SGU has started fairly strongly. Despite many thinly drawn characters and a lack of dramatic impetus, the show has grounded us in a very intriguing situation, bolstered by a few key performances. Robert Carlyle as Dr Nicholas Rush is the obvious stand out, although underplayed in many respects. The other character is Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), one of the more watachable military grunts trapped on the ancient ship Destiny as it ploughs through space. Despite starting off holed up in a cell like some kind of McQueen pastiche, Smith reveals nuances to a somewhat stock character that will hopefully develop over the course of the show. If SGU neglects the character, it could be loosing one of the aces up its sleeve.
“Light” follows the episodes “Darkness,” “Water” and “Air” which follow in the – yes, I’m going to mention it again – BSG innovation of showing the logistical realities of human space travel. While the idea is still fruitful and interesting, it does have the downside of lacking the dramatic punch if special care isn’t taken to establish a greater arc, and Light does suffer from this neglect. We still don’t know where the show is going, and because Destiny’s route seems to stretch throughout the universe, there is the feeling that without an arching narrative to compel us to watch, our interest may slip after Destiny stops off in a solar system to refill the dwindling supply of hand soap in the aft deft’s ladies bathroom.
Yet with Light, like Darkness, Water and Air before it, there is a real polish in the way these stories are crafted, and a real sense of discovery and awe amongst the crew of the Destiny that proliferates with the viewer. While we never for one second believe that Destiny will be destroyed by the Sun, the manner in which it is cleansed and rejuvenated amongst a fiery backdrop is a beautifully crafted sequence. SGU seems to want to rediscover the wonders of the Galaxy that have been forgotten by Science Fiction. Kudos must be given to the composition of the accompanying score too, for while it never reaches the beauty of BSG’s various orchestral delights, it delivers the sequence with an aplomb of serenity.
Carlyle’s Rush remains a peripheral figure amongst the greater crew, and the show doesn’t seem to know whether to present him as a silent menace, a hidden enemy or a watchful protector. It really hasn’t gotten into his head yet, but hopefully when it does, the show will crack open.
It was recently announced that Spore, the evolution game from Electronics Arts, and brainchild of creative maestro Will Wright (also responsible for the Sims franchise) is going to become a movie. This is peculiar for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the narrative of Spore is, like many games, unsuitable or certainly unseeable as a filmic experience. To elaborate, Spore is the game where you begin as a small cellular lifeform and through survival in the seas of a distant planet you grow and evolve, your ‘creature’ gaining all sorts of creature ‘parts’ as you specialise and adapt to the environment around you. Thus Spore is even atypical for a game in that you don’t have a character or avatar who grows with you during the course of your playing experience, but instead an entire species. When you die, your creature won’t return, but one of its offspring will. Thus Spore charts the experience of evolution, from the seas, to the plains and landscapes where you must compete with other creatures to become king of the food chain to the far reaches of space when you finally learn how to be become a pious space faring civilisation, or a blood thirsty empire – it’s your choice. How do you adapt the experience of life, death and evolution on such a scale to a two hour film? How do you connect with the audience? The survival of the fittest is not a theme that particularly induces laughter, emotion and entertainment.
Secondly, Spore’s high concept design centres around the aforementioned survival of the fittest ethic, a subject which is still highly controversial to some. Exploring existential themes of evolution in a galaxy without a god is a masterstroke which cements Spore’s place in the history of the development of games, even if the game itself is less than the ideas which drive it, but videogames are a form played by a certain demographic who must share a certain affinity with a computer to be able to play that game; cinema is different. Take Creation, the recent biopic starring Paul Bettany and wife Jennifer Connelly about the life of Darwin and the way his own ideas conflicted with his and his wife’s religion. Pretty much no one saw it, as barely any North American cinemas dared to show it. And Creation opens interesting and constructive discourse between religion and science. What could Spore offer?
Thirdly, as the title of this post suggests, the game is heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey. While 2001 may ponder upon the evolution of man from the proto-humans to the technology muted future to the starchild, Spore just lets us play that. You can even place a black monolith on other worlds inhabited by creatures and give their evolution a head start and even more, there’s a cut scene in the game directly taken from the famous revelatory monkey scene.
Thing is, I can’t see Electronic Arts, attempting to milk their cash cows a little further, fancying taking a gamble in a failing film industry on an existential romp through the history of time charting the evolution of three eyed leprechauns from the planet Boris Twatus - can you?
These last few weeks, a host of shows have returned. First off, let’s consider Dollhouse, the Joss Whedon’s offering that takes a lump of Baudrillardian ponderings, digests it along with his usual cast of hip, All American actors (with a glossy edition of OK! magazine on the side) and shits it out. The resulting dump is a thing of two sides. On one hand, the concept of reprogrammable avatars (the dolls) living inside a brothel and used by its clientèle for things as varied as romantic engagements to bank heists to rewaking the dead to solve their own murders is rich with potential. On the other hand, each episode feels plucked from the air with little interest in maintaining a strong narrative arc and impetus in being watchable.
Instead, episodes usually revolve around Echo – a doll who, as her name suggests, finds echoes of her past and the echoes of the personalities which inhabit her over the course of the series – on a mission, with Eliza Dushku playing a variety of characters to various levels of success. The thing is, every single week there seems to be a hiccup during the process of acting out these missions, so we follow the same procedure of the Dollhouse’s “handlers” – those who look after the dolls while on these missions – as they try and sort out the mess caused. One wonders how the Dollhouse can be a successful business enterprise and what its customer approval rating is. Ultimately, the shows first season felt like a very long, extended pilot, whereby only the final reels indicate that the show is going anywhere.
