by an average of 12 million viewers.

This four part story finds Tom Baker's Doctor and his new companion Leela (Louise Jameson) arriving on a sandminer cruising above the surface of a wind blasted desert planet and immediately becoming suspects in the recent murder of one of crew. The script by Chris Boucher (who had created the character of Leela for the previous story 'The Face of Evil' and would go on to write one more Doctor Who story - 'The Image of the Fendahl', another favourite) blends elements of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics with a splash of Dune. The clip here is from the opening of episode four:

Tom Baker was at his most comfortable in the role around this period, and 'The Robots of Death' finds him in peak form. Look at the confidence and humour he brings to his first line in the clip - rising from behind a bench in response to Uvanov's demand "what are you doing here?" with a smooth "why - does it upset you?" And Leela was the type of companion we'd not seen before, and would not see again - when Commander Uvanov slaps her early in the story, her response is "try that again, and I'll kill you where you stand!"

Louise Jameson as Leela.

This savage girl from a primitive tribe was prone to solving problems at knife-point, not exactly the most family audience-friendly character trait. The potential Pygmalion type development of her character was explored to an extent in a couple of subsequent stories - the following serial 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' being the best example - but was pretty much forgotten in her second year - extended development of ongoing characters was not a strong suit of the original Doctor Who. This is only Leela's second story, so the character was still fresh and Boucher makes the most of her interactions with the Doctor and the world of the sandminer.

And it's this meticulously created world which really sets 'The Robots of Death' apart. It's crucial to keep in mind the resources the production team had access to when evaluating classic Who production values. With the sort of budgets and shooting schedules that would only just suffice for a production such as Home and Away or Neighbours, the Doctor Who production team had to create completely new settings each month - the story prior to 'Robots of Death' was set on a jungle planet, and the following story finds the Doctor and Leela in the fogbound streets of Victorian London. It's little wonder that cardboard tubing and aluminium foil were staples for construction of alien worlds and space stations.

Typically, the cast would rehearse an episode for four days before shooting, using brooms as weapons and creating control decks from upended furniture in the rehearsal room. Perhaps the inevitable sense of schoolyard play this engendered contributed to the unique tone of a lot of period Who. Then, on the Friday afternoon and evening, they would get into their costumes and enact the episode on the sets with the cameras rolling, with most scenes recorded as live straight to tape. Miniatures and other visual effects elements were often set up simultaneously in another section of the studio, and mixed in as live during the recording of scenes. When considering the constraints of this type of production, the ambition of the Doctor Who production team back in the day was truly remarkable. 

Here, the designs of the sets, costumes and even make-up are thoroughly thought out from the basis of this world being a society where humans genuinely take robots for granted, where everything a person could need done can be done by a robot. Thus the elaborate gowns, head-dress and facial makeup (echoing the design of the robot faces), far from being just typical overblown sci-fi silliness, are a logical extension of the type of leisure based society future speculation often depicted until the mid eighties. Around then it became apparent that we were going to use all of our technology to help us run around like chooks with our heads cut off, eventually leading to the frenetic dystopias of films such as Minority Report. One only needs to compare the design ethos of the 1977-1983 Star Wars films to the later prequel trilogy to see the sort of general effect this has had on futuristic design. It's doubtful that, had he depicted Coruscant in the original films, Lucas would have had Vegas style gambling strips and neon holographic advertising everywhere, for instance.

The design scheme for 'The Robots of Death' is followed through in the sets. Luxurious cushions and bed like sofas abound in the areas occupied by the humans, colour schemes are all soft earth tones, and abstract art adorns the corridors of the sandminer. This is a world based around humans relaxing - imagine art hanging in the walls of a mining machine! This vision of humanity gone soft goes some way to explaining the pathetic failure of Toos (Pamela Salem) to even attempt any sort of self defense in the clip - these are people for whom the disconnect from any form of true survival instinct has gone to an extreme.

A Voc class robot from 'The Robots of Death'.

And of course, we have the robots themselves - the jewel in the design crown. With their sculpted faces, silky smooth voices, and quilted vests, the robots are a triumph of art deco futurism. The design would be homaged - but not surpassed - in the 2007 Christmas special, 'Voyage of the Damned'.

Robot angel from 'Voyage of the Damned'.

The story of 'The Robots of Death' is perfectly paced out over the four episodes, and the characters have a bunch of interesting interpersonal conflicts and alliances which keep suspicion high, although the audience is privy all along to what's really going on. It's just about the perfect example of a Doctor Who story from the period - and it was immediately followed by 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang', another masterpiece and arguably one of the greatest achievements of the 26-year run of the show.

Score of the week

Of course, I think the new Doctor Who has been perfect from the very first episode. The minute Delia Derbyshire's cliffhanger scream played over the time vortex from the opening titles, I was instantly transported back to my childhood. The deal was sealed about twenty minutes into the first episode, when Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) ran toward the TARDIS yelling 'Doctor!'. This was the real deal, Doctor Who was back on telly, and it was fucking brilliant.

A more critical part of my brain, however, notices that the careful balance between barminess and adventure that Doctor Who needs to hit was very much a work in progress for the first two seasons. It might even be argued that the show only hit its stride when unburdened of the loaded relationship between Rose and the Doctor. The latest series in particular, buoyed by Catherine Tate taking the re-invention of the companion further than Billie Piper ever did, went from strength to strength, with perhaps the only duff episode being 'The Doctor's Daughter'.

