Reviews

Waking the Dead: Series 6, Episodes 5 and 6: The Fall

Written by Damian Wayling; Directed by Robert Bierman

The conjoined corpses of a man and a woman, shot dead with the same bullet during a sex act, are discovered when the floor of a concealed room gives ways in a former City bank, which went down the tubes in the aftermath of 1992’s Black Wednesday. The man is identified as Mervyn Simmel (Nigel Whitmey), one of the bank’s directors, while the woman turns out to be Katherine Keane (Alison Doody), a journalist known for having a string of affairs with wealthy older men, many of whom hold down prominent government positions. The team’s investigation reveals several potential suspects, one of whom, Lucien Calvin (Peter Capaldi), a former partner at the bank, now clearly deranged and lecturing on the evils of capitalism, seems to be the likeliest.

This episode is undoubtedly a step up from its dire predecessor, but, watching it, one gets the impression that the writer relied a little too heavily on The Da Vinci Code for inspiration - not a good state of affairs by any stretch of the imagination. What this means is that, while Peter Boyd is a considerably more interesting character than Robert Langton (not that it’s difficult to be more interesting than Robert Langton), he does spend rather a lot of time chasing self-flagellating members of a secret society - yet another secret society with the spectre of religion hanging over it, which, hot on the heels of Wren Boys’ sinister nunnery and Deus Ex Machina’s Islamic overtones, means that things are beginning to feel a bit samey.

The highlight of this episode is undoubtedly Peter Capaldi, a fantastic character actor who plays the character of Calvin brilliantly, imbuing him with just the right mix of eccentricity and sinisterness. In the scenes in which he appears, the episode comes alive, and his interaction with Boyd and Grace is fascinating on many levels. In the most straightforward sense, it’s a pleasure to watch three extremely talented actors playing off each other; on a deeper level, writer Damian Wayling weaves a fascinating “family” undercurrent, with Boyd and Grace fairly obviously serving, in Calvin’s eyes, as surrogates for his own domineering father and docile mother, respectively. In Series 6 and 7 there is, on the whole, very little of the Boyd/Grace dynamic that helped make the first five series so enjoyable, so it’s very nice to see it making a welcome, albeit brief, return here.

Waking the Dead: Series 6, Episodes 3 and 4: Deus Ex Machina

Written by Nicholas Blincoe; Directed by Andy Hay

This episode manages quite a remarkable feat: on the one hand, it’s completely different from any other episode of Waking the Dead ever aired; on the other, it totally forgettable. It plods along to its conclusion, going in one ear and out the other, leaving no lasting impression. The plot is an odd one that doesn’t really feel like it belongs in the series, clumsily roping Boyd and co into recovering the Skull of the Mahdi, an artefact taken from Sudan as a war trophy more than a century ago, when a prominent Sudanese politician, Khaled Ahmed (Abdi Gouhad), goes on hunger strike. The team are also tasked with re-investigating the murder of an Iraqi refugee, Omar Jaffiri (Hassani Shapi), whose death may be related to the case of the skull. Along the way, they come across the Fakir society, a crowd of pretentious academics who like to dress up in robes and perform bizarre, masonic-like rituals.

Struggling to put my finger on just why this episode left me so cold, I popped over to the BBC’s official Waking the Dead web site and took a gander at the various user reviews that had been submitted. One writer, Ian Gould, hit the nail on the head:

There were too many loose ends and the first part gave the viewer no ideas at all. I expect to be confused but this was beyond confusion, almost bordering on boredom.

[…]

The top and bottom of this episode is that it was based on three ideas of interrogation and that seemed to be the whole plot. I have never been disappointed with this excellent programme before but this particular episode was rubbish.

I apologise for using another viewer’s review in place of my own, but this simply demonstrates how much of a non-entity this episode was for me. Barring some striking images injected by the director, among them Eve’s physical reconstruction of the scene of Jaffiri’s murder, which mixes the past with the present in a manner reminiscent of Series 3’s vastly superior Breaking Glass, I can’t recall a single memorable moment in the storyline’s entire two-hour duration. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I actually watched the episode (I’m currently playing catch-up with my reviews), but I didn’t in any way feel compelled to revisit it. When it aired it was, by a considerable margin, the worst Waking the Dead episode to date, and while I feel that the next season’s Wounds was even poorer, there’s not really all that much between them.

Holby connections: in addition to his appearance in Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, Adam James (Michael Leonard in this episode) had a recurring role in Casualty as lawyer-cum-rapist Pete Guildford during Series 19.

