It was all leading up to this: 'No Country For Old Men'

No Country For Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen) is a brilliant film with one of those maddening non-endings that can go either way with me: when John Sayles abruptly cut to black in Limbo (1999) it took my breath away, but the final scene of No Country felt unsatisfying. Perhaps I just didn't "get it". No matter - I love the film to bits, it's not like the ending ruined it for me. What I adored so much about the film was that, for the first time in what seemed liked forever, I was sitting in the theatre excitedly wondering "what happens next?" - happily twisted around the Coens' little fingers. After years of "plot developments" eliciting bored moans it was delightful to feel like I was really being told a story. The other thing I loved about the film was that it seemed the perfect distillation of everything that was once great about the Coen brothers before they really went Hollywood and started making films like Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers (2004). Truth be told, I think the rot was setting in before these sell-out low points - I enjoy The Big Lebowski (1998) enough but certainly not as much as its fans do, and found the highly acclaimed The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) to be an empty experience.

No for me, the Coens are all about their first six films, each one perfect in its own way: Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Fargo (1996). I know I am a rare Coens fan who will put Hudsucker on the good list over Lebowski, but so be it. I've just always really dug The Hudsucker Proxy.

And so No Country For Old Men really felt like a return to form for me. It was like they'd made a new Blood Simple, only this time with the best technical team given enough money and a dream cast. Like Blood Simple, No Country For Old Men is a twisty thriller set in the wastelands of Texas, and the films have almost identical openings, with a world weary voice over (M. Emmet Walsh in Blood Simple, Tommy Lee Jones in No Country) speaking over desolate shots of Texan plains. The critical difference - one which is not immediately apparent to the viewer - is who is behind the laconic voice over. Walsh is a sleazy private investigator out to double cross his employer, Jones is a morally upstanding lawman who looks on with increasing disbelief at the violent crime scenes he is faced with. Both films concern bungled crimes, red herrings, and vital clues hidden away in cheap motel rooms. But where Blood Simple is an intricate clockwork mechanism that invites the audience to watch the characters scurry around like rats in a maze, No Country eschews explanations and takes the senseless violence of its world as a given. A deputy examining the aftermath of a drug deal turned shootout remarks "they even shot the dog!" and then a few scenes later we are shown Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) - at that stage the main audience identification figure - put into a situation where he has to do exactly that, in a climax of a terrific chase sequence which begins with him being pursued across the plains in the dead of night by two armed men in a truck and ends with the wounded Moss desperately swimming down a swiftly running stream by the pre-dawn light, the soon to be dead hound in hot pursuit.

No Country even manages to recall Raising Arizona - the famous scene where the murderous Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) challenges a gas station proprietor to a high stakes coin toss resembles the black flip side of the scene in Arizona where two bumbling prison escapees turned kidnappers hold up a small grocery store, with the classic dialogue exchange:

 EVELLE

(re: balloons) 

These blow up into funny shapes at all?

CASHIER

Well no. Unless round is funny.

But if No Country For Old Men has a true sibling in the Coens' body of work, it must surely be Fargo. Both films feature a canny, moral law enforcement officer tracking criminals across desolate landscapes by the frequently bloody aftermath of their crimes. The snowbound Minnesota of Fargo is as harsh and unforgiving as the dusty plains of No Country - Fargo discovers a beautiful contrast between the vast landscape and the warm places humans huddle inside, as well as making maximum usage of the clue concealing properties of snow. But the real connection between the films are the police officers played by Frances McDormand (Fargo's Marge Gunderson) and Tommy Lee Jones (No Country's Sheriff Bell). Marge and Sherrif Bell are not the focus at the beginning of the films, which both set up other protagonists and conflicts, allowing McDormand and Jones to slowly creep into the story (Marge Gunderson doesn't appear until about half an hour into Fargo) before they eventually become the emotional core of their respective films. The characters are also an interesting study in contrasts, from the most obvious difference (that of gender) to the fact that Marge eventually finds and overcomes her quarry, whereas Bell never comes face to face with Chigurh, and the film makes it pretty clear that he would be unlikely to emerge the victor from such a confrontation: Chigurh is as unknowable and implacable a force of evil as Michael Myers in Halloween (1978, John Carpenter).  Marge Gunderson also has a more optimistic outlook than Sheriff Bell - No Country ends with Bell looking forward (at least subconsciously) to being released from this world, where the heavily pregnant Marge is in the process of creating a new life herself.

The remarkable thing about how heavily No Country For Old Men draws from the Coens' earlier work is that it is adapted with extraordinary fidelity (to a fault - the last page of the novel is a great ending to a book, but I'd argue it doesn't work as the final scene to a film) from Cormac McCarthy's novel. All the elements discussed above come directly - and in many cases, just about word-for-word - from the novel. Was McCarthy watching Blood Simple and Raising Arizona when outlining his story, perhaps?

No Country For Old Men, I believe, marks the beginning of a true second wind for the Coens. They're no longer trying to fit in to Hollywood, rather Hollywood is giving them the resources to make films exactly how they want to, only now with the very best actors (and stars, even) and the sort of marketing campaigns which films like Miller's Crossing (still their most perfect film as far as I'm concerned) never got to benefit by. If No Country For Old Men is Blood Simple 2.0, I found that watching their next film, Burn After Reading (2008) expecting Raising Arizona 2.0 is a very good way to have expectations confounded. Which of course is what the Coens like to do best - confound expectations. I need to see Burn After Reading again, this time without looking for the patterns I saw in No Country For Old Men, to fully appreciate it, I think. And how heartening that the boys are still making films that are worth going back to see a second time - very rare these days.

On the sequels to 'The Exorcist'

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin) was a huge sensation when released - it was banned in places, discussed in talk shows and the media, and walked out on. It came along at a time when big theological questions were in the public eye, and as such almost inadvertently became a sensationalist phenomenon that was concerned with Big Issues. It is of course an entirely fabulous film, still riveting after all this time. Hollywood wasn't as prone to sequels back then, but the huge success, both artistically and commercially, of The Godfather II in 1974 had proved that a sequel needn't mean cheapening the storyline. And so in due course along came Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman) with Linda Blair joined by great actor/ham combos such as Richard Burton and Louise Fletcher. It was a troubled production that was fitfully released, hauled back to the edit suite, and finally abandoned by both Warner Bros and the director and dumped into theatres to the jeering of the crowds. The Razzies hadn't been invented then but you can be sure Exorcist II would have been a contender.