Of course, the show couldn't have hit such diverse highs as 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', 'Midnight', or 'The Stolen Earth' without the careful build up of the first couple of seasons. The show needed Rose Tyler to lead up to Donna Noble. In a similar fashion, the music of Murray Gold started out pretty strong and developed into some of the best scoring we're currently hearing on the box. Series 1 was scored entirely with synthesizers and samples, which to an extent limited the effectiveness of some of the scoring, although some cues recalled the avant-garde electronica which was a staple of Doctor Who music in the 60s and 70s. As the popularity of the show has solidified, Gold has been given expanding resources to realise his scores, and is now able to utilise the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. His scores, like the show itself, vary wildly in styles and tone, and are never ashamed of big broad strokes.

This is the third soundtrack release for the series, presenting music from Series 4. It kicks off with Murray Gold's third (and best) reworking of the immortal Ron Grainer/Delia Derbyshire theme, with chugging guitar and high energy percussion propelling along Derbyshire's unearthly howls. Then we're treated to highlights from the material Murray Gold wrote for Series 4 - from the jaunty theme for Donna ('A Noble Girl About Town') through to action ('UNIT Rocks', 'The Dark and Endless Dalek Night') heartbreak ('The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble') and triumph ('Song of Freedom'). It's obvious that Murray Gold has been paying attention to Michael Giacchino's brilliant work for Lost, and elsewhere influences as diverse as John Murphy and Ennio Morricone can be heard, although Murray Gold definitely has his own distinct voice.

As with the previous two albums, Gold's music is better served here than in the show itself, where it often re-edited and tracked into different episodes, and frequently too prominent in the mix. This last problem has been rectified in Series 4, but the tracking of older cues remains an issue: the finale from the cue 'The Daleks', which fit the scene it was written for (the cliffhanger of the penultimate episode of Series 2, 'Army of Ghosts') like a glove, was far less suited to use in the Series 3 episode 'Evolution of the Daleks' and suffers even more by being repetitively tracked into several sequences in the Series 4 finale 'Journey's End'. I suspect these problems are more due to the producers of the show rather than decisions made by Gold.

But the album presentation is terrific, even though some of my favourite musical moments are not represented, such as the mime sequence from 'Partners In Crime', the introduction of Agatha Christie in 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', or the cliffhanger from 'The Silence in the Library'. But there was such a wealth of material composed for this series it's no wonder some good stuff had to get left off. The importance of Murray Gold's contribution to the show's success cannot be over-estimated. Doctor Who has always been an ever evolving beast, and the new incarnation has cleared such hurdles as the changing of Doctor and companion. With the show about to go through changes again, it will be interesting to see if Gold stays on - or if not, who would be capable of replacing him.

"I just want my kids back"

Saw The Mist a couple of nights ago. Awesome film - rave review coming soon. In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, the star of The Mist, Thomas Jane...

I prefer Terminator 3 to Terminator 2

There. I've said it.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines got a pretty bad rap when it came out. The fact that James Cameron, who created the franchise, wasn't returning spoke volumes about how good the film would be - or such was the wisdom during production. The absences of Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong were also perceived as bad omens. When the film was released, the responses ranged from a bored 'that was okay' to livid anger from James Cameron fanboys.

I'm not going to try and present an argument here for T3 being a better film than T2. Because it isn't. Whereas T2 ends with the human spirit triumphant (even in Arnold Schwarzenegger's titular machine), the narrative of T3 winds down despairingly, with John Connor sealed off in a bunker helplessly watching nuclear devices detonating across the globe, signaling the coming of Skynet and the oppression of humanity.

But there's something - and it's an important something - that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines gets right. It has a B movie energy and a more sensible running time (a full half hour shorter than the theatrical cut of Terminator 2) that brings it closer in spirit to James Cameron's original 1984 low budget flick. Terminator 2 is so assured that it's going to bludgeon the audience with staggering visuals that notions of storytelling economy seemed to have been thrown out the window. For all the technical prowess on display, the narrative of T2 is bloated, the screenplay (in true James Cameron fashion) belaboring the obvious subtexts such that even the most inattentive viewer cannot fail to pick them up. And maybe that's the point, but it does leave the sharper members of the audience sometimes waiting for the film to catch up.

The published screenplay by Applause Books.

Applause Books published a terrific book of the screenplay for Terminator 2, which included the shooting script illustrated with hundreds of photographs from the film and superbly annotated with details of which scenes or lines were re-worked during the shoot, or dropped during the edit, and why. Of course, James Cameron had to go and produce a director's cut of the film, and if nothing else, it is the best possible demonstration that the reasoning behind deleting all those scenes was quite sound.

Maybe I should never have watched that director's cut. I am incapable of re-visiting T2 without it seeming flabby now, even in the shorter version. Or maybe it's something about the inflated sense of self importance that seems to emanate from everything James Cameron has done since Aliens - the last time he had less than fifty million dollars to play with.