DVD Review: Trial & Retribution: The Third Collection

This third Trial & Retribution box set provides us with three episodes that are each, to differing degrees, flawed, but each engaging in their own way. The first two episodes, despite their shortcomings, ultimately make for solid television, with only the third episode threatening to collapse completely due to its shortcomings. It helps, I suspect, that all three episodes were personally penned by Lynda La Plante. This would change all too soon, with La Plante gradually reallocating these duties to various writers-for-hire, but here at least she seems to have been fully invested in the material, which gives the drama both the polish and the truthfulness that lifts her work above that of many other crime writers.

With the latest series of Trial & Retribution currently airing on ITV1, I take a look at the third volume of the series on DVD, containing three episodes produced between 2005 and 2007. Review at DVD Times.

The lights are on but no-one’s home

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days. I know I promised a full review of Tomb Raider: Underworld, but the three people in the world who are on tenterhooks for it will have to wait slightly longer. The fact is I’ve been under the weather lately, having picked up that brute of a cold that’s been going round. My head feels considerably clearer today than it did yesterday, but I’ve still got quite a bit of catching up to do, including read an entire PhD thesis before my next meeting with my supervisors on Tuesday 20th. I’ve also, as of today, started attention a Junior Honours class in Italian cinema, hosted by one of my supervisors. Much as I’d like to, I won’t be attending every single class, because each session is five hours long, which, when you’re studying part-time, cuts a pretty big chunk out of your week, but it should provide a good opportunity for me to fill in some of the (fairly substantial) blanks that exist in my knowledge of Italian cinema.

Oh, and I picked up a new monitor for a ridiculously low price. More on it later, hopefully, once it’s been properly calibrated and I have a better idea of its strengths and weaknesses.

Waking the Dead: Series 6, Episodes 1 and 2: Wren Boys

Written by Declan Croghan; Directed by Tim Fywell

For some reason, no episodes of Waking the Dead aired in 2006. When Series 6 finally came round, in January 2007, around 16 months had passed since the end of Series 5. The show came back with a new producer, Colin Wratten (who came from EastEnders and, before that, Holby City), a new lead writer, Declan Croghan, and a new pathologist, played by Tara Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, while Waking the Dead doesn’t have much in common with the previous show I did a full run through, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they do share one trait: both go off the rails in their sixth season.

Admittedly, Peter Boyd’s fall from grace is considerably less drastic than Buffy Summers’. Even at its worst, Waking the Dead still manages to retain a veneer of respectability, and I could never claim that these episodes are badly made (whereas some of the latter-day Buffy episodes were shockingly poorly written and directed). Instead, they just tend to feel rather empty, going from Point A to Point B, going through the motions but leaving no real lasting impression. One of the biggest losses come Season 6 is the team feeling that permeated the earlier episodes. Series 5 had its work cut out, having to make do without two of the five original characters, but it somehow managed to pull through, retaining the dynamic between the three remaining regulars and working hard to integrate the two newcomers. Such traits are not in evidence by Series 6. By and large, the characters behave like automatons, the interplay between them feels forced, and they function less as a team and more as a collection of people clocking in and out of the office.

It doesn’t help that the writers seem intent on ignoring any previously established continuity. Their biggest faux pas would come with Series 7 (which I’ll discuss when I get that far), but for now, the wheels are already being set in motion. Stella’s betrayal at the end of the previous series is never even mentioned, while Spence’s brush with death, which provided the cliffhanger between the two series, is brushed aside in a single reference to him having had a tattoo painted around his bullet wound. Seeing him laughing and joking about this with Stella, who played a part in his brush with death, is such a blatant breach of continuity that I find it nearly impossible to forgive. The fact that Felix is never once mentioned is also hard to swallow, although admittedly not entirely surprising, particularly if, as I suspect, she was only ever intended as a last-minute temporary replacement for Frankie.

Unfortunately, the new pathologist, Eve Lockhart, just makes us yearn all the more for her predecessors. The writers are at great pains to ram down our throats the fact that the character is alternative and wacky, smoking foul-smelling cigarettes, burning incense in the lab, listening to reggae music at crime scenes, and so on. Unfortunately, the actress, Tara Fitzgerald, may be many things, but “wacky” is not one of them. Her attempts to be so come across as completely forced, and all too often end up veering towards “annoying” rather than the “charming” that I suspect the writers were going for. At least, however, she is a little more animated in these opening episodes than she would later become: come Series 7, she would barely alter her facial expression and tone of delivery at all. Her major gimmick, aside from her insincere wackiness and amazingly deep voice, is that she keeps a “body farm” consisting of a bank of old body parts, which sounds interesting in theory but in practice is only ever referred to a couple of times.