Season Two, starting again after the mysterious 13th episode “Epitaph One” was placed on the first seasons DVD, dawdles about in the same manner as half the first seasons episodes, which is again a shame, because “Epitaph One,” set in an apocalyptic future where the technology programming dolls has run out of control, should have galvanised the shows creative energies. One can despair already that Dollhouse has been a bit of a spoil sport for ideas, rendering the chance of a similar premised show, executed better in the near future unlikely.
Flashforward unlike Dollhouse has a very clear premise, and one in which the whole show is built around. The thing is, as I have noted before, everyone is so bloody boring in it. There may well be genial orchestration in the construction of its overall narrative and mythology – although that has yet to be seen; I’m just saying – but the show insists on only dripping tidbits of information regarding the mysterious flashforwards, and in the mean time documents the ongoing crisis these many characters are dealing with. That, in itself, is not a bad thing and is a proven formula for success, and indeed that loathed beast Lost does it well with its compulsory flashbacks, but it requires the characters to be more than cardboard cut outs. Characterisation requires more than everyone having their own dark secret – as contrived as Fienne’s Mark Benford having a drink problem – their one fatal flaw which apparently gives them a depth and humanity lacking in the perfectly ordinary, average human beings such as ourselves. Domestic American life has been proved a tale of status, depression and discontentment so many times before that its starting to become incredibly dull, especially when you have to sit there and wait it out to catch a glimpse of the greater narrative arc. However, Jack Davenport is nice to see onscreen as always, and here brings a standard (for him) knowing performance to the table of absurdity that is Flashforward, a table that no one else seems to cotton on exists.
Jim and Pam finally got married in The Office (US). Their romance has gone on for a while now and the writers have built upon expectation after expectation that this would be something like the icing on the cake for a very good show. They seem to forget that the icing on the cake needs a chef to expertly lattice that fluffy pink drizzle over the rest of the cake. The episode had a feeling of self-gratuitous contentment which just came across lazy; let’s put all these characters which have slowly developed to varying levels of success over five seasons and put them in a hotel near Niagara falls. Let’s see what happens then.
And it happens pretty much as you would expect it to, in a way one could probably suggest it would after seeing merely the first season. Michael will embarrass everyone with a speech. Dwight will have to interact with other people. Pam and Jim will through off convention with a secret wedding. There seemed to be little effort or interest in writing a comedic show to it, and as Krasinski and Fischer’s onscreen chemistry arguably rivals or even betters that of Tim and Dawn’s (which is definitely one of the most underplayed yet wonderful romances of recent memory) to have such a predictable effort for what should be a landmark moment in the shows chronology is a waste.
It’s not all doom and gloom, disappointment and disinterest though. The Sci-Fi Channel (now regressed to the oh so postmodern moniker of Sy-Fy) has reinvigorated the Stargate franchise, a franchise which I must admit to have never cared for much to the extent of never watching more than a handful of episodes of SG-1 and completely avoiding Stargate Atlantis. Why I began watching Stargate Universe is not something I can really answer considering my record with its precedents, but the casting of Robert Carlyle probably had something to do with it. That’s right, taking up the mantle of the game-changing Battlestar Galactica, respected thespians are flocking to Science Fiction television regardless of the baggage of their original hammy incarnations.
Time seems to have moved on in the Stargate mythos – although only a few years to be fair – and us humans have spaceships and shit, with offworld military installations, and all this still unknown to the world at large, and yet we still have no solution to the increasing gut of Richard Dean Anderson. Carlyle plays a Scientist figuring out what some 9th chevron on the Stargates does, which is something they obviously haven’t achieved yet. What follows is that some kind of alien force attacks Icarus, the base that Carlyle works on this mysterious Stargate at, and events are pulled into motion that elicit the survivors of the attack to jump into the Stargate and thus into the unknown. They end up on an old, old ship drifting through space with no way home. Indeed, we soon learn through a modestly awe-inspiring slideshow that the ship is no longer even in the Milky Way, the zoom of the images drifting outwards until dozens of galaxies fill the screen. I’m a sucker for stuff like that.
Carlyle, as a source of knowledge among a rag tag bunch of bureaucrats and grunts, occupies a situation similar to Gaius Baltar in BSG, although instead of James Callis’ effete manner, Carlyle rockets around the ship with the kind of fury a bookworm Begby might radiate. It’s quite hard to stop with the BSG comparisons, and the look of Ron Moore’s remake is obviously a starting point for Stargate Universe, with the Destiny (the name of the ship they are stranded on) replicating not only the interior look of the Nostromo but that of the good old Galactica too, and any comparisons are only likely to do Universe favours considering the acclaim BSG commanded. The situation too, gives a similar potential for collisons of morality and politik among the crew.
Where it falls short of Battlestar Galactica for this viewer is that while Robert Carlyle is a great actor to watch week in week out, none of those around him carry the same kind of gravitas as Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos or Michael Hogan. Perhaps an arbitrary or ungrateful criticism, but it means that those opposing Carlyle and his brusque manner are unknowable and somewhat tame actors, without the bite of Edward James Olmos glaring and snarling at you, or Michael Hogan giving his excellent pirate impression. They are certainly capable actors, but they don’t have the extra edge that the aforementioned BSG aluminaries give, and you get the feeling you could pick up remarkably similar performances from any line of queuing Hollywood actors, and a line that will not include revelatory talents like Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer and Jamie Bamber.
What it does provide however, and very well, is the sense of wonder and awe that Battlestar Galactica, in its metaphysical, philosophical mutterings, ignored. Not having been a fan of Star Trek in any sense until the new film (which borrows heavily from Star Wars, so criticise me for that) I’m loathe to reference a major part of that franchise, but the wonder of visiting these new, strange worlds and being alone in a very alien universe is a major part of what made me connect with Stargate Universe. It’s a very strong start, and one that I will be following.