In any case, Terminator 3 sure is a fun ride. And one that never overstays it's welcome. Nick Stahl is a good John Connor (and hotter than Edward Furlong) and Claire Danes does her best to make sure we don't miss Linda Hamilton too much. Ah-nuld does his thing as usual, and Kristanna Loken's T-X is a worthy follow up to Arnold in the first film and Robert Patrick in the second.

It was released in 2003, the year we all got stiffed by the second Matrix film. Remember the hype over the car chase in that film? The months of filming on a specially built stretch of freeway? The extensive CGI? And then the boredom of sitting there for twenty minutes (or however long it was) watching the most soul-less car chase committed to film? Terminator 3 contains a car chase that was not hyped at all, and not only shat all over the one in the second Matrix, but is also one of the best such chases in recent memory.

So when I feel like watching some Terminator action, it's this film that's most likely to be popped into the DVD player. It effects haven't dated like those in the first film, and I never feel like I'm being lectured to like I do when watching the second film. It's 100 minutes of balls to the wall action that's dumb fun without insulting the viewer's intelligence.

Poorly received or not, you can't keep a good franchise down. Come to think of it, you can't keep any franchise down, as films such as The Howling VI: The Freaks, Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return, and Scary Movie 4 attest. So Terminator 3 has been duly followed by a television series - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which conveniently ignores Sarah Connor's off screen demise between the second and third films - and the forthcoming feature Terminator: Salvation, which has Christian Bale stepping in as John Connor, continuing to  fight the good fight after the apocalypse.

Typealyzer analysis

When I had my blog analyzed at typealyzer.com, this is what came up... it's about the opposite of what I'm really like!

ISFP - The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of. 

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

Halloween on Blu-ray

After being delayed by about two weeks, and missing being available on October 31 (thanks heaps, Beyond Home Entertainment) this one finally hit the shops, and of course I picked it up immediately. The film is wonderful as always and they've ported over the John Carpenter/Debra Hill/Jamie Lee Curtis commentary from the old Criterion laserdisc (as Anchor Bay did with the Region A Blu-ray disc).

It looks terrific with one major caveat - the transfer here is inexplicably presented in 1080i instead of 1080p. Mercifully, its not too apparent apart from occasional stepping on fine details like the odd car grill or power line. Once again, many thanks to Beyond Home Entertainment. I almost feel like calling them to ask what the story is but I know I won't get anyone on the phone who has a clue what I'm talking about. Hell, I might do it anyway - could be fun.

Score of the week

Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, 1987)

I've made this one score of the week because I received in the mail today the new 2 disc edition of the soundtrack album. The film was the first cab off the rank in John Carpenter's deal with Alive Films, in which he was given small budgets ($3m) and complete creative control. It didn't get a release here until the Valhalla cinema in Westgarth ran a brief season in late 1988, so we got to see it after the second film Carpenter made for Alive Films - They Live (1988) - had come and gone. I must mention that the Valhalla was also responsible for bringing films such as Miracle Mile, Akira, and Koyaanisqatsi to Australian screens, for which I will be forever grateful.

Anyway, I was bitterly disappointed when I finally got to see Prince of Darkness. Of course, I was eighteen years old and took everything so god-damn seriously back then. The film has aged well for me - it's a John Carpenter film through and through, with slick production values belying the small budget. Apart fom the el-cheapo make-up effects, anyway - but anything was going to be a step down from previous (and more costly) vfx collaborators such as Rob Bottin and Richard Edlund.

As always Carpenter's strong visual style is an asset. Shooting in anamorphic panavision as usual but without his regular cinematographer Dean Cundey, Carpenter's penchant for prowling steadicam and frames dominated by blackness is well realised by his new DP Gary B. Kibbe. And Carpenter's collaboration with co-composer Alan Howarth was working well, the two of them expanding upon the minimalist style Carpenter had employed in his pre-Howarth scores.

The film, to be sure, is second (maybe even third) rate Carpenter, but I'd watch third rate John Carpenter over first rate Ron Howard any day of the week. And I've come to appreciate it more after seeking out some of the earlier works it is influenced by - particularly the extraordinary 1972 telemovie The Stone Tape. Prince of Darkness is short on character, emotion, or plot (despite being full of terrific ideas), and long on atmosphere.

A lot of this atmosphere comes from the score. It is not musically complex, but that was not the mode Carpenter and Howarth worked in. Instead, they were always using state of the art synths and samplers to create their own unique sound, more often than not consisting of sustained string lines and driving percussion. It was a style that was adapted to the bluesy rhythms of They Live or the Eastern flavour of Big Trouble in Little China but was most effective when used in straighter action (Escape From New York) or horror (Christine) contexts. Prince of Darkness is full of choir samples and howling electric winds, and is effective both in the film and as a listening experience, especially if you have it on whilst reading some Lovecraft by candlelight.

The new 2 disc album contains the complete score followed - as is becoming common with new expanded editions of scores - by a presentation of the original album which was released along with the film. It's a good listen, but only worth the re-purchase if you're a hardcore Carpenter fan. I'm sure you've picked up by now that I'm a pretty hardcore fan. For others, the old album is a fine representation of the score and there's no major thematic material or action set pieces that aren't on there. I do enjoy having the music unfold over a longer running time, though, and those vocal snippets from the film which open both discs are wonderfully creepy.

