Reviews

Waking the Dead: Pilot

Written by Barbara Machin; Directed by Martin Hutchings

The two-part pilot episode aired almost a year before the series itself, and feels very much like a dry run. Not in the sense that it’s inferior to what followed, but because it clearly serves as an opportunity to test the waters by experimenting with the various parameters. Several elements were changed between the pilot and the first episode of Series 1: among them, fairly minor details like Mel’s surname (Silverman in the pilot, Silver in the series) and the music and title sequence, the familiar Joe Campbell composition not having yet been adopted. More significantly, elements of the characters’ lives shown in this episode directly contradict what we learn in the series itself. This is particularly true of Boyd, who, in the pilot, is still with his wife, with whom he has a baby, Matt. (In the series, Boyd and his wife are separated, and their son, Luke, is considerably older and is missing presumed dead. Actually, if you want, an argument could be made that Boyd does in fact have two sons, but I’m not sure how theoretically possible that would be.)

The pilot sets the tone by dealing with a case which has personal significance for Boyd. Several years ago, he was the investigating officer in the kidnap of a teenage girl. The girl was raped and then murdered, and the press announcement that Boyd has re-opened the case prompts the original attacker, Jimmy Marshall (Finbar Lynch), to abduct another girl, Jodie Whitemoor (Amelia Warner). By cross-cutting between scenes with Jimmy and Jodie, and the investigation itself, a considerable amount of tension is built up, exacerbated by our knowledge of how the previous case, the obvious template for this one, ended. To a degree, Boyd’s personal involvement feels ever so slightly contrived, but it’s an effective way to introduce the characters and the formula, and, in the second part, when it becomes clear that Marshall’s plans for Boyd go far beyond making him relive his previous failure, things (without giving too much away for first-timers) become even more personal.

Interestingly enough, Boyd, who, in the series, clearly believes in the “he who shouts loudest” mantra, is quite an understated presence here, quiet and contemplative, and actually diffusing rather than causing any arguments that break out among the team. Most of the conflict comes from the protocol-obsessed Frankie and her dealings with Spence, who is more concerned with the feelings of the dead girl’s relatives than with following the book. (Their opposing attitudes towards an exhumation raise some interesting moral and ethical dilemmas.) In later episodes, Boyd would become Frankie’s sparring partner, which in a sense is a shame, because I always felt Spence was the least interesting of the core cast, and confrontations such as the ones he has with Frankie in the pilot hint at a more interesting personality than we would end up with as the series progressed.

Holby connections: the director, Martin Hutchings, has helmed episodes of all three Holby shows, including the pilot episodes of both Holby City and Holby Blue. Additionally, David Sterne (Mac in Holby Blue) has a very brief appearance in this episode as a shopkeeper.

The Waking the Dead Project

I’ve mentioned once or twice already that I was going to do a Waking the Dead project, similar to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer project I did a couple of years back and which nearly broke my will and sanity. 144 episodes of any television programme is a lot, but the number seems particularly high when you consider that the final two seasons, 44 episodes’ worth of material, were at times pretty appalling. Luckily, Waking the Dead has two things in its favour. Number one, there have, to date, been only 74 episodes (including the two-part pilot). Number two, while the later series have, in my opinion, not been of the same standard as the earlier ones, the show has never plumbed the same depths as Buffy at its worst.

The main failing of my Buffy project was the perspective from which I wrote it. Essentially, I wrote as a fan talking to other fans, and therefore didn’t take account of the fact that not everyone reading my ramblings would be as intimately familiar with the series, characters and storylines as I was. I didn’t make it easy for people to understand what I was talking about, and I suspect I probably didn’t convince anyone unfamiliar with the show to check it out either. It would be a shame if I didn’t persuade anyone to give Waking the Dead a whirl - I think it’s a very good series, and if I thought otherwise I wouldn’t be attempting this project - so right off the bat I’m going to do my best to make things a bit more accessible this time round.

To briefly explain what this is all about, Waking the Dead is the creation of a writer named Barbara Machin. Hers is not exactly a household name, but it’s one with which I’m familiar because it appeared at the beginning of many an episode of Casualty between 1990 and 1998. The episodes she wrote for the medical drama stand out as being among the best, often due to her seeming fascination with mental disorders and her attempts to get inside the minds of those so afflicted.

Waking the Dead’s concept is that of “cold cases”, i.e. police investigations that have been shelved or thought to have been closed but which have been opened up due to new evidence coming to light, or because it is thought that the advanced forensic and profiling systems available in the 21st century may shed new light on old material. The idea is not necessarily groundbreaking, and seems even less so when you consider the existence of American-originated shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Cold Case (both of which, I feel compelled to point out, came along after Waking the Dead), but it’s a good one, I think, because it allows the programme’s writers to cherry-pick from virtually any period in recent history. Each investigation tends to challenge the viewer’s ability to keep track of the various ongoing strands and suspects, although it has at times drawn criticism (from people including myself) for being overly convoluted for its own sake.

What, for me, however, makes the early episodes of this show so enjoyable is the interaction between the Cold Case Unit. There are five core members of the team, three of whom have been present for all (so far) seven series. The man at the centre is Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve), a driven, moody and at times baffling man who, taking a page right out of the Detective Clichés Handbook, sometimes breaks the rules or acts like a jerk but gets results. Working under him are DS (later DI) Spencer Jordan (Wil Johnson) and DC (later DS) Amelia “Mel” Silver (Claire Goose), who find their boss’ behaviour strange and a bit alarming at times, but grit their teeth and put up with his mood swings because they know from experience that his slightly unorthodox methods work. Joining them is Dr. Grace Foley (Sue Johnston), a psychological profiler who, it has been suggested to me, is the audience’s main point of identification because she is the level-headed one who often diffuses Boyd’s temper tantrums and smoothes out discord within the team. (She also happens to be my favourite character for reasons that I’m sure to discuss in my episode reviews.) The final player is Dr. Frankie Wharton (Holly Aird), a forensic scientist and someone who is somewhat on the periphery of the team, something which is emphasised fairly often in the earlier episodes by portraying her as feeling marginalised and out of the loop. Frankie is every bit as obsessive about her work as Boyd, spending seemingly every waking hour in her lab, but she is able to keep her head in a way that Boyd isn’t.