Recently the original British sitcom The Office received a retrospective courtesy of the BBC, a documentary with interviews from media types from the inside and outside of its production and if anything, seeing it on UK screens proved how missed such a show was. Seen it its full a few years after the dust is settled, the Office still retains its delicate characterisation, its immaculately forged scalpel like wit, and its probing ability to overload our finely tuned senses with its asinine performances and scenarios. But most importantly, watching the Office again restates its permanence as a ground breaking show, a milestone for television.
So perhaps it is worth noting that the American adaptation of the show – we’ll call it The Office US – has begun its sixth, yes sixth, season on American network NBC. Most of us are used to hearing of successful British shows being unsuccessfully adapted to American television – Peep Show, Spaced, Coupling, Men Behaving Badly and Gavin & Stacey have all had their clones – but The Office US is a golden exception. While us British would like to think our original produce too clever, too, well, British, for reproduction, we can’t deceive ourselves forever that we alone on this Earth are the chief proprietors of sharp wit and heavy irony. And let’s not forget, the office is not an environment confined to Albion. There are German iterations of the Office, a French Office, a French-Canadian Office, even a Brazilian Office. I’ve not seen them though, so I’ll shut up about that.
The Office US though, has garnered not just enough ratings to satisfy the need for six seasons, but it has also faired incredibly strongly with the critics. But the differences of each show soon emerge. Due to the British style of production – and Gervais and Merchants infamous dedication to detail in its creation – the Office exists merely as 12 half an hour episodes with a Christmas special. The Office US however has around 100 episodes throughout its duration. Of course, if one were to compare the series on the base statistics, a 100 episode run seems like the hallmark of a successful show and that of 12 a failure. But that’s obviously tosh; the British Office was never intended as more than what it was – a taut, meticulously crafted sitcom that gave all it needed. The Office US is driven by its commercial value for NBC, and so was its creation in the first place, but our stigma with commercial ratings obsessed television should not cloud our thoughts concerning its quality – although I would recommend the uninitiated just “soldier on” with the first couples of episodes as they are pretty much shot for shot reconstructions of the British version.
Soon the US remake began to walk on its own two feet, it became its own entity and became all the better for it. Instead of remarking on how Steve Carrel as Michael Scott is hardly as foolishly sinister and lonely as David Brent, how John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer as Jim and Pam are more obviously good looking than Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis as Tim and Dawn are, and how much more OTT the compulsory office nutcase (Dwight Schrute/Rainn Wilson) is, you should just accept that it is a very different beast from the original and Michael Scott is a very different boss from David Brent.
Sure, they are both indecisive and irresponsible managers, but whereas David Brent reaks of the nastiness and self-regard we usually find with bastard businessman on the London tube, Michael Scott sits in an envelope of self-contentment, with a brand of naivety and innocence brilliantly played by Carrel. Unlike Brent, whose private workspace guarantees his status, it is Scott’s relationship with his workers that guarantee his. And over the course of the six series, Scott really warms to his employees and they (to an extent) to him. Of course, the general impetus for maintaining the shows many seasons lies with making Scott more redeemable, more likeable, but that only takes you so far.
For there is something useful in comparing the two shows in relation to the idea of the workplace as seen in Britain and in the States. Why are two shows from either side of the Atlantic, about the same environment, so different? Is it not strange that countries who share similar business practices and the same language have so different experiences? For example, the Office of Wernham Hog was the portrait of slow death, the continually perpetuating nightmare with a spindly chair. You saw the grim environment of the industrial estate on the cusp of the Great London Vacuum sucking the lives out of people and it reflected the decaying souls of its workers and employees. In the Office (US) of Dundler Mifflin, it…well it actually seems like a nice place to work. Sure, everybody gets at each others throats after a while, stifles the odd cough and watches the more eccentric members of the Office do something outrageous, but compared to the quiet misery of watching David Brent with his po-faced smile, beaming at the lifeless husks working under him after another of his jokes falls flat, its all a bit of fun.
Take the case of Tim and Dawn. Tim, through the course of the series’ confessionals, intimated that he felt his life should be more than what it was, that an escape from the Office was needed before it was all too late. Dawn too, needed an escape. She wanted to be an artist, a children’s illustrator nonetheless, and yet was trapped by the prospect of marrying her fiance, the proto-bastard Lee, also a worker at the warehouse below the Office. This is mirrored in The Office US – Jim questions his place in life, Pam paints on the side and is engaged to a warehouse proto-bastard – but whereas Tim and Dawn escape the Office together to start afresh, Jim begins rising up the ranks of Dundler Mifflin management and Pam seemingly buries her dream of being an artist after getting a job as a Dundler Mifflin salesman.
The Office US is an inclusive place. It releases itself from Gervais and Merchants vision of the Office as a place full of misspent creativity and wasted talent fairly quickly and replaces it with one where the workplace is one that you can raise a family around (Jim and Pam get engaged, Pam gets pregnant), where the American family unit can proliferate. The Office at Wernham Hog was simply a coffin buried somewhere, to escape from. Where does this diametrical difference come from? Are the attitudes to the Office environment really that different across the pond? I’m not entirely sure, but I can say that while The Office US will never replace the startling brutality of awkwardness that the original unearthed so well or, in simple terms, replace our faith in the originals pedestal, it certainly is very good and well worth the watch.
Often with TV, it’s all a matter of Marketing. And so is the entire world. Marketing. Yes, seated atop their utopian skyscrapers with their Gorden Gecko coffee mugs and their smarmy expression, smug Surrey accents and Patrick Bateman haircuts, the Marketing people control everything. Oh, what a well observed point there young one, for it was a mystery that lingered only in my dreams until you brought it forth into reality with unequalled clarity.
Well, it’s still true, and none more so than in the ratings obsessed media frenzy that is now television, a medium so fragmented and screaming for cash that even ITV has its iPlayer equivalent, which just goes to show that even the channel catering for the elderly has to broaden the way in which its content and advertising can reach the viewers.