The new starship Enterprise

Well, here it is folks. The talk back over on Aint It Cool is fucking hilarious. My favorite quote would have to be 'from my parents' basement, I stab at thee...'

Tarantino to make a film with an original score

Quentin Tarantino's upcoming war epic, Inglorious Basterds is to be scored by film music legend Ennio Morricone. Exciting news - Tarantino has never had an original score composed for one of his features yet, although he plundered many scores (some of them Morricone's) for Kill Bill. Is Tarantino finally going to allow one of his films to have a unique musical voice, and not rely on the instant nostalgia of golden oldies to create emotions?

Great Matte Paintings #5 - The Thing

Perhaps I should rename this series Albert Whitlock's Greatest Hits. These are shots from John Carpenter's 1982 paranoia classic, The Thing. First, the live action footage of actors against a bluescreen...

The live action footage composited on top of an Albert Whitlock painting of a crashed spacecraft...

A frame from later in the shot, demonstrating the patch of light shifting across the craft and the crater wall, a subtle touch which adds realism to the shot...

And two further shots of a second matte painting from later in the scene, again demonstrating the effect of shifting shadows on the painting...

The vampire film in the 80s

Following the early 1980s revival of the werewolf movie, which had a lot to do with the fact that special effects technology had at last advanced to the point where convincing man-into-monster transformations could be depicted, it was inevitable that the vampire would receive similar treatment.

Kim Newman, in his book Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Movie From 1968

The late 1970s was not a good time for the vampire movie. Lavish, big star, big budget re-workings of old properties like John Badham's Dracula and Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (both 1979) were poorly received by both critics and audiences. The George Hamilton starring parody Love at First Bite was a bigger box office hit than either of them.

The werewolf films of the early 80s pointed the way forward for the vampire film, with their blend of comedy and high tech effects. It was a blend none of the 80s vampire films got right, as they came at a time when the horror genre as a whole was being dragged down into too much badly executed gore and teen humour. Fright Night (1985) - the first attempt to make a vampire equivalent to The Howling or An American Werewolf in London - probably comes the closest to getting the balance right. It at least shares with the werewolf films a true affection for the genre films of old. In the excellent book quoted above Kim Newman suggests Fright Night would be a John Hughes film if a vampire didn't move next door to Charlie Brewster. I think the film is more retro than that - if Chris Sarandon's suave vampire didn't move in next door, the teens played by William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys, and Amanda Bearse would be living in a 1950s teen comedy.

The following year's Vamp plays a bit more like a post Animal House frat boy comedy, but is mainly distinguished by being the only time uberdiva Grace Jones has found a film role which suits her unique persona. Then 1987 saw the same basic storyline (a youth from a single parent home seduced into becoming part of a gang of vampires) played out in two radically different movies, each ending with both the youth and the vampire girl who lured him to the dark side cured of their vampirism and looking forward to a life in the sunshine.

The Lost Boys (Jamie Gertz introduces teen hunk Jason Patric to her gang of vampire pals - Kiefer Sutherland, Billy Wirth, Alex Winter - before he ends up returning with her to his loving mom Dianne Wiest and younger brother Corey Haim) is the best example of what a dead end grafting the vampire movie to the 80s teen comedy turned out to be, despite being the biggest financial success. Near Dark (Jenny Wright introduces teen hunk Adrian Pasdar to her gang of vampire pals - Lance Henricksen, Jennette Goldstein, Bill Paxton - before he returns with her to loving dad Tim Thomerson and younger sister Marcie Leeds) finds a more interesting blend of teen vampire film, modern western, and pretentious art film. Where The Lost Boys is all wannabe Tony Scott slickness, glowing contact lenses, and a bunch of 'hip' songs designed to sell the soundtrack album, Near Dark has low budget energy and The Cramps' cover of 'Fever' playing on the soundtrack as Lance Henricksen and his gang memorably slaughter the patrons of a lonely Texas bar. Despite their differences, both films share the same signature shot: the gang of vampires walking into view, backlit, on top of a hill.

Fright Night spawned a less effective sequel in 1988. William Ragsdale was back as Charlie Brewster, but Amanda Bearse had her regular TV gig on Married with Children and Stephen Geoffreys declined to reprise his role as Charlie's best friend 'Evil' Ed. Their presence - especially that of Geoffreys - is missed. Bearse's TV work led her to directing sitcoms, which she has done steadily ever since. And Geoffreys started popping up in hardcore gay porn films in 1990, which must represent one of the strangest career paths on record - from a 1984 Tony Award nomination to hitting 'Promising New Faces' lists of 1985 to wearing a trademark red bandana whilst riding cock in films with titles like Guys Who Crave Big Cocks and Uncut Glory. Knowledge of where Geoffreys was headed adds extra poignancy to the scene in Fright Night where 'Evil' Ed tearfully succumbs to vampire Jerry Dandrige's appeals to him as a fellow outsider.

Stephen Geoffreys in an affecting scene from Fright Night.

In any case, Fright Night II came and went without causing as much as a ripple, joining a bunch of other low budget vampire films misguidedly trying to emulate the box-office success of The Lost Boys. And that was how the decade ended for the vampire film, with The Lost Boys remaining the only one that audiences went to in significant numbers (although the box office for Fright Night was decent if unspectacular), and the rest becoming DTV fodder. Big budget Gothic would be in vogue again - briefly - with Francis Coppolla's Dracula (1992) and Neil Jordan's Interview With the Vampire (1994) before franchises depicting massive secret societies of vampires (the Blade and Underworld films) became the norm.