The format of the series stays more or less the same, generally opening with a crime taking place or a new piece of evidence being discovered. From then on, the team and the audience are introduced to the evidence and an array of suspects, with the investigation being teased out over the course of two one-hour episodes. Each two-parter tells a self-contained story, although in the last couple of years some attempted has been made to thread either a similar theme or an ongoing story arc throughout each series. Sometimes the episodes take the form of a whodunit; on other occasions, the audience is in on the culprit’s identity while the team is in the dark. Occasionally, there is an obvious suspect and the storyline consists of the team building the case against him/her. What does, for the most part, remain consistent is that, broadly speaking, we only see the team in the context of their job. There have been exceptions, particularly in the pilot and in the most recent series, but Waking the Dead is, by and large, devoid of soap opera, which is definitely appreciated given the TV crime drama genre’s tendency to combine the professional with the private.

Without further ado, it’s time for me to crack on with the first review…

Thoughts on Kiss of Death

Last night saw the screening, on BBC1, of Barbara Machin’s latest venture, a 90-minute crime drama entitled Kiss of Death. It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for me to say that I think Machin is one of the best writers working in television at the moment. She wrote my all-time favourite episode of Casualty, Perfect Blue (as well as two other episodes in my personal top ten - an impressive feat, given that she’s not exactly prolific), and created Waking the Dead, for which I am forever grateful to her. She also wrote the only episode of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman worth a damn, and has continued to demonstrate a refusal to be governed by the constraints normally imposed on the genres with which she works. Two Christmases ago, she turned Casualty on its head by adopting a Rashômon-like structure to tell a gritty medical thriller story, and Kiss of Death applies much the same format to the police procedural.

On paper, Kiss of Death is not all that different from Waking the Dead. Most of the same personalities are present and correct: we have the haunted senior police officer, the slightly oddball forensic scientist, the over-eager junior female detective who worked hard to get out of uniform, and so on and so forth. The programme’s uniqueness came not from its characters or the situation in which they found themselves but from the fragmented manner in which the story was told. Whereas the Casualty episode Killing Me Softly used the unprecedented (at least in Casualty) but fairly straightforward concept of showing the events of a day consecutively from the perspective of three different characters (each shift being indicated by flashing the character’s name up on the screen), Kiss of Death ups the number of available points of view to at least nine characters and continually jumps back and forth between them, also going both forwards and backwards in time. That I managed to keep up with what was going on is, I think, a testament to Machin’s writing and the directing of her old colleague, Casualty co-creator Paul Unwin, but I can imagine many viewers finding this very frustrating. Credit where credit’s due, therefore, to the often lowest-common-denominator BBC for commissioning and airing in a prime time-slot (9 PM on a weekday night) something that actually set out to challenge its audience’s expectations and intelligence. It’s just too bad it had the misfortune of airing directly after a highly sensationalised and tabloidish Panorama investigation into child molesters who use the Internet to prey on their victims.

Last night’s screening was billed as a one-off drama, much in the same manner as Waking the Dead when its two-part pilot episode aired back in 2000. It eventually returned for a full series in 2001, after certain stylistic elements and character backgrounds had been retooled, and I’d like to think that, in much the same manner, Kiss of Death has its own series to look forward to. However, I very much doubt that it could continue as anything but a one-off in its present form, given the extent to which the events depicted relied on the personal involvement of its protagonists. In what is becoming increasingly typical of television dramas, most of the main characters had a Dark Past, many of them interconnected. Our main detective, Kay Rousseau (played rather well by former CSI star Louise Lombard, this time sporting her native English accent with only an occasional Transatlantic vowel sound), had only recently returned to work after being convicted and later acquitted of the death of her baby, and it was implied that her being let off the hook was due mainly to work done behind the scenes by her ex-husband Miles (Ace Bhatti), who ensured that the “right people” worked on her case. Kay also had a History (with a capital “H”) with both her profiler, Clive (Shaun Parkes) and her forensic scientist, George (Lyndsey Marshal), the latter having helped put together the case against Kay during the investigation into her child’s death. George, it is also revealed, has or had a serious drink problem, and an action on her part in a previous case may or may not be connected to the murder that the team is presently investigating. Finally, Kay’s second-in-command, Costello, is played by Danny Dyer, which is enough of a defect in itself without giving the character any additional problems.

That probably all sounds a bit contrived, and, in a sense, I suppose it was. The structure was such that I didn’t really get to care a great deal for any of the main characters, apart from George, who I’ve come to the conclusion is my favourite, mainly thanks to her uncharacteristically enthusiastic reaction to the blood and guts that her job brings her into contact with. Seriously, the look on her face as she examines the contents of a murder victim’s bowel (see the image below) would put many a gore movie fan to shame. The rest of the characters, however, seemed a bit too distant or flawed to really care about them, and I suspect that a lot of this was a result of the unconventional narrative structure that had been adopted. With the episodes of Casualty in which Machin first began to experiment with this method of storytelling, this was considerably less of a problem, given that the audience had already established a relationship with the characters that she was using to tell her story, in the case of the likes of Josh and Charlie going back 15-20 years. Here, however, I found myself thrust into an extremely disorientating world populated by characters that I was getting to know only via brief snippets of information delivered in non-chronological order.