1983 saw the publication of William Peter Blatty's follow up to his original novel, Legion. It's weighty, meditative, and theological, and when production company Morgan Creek allowed Blatty to write and direct an adaptation for them, it should have come as no surprise that he delivered a weighty, meditative, and theological film. Shocked to discover - after the film was completed - that Legion did not contain any sequences of exorcism, Morgan Creek insisted on having one shot for the film. Although Blatty disagreed, he was a good enough sport to shoot the new sequences, hoping to still do the best job possible. The film, The Exorcist III: Legion (1990) is creepy and well made and leaves an impression despite the completely visible join between Blatty's story and the studio imposed exorcism. And it has one of the best shock scare moments of the last couple of decades.

The final sequel to date had the most torturous post production of all - fearing Paul Schrader's film Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist would be unsuccessful, Morgan Creek hired director Renny Harlin to completely reshoot the film. Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning was released to poor box office and negative reviews in 2004, and Schrader's film was eventually released as well in 2005, to a slightly better reaction.

Has there ever been a cinematic franchise with such a troubled production history? The fourth film especially being completely reshot, never mind Paul Schrader - a promising match for the material - being dumped in favour of Renny Harlin, of all people. A clear sign that the studio really had no idea what sort of film they really wanted.

Of course, the original film has not been without after the fact tinkering either. In this case, a long standing dispute between author/screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin was re-ignited when the film was re-released for a short theatrical run and then on DVD for its 25th anniversary. At that time Friedkin stood his ground, but a couple of years later he relented and the ridiculously yclept The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen was released in 2000. The new version re-instates some character material which Blatty had always missed, as well as the infamous "spider walk" scene which doesn't really fit - coming before the film has taken its shocks to that kind of level, it both steals the thunder from later scenes and disrupts the slow build of tension. Freidkin also adds a couple of ill-advised new visual effects, particularly an image of the demon's face appearing in the range-hood which is completely meaningless within the story. It ultimately doesn't matter, it's still pretty much the same film, and some of the extended sequences help what seem like big narrative leaps in the shorter version. My preference, however, is definitely for the original version, although truth be told, you can't even get that these days: the closest being the first (now out of circulation) DVD release, which replaces the startling and effective jump cut from Jason Miller playing Father Karras to the same actor in demon makeup with a more subtle digital morph, but is otherwise the same as the 1973 release.

Score of the week

The first film score I owned was the cassette of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Hooked on scores immediately, I quickly moved on to vinyl, and had a pretty decent collection by the mid 80s. At that time, CDs were only bought if I really, really loved the score. Once, I bought a soundtrack on LP - it was Willow by James Horner - and loved it so much that after one listen I took it back to the store and begged them to allow me to return the listened-to-once LP and exchange it for the CD. Of course, eventually I replaced most of my LPs with CDs, but I never got around to getting the CD of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and in my last house move (which came with a very severe cull of possessions) I got rid of all but a couple of my LPs, as I no longer owned a record player. There were some real gems in there, too - including a few scores which have since become rare and much sought after. Who knew that I would one day miss The Serpent and the Rainbow? Whenever I'm in a music store I fondle the CD of Willy Wonka, but always end up putting it back, thinking to myself 'It's a novelty item which would only be in your collection for nostalgic reasons.' Last week I decided to see if it was on iTunes, found it (bizarrely, it's title is censored to W***y Wonka... - I mean, wtf?), and seconds later was listening to it for the first time in years.

This score - which earned the film it's single Oscar nomination -  is a bit too musically straight forward and conventional to be counted amongst the great achievements in the history of film scores. And the film has a strange, scattershot approach to the use of songs - it's not quite a musical. Initially, the songs are connected to Charlie Bucket's story, through songs such as 'Cheer up Charlie' and 'I've Got a Golden Ticket'. Then, once Charlie and the other Golden Ticket holders are inside the factory, the songs are limited to a number by Willy Wonka (the wonderful and slightly unsettling 'Pure Imagination'), Veruca Salt's big tantrum in 'I Want it Now,' and the memorable Oompa-Loompa songs, one for each unfortunate child who ends up leaving the tour, with no big finale musical number and no musical continuation of songs about Charlie. It doesn't seem to matter - the film works whether the characters are singing or not, finding the right blend between being charming and scary, a balance which eluded Tim Burton. The album is only 37 minutes but it's a sheer delight, the music is gorgeous and the album is spiced up by the inclusion of a couple of dialogue snippets and some brief tracks featuring the bizarre and hilarious sound effects from the factory machinery. It's as much fun as watching the film again!

An obsessive phase...

I think I'm having one at the moment. They are periods in my life where I focus my viewing and reading on one particular thing. They vary from a more casual three or four week kind of thing before I move on (which is what the current one is) to a complete obsession that I spend months on. Previous subjects have included spending all my spare time re-reading my favourite Clive Barker novels (which means pretty much all of them), or re-watching my favourite Brian DePalma films one after the other. Yes, I'm a big re-watcher of films - I've seen a lot of my favourites dozens of times. Anyway, currently I'm going through a vampire phase. Sparked of course, by my re-reading of Dracula. Since picking that book up again, I've watched the 1979 film, the 1977 mini-series, and many clips from both 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu as well as Francis Coppola's 1992 film on YouTube. I've also watched bits of Interview With the Vampire.

My reading was sent in a different direction - after Dracula, I've had a hankering for Victorian gothic, which had me re-reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and now H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Reading these could send me back to the early films of Angela Lansbury, 1930s Universal horror films, or Paul Verhoeven's film Hollow Man. Which will in turn, send my reading in another direction, and the circle of life keeps turning.