Anyway, the series begins with what is probably the least impressive episode of Waking the Dead to date. There was worse to come, but I remember the massive disappointment I felt when this two-parter initially aired a couple of years back. The basic plot is that the team are investigating the case of a teenage boy found drowned in a pit of concrete back in 1990. A teenage boy is dumped outside a Casualty department, badly beaten, and Boyd suspects there may be a connection. (I actually can’t remember what it is that causes him to suspect this, which says a lot about how much of an impact the storyline made on me.) This leads him and the team to investigate the community of travellers from which the boy came, along the way taking in the sights of a local abbey and a young nun apparently suffering from stigmata.

This episode does actually have a rather interesting theme: the combination of pagan and Christian beliefs and rituals. As far as I can gather, it’s a pretty accurate representation of the religious beliefs held in many traveller communities, harking back to the latter days of the Roman Empire’s occupation of Britain, when the occupying forces concluded that the easiest way to convert the local tribes to Christianity was to mix the doctrine in with their existing pagan traditions, resulting in (to quote Bremner, Bird & Fortune’s piss-take of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams) “an à la carte religion”. At the same time, though, I think that the episode’s greatest failing is that there are simply too many ideas scrambling for attention, resulting in it feeling incredibly disjointed and not very satisfying as a whole. In addition to the exploration of the travellers and their beliefs, we’ve got stigmata, hallucinogenics, Rottweilers straight out of The Omen, a goat demon who seems to have stepped straight out of Hammer’s adaptation of The Devil Rides Out, arranged fights which clearly own something of a debt to David Fincher’s Fight Club, a family tree as complicated as a spaghetti junction, a young mother offering her unwanted newborn child up to a benevolent angel (no, really), and the curious arrival of an envelope addressed to Mel containing a bracelet inscribed with Hebrew letters. The latter sets up a plot strand which is actually carried through the entire season before finally coming to a head in the final episode, Yahrzeit. I’d like to say that this storyline, which hearkens back to the good old days, provides a sense of continuity to the series and resolves Boyd’s feelings as regards Mel’s death, but I’m sorry to say that, for me at least, this is something that should have been done in Series 5 if at all. Barely mentioning Mel in that series and then taking up the storyline again over a year later, while introducing some whopping continuity errors in the process (more on that later), merely cements my ambivalence towards this season.

Holby connections: Gregory Foreman (Davy in this episode) has appeared in Casualty at various points in Series 22 as Charlie Fairhead’s son, Louis.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 11 and 12: Cold Fusion

Written by Ed Whitmore; Directed by Richard Standeven

Series 5 draws to a close, and like Series 4 before it, it’s the end of an era. The casualties this time are long-serving producer Richard Burrell and lead writer Ed Whitmore, who both leave to do other things, and poor Esther Hall, who receives an even less auspicious exit than Holly Aird (whose at least got a brief mention in a conversation following her departure). It also closes on Waking the Dead’s first and to date only end-of-series cliffhanger, and an absolute whopper it is too - a situation made all the more frustrating by the fact that, back when it originally aired, we actually had to wait about 16 months for Series 6, only for it to be addressed in the lamest, more throwaway manner possible (more on that when I get on to reviewing Series 6).

Still, as season finales go, it’s a good one, thanks mainly to the “no holds barred” quality it has. With Mel’s death at the end of the previous series, we were shown that the regulars were by no means safe from harm, and so, when the lives of two of the main characters come under threat in this episode, we genuinely fear for them. At the heart of it all is Spence, who as I’ve mentioned before is, in my opinion, the least interesting of the original cast of five. He’s at his best in episodes that delve into his past (see also Series 3’s Final Cut), because they tend to be the only occasions on which he stops simply being a plod and is allowed to exist as an actual character. Here, in the classic “wrong man” tradition, he finds himself suspected of everything from destroying evidence to cold-blooded murder when vital evidence pertaining to a case he worked on as a uniformed PC back in the 80s goes missing from CCHQ (his pass having been used to gain access to the storage room), followed almost immediately by an arson attack on Central Lab in which further evidence pertaining to the case is lost.