This probably sounds like I’m coming down rather hard on Kiss of Death, which is not the case at all. On the contrary, I really enjoyed it… if “enjoyed” is the right word, given the bleak tone and often gruesome imagery on display. The programme worked as an experiment first and a piece of storytelling second, and it required me to invest effort in it to get the most out of it, but I suspect that’s no bad thing. On the whole, I feel that the Casualty two-parter I’ve already mentioned was more satisfying as a piece of drama, mainly because I didn’t feel there that the structure was hampering my ability to connect with the characters, but Kiss of Death was a gripping, challenging piece of television and a more than welcome antidote to an often formulaic and predictable schedule.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 14: Wolves at the Gate, Part Three

Written by Drew Goddard; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

Well, Renée is now dead, bloodily speared through the heart with the mystical scythe by a grinning vampire in what I’m sure was meant to be a deeply shocking and heartbreaking moment, but which just leaves me rolling my eyes and thinking “Jesus, get a new favourite plot contrivance, Joss.” Sudden Unexpected Deaths are all very well when used in moderation and for meaningful purposes, but when you roll out the exact same thing again and again, then please forgive me for not being entirely enthused by it. Jenny Calendar worked, Joyce worked, I’ll even concede that Doyle worked to some extent, but now we’ve had (off the top of my head) Tara, Jonathan, Cordelia, Fred, Wesley, Christian Kane, Shepherd Book, Wash, Random Japanese Slayer… Really, when you add up all the Sudden Unexpected Deaths that have been thrown at us by Buffy, Angel and Firefly/Serenity combined, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was nothing more than a big joke.

Maybe it is. Maybe Joss Whedon is sitting at his desk cackling as his unquestioning fans slavishly lap up each tall steaming glass of liquid fertiliser he serves them and then ask for more. However, if so, I’m sorry to say I don’t share his sense of humour. Oddly enough, what I find particularly obnoxious about the whole affair is that I had no reason to care about Renée in the first place. She was never characterised in anything but the broadest sense, and her entire function, it is now clear, was simply to dump yet more heartache on Xander. Are we at all surprised that the pair shared a kiss not six pages before she was skewered? Then again, given how Whedon and Goddard have treated the Xander character so far in this arc (see his “relationship” with Dracula), perhaps they’ll expect us to see his bereavement as highly amusing. After all, this issue began with Buffy cutting down the body of Random Japanese Slayer, which the vampires had strung up over the streets of Tokyo for all to see, and yet, four pages later, had Dracula hilariously asking if anyone was going to finish eating the corpse.

I haven’t yet mentioned Buffy treating Dracula as a mere annoyance (rather than as the mortal enemy that he is) or the sight of giant Dawn stomping through Tokyo à la Godzilla, but in all honesty I don’t see the point. This comic is a train wreck even by the already extremely low standards set by Seasons 6 and 7 of the television series. I’m sorry to say that I have less and less hope for Whedon’s new TV project, Dollhouse, with every page I read of this travesty. It astounds me that the person who once gave us excellent television like Hush, Restless and The Body has fallen so far from grace, but quite frankly, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to bring myself to care.

My next Buffy comic review will be my final one. My subscription stops after Episode 15, and I most assuredly won’t be renewing it. So, you can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The power of Allah compels you!

Well, yesterday was rather interesting. After conversing with him online for several years, I was finally able to put a face to a name as I met Baron Scarpia in person for the first time. And what better way to celebrate such a meeting than with a dreadful movie? Yes, after lunch, we boarded the HMS Whimsy to watch a title from the Baron’s own private collection. The film in question was Seytan, a 1974 Turkish production directed by a fellow named Metin Erksan, which bears more than a passing resemblance to William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

Something of a background primer is required on Turkish cinema before we can progress any further. Although responsible for a number of critically lauded films (none of which I could name at present, as my knowledge of the country’s output is fairly limited), I suspect that most cult film fanatics will be more familiar with the industry’s habit of ripping off Hollywood productions with its own distinctive takes on the likes of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars and even Superman.

Now, lest anyone get the wrong impression, we are not talking “loosely inspired” here. We are talking shot-for-shot remakes, the only significant differences being the minuscule budgets, dreadful production values and complete lack of talent on either side of the camera. Yes, those are the “only” significant differences. Oh, and they all appear to take place in Turkey.

Anyway, Seytan (pronounced “SHAY-tan”, by the way) introduces us to 12-year-old Gül and her mother, Uma Thurman (I’m calling her this because the actress playing her looks like a significantly less talented version of her, and because the character’s name is not provided by IMDB). Gül is a precocious child who has an invisible friend called Captain Lersen (eh?). She also has other, slightly more disturbing tendencies, such as an ability to urinate dark green liquid on cue, spew what looks like orange paint from her mouth, bitch-slap members of the medical profession and rotate her head 180 degrees. Rejecting the rational in favour of the supernatural, Uma calls in the appropriately named Tugrul Bilge, author of a book on demons. I’ll be calling him Alan Partridge, though, because the actor playing him vaguely resembles Steve Coogan. (Besides, the image of Alan Partridge performing an exorcism is in itself deeply amusing.) In turn, Alan Partridge concludes that the only viable solution is to perform an exorcism on poor possessed Gül. Enter an exorcist, whose name I once again can’t remember (IMDB is no help here), and the most sinister-looking moustachioed policeman you’ll ever see on screen, who has a habit of blowing cigarette smoke directly in people’s faces when they are talking to him. I have christened him Inspector Clouzot. Oh, and is that Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells that keeps drowning out the dialogue?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock since some time prior to the end of 1973, all of this might sound vaguely familiar. Remakes such as the recent versions of Halloween (well, the second half at least) and The Omen have been justly criticised for been slavish copies of the original films, but, until you’ve seen what the Turks got up to in the 70s and 80s, you really have no idea what outright plagiarism looks like. To clarify, The Exorcist is less of a sacred cow for me than say, Suspiria or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I appreciate its importance in cinema history and would argue that no other horror film produced by a major studio achieves anything quite like it. Still, it’s hard to be annoyed at Metin Erksan and his cronies for what they have done here because, unlike, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there is no danger of this remake overshadowing the original (seriously, the number of people that don’t realise Marcus Nispel’s 2003 hack job is an update of an earlier film of the same name is quite disturbing). Seytan is so hilariously awful on every level that hating it is not an option: you either get it or you don’t.