Anyway, my vampire phase intersected with my brief interest in James Mason and I inevitably ended up pulling out the DVD of Tobe Hooper's 1979 mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot. A theatrical cut down of the film was distributed to international territories in 1979, and I loved the look of it and wanted to go see it. Of course, I was nine years old and it would have scared the crap out of me and scarred me for life, so my mother quite sensibly did not allow me to go see it. I was, however, allowed to read the book. I remember finishing reading it and immediately turning back to page one and starting again. I devoured that book. It was funny, I gave it to mum to read when I was done and then my teacher at school, and no one really said anything about my tender brain being exposed to Stephen King at his very best.

I had two years of recurring vampire nightmares from reading 'Salem's Lot, but I was kind of hooked on the primal thrill of a really good scare by then. When the mini-series in it's complete form aired on Australian television in (I think) 1983, I loved it. It had all the kids at school talking about it - lots of "did you see?" and "what about..." 

It was a big ratings hit in Australia - the network broadcasting it ran a repeat screening the following year, and again the year after that. It was a period of two years where I was pleading with my parents to buy a VCR, as I wanted to start taping stuff. When our first VCR finally arrived (it's funny, I remember that VCR as clearly as if I'd seen it this morning) we were too late to miss the repeats of Salem's Lot. I had to wait until it became available to buy from Warner Home Video on VHS, which was sometime in the 1990s, before I got to see it again. I remember the first time I saw this film as an adult, I found it cheesy and dated. I never really watched it again until the price of the DVD dropped enough for to finally say "oh, alright". I blame the highbrow and dismissive company I was in when I first re-watched it for my former judgement, as this time I found Salem's Lot to be extremely effective. I used to dislike the lack of fidelity to the novel, but now I enjoy the way the screenplay by Paul Monash plays fast and loose with the novel, conflating characters and re-ordering events in a similar fashion to many of the various stage and screen adaptations of Dracula.

I won't go into comparing the mini-series and the novel even though I've done a bit of that sort of thing on this blog. I actually do believe a film should stand apart from any source text, and be judged on it's own merits. That said, this small town of 'Salem's Lot, with petty, grasping characters played by the likes of Kenneth McMillan, Fred Willard, and George Dzundza, is recognisably the world Stephen King created. I fell in love with Bonnie Bedelia, girl-next-door pretty until the final scene, where she is transformed into a vision of Gothic seduction. James Mason's sneering and disdainful Richard K. Straker and Reggie Nalder's growling Nosferatu faced monster leave strong impressions. And the sequences with the boy vampires floating outside the window, scratching at the glass and pleading to be let in, are unforgettable. It's strong stuff - I can't imagine anything being scarier than this for a 1979 television production. Special shoutouts to contact lens specialist Dr. Morton Greenspoon, Harry Sukman for his scary Emmy nominated score, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz for the Marsten house, represented by a Psycho inspired facade on location and a sensational interior set which easily gets my vote as the best ever decrepit old house of evil.

James Mason et al...

The other night I was doing some random internet searching - mainly on "living fossils" such as the Coelacanth - and ended up finding this superb page detailing scores of different designs for Captain Nemo's submarine the Nautilus from Jules Verne's prescient piece of speculative fiction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Inspired, I dug out my region 1 DVD of the 1954 Walt Disney film, looking forward to revisiting it. Unfortunately, our old DVD player is becoming a little tempermental and refused to load the disc.

In desperation, I put it in the PS3, knowing full well that it is locked to region 4 and wouldn't play the disc, as was indeed the case. What to do? I'd developed a craving for a 1950s adaptation of a Jules Verne novel, preferably starring James Mason.

Fortunately, I have a region 4 disc of Henry Levin's 1959 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, another childhood favourite. While still fun, it's a poor substitute for 20,000 Leagues..., that's for sure. On the plus side, it's colourful, James Mason and Arlene Dahl have a terrific love/hate relationship, much of the effects work was terrific for the time (they sure had some cojones to shoot daytime scenes on a beach and then stick matte paintings on the top to place the location footage inside a gigantic subterranean cavern), and Bernard Herrmann provides a typically wonderful score, all thundering timpani and moody church organs.

It would have taken balls to even attempt

an effects shot like this in 1959.

On the minus side, Henry Levin's direction is static, the film takes a little too long to get going, some of the sets and effects work have not dated well, and James Mason's Oliver Lindenbrook lacks the magnetism and sex appeal of his Captain Nemo. Not to mention the terrible songs shoe-horned in to the film due to the presence of Pat Boone. I might be being a little harsh, but I was really in the mood for James Mason with a beard, Kirk Douglas singing to a friendly seal, Peter Lorre's shiftiness, and a fight with a giant squid. Some iguanas with rubber appendages stuck on to turn them into Dimetrodons just didn't do it for me tonight.

I followed up with another favourite of my youth, Jack Arnold's 1955 giant-spider-run-amok flick Tarantula. This one's full of classic 1950s stiffness, with characters stopping still to deliver exposition to each other, and a bizarre mix of progressive feminism and sexism in the character of of Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (Mara Corday), a clever scientist in her own right who quips "beauty must come before science" as she absents herself from the lab to keep a hair appointment. The giant spider itself is superbly realised for the most part through high speed photography of a real tarantula matted into location photography (often the shadows of the spider were also matted in, providing an extra kiss of realism), and it would be remiss of me not to mentioned an early uncredited role for Clint Eastwood, playing one of the fighter pilots who come in at the end to napalm the beast to oblivion.

TV I'm watching...

I've got a mate who comes around to watch new episodes of Doctor Who as soon as I've got them - this year, with only four Doctor Who specials being produced, we've sought out other TV shows to keep us occupied. Craig has not seen Deadwood or Arrested Development, and so I'm taking great pleasure in watching those shows again with him. We're up to the start of Deadwood series 2, and about halfway through series 1 of Arrested Development. But these shows are not why I've taken to the keyboard to write a post...

Two years ago, several friends started telling me to watch Dexter. "You'll love it," they would assure me. I was unconvinced. A show about a serial killer? Sure, it was fun and naughty when Hannibal Lecter walked off into the sunset to audience applause in The Silence of the Lambs, but isn't it time we moved on from turning serial killers into cult heroes? My housemate watched series 1, which was given to me - almost forced on me in fact - by a mate, and said it was very good. Still I didn't watch it. I bought my housemate series 2 on DVD for his birthday, and I've been watching it with him.