You should see this movie: Miracle Mile

Miracle Mile (1988)

This, writer-director Steve De Jarnatt's second feature film, remains criminally underrated. And more obscure than a film this good should be.

The tightly constructed script was one of Hollywood's famous unfilmed scripts for a decade before it went into production - everyone wanted to read it, and once they read it, no one wanted to produce it. It was too dark, too quirky, too downbeat. It wasn't until he had directed a feature film - the 1987 sci-fi cheapy Cherry 2000 - that De Jarnatt was able to convince anyone to let him direct Miracle Mile, with production company Hemdale Films giving him a $3.7M budget.

It starts like a screwball comedy and then - like all screwball comedy - turns into a nightmare. It tells the story of trombonist Harry Warshello (Anthony Edwards), who has a perfect first date with cafe waitress Julie Peters (Mare Winningham) and then finds circumstances conspiring to keep them apart. Running three hours late for a midnight rendezvous with Julie, Harry answers a persistently ringing phone booth to hear an hysterical voice warning of an imminent nuclear attack, and inadvertently starts a wave of panic when the rumour starts to spread, eventually hearing distorted versions of his story coming back to him, Chinese whisper style.

Harry's night in L.A. running from one crazy character to the next recalls Griffin Dunne's nightmare night in SoHo in Martin Scorsese's After Hours. However, unlike the Scorsese film, Miracle Mile is more than just a series of brilliantly executed plot mechanics designed to put the protagonist through hell. De Jarnatt makes the most of his tiny budget, his inventive visuals matched by a terrific and driving score by Tangerine Dream which would have to rank as their best work in film.

Performances are great all round - Edwards and Winningham are sensational and heartbreaking as their characters come to terms with true love in the midst of disaster, with Mykelti Williamson a stand out in the uniformly good supporting cast. Elsewhere we have Denise Crosby as a no-nonsense high powered business woman desperately trying to raise Carl Sagan on her gigantic mobile phone to tell him the bad news (it was 1988, and she's also got the shoulder pads) and Jennette Goldstein in a tiny but funny role as a Beverly Hills socialite. The structure of the film is consistently surprising but never deviates from it's own nightmare logic. And the elements that De Jarnatt concocts his happy ending from have to be seen to be believed.

The film won raves at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival, followed by a negligible release that went unnoticed. MGM put out a no frills, full frame (4:3) DVD on 2003 which is better than not having the film at all, but only just.

Great Matte Paintings #4 - Dune

Dune (1984)

Although he supervised all of the matte work for the production, this was the only painting in Dune painted by Albert Whitlock himself. A gorgeous painting, brought to life on film using typically genius Whitlock touches such as live action smoke elements and shifting shadows (there's another great example of this technique in John Carpenter's The Thing), as well as the more self evident model spaceships (a terrific piece of design by Tony Masters) composited into the shot.

Fighting for the underdog: Alexander

Look, I realise that my previous article in this series started out kind of interesting and then completely ran out of steam. I think the reason is that after putting some thought into it, I found I just couldn't be arsed putting too much energy into trying to clear the name of Hudson Hawk. I mean really, the film is just a mildly enjoyable piece of shit. I either need to pick more deserving movies or put some more effort in. So here goes...

Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004) gathered about it the whiff of a tremendous turkey long before it hit the screens. Initially, the fact that it was an Oliver Stone film divided opinion. You can either get the good Oliver Stone (Talk Radio, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July) or the crap Oliver Stone (The Doors, Natural Born Killers, U Turn). And I don't think many people can come to a complete agreement on which of his films should be on which of those lists, anyway.

Then the first photos of Colin Farrell looking very uncomfortable in a blonde wig and a toga hit the rags. It was around this time the general consensus of public opinion was that the film was going to be this year's Big Turkey. Previous Big Turkeys have included Hudson Hawk, Ishtar, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. They are the films that the industry press and the tabloids gather around like vultures for months before their release, keeping the public informed of what a disaster the production was, how the star and the director were fighting, how the studio was going to pull the plug, etcetera...

Big Turkey press doesn't always result in a Big Turkey, although the exceptions are rare. Titanic (1997) had several months of Big Turkey press. Of course, then people actually saw the film: critical raves, record breaking box office, and a slew of Academy Awards followed. There seems to have been a bit of a backlash against Titanic of late, but when it was first released, it was really like the whole world went 'wow!'. I loved it, you loved it. Admit it. And we now all think it's a piece of over-romaticised pap with all the usual James Cameron script issues (no less than three endings for me, please) and astonishing production values, particularly in the groundbreaking effects work. Don't we?

But enough of Titanic. It's reputation has not sunk low enough to be the subject of discussion here. Those shots of Colin Farrell got this film some big time Big Turkey press. Also, Oliver Stone was going be including details of Alexander's bisexuality, which made the film controversial in some circles. The circles that weren't rolling their eyes at how predictably gauche and button pushing Stone was being, anyway. And then we learned some more details of the rest of the cast - Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins - performers who had all shown themselves capable of alarming shifts from award calibre subtlety to outrageous scenery chewing. The film was starting to look like a dodgy proposition indeed, even before you add in world class hams like Christopher Plummer and Brian Blessed.