Luckily, I got it. Seytan is such a mess in every imaginable way that it makes Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace look like the highly polished work of a cinematic genius. Before anyone asks, yes, I am aware that Darkplace was a spoof. Seytan, however, is not, as hard as that may be to believe at times, particularly when Gül’s bed is bouncing about like a bouncy castle and Uma Thurman thinks that the best way to stop it is to get on the bed and join in. More gales of laughter greet every single instance of Tubular Bells starting up and then stopping as abruptly as it began when the sound technician yanks the needle off his record. Come to think of it, this piece of music is repeated so many times that I’m genuinely amazed that, when Erksan tries (and fails) to recreate the iconic image of Father Merrin arriving at the house, surrounded by fog, Mike Oldfield is nowhere to be heard.

(Mr. Erksan, by the way, is nothing if not a varied director. While most filmmakers would be content to simply zoom in or out, Erksan zooms both in and out, often multiple times within the confines of a single shot. And bear in mind that every scene in the film features at least one zoom. Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco would be red-cheeked with embarrassment.)

And I haven’t even mentioned the climactic exorcism yet, which goes on for an absolutely absurd length of time and concludes, after Alan Partridge and his exorcist friend have yelled “Allah’s grace be upon you!” more times than I care to remember, with poor old Mr. Partridge fulfilling his fate (and ensuring that Seytan doesn’t diverge too far from The Exorcist’s plot) by leaping out of the window and rolling down the longest flight of steps in Turkey. Actually, I’m fairly sure that this scene is performed by the actor himself rather than a stuntman, so it’s actually quite impressive that he was still alive at the end of it all.

I really can’t thank the Baron enough for giving me the opportunity to experience Seytan. It’s actually somewhat embarrassing to admit that this was my introduction to Turkish cinema, so I suspect I should really follow up the experience by watching one of the country’s better films. It’s a bit like making Giallo a Venezia your first port of call when embarking on a voyage through Italian cinema, only several stages worse.

Dead rising

My copy of the DVD release of the sixth series of Waking the Dead arrived on Tuesday, coincidentally on the same day that the twelfth and final episode of seventh series aired on BBC1. Series 6 stands out to me as by far the weakest of the bunch, for a number of reasons, but it’s been over a year since I last saw it and I’m genuinely curious to see if it plays better on a second viewing. The thing about Waking the Dead is that the plots are often so convoluted that they require two or three viewings to work out what’s actually going on and simply enjoy the drama on its own merits.

In any event, Series 7, on the whole, constituted a definite step up from Series 6. It shared the same core cast of characters, the same producer, Colin Wratten, and the same head writer, Declan Croghan, but this time round, all but one of the six two-part storylines was at least worth a watch, even if the overall standard varied wildly from episode to episode. The stand-out, this time round, was Skin, a storyline involving a group of neo-Nazis connected with the murder of a gay Jewish man. The twist, which I’ll spoil here given that the episode in question has now aired, was that their victim had in fact infiltrated their group by posing as a skinhead himself, and has succeeded in infecting all of them with the AIDS virus by mixing his own blood into the pigment he then used to give them tattoos. It was a unique concept, and exceedingly well-told too, and I’m quite pleased with myself for managing to work out what was going on a good five minutes before it was revealed in the programme itself, which I think speaks well for its refusal to cheat the audience by throwing in a massive twist out of left field.

Unfortunately, Skin, and the first part of the final storyline, Pietà, were the only ones that I felt were up to the standards of the earlier series. It doesn’t speak well of the second two-parter that I actually had to look up LocateTV to remind myself what it had been about. On the other hand, the fifth storyline, Wounds, sticks in my mind for all the wrong reasons. Gimmicky in the extreme and confusing for its own sake, it was more along the lines of the previous series with its pseudo-mysticism, muddy structure and overuse of flashbacks. I also continue to be less than impressed by forensic pathologist Eve (Tara Fitzgerald), who joined the team last year and has so far been a less than riveting replacement for Holly Aird and Esther Hall. Part of the problem stems from the fact that she never seems to alter her facial expression or manner of delivery, to the extent that, when she actually gives a slight half-smile in the final episode, it’s something of a shock to discover that her mouth can actually make that shape.

In my review of Series 5, I criticised the increasingly exaggerated and unrealistic behaviour of the central character, Detective Superintendent Boyd (Trevor Eve), who would repeatedly bully his colleagues and extract confessions from suspects under duress. This behaviour escalated throughout the previous series to the extent that it became a running joke, so it was something of a relief that Series 7 went in the opposite direction, giving us an older, quieter, wearier Boyd than the one we’re used to seeing. The writers certainly reined in the character’s temper tantrums in this series, and likewise, Trevor Eve toned down his scenery-chewing in favour of brooding and scowling. He also, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t assault anyone this year, preferring instead to leave the strong-arming to his sergeant, Stella (Félicité Du Jeu).