Well, call me a convert. I think I imagined something more "funky" like NCIS, full of flash frames and jump cuts and obsessed with forensic work. Instead, it's a supremely engaging character drama with a terrific cast and compelling writing that never fails to draw me in. Michael C. Hall - so good in Six Feet Under - is equally good here in a completely different role. And pretty easy on the eyes, as well! I'll be checking out series 1 after I've finished the second series for sure.

And I've just seen the first episode of series 5 of Lost, a show which was so promising, so full of potential in the early days, potential that has been squandered and diminished in direct proportion to the amount of ideas the writers have been dragging in. Lost stopped being compelling a couple of years ago, usually due to the writers (I really hate these guys) seeming to believe their silly mysteries are more interesting than their characters. The cast are great, and the production values are top notch, but the contrived manner in which characters in the show don't reveal things to each other in order to keep secrets from the audience has gone beyond wearying. I've kept watching however - there have been individual stand out scenes and even episodes, and Michael Giacchino's music is so wonderful it usually helps carry me through the rest of it. Having just watched series 5, episode 1 however, I wonder if maybe it's not time to give up. The two words that kept coming to mind throughout the episode were "dull" and "senseless". The time travel shenanigans here seem as if the writers (those bastards again!) saw Stephen Moffat's episodes of Doctor Who and tried to appropriate the ideas without an understanding of how to make them work or how to make the audience care. I'll give it another episode or two but I doubt I'll make it through to the end of the series.

On the bookshelf: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

I'm re-reading Bram Stoker's classic Dracula for the umpteenth time - I read it at least once every few years, and it never fails to captivate me. I wouldn't have thought it possible - I've killed the impact of many of my favourite books through excessive re-reading (I have to rest 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and the Dune series for a goodly number of years before I pick them up again) - but I'm enjoying the Stoker novel more than ever. I own the hardcover edition of the book illustrated with the wonderful paintings of Greg Hildebrandt (see above) - and although on this reading I'm encountering an irritating number of editorial errors ('from' is frequently typed as 'form'), it's not detracting from my enjoyment. I love the contrast of the highly literary device of telling the story through journals and diary entries (a device which was old-hat even when Dracula was first published in 1897) with the almost hysterical alarm at wanton female sensuality. Of course, cinematic adaptations and derivations of Dracula are legion, and enjoying the book as much as I am prompts me to recall my favourites and thoughts on other major adaptations.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (F. W. Murnau, 1922) can seem badly dated - certainly it has no-hope of frightening a contemporary audience. But it's imagery, once seen, is indelible, especially the grotesque Count Orlok (the legendary Max Schreck), and many of the special camera effects are still arresting. All the characters in the film were given new names in the flimsiest of attempts to disguise the unlicensed adaptation, which didn't pull the wool over the widow Stoker's eyes. She was very nearly successful in having every print and negative of the film destroyed. I've never owned the DVD, due to the bewildering array of versions of this public domain film on the market, some of them lacking the colour tinting, some looking like the print was found in a trashcan, some with poorly translated intertitles, some with horrendous new scores... the list goes on. Rumours of a forthcoming Blu-ray release excite me - surely whoever is taking the trouble to create a High Definition disc will be trying to get it right. It's been some years since I last saw this film so I'm sure to enjoy it even more for the wait.

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) is not a particular favourite of mine, despite Bela Lugosi's cold, commanding Count. Like Nosferatu I haven't seen it in a while, but it always seemed stiff and stagey to me - perhaps the result of it being more directly adapted from the hit play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston than the novel. I'm probably due for another look at this one - Philip Glass wrote a score for it in 1999 which is available as an alterate audio track on the DVD, and that at least is worth checking out.

The 1958 Terence Fisher Dracula is another one which is a little lost on me. Hammer Films, the UK studio responsible for this, the 50s Frankenstein films, and scores of other horrors to keep Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price in work for years, brought brilliant Technicolor design, dollops of gore, and busty vampire brides the like of which would never have been allowed in the 1930s, but the waste of Christopher Lee's mellifluous voice - Stoker's verbose Count is given only a handful of lines in this film, and a couple of the later films give him no dialogue at all - is a major liability to me.

One of my favourite versions was made for British television by the BBC in 1977. The two part Count Dracula was the first time I'd seen Stoker's story accurately conveyed on screen. It's a strange beast, part po-faced BBC period drama (the props, locations, and costumes were no doubt staples of many a Jane Austin adaptation), part Doctor Who (the use of video-tape for interiors and what would have been at the time cutting edge video effects but are now quaint oddities). But for once, most of Stoker's vision hits the screen intact, and the cast is brilliant, particularly Jack Shepard's Renfield and Frank Finlay in the definitive interpretation of Van Helsing - so good he would play the role again as Dr. Hans Fallada in Tobe Hooper's terrible but highly entertaining 1985 sci-fi/zombie apocalypse fiasco Lifeforce.

John Badham's 1979 Dracula was based on a hugely successful revival of the Deane/Balderston play, and like the 1931 version the role of the Count was played by the same actor who had played him on stage. This time Frank Langella dons the cape, and it is one of my favourite versions, trumping the 1977 BBC version through lavish big budget production values. It's generally not as highly regarded as the Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee adaptations, although I don't understand why. Langella's magnetic Count is given terrific support by the likes of Donald Pleasance and Laurence Olivier (the latter positively hamming it up as Van Helsing), with Kate Nelligan a standout as the progressive Victorian Miss who comes under the vampire's spell. The photography and production design are gorgeous and the whole package is wrapped up in a lush score by John Williams which is equal parts horror, romance, and action - a score that would surely be as highly regarded as his work for films such as Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) but for the fact that this version of Dracula remains a barely remembered box office failure.