This means more than ever that television must cater for ’key demographics’ and leave the risk of producing oddball comedic mash ups like Man to Man With Dean Learner to the banal fairies who haunt the BBC archives at night. Those fairies don’t exist by the way; I made them up to illustrate just how rare a TV company willing to take a risk for niche programming is. Instead, British TV concentrates on homogenised gurn fests like Doctor Who or the BBC’s other Saturday night serials.
Of course, when you have something quite unusual you have to live and let live with the production firms and hop up to the marketing level and that’s really where the gulf widens. Take the example of Lost, a high concept scenario in which the survivors of a plane crash land on a deserted island and I won’t bother going on because if you don’t know the basic premise behind the show by now you’re either too busy with your life that haven’t had time to watch it – and good on you for that – or you’re a total moron.
Of course, the plane crash turns out to be the most pedestrian thing about the show as things get going. Bundles of uncanny and mysterious things occur over the shows seasons, including hippy spiritualism, the Zeitgeist and, I’m told, time travel. It’s a melting point of different paranoia’s. There’s only so many enigmas I can take personally, and I’m glad to say I bailed on Lost at the advent of its second season.
One of the many twists of 'Lost.'
However, my point is this: these ideas are far removed from your average show and potentially too diverse and scattered to package in one normal sized box – and it probably is to the shows credit that it has managed to keep them all relative control (even if to the discerning viewer, its all completely contrived). Yet ABC’s Lost has reached its place in the cultural spectrum of the naughties not only with plenty of mysterious to tease the audience with, but with the help of a marathon advertising campaign that seems to rear its head only for air once every year like a bloody werewolf.
The same beast carries the burden of Flashforward, another high-concept ABC drama with weird ideas (what does the kangaroo mean? How zen!). Flashforward has modelled itself closely upon its forebears rise to prominence. Of course, one of Lost’s most powerful allies has been its irritant internet fan base, and Flashforward’s very premise seems to draw on the same kind of narrative mysteries that led idiot Lost fans to link together in the first place, forming a cult to ponder its meanings (if there is any that is). The premise is somewhat simple, but ultimately bizarre: the world’s population, from Swindon to Shanghai, mysteriously pass out for roughly two and a half minutes and then wake up again. Basically, if you’ve seen the first series of the perennially-disappointing-but-potentially-mind-blowing Heroes, think of Isaac’s premonitory paintings being the ENTIRE premise of the show.
Joseph Fiennes got lost on his way to the new RSC audition.
Of course, when they wake up, bad things have happened. Aeroplanes lie submerged in the oceans, millions of cars have collided with each other, helicopters shudder and splat into skyscrapers like there’s no tomorrow – the list is endless. In fact, its a shame it doesn’t show more of the stranger, banal kind of death which would probably run like a tasteless Youtube playlist of stunts gone wrong. Most horrifyingly, the two minute black out affects surgeons on the operating table, leaving their patients good and dead by the time they wake. It’s no surprise that the show revels in this chaotic dismantling of our fragile world and that no CGI is spared when visualising the destruction, but because it seems to enjoy itself too much, we have trouble taking the devastation seriously. True horror this isn’t, and as our characters run through the streets littered with debris, we are left to look at the dead bodies simply as window dressing for the greater mystery of the show.
As soon as Joseph Fiennes turns up, crawling out from the overturned car he’s passed out in (a situation much like we were with Jack the Doctor in Lost’s pilot) we know we’ve found our compulsory straight laced hero with compulsory flaws and compulsory resources to get the job done. One would hope that Flashforward can offer the diversions from the straight laced type in the same manner as Lost did, because Fiennes character is quite a bore as it is, and all in all, Fiennes just looks a bit lost in a production like this. Turns out however, that Fiennes’s character (the name is quite forgetful) wasn’t simply dormant while unconscious, but that he was having a vision in which he was cowering in a nightmarish future, looking lost again – but this time with a gun – as tatooed men approach him with bigger guns.
It’s soon established that it wasn’t just Fiennes’ character who experienced a vision during the black out, but everyone in the entire world. And it soon turns out that these visions take place in the future at precisely the same time on the same day, even the same month! It’s kind of like being beaten over the head with a genetically modified marrow of Truth, and it’s quite unpleasant.
Soon, Fiennes is revealing to a room of empty suits in the FBI office - did I not mention that hero comes equipped with Federal Bureau badge? – that in his dream, he was working on a case piecing together the information about the black outs. Now, I can’t say I know much for the inner workings of the FBI, but I know they are not investigators of the paranormal, and I at least expected the old cliche of the hero being ridiculed by his seniors. But no, instead of the benevolent boss giving our hero twenty four hours to prove his cases worth despite protestations from colleagues, they just out right believe him. Of course, most of them had dreams too, but the FBI work with reason and logic, and I find that they adapt to the idea of a global mindfuck so fast just silly.
More on Joseph Fiennes, I guess, who’s followed the likes of Dominic West and Idris Elba (of The Wire, the former an Eaton toff, the latter an ex-employee of Dagenham Motors), Hugh Laurie, Jamie Bamber (Apollo, Battlestar Galactica) to Hollywood and probably landed in a show that is most likely to succeed due to its advertising on every screen on the North American continent. He’s the aforementioned FBI man, also a family man, with a wife (doctor), kid (small girl) and a house straight out of the Truman Show. All is well, all is white and middle class and America is alive and well. But with America in peril, Middle America must once again save the world and Fiennes – a perfectly good actor who has nailed the accent – is the man for the job.