The box office failure of the film was perhaps not as gleefully crowed over as is usual for a Big Turkey. This could be partly attributed to the fact that, malarkey though it is, Alexander is not legendarily bad, just kind of dull bad, and ultimately pretty inoffensive. Stone himself blamed the poor U.S. box office on a 'raging fundamentalism in morality', but it really seemed out in the real world as though the response was more indifferent than that.

I was surprised at how tame the approach to Alexander's sexuality was - I'd come to expect Oliver Stone to tear into any subject matter with a certain bulldog ferocity, and so a couple of hugs and lots of longing looks between Farrell and the feminised Jared Leto just didn't cut it. And in any case, Hephaestion probably should have been played by someone like Ray Stevenson, and without the mascara.

Elsewhere the film is kind of interesting. The Oliver Stone who makes 'serious' films like Born on the Fourth of July was here having to share screen time with the Oliver Stone who wrote Conan the Barbarian. So lectures on the political and social climate of the times are constantly at war with blood-splattered violence, bursts of testosterone, and lurid sex. A scene where Alexander's father Philip explains the legends of ancient Greece to the boy, showing him painted murals depicting the gods, could have come straight out of Conan. Philip is played by Val Kilmer, and his performance can only be described as bonkers - it's his Lizard King, twenty years later, in a toga.

It may have been too much to expect Oliver Stone to make a film about ancient Greece that could be taken seriously. After all, this type of goal has proven elusive for many other films makers more restrained than Stone. Films on the period more often than not recall Old Hollywood playing dress-ups, or the sort of film that's always being made in an old film about Hollywood, or a new film about Old Hollywood. And who can blame them? If you put a bunch of hot actors of varying ages in togas and asked me to make a film with them, I'd get a bit over-excited too.

Maybe I should have reserved 'bonkers' for Angelina Jolie. She hisses, purrs, and spits her way through the role of Olympias, Alexander's mother. Rosario Dawson tries to be the wildest cat in the film, but she doesn't have as many snakes as Angelina. Nor the kinky twist of playing seductive mother to a handsome man played by an actor one year her junior. Jolie knows that the film is more Caligula than I, Claudius.

Colin Farrell's wig comes up surprisingly well in the actual film, much better than in all the paparazzo shots. The actor may be hopelessly miscast, nevertheless it's not a negligible role for Farrell, who is still struggling to live up to the promise he showed in his early films. He has a natural magnetic screen presence and intensity which go quite someway to creating a decent Alexander, and is not shy of striking sparks off his on screen mother, getting off his face at a Babylonian party, or any other type of madness Oliver Stone was trying to create on that day. The crazed narrative Stone has concocted keeps preventing him from creating a real character, however.

The version of Alexander which screened theatrically randomly jumped between time periods, haphazardly patching together a narrative. The acting was committed but mesmerisingly inconsistent. Ultimately, the film was spectacular but never truly gripping.

Buoyed by strong DVD sales, Stone was able to re-visit the film for a second DVD release. This release, subtitled The Director's Cut, was nine minutes shorter than the 175 minute theatrical version. The narrative had been re-structured, and although still jumping between 323 BC and 356 BC, stronger story threads emerged. And Angelina Jolie's character and performance, though still crazed, seemed to have more of a genuine progression. The film was not strikingly different in detail from the version seen at the cinema, but was nevertheless markedly improved.

But Stone was not finished. He went on to produce another version. This one was called Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut (now there's a promising title). And yes, I've seen it. There's so much to enjoy in Alexander - it's so opulent and rich and beserk. It's three terrific films from mismatched genres patched together. Sadly, this final version of the film - which re-introduces a lot of pieces which are good in themselves, but do not strengthen the story - is the poorest, in my opinion. It's a bit more confident with the bisexual stuff, but the storyline straggles across 214 minutes. And there are extended periods where it seems that every scene opens with a subtitle telling us where we are, even when cross cutting between two well established locations. Tedious.

So go for the Director's Cut, I reckon. Because when an Oliver Stone screenplay says...

CUT TO...

EXT DAY: BLOOD-SOAKED BATTLEFIELD

The mist clears to reveal Alexander, sword aloft, on his rearing horse, facing off against a rearing elephant, it's tusk bloody from battle.

...you know that he's going to get a horse and get an elephant and get them to rear up together in front of the camera, and shoot it. He's that kind of batshit. And you gotta have at least a little respect for that.

Albert Whitlock

Albert Whitlock with his matte painting for Dune (1984).

Fighting for the underdog: Hudson Hawk

Upon it's release in 1991, Hudson Hawk was generally regarded as an irredeemably stupid film. I have no intention of disputing this here - Hudson Hawk is most definitely irredeemably stupid. And there's no case to be made for it looking better in retrospect compared to other films of the time - 1991 also saw the release of The Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, Barton Fink, JFK, and Thelma & Louise, all of them much more rewarding than Hudson Hawk.