There's one last important adaptation of Stoker's novel which I'm going to discuss here, and of course it is Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Coppola, 1992). My excitement grew in the months leading up to the release of this film - were we to finally see a good version of the story that remained faithful to Stoker? It certainly seemed so - from his name in the title to the inclusion of all the main characters (most other adaptations usually collapse Lucy's three suitors into two characters, if not one, and Lucy and Mina swap names randomly at the whim of the screenwriters) it looked like Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart (riding high on Steven Speilberg's filming of his screenplay Hook, in that period of grace where no one had yet seen the film) were determined to bring Stoker's novel to the screen. And the cast was a terrific line-up, never mind the dubious casting of Keanu Reeves. The lurid mess which ended up on the screen saw an attempt at a faithful re-telling crowded out by an invented romance between Dracula and Mina, here depicted as the re-incarnation of his centuries dead sweetheart. The way James Hart crowed about this plot addition, you'd think he'd written Hamlet - no matter that exactly the same ploy was used by a 1973 television version starring Jack Palance as the Count. What is the point in trying to include all of Stoker's story and then having to rush through it to make room for a Count with a bleeding heart? Stoker's eroticism is as cold as the grave - Dracula refers to Mina as his "wine press" - but Gary Oldman's Count can hardly bear to bring himself to inflict the fatal bite upon Winona Ryder's Mina, so rent is he from his love for her. If you didn't need a sick bucket for the gore, you'd still want one handy for the romance. The performances from the aforementioned stellar line-up seem to come from ten different films, every actor encouraged by their indulgent Uncle Francis to find the histrionic madness in their character, with the result that Tom Waits as Renfield - the one bona fide madman of the text - seems sane beside the shrilling of everyone from Reeves and Ryder to Anthony Hopkins and Richard E. Grant. And the crying shame of it all is that so many good, even great, qualities are in this film, from Eiko Ishioka's stunning costumes and Greg Cannom's exceptional make up work to Sadie Frost's vampish (I'm sorry, there's no other word for it) Lucy and the darkness and power of Wojciech Kilar's score, by turns lyrical and brooding. With so much that is so right, it's amazing that the film as a whole is so wrong.

Diminishing returns and 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy

Damn, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) is a fine film. A careful, respectful film. The pressure was on: generations of Tolkien fans were anxious to see if co-writer/director Peter Jackson could pull it off. Rumour has it almost the entire budget for the planned trilogy was spent getting the first film finished, and that the additional funding to complete the next two films would be dependent on box office takings.

Even in a three hour film, Peter Jackson had to race through Tolkien's narrative, honing in on following the journey of Frodo (Elijah Wood) and the Ring. The most sorely felt loss for many Tolkien readers was the omission of Tom Bombadil, but for the most part the narrative compression was done with great care and skill, imbuing the story with a terrific sense of urgency.

The finished result won critical raves, played to huge - and adoring - audiences, and delighted all but the most hardcore of Tolkien's fanbase. Those that went looking for things to quibble about could find them, but they were more likely to be disputes about Elvish dialects rather than genuine problems with the adaptation. Some purists protested elements such as the involvement of Arwen (Liv Tyler) in events her character wasn't part of in the book, as in when Frodo journeys to Rivendell. Others found the use of Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) as comic relief ("no-one tosses the Dwarf!") objectionable. And for the most literary minded, no film could capture the beauty of Tolkien's prose. Of course, these people made up the tiniest proportion of the cinema going audience, who largely had the time of their lives - the aforementioned line from Gimli never failed to get a huge laugh whenever I saw the film at the theatre, which was probably five or six times.

It's a genuinely thrilling and moving film, sure footed from the first moments to the last. One walked out of the cinema already anticipating the next film, and knowing that there was a genuine Christmas present coming for audiences for the next two years. Peter Jackson showed a gift for maximising the drama of the story - the encounter with the Balrog being the best example, a sequence deliciously drawn out as the Fellowship descends gigantic crumbling stairways in flight from the as yet unseen fire demon. The excitement is cranked up to a pants-wetting level before the reveal of the magnificent CG creation, until now only glimpsed in a brief shot in the trailers. The tactic worked again for the following films - the Ents in The Two Towers (2002) and giant spider Shelob in The Return of the King (2003) were also cleverly withheld from being overexposed in promotional material. The only way to really see these beauties in action was to buy a ticket.

The production was unique - the three films were shot over an extended period of many, many months, a time frame which encompassed the release of the first two films. After the box office success of the first film demonstrated what a gold mine the trilogy would be, the only limitations on the resources allocated to Peter Jackson were those of completing the films in time for the release dates. Scenes were shot, reworked, and shot again, sometimes in a genuine two way dialogue between film makers and audience. When Tolkien fans responded negatively to news that sequences featuring Arwen at the battle of Helm's Deep had been shot, the relevant material was reshot without her. Enthusiastic response to the Dwarf tossing gag meant that the humorous aspect to the Gimli character was emphasised in the subsequent films.

The release of the extended version of Fellowship on DVD was a new revelation, the already great film enriched by the additional material, the narrative more fully rounded, although such was the cleverness of John Gilbert's outstanding editing work we never saw the rough edges in the shorter version.

The Two Towers was released the following year to an even more enthusiastic response than the first film, with the remarkable creation of Gollum - an unprecedented fusion of performance and character animation - a particular favourite. I enjoyed the film enough, but felt something was amiss. It wasn't until after a couple of days thinking about it that I came around to the conclusion that I loved it. My friend Kate remarked that it was a common response to the film among people she knew, with her take being that it took a couple of days for people to put a positive spin on the film. I disagreed at the time, but I now think Kate's comment was pretty astute. The screenwriters have again grafted new elements onto Tolkien's story, but unlike the first film, some new story threads seemed out of place here. The warg attack which leads to Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) being separated from his fellows on the way to Helm's Deep is the best/worst example. In a film which already had a few too many fake-out character deaths (did anyone really think that Billy Boyd's Pippin was trampled to death by that horse?), trying to wring emotion from the notion that Aragorn falls from a cliff and out of the story was a bit much.