Yeah, after watching the character for five years (six if you count the pilot), I’d find it a bit hard to swallow if he truly was corrupt, but that’s where the episode’s central twist lies. Again, I’d prefer not to give it away to those who are considering watching the series, so for the time being I’ll just say that someone on the team is involved in shady goings-on which have led to this situation, but aren’t fully aware of what they’ve got themselves involved in. As far as twists go, it’s a pretty good one, even if long-term viewers are unlikely to have any trouble fingering the culprit. Either way, it doesn’t really matter: the final half-hour is nail-biting stuff, and the cliffhanger I mentioned before could have been so good if the new regime that came in with the next series hadn’t completely dropped the ball.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 9 and 10: Undertow

Written by Oliver Brown; Directed by David Thacker

Undertow is actually a rather better episode than I’d remembered, but it still suffers from the problem that plagues the other Series 5 episodes that don’t focus specifically on the past of one of the main characters: it seems almost like filler, as if the writers were really excited about delving into regulars’ back-stories and were simply treading water with the episodes in between. Here, the chance activation of the credit card of a murder victim sets in motion a chain of events that leads the team to suspect Steven Hunt (Stephen Moyer), a man currently serving the final stretch of a prison sentence for benefit fraud, of a series of past murders and attempted rapes. Lacking sufficient evidence, and meeting only hostility from Hunt and his family, Boyd decides to have him tailed when he is released, hoping he slips up and they get the evidence they need to pin on him before he finds his next victim.

As with Subterraneans, there’s no real effort made to conceal the killer’s identity: if there isn’t a giant sign saying “Guilty!” over Hunt’s head the moment he is introduced, then it’s well and truly lit up and flashing in neon by the one-hour mark. It’s not a negative as such, but it’s the second storyline of this season to follow such a formula, although at least this time round the audience isn’t constantly several steps ahead of the police. Actually, the writer of this episode does a rather good job of exploiting the team’s frustration at being 99% sure of the culprit’s identity but unable to do anything about it. For me personally, the most interesting aspect of the storyline was Grace’s use of the geography of the various attacks to help work out the killer’s identity, working from the hypothesis that most people don’t go further afield than they have to.

That said, particularly in the second half, things get a bit farcical, with Boyd first trying to drown Hunt, much to Grace’s consternation (“Why didn’t you just slap him about like you usually do?” she demands frostily - me thinks someone somewhere is taking the piss), and then agreeing to a completely asinine entrapment scam with Stella as Hunt’s bait. (We’re supposed to believe that, despite having been tasked with tailing him in the most obvious manner imaginable, Hunt isn’t going to recognise Stella as part of the police force.) As such, we end up in a situation where Part 1 is superior to Part 2, a problem which also plagued the two previous storylines in this series. I don’t dislike this episode by any means. The interplay between the team is still as good as ever, and the banter is often highly amusing, but it’s a minor effort overall.

Waking the Dead: Series 5, Episodes 7 and 8: Straw Dog

Written by Declan Croghan; Directed by Jim O’Hanlon

“Look, we’re not monsters, Sarah.” - Detective Constable Stella Goodman
“Speak for yourself.” - Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd

The following year, Declan Croghan would become Waking the Dead’s lead writer, presumably based on the strengths of this two-parter, which stands out as being by far the best of Series 5. Beyond any great flair in the writing however, this is Sue Johnston’s chance to shine as Grace, for once, steps into the spotlight to become the focus of an entire story. The backdrop is the first case she ever worked on with the police, back in 1980 - a particularly nasty affair involving a serial killer who chopped off his victims’ fingers and sent them to the senior investigating officer, DI Harry Taylor (Tom Ellis). In the present day, the man convicted for the murders, Tony Greene (David Norman), alleges that his confession was beaten out of him, with Grace softening him up psychologically before turning him over to Harry, a man with a suspiciously high rate of success in securing confessions. During the retrial, at which Grace is giving evidence, another victim is abducted and one of his fingers sent to CCHQ, along with a demand that Grace admit that Greene is innocent. As a result, Grace is forced to come face to face with her past and consider that what she remembers as a triumphant first success may in fact have involved her playing an unwitting role in a case of corruption.