However, I have a real fondness for films like this - cinematic follies that can only be the result of over-inflated egos colliding with a lot of money. They're often bad films, but they're rarely boring. And the toxic fumes from their box office failures are such that no-one ever sits around a studio boardroom musing 'you know what would be great? Another film like Hudson Hawk'. The net result being that these follies remain more often than not one of-a-kind films. The only place to go when you want to get that Hudson Hawk feeling is Hudson Hawk.

It was an out of control production with the storyline being re-written daily to accommodate the larger egos involved - mainly those of Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello. Surrounding these two forces of nature is a group of idiosyncratic actors - Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard, James Coburn, Andie McDowell - all deciding to hell with it, let's go for broke. And the whole thing helmed by Michael Lehmann, who'd made a couple of funny and smart independent films and here found himself in the deep end of big budget Hollywood film making. It's a mess and completely nonsensical, but it's best moments work on a kind of Looney Tunes level, and the interest level kicks up a bit whenever Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard are on screen as the villainous Mayflowers.

So if there's nothing else on telly and you feel like watching something fun and stupid, you could do worse. Like Men in Black II, for example.

Disappontment

I couldn't get Halloween on Blu-ray. It's supposed to be out, but it wasn't in any of the shops. So sadly, I didn't spend my Hallowe'en watching Halloween in high definition.

Score of the week

Psycho (Bernard Herrmann, 1960)

As a kid, one of the television shows I enjoyed watching after school was 'Simon Townsend's Wonder World'. It was kind of a light infotainment show for younger viewers, and they would often use cues from film scores in their segments. So it was that I first came across the electrifying main title theme from Psycho, used as the background for shots of Angela Catterns running madly around an old house.

I knew about Psycho and its score, of course. I'd never seen the film, but I'd read about it and the music in many film books and magazines, and had read the pulp Robert Bloch novel it was based on. I had to wait until the end credits of 'Wonder World' to find out what the music was (I always scrutinised the end credits to find out what music they used) and was delighted to discover that I'd finally heard Psycho. And it was brilliant!

I finally caught the film a couple of years later on television. This was before the internet, and even before home video. I'm talking about an age where it was possible for a film - many films even - to become myth, possible to remember if you'd seen them at the pictures but otherwise not readily available for perusal. The television schedules were scoured for late night screenings of items like Tarantula and The Green Slime. That thrill of stumbling across a rare screening of a thirty or forty year old film is a thing of the past in our age of video (or anything) on demand.

I didn't need to sneak out of bed at 1:00 am to see Psycho however - it screened one weekday afternoon, and I excitedly sat at the television and watched. Despite the fact that I knew every plot twist (from reading the novel, which the film is quite faithful to in most respects, a notable exception being the characterisation of Norman Bates), the film gripped and terrified me. And the score had me thrilled from start to finish. It was typical of Bernard Herrmann's genius that when given a restricted budget to produce the music, he turned it to an advantage - limiting his musical palette to string instruments only, providing the perfect sonic counterpart for Hitchcock's black and white film.

The score for Psycho keeps springing surprises - immediately after the urgent rush of the main title theme (brilliantly matched by Saul Bass' startling title design), Herrmann abruptly changes tack, providing slow descending notes for the languid montage of Phoenix, Arizona which opens the film. He scores the clandestine romance of Marion Crane and Sam Loomis (Janet Leigh in her signature role paired with the hot but wooden John Gavin) with a 'desolate falling pattern'* which never quite resolves into a melody, allowing dissonance and plucked string tension to creep in as Marion steals $40,000 from her employer, before revisiting the urgency of the main title theme - this time denoting panicky flight - as Marion leaves town, finally pulling over at the Bates Motel. The thematic material making up the score becomes more varied with the introduction of Norman Bates (another major deviation from the source novel is having the narrative discover Norman at the same time as Marion, rather than crossing back and forth between his story and hers), including the unnerving three note motif for madness which would later reappear in a similar context in Herrmann's final score for Taxi Driver, and most memorably the shrieking terror of the infamous shower murder.

This last is the most well known piece from the score, one that is still imitated by kids in the schoolyard - although they're more likely referencing The Simpsons or one of the many other films or shows which have riffed on the famous cue. It stands alongside John Williams' two-note theme for the shark in Jaws as an immortal piece of film music.

There are several different recordings of either the entire score or suites from it on CD, although the original film recordings have not been made available in commercial form outside of an isolated score track on a 90s laserdisc. 

Herrmann conducted a recording of nearly all of the score in 1975, and although it's at a slightly slower tempo than most of the music in the film, it has precision and clarity.

Conductor and film composer Joel McNeely recorded the complete score in 1997, and it ranks as the best recording of the score available.

In 1998, Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek arranged and recorded the score for use in Gus Van Sant's experimental shot for shot remake of the original film, and produced a terrific and energetic version, surprisingly faithful to the original score - at least on the album. Van Sant and his sound team couldn't help themselves from screwing around with a couple of the cues in the film, especially noticeable ones like the shower murder.

Australian film maker Richard Franklin made a remarkably good sequel to Psycho in 1983. Although Franklin and his Psycho II composer Jerry Goldsmith wisely decided to create their own sound for the sequel, the film kicks off with a replay of the shower scene, for which Goldsmith provided a terrific recording of the cue 'The Murder'.