This fight sequence provided an action beat on the long trek to Helm's Deep, but the main raison d'etre for the narrative detour was to rope Liv Tyler's Arwen back into the story. She appears to the wounded Aragorn in a vision, spurring him to fight for life and resolving his feelings in the romantic triangle with Arwen and Eowyn (Miranda Otto). Tolkien's famously laddish adventure has no time for love triangles - Eowyn pines for Aragorn but there is never even a hint that he would reciprocate - and I can't help feeling that there's an element of cynicism here, a conscious attempt to make sure that the female half of the audience remains engaged amongst all the Orcs and battle cries. Viggo Mortensen seemingly concurs with Tolkien, as his Aragorn never offers more than undying friendship and respect to Eowyn, and as a result the whole sequence feels more like screenwriting than an organic progression of the drama. The net result of the plot detour is essentially nil - Aragorn ends up making his way to Helm's Deep after all, giving Peter Jackson an excuse to indulge in another lugubrious reunion scene, with the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom) behaving more like a wife to Aragorn than Arwen ever did.

Elsewhere, Peter Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens include character and plot points at 180 degree reversals from Tolkien: in the novel, the Ents decide to take war to Isengard, yet in the film the Ents decide that the matter is not their concern, with Treebeard (voiced by John Rhys-Davies) only changing his mind when witnessing first hand the devastation wrought upon the forests by Saruman (Christopher Lee). And Faramir (David Wenham) proves resistant to the temptation of the One Ring in the novel, but here takes Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) along with him to the besieged city of Osgiliath with the intention of turning the Ring over to his father Denethor (John Noble). In a difficult middle act film with no real beginning or ending, this allows Jackson an excuse for further action near the climax, as well as the opportunity for an encounter with the flying Nazgul which is frankly too close to believe.

In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film - fourth edition, film critic David Thomson - writing in 2002, when only the first film in the trilogy had been seen - wonders 'whether the frighteners in the Rings might not get out of hand before the series ends'. His writing was prescient - look at the sequence where Frodo, Sam, and Gollum (Andy Serkis) cross the Dead Marshes. What is haunting and poetic in the novel is here reduced to the stuff of a ghost ride, green ghouls leering out at the audience, in a sign of Peter Jackson's propensity to crank everything up to eleven.

However, I judge the extended edition of The Two Towers to be the most improved from the theatrical cut. The cross cutting between the three major story strands is better handled here, somehow more balanced. And the battle at Helm's Deep does not dominate the final half of the film as much as it does in the shorter version.

The Return of the King has a lot to get through, even with major sequences (such as the Scouring of the Shire) omitted. There's some set up here, but the film is mainly comprised of big climaxes and extended farewells. In the rush to get to the action, the wrap up of Saruman - a role which had been played up in the first two films - was reduced to a single line referencing the unseen character, to the vocal displeasure of Christopher Lee. This film has - for me at least - the most damaging deviation from the novel, when Frodo - swayed by Gollum's treachery - sends Sam away on the climb up to Shelob's lair. In a Screenwriting 101/Robert McKee sense the writers have upped the ante here, turning the screws on character conflicts present in the novel to maximise the conflict. In story and character terms, it's a betrayal of Sam's character - the finale of the first film was predicated on the notion that Sam's loyalty to Frodo and determination to stay with him know no bounds. And it robs the characters of one of their great moments in the novel - facing the horror of giant spider Shelob together. Sam ends up a johnny-come-lately to his biggest moment of heroism in the entire story, getting his moment in the spotlight in the superbly realised fight with the monster, but leaving at least this Tolkien reader wondering if an important beat with the two characters had been skipped or short-changed.

Of course, by now I probably sound to you like one of those Tolkien fans quibbling over Elvish dialects. Or maybe I passed that point three or five paragraphs ago. Far be it from me to argue with a bazillion dollars at the box office and a record number of Oscars - the three films comprising The Lord of the Rings are all wonderfully made, acted with heart, gripping, and exciting. There were maybe turns taken that I would have preferred taken another way, but the crank-it-up story sensibility that I bemoan when it takes the story on certain paths is the same sensibility that made many sequences so wonderful. So the good definitely comes with the bad.

The extended DVD version of The Return of the King is a strange thing. The expansions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were both improvements on the shorter edits, especially with the second film which saw some rushed storytelling clarified. The longer version of The Return of the King seems to me to be on exactly the same level as the shorter edit, with no overall improvement to the film as a whole. A lot of good - and necessary - material has been restored, such as the final confrontation with Saruman. Other additions which might have been expected to smooth out some trouble spots are less effective. Take the restored scenes at the Houses of Healing, for example. The theatrical edit of the film has a moment in the first of its many endings where we see Eowyn standing beside Faramir, indicating a healing of her unrequited love for Aragorn as well as a redirection of those feelings to Faramir. The reinsertion of the Houses of Healing scene - wherein Eowyn, recuperating from battle, begins to notice Faramir noticing her - should have provided the linking material in the relationship, but somehow it fails to gel. This perhaps highlights an inherent problem in trying to construct a contemporary style cinematic narrative from Tolkien's novel - this beginning of a romance becomes lost amidst the culmination of so many other story threads.

Elsewhere, and for the first time in the extended versions, The Return of the King contains redundancy, most notably in the new sequence at the start of disc 2 where Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas conquer the Corsair ships with the aid of the Army of Dead. Maybe it's churlish to deny Peter Jackson and his department heads their additional cameos as the crew of the ship, but the use here of the visual gag of the Army of Dead materialising behind the sword-wielding Aragorn diminishes the impact of the same image later in the film when the ships arrive at Gondor. Can I reiterate here my complaint about haunting prose becoming an fx spookshow in the Army of the Dead - more glowing green ghouls, Peter?

I may be giving the impression here I don't like the films, which is far from the case. The collective trilogy makes great viewing as a six part mini-series - one disc a night. It's easy to talk about the greatness of the enterprise and the excellence in every aspect of the productions. Not many people talk about alterations to the narrative which may be less, rather than more effective. What's interesting here is not so much passing judgement on decisions made by Peter Jackson and his team as seeing how they reflect changes in storytelling and audience expectations. Is Aragorn a more interesting character with a more compelling arc because the films have given him a measure of self doubt to overcome before he fulfills his destiny? Do we find the Hobbits more relatable because they've been transformed from the overgrown garden gnomes that Tolkien artists have been depicting for half a century into a quartet of hot young men? I'm not convinced myself. I think the perfect adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is yet to be made, and it's more likely to come in the form of three seasons of episodic television, taking the time to enjoy the journey as the novel does instead of rushing from one event to the next.