Sadly, from the pilot, the character is a bore as mentioned. So is his wife, a doctor, and his daughter, who just smacks of the Dakota Fanning vibe that means Daddy will have to come and save her at some point. And Daddy spends most of us his time on the show looking pensive and glum, and you almost think that Fiennes was picked because he fits in the bill for cheap, potentially bankable star rather than the character. It’s probably too much to hope ABC would present to us a progressive casting choice in the form of a black or asian family, but frankly we’ve seen all of this before.
Toilet Trouble
Perhaps though, the lack of characterisation, the lack of a realistic reaction to spectacular events and the glee its takes showing us all the bodies of the dead, Flashforward just wants to power ahead and get the real story going, and it does try hard. We’re given a few threads to follow, from the revelations of peoples own visions, from Doctor-Wifes dream that in six months she’ll be with another man to a friend* of Fiennes revealing that he saw his daughter alive in his vision despite recently burying her. We get John Cho (more famously Harold from Harold and Kumar (and Sulu!)) as a fellow FBI agent confiding to Fiennes that he never had a vision at all, to the end that he believes he will be dead in six months. Harold is in fact, one of the good things evident in the pilot, but mainly because he seems like quite a nice bloke rather than showing any massive talent for the small screen.
*Actually, this is supposedly Fiennes’ sponsor from the rehab clinic, and vice versa. How we were ever supposed to believe Joseph Fiennes was an alcoholic, I don’t know. But I suppose there’s nothing more heroic than Jack Bauer in rehab.
Flashforward isn’t bad per se, it’s probably perfectly watchable to most, but the pilots got none of the thrills of the extraordinary pilot for Lost or the determination to really get into the hearts and heads of its viewers like the Battlestar Galactica pilot had. Of course, this is precisely my point: we’re so inebriated with average shows marketed and advertised as if they are the second coming, that we miss the truly great television that’s out there.
One of these is Breaking Bad, a dark comedy-drama that has a lot more to offer than its name suggests – and yes, it sounds like Saved By The Bell, Part II. Covering both familiar territory in the form of a disillusionment with suburban life and new, stranger turf, its a show that really won’t pull enough interest to be shown anywhere but a backlot digital channel in the UK. It stars Bryan Cranston, who might be vaguely familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Malcolm in the Middle. Now, Malcolm in the Middle may have passed some by, it may also have turned off viewers with Malcolm’s frequent confessionals of teenage angst to the camera, but the show had some great moments and some even greater performances from both the young cast and the adult cast (Bryan Cranston was Hall, their Dad). This is completely different territory, even if Cranston plays the father in a matriarchal suburban family again.
Paedophile Moustache
Cranston is Walter White, a Chemistry teacher who seems to moonlight as an employee of a local garage at night to keep up the family funds while his wife is on maternity leave. They have an older child, Walter Jr, who has cerebral palsy, and who has a remarkably quick tongue and charismatic presence when compared to portrayals of other sufferers of cerebral palsy on TV. Skyler, Walter’s wife, has a bigoted sister who’s marriage to a DEA narcotics officer means that although Walter Jr may have a solid role model in his father already, he also has a successful, righteous yet ultimately alpha-male role model also vying for his attention – and by extension threatening Walter’s masculinity. The monotony of his suburban life however, is placed into perspective, or perhaps even dwarfed by the revelation that he has inoperable lung cancer.
Unlike, say, Kevin Spacey in the familiar set up of American Beauty, Walter takes an altogether extreme path to reasserting his position as family breadwinner, accompanying his ass of a brother-in-law on a drug bust at a Meth Lab – Walter previously witnessing the amount of money to be earned from selling Crystal Meth on a news report in the presence of his gloating brother in law, who was the officer interviewed by the channel. After discovering one of the dealers of the Crystal Meth is an ex-student, he sets about preparing a mobile Meth Lab with the help of the dealer, Jesse, in order to produce and sell Meth, stocking up enough cash to provide for his family after he has past.
It’s a series that manages to keep both the drama and comedy on an even keel, so you aren’t just yawning through melodramatic ramblings until something outrageous happens. It’s smart, but not to the extent of alienating its audience, and incredibly well acted by Cranston, who compliments and tones down the more exaggerated gestures and postures of Hall with unexpected layers of depth, self disgust, warmth and determination. As a show, it explores the psyche of the reluctant criminal, the good, family man turning to the dodgy side of the tracks to provide for his family and yet the characterisation is completely different from previous incarnations of the type, where the good man will turn to crime to help his family and come out of it with his principles intact, or the good man who turns to the dark side and falls prey to its indigenous natives. It instead shows easily it is for a normal man like Walter to turn to the other side of the tracks, and keep going. Walter looks like those men you see on the news, tried for crimes that seem beyond their means.
I’ll soldier on with Flashforward. It’s at least provoked enough empathy from me in its poor execution that I want to see it flourish, but while I’m sure it will be plastered across the screens of the UK soon, keep in mind Breaking Bad, and watch it. That is if you haven’t already.
You can catch Flashforward on Five I think, but Breaking Bad remains confined to the FX digital channel.
It was a while ago when I last mentioned Heroes on the blog. Since then, the shows recieved its lowest ratings to date and the ‘critical reponse’* has been consistently downbeat. There were a lot of people who expected NBC to off load the show and not renew it for a fourth season, but alas, they did renew so expect this to be more of a general overview rather than a post-mortem of the show.
As always, when I see Heroes, I want to look for the best in the show rather than the worst. In this sense, Heroes: Fugitives, the fourth ‘volume,’ is a disappointing ‘come-back’ thus far. However it would be wrong to dismiss the whole when considering the occasional moments where the show and its characters do indeed shine. Yet like always, the show is a thing of disappointment. For starters, it must be said that Fugitives has a great premise. Not an original one – for Heroes has never had any points for originality - but a solid one different from what we’ve already encountered: Nathan Petrelli calling the shots on a Government backed containment plan for controlling superpowered individuals.