This uncharacteristic calmness seems particularly strange when you consider that this was the very series in which Boyd might have been considered justified in flying off the handle, in that a storyline that has been lurking on the sidelines since the very beginning of the show, the disappearance of his son, was finally resolved. At the beginning of this series, his son, Luke (who I’m fairly sure was actually named Joe in Series 1), re-appeared, a homeless drug addict who Boyd spent the rest of the series intermittently running away from and trying to help. In some respects, I thought this storyline was quite effective, providing a reason for Boyd’s bizarre behaviour and also helping to tie what would have been six disparate storylines together, but at the same time I feel that it breaks the programme’s crucual tenet of never allowing us to see anything of the main characters’ personal lives.

The Luke storyline also created a far bigger problem for the rest of the series, because the writers seemed to insist on drawing parallels between Boyd’s relationship with his son and most of the cases the team were investigating. This led to a sense of repetition, not least with the continual emphasis on missing children and fathers’ dysfunctional relationships with their sons. It also meant that four of the six storylines involved a suspect, victim or witness who either was or was suggested to be gay: it is implied, at the end of the second storyline, that Luke is gay, or possibly working as a rent-boy to feed his drugs habit (the specifics of what we see are infuriatingly unclear), and, reading between the lines, I wonder to what extent we are meant to suspect that this in some way led to his estrangement from his father. The thing is, though, that Boyd may have been shown to be many things, but homophobic has never been one of them; actually, his views towards most aspects of humanity have always been characterised as fairly liberal. In the end, I don’t know what to think.

On the whole, though, what we got was an improvement on the previous year’s clumsy, wishy-washy series. I wouldn’t characterise any of it as essential viewing, except perhaps the Skin two-parter, but it proved to be an engaging enough distraction on Monday and Tuesday evenings for six weeks, and only two of the twelve hours I devoted to it (the Wounds two-parter) are ones that I consider to have been wasted.

Creator Barbara Machin’s newest project, another crime series under the title of Kiss of Death, airs next Monday, by the way. It’s being billed as a one-off 90-minute drama, although Waking the Dead started out very much in the same way, airing its two-part pilot episode in 2000 before returning for a full series in 2001. The advance buzz suggests that Machin is continuing her interest in non-linear storytelling, using an approach similar to that of the Casualty episodes she wrote for Christmas 2006.

Blu-ray review: Juno

For Juno, Fox have provided stellar audio-visual quality that ranks among the best they have produced for the Blu-ray format. While the bonus content is a little on the lightweight side, and the extra Digital Copy disc serves no discernible purpose, those who enjoyed the film can rest assured that they are getting a presentation of the highest standard and should have no qualms about picking up a copy.

For shizz! I cast my peepers over Juno, that wizard little sleeper hit about getting knocked up, given a totally boss Blu-ray release by 20th Century Fox. Okay, I’ll stop now.

Review at DVD Times.

Actually, it really is that bad

The illustrious Baron Scarpia has braved a fate worse than death and submitted himself to reading all thirteen of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comics. It was actually the Baron who first drew my attention to the world of rubbish Buffy comics in a post he made back in 2006, and, while I’m sure I’d have sought the Season 8 comics out regardless, I suspect that his, erm, appraisal of the comics available on the BBC web site probably served as something of a warning of just how bad things could get in comicdom. Therefore, I suppose I have him to thank for my experience with Season 8 not being as traumatic as it could have been. You see, my expectations had already been tempered somewhat by what I knew about the previous comics in this franchise, to the extent that I wasn’t particularly surprised by the poor quality of this official continuation. Still, I think my appreciation for the comics would have improved immensely had they included this delightful line from a piece of Buffy fan fiction, quoted by the Baron in his 2006 post:

The demon jumped into the air and landed in front of Buffy. “I know you Slayer. You cannot stop me. I shall defeat you then I shall fuck you to death.”

Is that poetry or is it poetry? Proof, perhaps, that Willow asking Satsu what Buffy is like in the sack (in Episode 13) is actually not the single most absurd conversation that could have been written.

Anyway, there’s a point to this post other than simply hawking a friend’s review (not that I wouldn’t have done that anyway - go and read it, it’s insightful and quite amusing). I want to take the time to reply to some of the issues raised in a comment left on of my own reviews of these comics. Basically, the visitor, Marc, felt that, in comparison with my reviews of other series and films, my Buffy reviews were a bit like something you might find in a “tawdry fan blog”, featuring over-analysis and without sufficient context given for those who are not followers of the show to understand what I was writing about.

I disagree with the first point, in that I don’t think my coverage of this series has been any more (over-)analytical than the other reviews I do. And if it is… well, let’s not forget that Buffy is a series that has gone out of its way to be very self-aware and referential towards pop culture. It’s the sort of thing that practically demands that you address it in an analytical way rather than just saying “I liked this, I didn’t like that”.

The other point, however - the lack of background explanation - is a perfectly valid one, however, and is a shortcoming of the Buffy project that I’ve become aware of over the course of re-reading some of the episode reviews recently. It’s quite true that there is a lack of context: if you don’t watch Buffy, most of the time you’ll have no idea what I’m talking abut in terms of characters, events or the mythology in general. In that respect, these reviews are very difficult, not to mention weaker, than the reviews I normally write. In my defence, when I began the Buffy project I wasn’t really writing the reviews for anything other than my own benefit. By the time I realised that this was a problem, however, it was too late to modify the tone of these capsules without going back to the beginning and starting over, something that I don’t feel particularly compelled to do, since it would necessitate yet another trip down memory lane, dredging up all the painful memories that come with it.

Tell you what - one of these days, I’ll sit down and write a summary-style review of each season, written with the assumption that the reader has no prior knowledge of the series in question.