Incidentally, at one point in the past I suggested that this episode contradicted an earlier mention by Grace of “kids she never sees” by implying that she never married or having children. Watching it again now, I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as this. Yes, it’s true that the scene in question, where Grace strongly urges Felix to have children if she gets the chance, does hint at a sense of longing on Grace’s part, but it’s far from conclusive. (And let’s not forget that she is shown to be wearing a wedding ring throughout. Actually, wait a minute - that in itself creates another inconsistency, as in the final episode of Series 2, Grace stated that her marriage didn’t last.) This scene, by the way, is a very good one, sensitively written and well acted by Sue Johnston and Esther Hall. Material like this would become increasingly less common by Series 6, so it’s very much appreciated here. Equally effective is the scene at the end of the first part, where Grace speaks directly to the abductor via the press. In fact, it’s possibly my all-time favourite moment in the history of the series: the writing has a simple but powerful quality, and the combination of the music and acting succeeds in taking it to another level entirely.

More than any other episode of Waking the Dead, this one relies very heavily on flashbacks, telling two concurrent stories - one in the past and one in the present. Once you get past the fact that the 1980 incarnation of Grace (Emma Lowndes, who otherwise does an impeccable job of mimicking Sue Johnston’s inflections and accent) looks a little too young (that, or the present-day incarnation looks a little too old), it’s possible to appreciate the rather effective recreation of a bygone period, with keen attention to the costume and production design. I’m also impressed by the fact that Croghan was able to create a convincing past for Grace which helps flesh out her character without detracting from or overly contradicting what we already knew about her. What lets the episode down, though, is the killer’s identity. I’d prefer not to spoil things too much for those who haven’t seen it, but let’s just say that it’s a predictable old cliché that reinforces a certain stereotype often perpetuated in films and television programmes about serial killers. It’s not enough to sour things completely, but it does mean that the denouement is less impressive than the setup. Even so, it’s the last of the truly great Waking the Deads, in my opinion. From this point on, possibly only Yahrzeit and Skin can hold a candle to what came before.

By the way, I apologise for having left this project hanging in the lurch for so long. I fully intend to complete it… provided I can work up the stamina to sit through the remainder of Series 6, that is.

Holby connections: director Jim O’Hanlon has helmed several episodes of Casualty and also wrote one episode in 2004.

Blu-ray review: The Messengers

A friend of mine once commented to me, in relation to another film entirely, that writing anything about it was a challenge because you can’t review thin air. I find myself in exactly the same boat with The Messengers: it doesn’t exist in a tangible form so much as it merely floats around in the ether for 90 minutes before promptly disappearing without a trace. It’s neither obnoxious nor offensive… it just is, which I would argue is just about the worst thing a film can possibly be. If you want to watch a recent ghost house movie, I recommend The Orphanage, which exploits the premise far more effectively and actually creates something approaching a lasting impression. Unless you have trouble sleeping, give The Messengers a miss.

I manage to cure my insomnia with The Messengers, a tiresome little haunted house movie starring Kristen Stewart (Panic Room, Twilight) and directed by the Pang brothers (The Eye), which should serve as a warning to any other promising filmmakers considering making the leap to Hollywood.

Review at DVD Times.

Right - let’s go adventuring

I completed Tomb Raider: Underworld last night. I’m working on a full review at the moment, which will hopefully go up later in the week, but, for the time being, let’s just say that it’s a great game that I heartily recommend. Legend is still my favourite game in the series since the Crystal Dynamics reboot - actually, scratch that, my favourite of all time - but this is a very strong follow-up that continues the story and develops the gameplay in a plausible and agreeable way. My main complaint would be the at times obtuse nature of the puzzles: I had to use a walkthrough on a number of occasions, generally after a good half-hour of running around in circles trying to work out where to go next. This is, in fact, my main reason for preferring Legend, which was considerably less daunting (although not a cakewalk by any stretch). Otherwise, though, I definitely recommend this game to those who enjoy platforming adventures in this mould, particularly those who, like me, found the similar Prince of Persia 2008 too simplistic.

Just a little something to whet your appetites…

Mondo Vision’s official web site has finally been fully launched, now with complete information on the currently announced releases as well as the company itself. An extract from their philosophy:

We hope to be around for the years to come, and to give viewers the chance to experience some unique films from around the world, which would otherwise remain buried: a feast of insights into cinema at its most obscure, excessive, and marginalized, aimed at adventurous cinephiles eager to uncover lost and forgotten gems of subversive cinema. For us and our audience, these unique films and their respective directors represent filmmaking at its most challenging and brilliant. We hope you’ll join us!