Now that’s a strong approach. But its execution for the most part has been a bore and while a lot of it is due to clunky dialogue meaning the dilemma’s facing Nathan are not really explored, there are also larger elements that fail to hit the right notes. Nathan’s antagonistic second in command, the ruthless Danko with his ’stick’ to acquiring Heroes, is an interesting character but one who really hasn’t come to fruition yet. Similarly, the effect of the containment plan has not been seen on a scale wider than that of Claire Bennet’s dating options. The show shows promise but fails to deliver.
And let us not forget Luke, the other half of the Superpowered Psycho Buddy double act. His partner in crime is of course Sylar on an Oedipal search for his father. I pine for a time where Sylar’s psychology revoles around things a little more complex than these daddy issues. Of course, Luke, a walking microwave with cringeworthy teen attitude in abundance, becomes Sylar’s personal psychologist during their road trip, giving us a cross-examination that Season One’s overused baddy not only willingly listens to, but one that actually affects him.
Not all is bad news however. For example, the latest episode, Shades of Grey, had some nice moments where the show genuinely looked confident, with Christen Rose’ matriach Angela Petrelli relishing her dialogue to a degree where I have half the mind to declare her two lines of performance the best of the season so far. The power play of running the bagging-and-tagging service between Danko, Nathan and Noah Bennet (yeah, he’s back again) becomes interesting once Danko suspects Nathan himself has an ability*.
The idea that Nathan’s commitment to the plot is compromised because of personal involvement is a strong one, but the notion that the operation will be removed from Nathan’s grasp has already been criminally glossed over in an earlier episode, when Nathan appeases a foxy government advisor within one episode, rather than a drawn out relationship that would better the volume as a whole. Nathan’s position as a young, determined Senator is another factor underused in the show. The man attends to no duties other than his little programme of mutant hunting and it would be nice to see the inner machinations of his office a little more. After all, Adrian Pasdar remains one of the best parts of the show.
As always, Heroes has the ideas and potential, but it never comes to fruition. There are moments when you nod your head, expecting a masterstroke from the writing staff, but instead you find the situation turning away into something ill-concieved or – and this word is used too frequently and without meaning – rushed. The pacing of Fugitives is a lot better than that of Villains, but it still cannot deliver upon its promise.
*Read Robert Canning’s reviews of the show at IGN.com to enjoy his amateur journalism and/or the comments for his reviews, which are almost universally hysterical in their disagreement.
*I’m starting to loathe the overuse of ‘abilities’ in much of the dialogue. The idea of calling them ‘abilities’ demystifies the entire concept of these powers and the way in which the show first showed themselves in the characters. Some of the worst dialogue of the season yet has occured when Zachary Quinto (Sylar) reflects on the ‘abilities’ he has stolen. The show needs to step back and defamiliarise itself with superpowers.
After recently seeing the adaptation of Alan Moore’s comic Watchmen (dir. Zack Snyder) my mind became a stewed mess of half formed opinion, bittersweet reflection and indecision. I don’t think I’ve been stumped with a dilemma so arresting for a while. And considering this was a big budget Warner Brothers blockbuster, I had the startling thought that perhaps I’m starting to go soft.
I enjoyed Watchmen. I have to say it. Or I think I did. Sitting there, watching panel after panel of Dave Gibbon’s artwork recreated on the silver screen, I was content. Yet after the screening, when I had left the theater, even when I went about my daily business for the next few days afterwards, I felt the nagging feeling of unrest within. This unrest caused me to become East Anglia’s most accomplished mute for the next couple of days. The unrest was really quite disturbing. After all, it was just a film, adapted from a comic book. That’s okay. That’s normal. I can speak about that surely?
Apparently not. People wanted to discuss the film. I couldn’t join in. People wanted a recommendation for the film. I couldn’t give an answer. Even conversations with those I saw the film with became strained and incredidly brief. I could not help explain why the Comedian was killed. I could not agree nor disagree when my compadre’s discussed the changed ending Snyder and co. devised. Not wanting to burden them with the engima burning inside my head, I kept my silence.
Until now of course. Let me explain my dilemma. It is probably simpler in concept than deliberation. My dilemma is this. What exactly is this film? Many have gone on about Synder’s faithfulness to the original novel. Great. I agree. Snyder’s taken the bullet and made a competent version. It’s all well and good and the faithful argument stands, justified and validated. Good for Zack Snyder. Good for David Hayter, the screenwriter. Good for all the other fans. Good for Warner Bros. Good for everyone; have a pat on the back.
But I’m not interested in the fidelity of the graphic novel. Sure, it’s a nice bonus. But I’d much prefer a ‘Watchmen’ film, not an audio/visual companion. That sounds more malicious than intended, but the point still stands. What could there possibly be in the film that justifies its existence, production and marketing in a way that the graphic novel couldn’t deliver? Well, moving images probably, but that’s missing the point slightly. Of course, if you pretend the novel is a flick book: voila, moving images.
No. The one thing on my list I wanted the adaptation to tick off was that this film be an open invitation to the uninitiated; something to entice, intrigue and garner interest from those who would either be unwilling to buy any comic whatsoever or to those who have not even heard of the Watchmen. You could say I want it dumbed down, that I want it tame, commercialised and generic. I do not want those things, of course, but it must be understood that these things are simply the results of adaptation conducted incorrectly. Synder and co. went the other route, and while they may have pleased the ‘Faithful’, they have pretty much baffled the rest of the world.
The film is a closed piece. It’s an exclusive movie. It’s great for fans of the comic to see it on a big screen, but Watchmen was made to be a graphic novel, to push that medium as far as it would go, and the inspired flourishes within the comic simply cannot be replicated in any other medium. Perhaps that means a ‘true’ adaptation was doomed from the get go and that if one was to ‘open up’ the world of Watchmen to a wider audience, the things that truly make Watchmen “Watchmen” will have disappeared. But still, my point stands: this film turns people away.