Blu-ray brattiness

Unfortunately, high definition doesn’t make Juno MacGuff any less moody and obnoxious than her standard definition counterpart, but she, her posse and their surroundings certainly look considerably more detailed and lifelike, courtesy of one of 20th Century Fox’s best transfers to date. “Grain!” I hear you say. “Good!” I say. Juno has a look not unlike that of Atonement (HD DVD screen captures here), but is considerably less eroded, resulting in a far more satisfying experience overall. The clots at DVD Town, IGN (“Only marginally better than the standard [definition DVD]” - pffffft!) and the like may have been pretty lukewarm in their reactions to this transfer, but rest assured that Captain Whiggles will be giving it a glowing appraisal come review-time.

Juno
(20th Century Fox, USA, AVC, 26.9 GB)

DVD review: Mother of Tears

All things considered, Mother of Tears could so easily have been a much worse film than it is. As a conclusion to the Three Mothers trilogy, it’s not even remotely satisfying, paying lip service to various plot elements from the previous entries but failing to continue their thematic concerns in anything but the most superficial manner. Taken on its own terms, however, you have a pacey and at times very entertaining romp through various pieces of 70s and 80s horror iconography, bolstered by some stand-out set-pieces and gung-ho violence. It’s something of a reflection of how much times have changed that I can honestly say I enjoyed a Dario Argento film more as a fast, silly rollercoaster ride than as a work of art, but I prefer to look upon this as a “glass half full” endeavour. No, it’s not Suspiria or Inferno, but nor is it the disaster it could have been.

Three decades after starting his Three Mothers trilogy, Dario Argento comes full circle with Mother of Tears. I review Optimum’s R2 UK release.

DVD Review: Holby Blue: Series 1

Holby Blue seems to suffer from something of a crisis of identity. Piggy-backing on the success of a medical series, it masquerades as a police drama when in actual fact it seems to want to be nothing more than a soap. With The Bill running bi-weekly on rival network ITV and the likes of Waking the Dead and various American imports fulfilling the higher brow end of the market, it’s questionable whether there is really room for another police series, let alone one so unsure of its own target audience. It’s watchable enough, but it all seems a bit pointless, and, for all its surface gloss and high aspirations, doesn’t really seem to have anything fresh to say.

A police drama spun off a medical series, you say? Whatever next? I get out my magnifying glass and gives Series 1 of Holby Blue a grilling in the interrogation room.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 13: Wolves at the Gate, Part Two

Written by Drew Goddard; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

Another month, another wondrous Buffy comic. The previous issue was irksome because of the Buffy/Satsu nonsense, but this one is completely and utterly bloody infuriating. First of all, this episode has more Andrew in it than any previous one - Goddard must be in love with this character, and it’s one of my main reasons for my considering him to be utterly overrated as a writer. Seriously, it absolutely astounds me that he and illustrator Georges Jeanty have managed to make this character every bit as annoying on the page as he was on screen. That must constitute some sort of dubious special talent.

Secondly, the character of Xander continues to be run into the ground with the revelations, spoken (by Andrew) without a hint of jest, that he and Dracula “stayed in touch” post Buffy vs. Dracula, writing “the occasional letter here and there”. I mean, seriously. This is the Xander who, after freeing himself from Dracula’s spell, gave a bit speech about how he would never again be anyone’s butt-monkey. But even this pales in comparison to the statement that, after Anya’s death, Xander went to live with Dracula for several months because he “needed some guy time”. Oh, and taught Dracula how to ride a motorbike.

I know this shouldn’t really be surprising. The character of Xander was treated like absolute crap in the final two seasons of the TV series, and indeed Nicolas Brendon has since stated that, at around the beginning of Season 5, Joss Whedon essentially told him that his character arc was finished and was welcome to stay but shouldn’t expect any meaningful storylines (he only stuck around because he felt he needed the money). But this is a new low. It demonstrates, to me, that those involved have lost any interest in telling a believable story about people the audience can empathise with and instead are content to trade the core characters’ dignity in favour of a cheap laugh here and there.

By this stage, I was pretty close to tearing my comic in two and chucking the two halves in the bin, but I hadn’t even finished page 7 at this point, so against my better judgement I persevered. If I hadn’t kept going, I wouldn’t have got to enjoy the sight of Buffy completely blanking Satsu and barking orders at her, and a whole cavalcade of jokes suggesting a homosexual relationship between Xander and Dracula, each one more hilarious and mature than the last. Oh, and Willow pestering Satsu to tell her what Buffy’s like in the sack. That, by the way, comes after Satsu saying she knows Buffy’s not “a dyke”, surely the most tasteful piece of writing since that infamous deleted exchange in the Season 6 episode Dead Things where Tara sympathises with Buffy’s sordid relationship with Spike by pointing out “Sweetie, I’m a fag. I been there.” (You think I’m kidding? Just follow the link.)

Following this hearty recommendation, I’m sure you’ll all be rushing out to buy copies of this masterful work of literature. Myself, I’d cancel my pre-orders for Parts 3 and 4 of this four-part arc if I could.

So many discs, so little time

The last few days have heralded a shed-load of DVD and Blu-ray releases pouring through my letterbox, most of which I’ve scarcely had time to give more than a cursory glance. Most of them were free review copies, and a good thing too as I recently had to pay off my Graduate Endowment, so my coffers are looking a little empty at the moment.

First up, and one that I did pay for, was Sony Pictures’ UK Blu-ray release of Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It looks to feature a decent transfer for a catalogue title: detail is, on the whole, very good, but the tell-tale signs of grain reduction are consistently evident. At the moment, I’d peg it as being slightly better than the re-release of The Fifth Element, also from Sony, but more investigation will be needed.