At the same time, Mondo Vision has given the authoring house the go-ahead to post screen captures from Mondo Vision’s upcoming second DVD release, Andrzej Zulawksi’s 1975 film L’important c’est d’aimer (The Important Thing is to Love), which stars Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, Jacques Dutronc and Klaus Kinski. As with the already available La femme publique, this will be the first ever release of the film to fully cater to English speakers. Currently, those not fluent in French have to make do with a frankly horrible-looking mess from German label New Entertainment World, released under the title of Nachtblende. I’ve actually read reviews which praise this catastrophe, so I can only imagine what the feedback will be like once Mondo Vision’s edition hits the shelves.

Some screengrabs from the Mondo Vision version:

And here’s the Nachtblende disc that it’s up against:

Note: we have reason to believe that both transfers were minted from exactly the same source. Make of that what you will.

That was the year that was

With another year been and gone, now seems like a good time to sit back and reflect on the past 365 days. I’ve experienced some highs and lows, the lowest of which would undoubtedly be losing my last two surviving grandparents in the space of a few months. On the upside, I feel that I’ve begun to make real progress with my PhD, which is finally evolving into something tangible, the process of which will no doubt continue in 2009. Otherwise, I can’t say that very much has changed for me. I continued to work part-time in my job at the library, with the various rounds of staff transfers mercifully passing me by and life continuing as before. Is it my dream job? No, I should say not, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go through periods of finding it (and the Great British public) incredibly frustrating. However, all things considered, I can think of plenty other less desirable jobs I could be doing. At least this one is convenient and, all things considered, reasonably well-paid.

 
Zeros and Ones

In relation to the battle between rival high definition formats Blu-ray and HD DVD, last year’s annual round-up included the statement “With no end to the format war in sight any time soon, 2008 looks set to be another interesting year.” Well, it seemed that I’d barely finished writing those words when the HD DVD camp threw in the towel. To be honest, the writing had been on the wall for some time, but several people, myself included, still adopted an “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” mentality in the early days of 2008. With Warner’s abandonment of the format only a few days later, however, the writing was well and truly on the wall. Within days, the game was up and the remaining HD DVD-supporting majors (Universal and Paramount) were pledging allegiance to the Blu flag. In any event, once the stragglers got up and running, it turned out to be a pretty damn good year for HD content, with some truly amazing transfers seeing the light of day, while the arrival of several high profile titles such as The Godfather trilogy and The Dark Knight, plus the certainty afforded by there now only being a single HD format, undoubtedly contributed to more people taking the plunge and lending their support to the platform.

I bought myself a new computer - a full tower system after my brief dalliance with the world of small form factors the previous year. After relying on my more technologically competent relatives in the past, I was quite pleased with myself for managing to build the whole thing from scratch myself - seriously, deciphering some of those poorly translated user manuals practically requires a diploma in itself. I also upgraded my PC’s aged Creative audio system with some nice new Logitech speakers and a veritable beast of a subwoofer. I also ultimately succeeded in going region-free for Blu-ray playback, thanks to SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD software, allowing me to use my system as a multi-region HD home theatre PC.

 
At the Pictures

This year, my brother put together a pretty impressive projection system, accompanied by a meaty sound setup, allowing us to enjoy a film-watching environment that more closely approximates the big screen experience. Despite this, however, my overall viewing figures were somewhat reduced in 2008 compared with 2007 (themselves a reduction from 2006). I maintain a log of all the films I watch, and the total tally for 2008 is 128, 67 of which were first time viewings. The increasingly wide array of available Blu-ray titles certainly led to me taking increased risks with titles I hadn’t previously seen, but at the same time caused me to be far less likely to tune in to television broadcasts of films. (I watched 56 films on Blu-ray, 44 on DVD and 14 on HD DVD, versus 7 on TV.)

I got the opportunity to see several what might be termed “significant” films, among them the great - 28 Weeks Later, Across the Universe, Atonement, Bonnie and Clyde, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dark City, Eastern Promises, Enchanted, Fight Club, The Fly (the David Cronenberg version), Juno, The Life Before Her Eyes, The Maltese Falcon, A Matter of Loaf and Death, Mean Girls, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Orphanage, Persepolis, The Plague Dogs, Rabid Dogs, The Shining, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Volver, Wall-E - the good - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Almost Famous, Blow, The Brave One, Chungking Express, La Femme Publique, Grindhouse, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Memento, My Blueberry Nights, Nikita, Resident Evil: Extinction, School of Rock, Shaun of the Dead, La Vie en Rose - the disappointing - 30 Days of Night, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Dark Knight, Doomsday, Gone Baby Gone, Running Scared, Tekkonkinkreet - and the downright dreadful - Freddy Got Fingered, Omen IV: The Awakening and, last but not least, Seytan.