And its a shame because the effort and determination that went into the films production deserves more. The film’s a mess, but its a good mess. Dr. Manhattan’s ‘origin’ – for lack of a better term – is fantastic as a self contained story that manages to capture a sliver of the novel’s rhythmn, even if the links tying it together with the rest of them disrupt any chance of the facade-like plot taking precedence. The majority of the casting is simply inspired: Jeffrey Dean Morgan IS the Comedian; Jackie Earle Haley Is Rorscharch; Patrick Morgan Is Nite Owl. The film looks gorgeous, from every little detail to every large brushstroke.
There’s alot to be desired when it comes to the choice of music in the film, for instance Simon and Garfunkel was a poor choice in the light of day for the Comedians funeral, but we can forgive a little; Snyder was obviously given a little too much free reign and hopefully his musical choices will be reviewed a little more thoroughly next time.
Less said about the juvenile violence the better.
Point is, where do you stand? Amongst the ‘Faithful,’ with their bright ‘at-least-it-wasn’t-awful’ attitude and treasured receipts for a pre-ordered Extended Cut DVD? With the disenchanted, who relish the chance to claim for their own whatever ‘in vogue’ comic Hollywood takes next, and then ridicule the resulting adaptation? Or with the confused, baffled majority of the public who may wonder, forever even, what Watchmen was ever really about? It’s a missed opportunity, but time will tell.
I’m a little of all of them by my own admission. Though I must say, rebooting the Fantastic Four is the worst idea ever in the History of Botched Adaptations, second only to making the Fantastic Four into a film in the first place. All the Pretty Horses comes close.
It has been a while since I last had the time to post something on here, but now I have the time, I thought it would be apt to articulate my impressions of Heroes‘ third volume – Villains – thus far. As this is being written, the last episode of this “arc” has yet to air, and if it were not for my willingless to experience a sub-par stream with bad sound synchronisation, I would have to wait another week. However, I think, as we stand on the precipice of the volumes finale, we can garner some interesting observations on the series so far.
First off, I would like to congratulate myself for noting the haphazard pacing of the season opener, which in retrospect really was the taste of things to come. Of course, of course, that has since become evident to everyone, but I feel due respect should be given in my case. Forgetting vanity for a minute, I think it must be said, again, that the leverage of the “fans” really is noticeable on the show; the producers, writers and network seem to cave in to the speculation and wishes of die-hard fans without a fight. I am not saying that those vocal fans are not accurate or inaccurate in their criticisms and suggestions, but the writers are writers for a reason, the production team working on Heroes for a reason and the network financing it for a reason.
I find following a show so susceptible to fan reactions to be a bit of a pain, especially when it results in often irrevocably dire plot lines and character arcs. Consider the character of Sylar; a hit, memorable character who is the darling of superlatives the world over – yet because of his popularity with the fanbase, this dodgy fellow has been allowed both survive a sword through the heart (which ultimately undermines the entire first season) and recieve a humanising redemption from the pit of Hell in seasons 2 and 3. It isn’t that Gabriel Gray (Zachary Quinto) isn’t a bad villain – in fact, he’s generally played to great effect by the strange looking Quinto – but that Heroes is unable to tell the stories it wants because of the fans incessant whining.
The pace of the season has drfited between flat action sequences, rarely filmed with the kind of visceral verve invested in those of season one or two, and flat discourses between characters with some cringeworthy dialogue. All in all, if you had to pick and chose a list of shows in your weekly schedule of “self-time,” on paper, Heroes would not be up there. However, I continually find an idea, or an enigma to look forward to in Heroes. It does not matter whether Heroes provides or not – especially when some of the notions you pick up on are so unfounded – because neither do other big, ensemble dramas like Lost, which is driven by ideas, but ideas without explanation.
Heroes is often at its unwittingly strongest when it plays around with the ideas of lineage and misue of power; the whole mythology is more concrete than Lost and all the more fascinating for it. Again, on paper, season 3 should have this in spades, but instead of the unravelling misdeeds of previous Generations in season 2, we instead find a rather flat character in Arthur Petrelli, the presumed dead patriarch of the Petrelli dynasty, played by Robert Foster. Foster is a strange proposition; the potentially complex and memorable character of Arthur Petrelli is played with the kind of aplomb that should result in one, yet something feels off about his appearance, his delivery of dialogue and the fact that you can’t help but feel Foster is miscast in a role that would be much more effective if the the budget allowed for a bigger actor.
Foster is no bad actor however; his mincing of dialogue is great stuff, but the notion of respected lawyer and philanphropist does not suit an actor who would be more at home playing the local mob boss. He just doesn’t have the gravitas to make the role convincing or even threatening enough for the series arch villain, especially one who has the powerful Austin Linderman (a superb Malcom McDowell) in his pocket. Back to the events of the season itself and great news for those who thought Arthur was an odd fish; the penultimate episode Our Father (and one that got increasingly better as it went on) had Sylar telekinetically launch a bullet into the mans head, killing him instantly and destroying the cells that generate his abilities. Arthur’s legacy is there, and it seems the wonderful Nathan Petrelli (a chisel-jawed politician with a paradox for a moral center) has taken up his fathers villainous mantle, which hopefully means the cluttered ensemble drama can keep with one clear goal for the next volume, entitled Fugitives. Or mabye they’ll scrap that plottime when the fans vote in.