Next up, on Saturday, Shameless Screen Entertainment’s UK DVD release of Piero Schivazappa’s trippy 60s shocker The Frightened Woman (a.k.a. Femina Ridens). As a nice surprise, they sent me a fully boxed copy rather than the “DVD in a paper wallet” affair that most of the UK studios favour, so I can savour the tacky artwork in all its, erm, glory.

Unfortunately, I can’t say anything particularly positive about the transfer. Yes, it looks considerably better than my old VHS dupe, but that’s not a fair or particularly realistic comparison. A more valid counterpoint would be Severin Films’ release of The Psychic, which had similarly poor image quality, with a lack of detail and what looked like a dodgy scaling job, manifesting itself in the form of jagged diagonal lines. I wonder what caused this. Perhaps both films were acquired from the same licensor, or perhaps both companies used the same (incorrectly set up) encoder? Either way, if I’d paid for a company to encode my film and it came back looking like this, I would have rejected it outright. In case anyone gets the wrong idea, this is nothing to do with the quality of the source materials, which, barring some tape-based inserts for scenes which wouldn’t be sourced from a print, appears to be in great shape. This issue here has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the way it has been treated at the authoring stage. Not impressed.

Also in the package was the 2-disc release of the first series of Holby Blue, from 2 Entertain (the BBC’s front for commercial exploitation via optical disc). This is interesting, because I recorded the entire series directly to my computer via my USB TV stick back when it first aired, so I had a point of comparison to refer to when examining the image quality. The results, which you can see by clicking the smaller images below, are quite surprising:

Example 1
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 2
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 3
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

That’s right: the DVD release is considerably more filtered than what was broadcast on BBC1. Obviously, there are considerably more compression artefacts in the captures taken from my off-air recordings - that’s not surprising, given the notoriously shoddy standard of BBC’s encoding (BBC1 has a fixed 6 Mbps bit rate to play around with, so there’s really no excuse). I am, however, surprised, by how much more detailed my recordings are. A further black mark against the DVD release is that 2 Entertain have unceremoniously lopped off the “Previously” and “Next week” segments at the start and end of each episode, sometimes incredibly badly: the music has noticeable jump cuts and generally reeks of shoddiness. Is it so unreasonable to expect a complete package when you shell out your hard-earned cash for a TV series that you already helped pay for with your robber baron tax? (Ignoring the fact that I got the DVD for free, and, not being a home-owner, don’t pay the robber baron tax.)

The final disc in this package of joy was Optimum’s UK release of Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears. Audio options are Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 English, with no subtitles, while the only extra is the trailer. Image quality (and I’m aware of sounding increasingly like a broken record here) is not too bad, but not too great either. There’s plenty of evidence of ringing as a result of brick wall filtering, and also a massive amount of noise reduction which robs the image of its natural grain. A couple of people who got advance copies of this disc mentioned that the film looked as if it had been shot on digital video, and I see what they mean. I wonder if Medusa’s Italian release (which doesn’t have any English audio options) looks any better?

This morning, I received an order from DVD Pacific containing the US release of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. This was an ITV adaptation of P.D. James’ novel of the same name (which I’m reading at the moment), starring Helen Baxendale and Annette Crosbie, and the DVD contains all four three-part episodes. My interest was piqued when I discovered that one of the three-parters was written by Barbara Machin, creator of Waking the Dead (the seventh series of which incidentally started tonight), so I decided to pick up this DVD set, fully aware that all four episodes feature standards converted transfers. This is, unfortunately, as far as I’m aware the only release of this programme on DVD, and beggars can’t be choosers. I won’t start watching till I’ve finished reading the book, though.

Finally - and this is where my luck with image quality finally changes - I also received a review copy of the US Blu-ray release of Juno. My good friend Peter M. Bracke opines that this is “a fairly good-looking presentation”, but as usual I beg to differ. This is definitely the best high definition transfer I’ve seen from 20th Century Fox so far, bearing in mind that I own fewer of their films than any of the other major studios. The source material is such that it won’t make you leap out of your seat, marvelling at all the detail on display, but even so it’s an excellent presentation of a fairly low-key, muted-looking film.

Expect full reviews of The Frightened Woman, Holby Blue, Mother of Tears and Juno at DVD Times before very much longer.

DVD review: Waking the Dead: Series 5

Waking the Dead’s fifth series is, on the whole, not up to the standard established by its predecessors, although it does offer some real gems of entertainment at various points throughout its 12-episode run. Like Boyd, the programme may not live in the real world and may at times baffle with its seemingly nonsensical twists and tangents, but, when it’s firing on all cylinders, the journey, however convoluted, is always an engaging one.

Waking the Dead’s seventh series begins airing tonight on BBC1, and, to coincide, I’ve reviewed 2 Entertain’s DVD box set of Series 5, containing all 12 episodes on six discs.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 12: Wolves at the Gate, Part One

Written by Drew Goddard; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

Note: Several of my thoughts on this issue were previously worked out in an email exchange with my good friend Baron Scarpia.

Wow.

I take it most people know the phrase “jumping the shark”. In case you don’t, Wikipedia describes it as

a colloquialism used by U.S. TV critics and fans to denote the point at which the characters or plot of a TV series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline. Such a show is typically deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has “jumped the shark” fans sense a noticeable decline in quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm.