Best film I saw this year? Definitely Atonement. Worst? Oh, come on, do I even have to answer that? I saw Freddy Got Fingered, for god’s sake.

 
Bibliothèque

Much to my chagrin, my reading this year was pretty limited. In addition to perusing a number of academic tomes as part of my PhD research, I sat down with The Field of Blood, The Last Breath, Garnethill, Exile and Resolution by Denise Mina, Day After Day by Carlo Lucarelli, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James, Demo by Alison Miller, The Deceiver and The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsythe, and Above Suspicion by Lynda La Plante. I also re-read Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin, and tucked into The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - the latter serving as my sole piece of non-fiction reading that had no direct relation to my PhD. I also started Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré, a celebrated classic that I must admit I’m making very slow progress with indeed.

 
Song and Dance

I picked up the following CDs: Atonement (Dario Marianelli), Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment (Eminence Symphony Orchestra), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Pink and the Lily (Sandi Thom) and Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez).

Top 10 HD Transfers of 2008

2008 has been quite a year for high definition. In addition to the emergence of Blu-ray as the clear winner of the format war with HD DVD, it has seen the steady growth of HD as a mass market option, with sales becoming increasingly healthy - aided, no doubt, by the release of high profile titles like The Godfather trilogy and The Dark Knight. That the latter shifted some 1.7 million copies in its first week, accounting for 13% of the film’s sales on home video, demonstrates that Blu-ray is well on the way to becoming a format not just for AV and cinema enthusiasts but also for the general public.

For my first feature of 2009, I look back over the past year with my picks for the best-looking high definition releases of 2008, boiling the year’s impressive output down to a list of ten particularly distinguished titles. Head over to DVD Times to find out what made the grade.

Blu-ray review: Wall-E

It’s easy to become overly gushy about a package like this, not only on account of the film itself but also because of the excellent audio-visual presentation and downright generous offering of extras, but I’m going to take a leap and suggest that Wall-E on Blu-ray is one of the best - or possibly even the best - releases of 2008. A poster child for high definition and a remarkable film in its own right, this release deserves a place on everyone’s shelf.

I’ve reviewed Disney’s recent Region B UK Blu-ray release of Wall-E, a remarkable film in a remarkable package..

Review: the Garnethill trilogy (long post)

Prior to writing her first novel, Denise Mina researched a PhD on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders and taught criminology at Strathclyde University. These roots are very much in evidence throughout what is semi-officially referred to as the Garnethill trilogy, encompassing three books published between 1998 and 2001: Garnethill, Exile and Resolution. (The title refers to a residential area in the centre of Glasgow, most famous for the Glasgow School of Art.)

The central protagonist of the trilogy, Maureen O’Donnell, has not had what you’d call a happy life. As a child, she was abused by her father, culminating in what she later comes to suspect was a rape attack, an event which she blocked out for over a decade and which led to her father disappearing abruptly. Years later, as a History of Art student at Glasgow University, she suffered a nervous breakdown as her repressed memories of the attack resurfaced and was, for a while, institutionalised. However, her attempts to get her family to admit what had happened to her as a child fall on deaf ears, with her alcoholic mother seemingly repressing her own memories and her two sisters flat out refusing to believe Maureen’s version of events. Only her older brother, Liam, who makes a living peddling drugs, stands by her, and as a result the rift that has developed between these two factions of the O’Donnell clan is immense to say the least. At the start of the first novel, Maureen is on the mend. She’s holding down a job in a ticket office, self-sufficient enough to be able to live on her own in a flat at the top of Garnethill, and has recently decided to dump her boyfriend, therapist Douglas Brady, after discovering that he is in fact married. Then, one morning, she wakes up to find Douglas in a chair in her living room with his throat slit.

Oh, and the killer has gone to considerable lengths to make it look like she did it.

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Review: Planescape: Torment (long post)

Note: I don’t often review computer games, but every so often I feel compelled to write more than the usual couple of paragraphs about something I played. I recently revisited one of my all-time favourite games and, having played it from beginning to end over the course of about a week, found myself with the urge to attempt to put into words just why I love it so much.