Perhaps it is the demographic that a show about normal people who gain superpowers inadvertently attracts that mean a standard ensemble drama is treated in ways not dissimilar from the realms of superhero conventions, pulp fiction and the comic book indstury. In converse, one could say that Heroes is a superhero story that borrows from the realms of televised ensemble drama. All in all, following a show in which characters, plot lines and even production staff can be voted off is not a show I want to follow. I like Heroes, I like its ideas and I like the majority of its characters (and it has a great soundtrack atypical for your standard ensemble) and I hope that Duel, the last episode of Villains goes out on a high. As a show, it isn’t immensely important as some will have you believe, and if it does go the way of Old Labour, Princess Di and Don La Fontaine, something will undoubtedly arrive in its place, but for what its worth, Heroes is good entertainment.
Been a while since I have taken the time to write or update this blog, but I have been busy enough to warrant an excuse. We’ve reached the point in British springtime when we can divulge whether this is going to be a nice summer or not, and considering the charmingly warm spring we have enjoyed so far, I think it is safe to say that we can look forward to a pretty grim summer. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can now take off our thoughtful borguois tricorns and leave that arthouse cinema with the pretentious plush red seats and the expensive bar and head on down to the Multiplex, mess with the proles and thoroughly enjoy the mound of ostensibly fun blockbusters that require no appreciation of the ‘fine arts’ other than how to grin at an explosion.
To try and make this a slightly productive summer for myself in some capacity, I am going to try and write a few reviews for the big films I have seen, and maybe the smaller ones I see in retrospect or simply add to my Dvvduh collection. For example, my Iron Man ‘review’ – I prefer to call it a reaction considering my credentials – is now posted in the Eat Me Critics sect and having seen Indy IV for the second time yesterday, perhaps it is ripe to write up my ‘review’ to that. My reaction however, it something of a casual fan glad to see that Indy’s heritage has not been trounced upon. Scathing Cannes reviews were expected of course, but most press reviews have since been positive, although fan reactions remain mixed.
I liked Indy IV. It was familiar territory, led by a familiar old soul, into more familiar MacGuffin territory, through some familiar experiences set in unfamiliar ground. Yes, it is familiar. I don’t care. It is Indiana Jones, and if you take ‘I don’t care, it’s Indy’ as a reason rather than a cop-out, then you will enjoy it. I read Roger Ebert’s review after seeing the film for the first time and am glad to see he liked it. His reviews on films are so-so to me – sometimes I just plain disagree with the bloke – but his writing makes for a fun read and I can hardly doubt his integrity. In his review, he remarked upon a line that a wisened Ford makes; “same old, same old.” He is right of course; it is the same old stuff, and I loved it.
Most of the criticisms I have seen for the film from casual schoolboy critics remark upon certain ’stretchings of belief’ that I feel I am not at liberty to divulge in case of spoiling the film for you. I just do not admire criticism such as that, especially when Spielberg (who I must say was certainly on form during this shoot – it shows) offers an olive branch to bridge the gap between what is happening on screen and the audiences suspense of belief.
Other criticisms fall before the way side of course, because, like any self respecting audience member, I can abide the reason “Its Indiana Jones!” While it has always offered fun and enjoyment to a large slice of the audience, Indy has always been a treat for those who really enjoy film. It is packed so full of cinematic references that it almost runs like a tour through cinematic history. From the exotic adventure films of Errol Flyn and Charlton Heston (‘must say, sad that he is now deceased. I wasn’t a fan of his ideals, but he left a lot of friends and his integrity as an actor is undeniable) in Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the musical and James Bond homages (Temple of Doom), the rip-roaring chases and stunts that reminds us of Stagecoach, Ben-Hur et al (evident in all the films) and the appearance of the noir femme fatale in Elsa Schneider, Spielberg and Lucas have packed these films full of their own love of film as a medium and cultural palette. It just offers a lot more than, say, Star Wars in that sense, as well as being undeniably less geeky.
The new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (the title has grown on me considerably sincd it was announced by the way) is no less choc-a-bloc in that sense. Dealing with a new era, although at first a tad disparaging for devoted fans of the 30s romps, allows for new intertextuality, in-jokes and homages. An American Graffitti reference, as well as a marvellous scene itself, was one of the highlights of the film itself for me. I’m glad that the script (although certainly not the best of the Jones scripts) allows for some cultural references worthy of a chuckle. 50s momism, the nuclear family and the suburban household are all given the nuclear treatment by Spielberg, being obliterated in the opening act with no mercy, as Indy wanders into a Nuclear test site filled with eerie plastic dolls posing as the 50s middle class. ‘I like Ike’ also shows its face with barbed wit from Ford and then as a motif during the nuclear explosion.
Of course, the Soviets rear their head as the pantomime-villains-of-the-era, partly to Spielberg’s admittance that there really is no one else with the villainous credentials. Obviously, this has angered members of Communist parties the world over, particuarly those in Russia, but again, to Spielberg’s defense, he lets us remind ourselves that he himself is of Russian descent. For me, the Soviet’s work to an extent in Crystal Skull. They seem to fit the mould of the Nazi replacement and Cate Blanchett, as usual, is amazing as the dangerous, sexless looking Soviet, Colonel Irena Spalko. But at the same time, I don’t feel the Soviet’s are half as threatening as the Nazi party. Perhaps it takes someone born on the eve of the Iron Curtain’s collapse to make that claim, but the Soviet’s fill the antagonising role in what I have always seen as a ‘grey area’ in history. Admittedly, David Koepp’s script certainly acknowledges this; even while pursued by the KGB on American soil, Dr.Jones, ‘even with his War record’ an investigator states, is under suspicion of treason by the FBI. A spectular chase sequence through the Dr.Jones’ University allows for protestors with signs such as ‘Red is Dead’ to run in terror as Dr.Jones’ (on motorbike) is pursued by KGB agents in cars.
Certainly, there is more to say for the film, its strengths and its flaws, but really, if you take ‘It’s Indiana Jones for god’s sake!’ as a reason, rather than an excuse, it won’t matter to you.