* with thanks to Steven C. Smith and his terrific biography of Bernard Herrmann, A Heart at Fire's Center

Happy Hallowe'en

Hopefully, tonight I'll be watching John Carpenter's 1978 classic Halloween on Blu-ray.

The Eleventh Doctor...

So the news has broken that David Tennant is moving on from Doctor Who once he finishes work on the five specials which are to be broadcast over 2009 and early 2010. Tennant's been sensational in the role, and his star and the profile of the show have ballooned in the three years he's been playing the Doctor. His Doctor must rank alongside the first four as a definitive interpretation (such is the magic of the character that there can be more than one definitive Doctor). So incoming executive producer/head writer Steven Moffat has a challenge finding the new Doctor. Who knows if they'll opt for an unkown, an established star, or a hot talent on the rise? If Moffat's previous stories for the show are any indication, his Doctor will be full of daring heroism and prone to romance. With that in mind, here are the people I hope they're talking to for the role...

ROBERT CARLYLE

I would love to see Carlyle in the TARDIS. Nervous energy? Check. Capable of a frightening edge? Check. Cheeky sex appeal? Check. He is perhaps a little over the age range I suspect they're looking for, but would nevertheless do a fantastic job. An increasingly high international profile and attachment to many projects in various stages of production means he may be too busy for the role. On the other hand, the man is the father of three, and may like to combine a rest from the hectic pace (although Doctor Who does have a particular brand of hectic pace all it's own) with the chance to do something his kids can watch. I'll call this one unlikely, much as I'd love to see it. Perhaps he can do a guest role sometime.

DYLAN MORAN

Dylan would be sensational - sadly, this being the enlightened future we live in, the Doctor would not be able to chain smoke or swill red wine - although Pertwee's Doctor didn't mind a nice red, so why not one every now and again? Moran does not do a great deal of film or television acting, and is apparently a very private man who prefers to stay out of the limelight, so if he was approached, he would most likely decline the role. Again, there must be a juicy guest role down the track for him.

JAMES McAVOY

Imagine James McAvoy in the role! I mean, this guy is the fucking shit, quite frankly. He's a bit on the young side, even for the current production team, and is so white hot at the moment that he'd be way too busy and they'd never afford him. Very unlikely to be approached. He'd be great though.

HUGH GRANT

Let me get this out of the way - I'm not a fan of Hugh Grant, and have not really liked much that he's been in. However, I would not be upset if he was approached for the role. I think his dopey charm would work well with a story like 'The Girl in the Fireplace'. His profile has waned in recent years, and he did lament in an interview a few years ago that he didn't get to play the Doctor, so who knows? At 48 years of age, he's perhaps a little old for the role, but I think this one is not outside the realms of possibility. Of course, you must realise that I'm indulging in a lot of speculation about the age range they'll be looking for, based on the history of the show, comments made by previous showrunner Russell T Davies, and the much written about grueling schedule of the show, but humour me, okay?

COLIN FIRTH

He busier than a one legged man in an arse kicking contest. Another one who's possibly a little old. So this one's a total fantasy pick, will never happen. So why's he on the list? Because once, just once, I'd like to see a smokin' hot Doctor. Sure, when I was but a confused 12 year old Peter Davison certainly had my heart racing, but now I can see that I was clutching at straws, and should have spent my time drooling over Matthew Waterhouse's Adric instead. Why? Three reasons: he was much closer to my age; he's gay (I know, as if I'd ever meet him, but at least it makes the chances slightly better); and he's aged into one of those really cute grey haired guys in their mid forties. Before you jump to conclusions about my opinion of Adric, I want to make a few of things clear. Back in the day, I never looked at him twice. His character was poorly served throughout his tenure on the show, and quite possibly just a bad idea. And Matthew Waterhouse cannot act - or could not back then at least. He literally made a showcase of bad acting simply walking across the room in the otherwise superb story 'State of Decay'. Anyway, back to the point: it'd really make me happy to have a Doctor who made me think dirty thoughts.

ALFRED MOLINA

Again, with the never-gonna-happen. IMDb has him listed for at least eight or nine features in production for release over the next two years. He's here because he became my number one choice for the role when I saw the passion, energy, and madness that he brought to the role of Otto Octavius in Spiderman 2.

JOANNA LUMLEY

I don't think she's an example of never-gonna-happen. Ms. Lumley is an example of never say never. The idea of a female Doctor bothers me not in the slightest, and it would at least mean we'd be more likely to get some hot boys in the TARDIS along for the ride as companions. She's already played the role anyway, in the 1999 Comic Relief sketch 'The Curse of Fatal Death' - from a funny and clever script by one Steven Moffat, which featured Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor with Julia Sawalha as his companion Emma facing off against Jonathan Pryce's Master. The climax had the Doctor successively regenerate through Jim Broadbent, Richard E. Grant, and Hugh Grant to finally arrive at Joanna Lumley, who takes off in the TARDIS with Sawalha in tow. Lumley has said she'd love to return to the world of Doctor Who, but only if offered the title role. I say, why not? She was great in 'Fatal Death' and the climax of series 4 showed - with Catherine Tate and her character Donna Noble - that a female Doctor could be sensational. Would love to see this happen. It would be more likely to be in the form of a one episode special rather than handing the show over to her, however.