Now, a little aside about sexy Hobbits. I like my men - as Hannibal Lecter would say - 'roomy', although hotness does come in all shapes and sizes. Sean Astin's Samwise Gamgee became my definition of 'sexy' for a couple of years after seeing The Fellowship of the Ring. This probably lasted until I saw Aaron Eckhart carrying an extra 30 lbs. and a 70s porno moustache in Your Friends and Neighbours (Neil LaBute, 1998) - va va voom! Anyway, meandering back to the point - the casting of the Hobbits did have the side effect of making Tolkien's strong bonds of friendship and love look totally gay, and the fodder for an astonishing amount of slash fiction. Now look, my mind is as filthy as the most ardent writer of slash (usually women, the heterosexual male fantasy geek is alienated enough without authoring homoerotica - and I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the level of alienation the homosexual male fantasy geek experiences) - in my mind, of course those randy hobbits are buggering each other in the bushes whenever Gandalf isn't looking. And I'm pretty sure Merry (Dominic Monaghan) tried it on with Boromir (Sean Bean) at least once before the Orcs came along and ruined it for everyone. But I'm gay - I'm allowed to think dirty thoughts when Sean Astin and Elijah Wood look deeply into each other's eyes. It's unfortunate that everyone who saw the films thought 'gay' whenever the Hobbits got too lovey-dovey. Perhaps if they weren't pretty boys? Or maybe what we're seeing is an indicator of our society's inability to look unembarrassed at deeply felt male friendship without resorting to the protective ironic distance of sniggering at innuendo? But hey, this post is long enough without opening that can of worms...

Rented last weekend

Only three posts in January. Must... try... harder...

What to say about the remarkable WALL•E that hasn't already been said? I didn't see this one at the theatre, perhaps a little wary after Finding Nemo, which felt to me as though the mechanics of Pixar's storytelling were starting to show. WALL•E truly lived up to the rave reviews. The animation is so detailed and lifelike that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you're not watching live action. I was completely enthralled from the opening minutes to the end. It's worth mentioning that this is the only time a film or television show has used Richard Strauss' 'Also sprach Zarathustra' as a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey without making me groan.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army was less satisfying. I liked Hellboy enough, but I think I was mainly just overjoyed to finally see some decent Lovecraftian monster gods in a movie. The sequel is a classic Hollywood-blockbuster-empty-spectacle, with a fabulous menagerie of fantastical creatures and one of those aggressive soundmixes that needs to be noticed constantly, topped off with Danny Elfman phoning in another superhero score.

Eric Bana in 'Troy'

Films about Ancient Greece or Rome will always pique my interest - if nothing else, they usually offer more scantily clad Hollywood beefcake than you're likely to find in your average romantic comedy or courtroom drama. And so I went along to see Troy (2004), although I was starting to feel mighty dubious about director Wolfgang Peterson after he made The Perfect Storm (2000).

I found little to enjoy in Troy, but there is one brief moment when Hector (Eric Bana) is preparing for some battle or other that was pretty hot.

'The Silence of the Lambs' snubbed at the Oscars

I know, how can I say that? The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is one of only three films in history to win all top five Ocsars, taking out Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for Oscars for its extraordinary sound work and Craig McKay's solid editing, although I would argue that this last nomination is mainly in recognition of the clever misdirection in the scene where Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) arrives at the house of serial killer Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), and that this was really an example of great screenwriting (the gag comes from Ted Tally's screenplay). Not that McKay's work was not worthy of the nomination, and it's a moot point in any case - no film in 1991 was going to take the editing Oscar away from Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia for their jaw dropping work on Oliver Stone's JFK.

However, it is my belief that The Silence of the Lambs was critically overlooked in several other categories. Here are five Oscars that this one should have been up for.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Snot-nosed realism will get you a shot at an Oscar in a leading role. For the supporting roles, though, the Academy favours over the top - they like nothing better than seeing a long overlooked great actor or big Hollywood star whooping it up in a colourfully written smaller part. How else to explain Judi Dench, after decades of superb work in theatre, television, and film, finally getting an Oscar for doing NOTHING in Shakespeare in Love (1998)? Look at the introduction of Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith) in The Silence of the Lambs - we see her singing along to 'American Girl' as she drives home, waving up to her pet cat from the apartment carpark, and making the ill-fated decision to assist the man with his arm in a cast struggling to load a couch into his van. Such is the skill of Brooke Smith in these scenes that these simple elements come together to create a complete characterisation. Later in the film, thrown down into a deep pit by her tormentor, she is already someone we know, even though she has already been placed in an alien situation. The film is full of terrific acting like this - the characters played by Kasi Lemmons and Anthony Heald are not soon forgotten (which is a remarkable achievement when you consider the quality of the leading performances), and Lauren Roselli works wonders in her single scene. Which is not to overlook the fact that a lot of the magic started with Ted Tally's note perfect screenplay. Brooke Smith is the standout here, and she's a wonderful actor - always a pleasure to see her pop up (unexpectedly, because as a great actor as opposed to a star, no one advertises her presence) in a film or television show. And Ted Levine - one of Hollywood's true chameleons - is terrific as the disturbed serial killer, Jame Gumb. His scenes with Brooke Smith are wonderful, and he brings a superb animal cunning to later scenes with Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling.

Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction

These categories truly are the beauty contests of the Oscars. For cinematography, the Academy's bias is often towards spectacle over visual story-telling. Dances With Wolves (the winner that year) is a gorgeous film, but cinematographer Dean Semler's main contribution was waiting for the right moment to shoot some beautiful landscapes. Of course, I'm over simplifying, and Semler deserves every accolade, but a film in which choices of framing and depth of field define psychology and reveal character will always be passed over in favour of a film with beautiful imagery. Thus the brilliant work of Tak Fujimoto was overlooked, not the only time he's had fine worked ignored by the Academy. Similarly, nominations for art direction often go to period pieces or science fiction/fantasy films - in other words, films where the art direction is obvious. And so the work of production designer Kristi Zea and art director Tim Galvin, which often informs us about characters before we meet them (before we see the steely gaze of Scott Glenn's FBI agent Jack Crawford, we've already seen the wall of newspaper clippings behind his desk, and have already - if subconsciously - made assumptions about the type of person he is) was also ignored. The greatness of The Silence of the Lambs is in every aspect of the production serving the story and characters in the best possible ways. The performances are as compelling as they are because Kristi Zea places the characters in their own worlds, and Tak Fujimoto studies them in bold extended close-ups.