“What can change the nature of a man?” That is the central question at the heart of Black Isle Studios’ Planescape: Torment, one of the most unique computer role-playing games (CRPGs) ever created and an absolute triumph of brains over brawn. While some may baulk at its text-heavy nature and the clunkiness of the combat system, others, fed up with or uninterested in the current spate of 3D action games, or indeed Black Isle’s other, more Tolkienesque RPGs, will certainly get a kick out of this novel, challenging and thought-provoking exploration of human nature.

You begin lying on a mortuary slab, horribly scarred and unaware of who you are, how you got there and, perhaps most pertinently, why you aren’t dead. Your only companion turns out to be a floating skull named (what else?) Morte, who seems rather insistent that he tag along and is full of good advice but seems to know more than he lets on. Two things become readily apparent:

1. you have amnesia, and can’t remember your own name, much less what you’re supposed to be doing;

2. you can’t die.

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La Femme Publique - c’est fantastique! (Part deux)

More reviews of Mondo Vision’s La Femme Publique are beginning to trickle in. Today’s comes from Svet Atanasov at DVD Talk, who was extremely impressed:

It is almost too good to be true - Mondo Vision have assembled a package that will warm up the hearts of many film aficionados who have been hoping to see Andrzej Zulawski’s La femme publique treated with the proper dose of respect. Well, the wait is over. I would like to go on record here stating that even Criterion could have not produced such a terrific package. This is a gift for all of us and I hope that Mondo Vision will be around for many years to come so we could benefit from their admirable desire to please. Good luck Mondo Vision and thank you for this most beautiful release!! DVDTALK Collector Series.

The review gives the transfer, audio and extras a 10/10 rating each.

Halloween Blu-ray review: The Omen (2006 remake)

Well, here we are once again, concluding yet another review of yet another box set of films in the Omen franchise. (I think it’s safe to call it a “franchise” rather than a series now, given that, with the 2006 remake, any remaining hints of artistic merit have been well and truly exterminated.) The big question, I suppose, is whether or not this four-disc Blu-ray collection is worth it. My answer, as usual, is going to have to be “no”: the original 1976 film is available separately for considerably less money than the four-movie set, and it’s really the only one worth bothering with, so my advice would be to save your cash and just pick up the first one.

That said, for those who are determined to be subjected to the full Omen experience (or as full as possible without the hilariously awful 1991 TV movie), this box set constitutes an admittedly expensive but nonetheless satisfying package. The first film has received by far the most lavish treatment, and rightly so, but the audio-visual quality of the subsequent entries in the series is nothing to be sniffed at either. The Omen Collection is not exactly The Godfather Collection of horror movie franchises in high definition, but in terms of image quality and the actual running time of the bonus content, it’s comparable. All told, Fox have provided a far more generous package here than anyone had any reason to expect, and, whatever you might think of the films, at least they are to be commended for not doing this project on the cheap.

I conclude my trawl through the Omen series of films with a review of the Region A Blu-ray release of the dire 2006 remake, available both separately or in The Omen Collection. The review also concludes with some general thoughts on this four-disc box set.

Review at DVD Times.

That concludes this year’s Halloween fun. Sorry I didn’t get round do reviewing an extra film, but the time just wasn’t there. Every year, I convince myself I’ll start working on the reviews earlier, but I always end up leaving them to the last minute.

Halloween Blu-ray review: The Final Conflict

As the conclusion to a trilogy, The Final Conflict is not even remotely satisfying. However, as I’ve said before, I prefer to look on the original Omen as a standalone film and the subsequent instalments as curious but unnecessary aberrations. As such, there’s not really a great deal to recommend here, barring the impressive performance by Sam Neill and the knowledge that, limp as it is, it is at least considerably better than the 2006 remake of The Omen and a slight - very slight - improvement on Damien: Omen II.

In which God’s followers reveal themselves to be so hopelessly inept as would-be assassins that Jesus Christ himself has to come down from the heavens to defeat Damien Thorn.

Review at DVD Times.

Halloween Blu-ray review: Damien: Omen II

Damien: Omen II is not a very good film, and as such it’s little wonder that the Blu-ray package assembled for it is a pale shadow of that of the original Omen. Still, it’s a perfectly adequate disc and one that, once again, proves to constitute a substantial upgrade over its DVD counterpart. Whether or not that makes the film itself any better is, of course, open to debate…

As part of DVD Times’ Halloween coverage, I’ve reviewed 20th Century Fox’s recent Region A Blu-ray release of Damien: Omen II, considered by some the least awful of the various cash-ins on the original Omen.