Best Original Score

It is my opinion that Howard Shore has been creating Oscar calibre scores since at least The Fly in 1986. It was not until 2002 that the Academy finally recognised him with a nomination (and subsequent win) for his score for The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), somehow managing to overlook remarkable scores such as Dead Ringers (1988), Ed Wood (1994), Se7en (1995), and Crash (1996). Again, the Academy is likely to go for scores with strong melodic work over scores with innovative textures. Howard Shore's work in The Silence of the Lambs is dominated by moods and textures, surging from the darker regions of the orchestra and often serving more as sound design within the film. Reviewers raved about how incredible Anthony Hopkins' entrance is - he commands the screen without moving a muscle. This ignores the fact that all the elements of the production have been working in concert to create the introduction of the character. Kristi Zea has step by step been taking Clarice and the audience into the more and more hellish environs of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Tak Fujimoto has aligned our viewpoint strongly with Clarice, tracking down the hallway with leftward glances to the inmates in their cells, and Howard Shore's gloomy orchestrations create the perfect stage for Anthony Hopkins' terrific performance.

Of course, looking at the nominees for that year - I won't regurgitate the information, which can be found here - I am hard pressed to say which ones I would bump from the list to make way for The Silence of the Lambs, however this film is truly superbly made in every aspect, and should have been given more recognition at the time.

Addendum: A reader has informed me that Dances With Wolves won the Oscar for cinematography the year before The Silence of the Lambs, and also won everything else it was up for, including Best Picture. Absolutely correct of course - in an article that had me hunting down imdb entries for spelling, this was the one factoid that I stupidly relied on memory for. Only I could recall that Wolves won the cinematography award, but forget that it took out Best Picture! The oversight is even more remarkable when you consider the fact that I did play a little Sophie's Choice game of seeing which of the nominees I would drop without realising. Some "expert"!

Welcome to 2009

I wasn't going to post about the casting of relatively unknown actor Matt Smith as the new Doctor, but since Wired have used it as an excuse for the flimsiest look at the eleven Doctors, I figured 'what the hell'...

My first response was shock at how young he was. The first seven Doctors were men when I was a child, David Tennant is about the same age as me, and now I'm seeing the Doctor played by someone almost young enough to be my child. Weird. However, incoming executive producer Steven Moffat has praised Smith for having a young/old quality which would be an important factor in playing the Doctor, and a second look at Smith confirms this. He's got an interesting face, and provided that his costume and behaviour are suitably different from Tennant, I don't see any reason why he can't work. The most fatal mistake would be for them to try and re-create Tennant, but as they say on the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who forum "in The Moff we trust". The production team have been doing everything right for four years, I doubt they're about to stuff up now. On a related note, I saw the Christmas special 'The Next Doctor' and it's great fun. Especially good to see Doctor Who finally get around to doing some proper steampunk.

I also saw The Clone Wars on Blu-ray. Now, I'm not one of those genre guys who rails against defiling of childhood treasures. If you've read my post on the latest Indiana Jones film, you'll know how benign my response was to that one. George Lucas' Star Wars prequels were all disappointments to varying degrees, but it doesn't bother me too much. I'm even pretty tolerant of the alterations he made to the original three films. Hell, when they seemingly destroyed Doctor Who for good with the 1996 telemovie, I didn't even bat an eye. And I find myself looking forward to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek more than I would have thought. The only defilement of a beloved story which really makes my blood boil is Brian Herbert's continuing exploitation of his father's Dune series, but even that one I usually just ignore. I'll always have Frank Herbert's original sextet of books, and nothing will take that away. I met Frank Herbert once - it was in 1985, about nine months before he died, and I got my movie tie in edition of his novel Dune signed by him. It's a memory I will always treasure. If I ever meet Brian Herbert, I will punch him in the face.

All of which is a windy prologue to my statement that The Clone Wars sucks, then blows, then sucks some more. The 2003 animated series was surprisingly good and more satisfying in a way than the prequel films. This one... where to begin? Anyone who knows anything about the Star Wars universe will find the main storyline - the Jedi Knights attempt to rescue the son of Jabba the Hutt from a separatist plot - about as plausible as if The Godfather II had a scene of Don Corleone imploring the US government for help. And those unfamiliar with Star Wars are shit out of luck - dumped into the middle of the clone war without a hint of setup or backstory, the only intro being a montage with an appalling newsreel style voice over, which plays like a scene from Starship Troopers without the satire. The storytelling - in terms of both visuals and dialogue - is so basic that it seems to be pitched at an audience that is just about ready to move on from the Teletubbies. Which is fine, although I'd argue that such an audience need not be confronted by the image of a Twi'lek whore dancing for the pleasure of a gross slug-like gangster lord. Dialogue is usually along the lines of 'protect Jabba's son' or 'we must keep those droids back' - bald statements of conflicts the audience are well aware of, and more than once a scene began with one character relating to another a description of the scene we just watched. The main dramatic conflict of the first ten minutes or so is a communications breakdown where a vital message ends up needing to conyeved in person. How thrilling is that?

No, The Clone Wars must rank as the least interesting Star Wars production - at least the notorious 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special had Harrison Ford! I nearly switched it off half way through, and in retrospect, my life would not have been any poorer if I had. I feel obliged to mention that the animation - a CG extension of the stylised characters from the 2003 show - is stunning, but here put to the service of a team of writers and a director who would struggle to tell the story of Goldilocks in a concise fashion. There are many, many, fan made Star Wars films with more compelling drama than this. One to avoid.

I really want to get around to reviewing The Mist, but I also got The Descent on Blu-ray for Christmas, and I reckon I'll end up writing about that one first. Second time around I loved it just as much - it's the genuine article, a scary horror film.

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.