Now that we know what it means to jump the shark, my question is can a series jump the shark more than once? Or do you have to jump over some other form of sealife? A Blue Whale, perhaps? By my reckoning, Buffy the Vampire Slayer jumped the shark at some point during Season 6, either with the episode Wrecked or Hell’s Bells. (Others might argue for the final scene of Seeing Red, but as far as I’m concerned it was past the point of no return before that episode anyway.) Still, I now find myself in the unfortunate position of having experienced an event that makes all Buffy’s past transgressions seem minor in comparison. This is worse than magic!crack Willow, worse than the comedy rape of Spike, worse than Buffy juggling, worse than the murder of Tara, even worse than the yellow crayon speech. And no, I’m not referring to the sight of Xander flying around in a helicopter that looks like a fish-bowl.

Buffy just screwed another woman.

I specifically chose to say “screwed” rather than “had sex with”, “slept with”,* “got jiggy with” or any number of other hilarious euphemisms, and the reason for this should become clear in due course. First of all, a little back-story. To briefly set the stage, one of the junior Slayers in Buffy’s squad is a young woman called Satsu, who is fairly blatantly in love with Buffy. I’m not just talking about a crush here - I’m talking full-on true lurve. The reason we know this is that, in an early issue, Amy cast a spell on Buffy which sent her to sleep, and, in typical Buffyland fashion, it had an escape clause built in: she would wake up if someone truly in love with her kissed her. Well, that someone turned out to be Satsu (although this was so unclear in the actual comic book panels that it had to be revealed in retrospect in a “Letters to the Editor” section after several readers wrote in asking who had awakened Buffy). In the most recent issue, Episode 11, Buffy had a long chat with her in which she explained that, while she was flattered, that wasn’t her thing. Fair enough. Cue Episode 12, and what does Buffy do?

She has sex with Satsu. For real.

This is horrible on so many levels it isn’t funny. There are a few ways you can attempt to spin this plot development, and none of them do the character of Buffy or Joss Whedon and his merry band of writers any favours. But here goes:

Theory 1. After being fed seven years’ worth of evidence to the contrary, we are now being told that Buffy is in fact attracted to women. It worked for Willow, after all.

Theory 2. Buffy has learnt nothing from the abominable manner in which she treated Spike in Season 6, and is proceeding to do much the same to another person, using them for a quick lay despite the fact that they want more out of it than a quick orgasm. Now do you see why I used the word “screwed”?

Theory 3. 2 grls 2gether = teh s3xy = $$$.

Yep, sorry, guys - I think Theory 3, probably with a bit of Theory 2 thrown in for good measure, is the most likely. The publisher suggested that retailers order more copies than normal for this issue. You do the math(s).

(Incidentally, I once read a very funny piece of intentionally absurd fan fiction which culminated in, for want of a better description, a gang bang involving a good 95% of the female characters in Buffyland. It’s some measure of how low this series has descended that, if Joss Whedon served this scene up as it exists in Issue 13, I wouldn’t even do a double take.)

So, we now find ourselves in a situation where the heroine of the tale is, in all likelihood, so callous and heartless that she is willing to toy with a friend/underling’s emotions in a manner that is utterly reprehensible and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to continue to root for her. Okay, so Seasons 6 and 7 did a pretty solid job of stripping Buffy of every ounce of humanity, but until now I still held on to a rather slim hope that she might have learned from her mistakes and realised that it’s not good to treat your friends as commodities that are devoid of feelings of their own, and can be picked up and used to scratch an itch, then immediately dumped. I really shouldn’t be surprised, though - it’s not as if there have ever been proper consequences for bad behaviour in Buffy, regardless of the writers’ endless pontificating to the contrary.

Perhaps I’m taking this all a bit too seriously? After all, it’s only entertainment, and at least on some level this episode was clearly written with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek (and yes, a lot of it is genuinely funny, considerably more so than any previous issue). Maybe I should lighten up and just see this as a bit of a laugh, a bit of outrageous fan fiction that really isn’t any better or worse than 99% of the other fan-written jaunts you can find for free on the web. Only it’s not fan fiction, and it’s not free. It’s also rather depressing to watch characters who I have developed some degree of affection for over the years being used for such cheap ploys. I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that these comics aren’t worth my time or money, and that I would be better served by cancelling my subscription and devoting the cash I save to something that actually gives me some degree of enjoyment.

Oh, and incidentally, what happened to the searing animosity between Willow and Buffy? The only thing worse than creating insincere conflict is creating insincere conflict and then not following up on it. (Hmm, sounds like Season 7 described in a nutshell.)

* Pointless aside: did I ever mention how much the euphemism “slept with” makes me roll my eyes? I’d imagine sleeping is that last thing either party will be doing. Which reminds me of a great exchange in the Season 5 episode Intervention:

Willow: Um… Buffy, this thing with Spike, i-i-it isn’t true, is it? You didn’t, you know, sleep with Spike?
Buffybot: No. I had sex with Spike.

Ah, happier times.

And thus the cycle of grief continues

Baron Scarpia has reviewed Norbit. As you may remember, this was part of a wager into which we entered: he would watch and review Norbit, but only on the condition that I watch and review Freddy Got Fingered.

As the good Baron himself acknowledges, I probably got the worse end of the deal, but only just. Read his review to see what he thinks of this fascinating indictment of the fact that Eddie Murphy is for some inexplicable reason still allowed to make films.

I’ve got the (Holby) blues

The BBC1 police drama series Holby Blue started its second series on Thursday night (the first of twelve episodes). I discussed this distant relation of Casualty and its spin-off, Holby City, just under a year ago when the first series began airing, but for some reason forgot to give my appraisal of it once the series had finished. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, I’ll briefly sum up my feelings here: essentially, it was enjoyable but highly variable, falling uncomfortably between a drama and a soap opera in much the same manner as its parent shows. Its biggest problem, I suspect, is that the use of the “Holby” brand name gave viewers false expectations, because, while it does share certain tonal elements with Casualty and Holby City, it was ultimately a more mature and, dare I say it, more intelligent programme than either of these two stalwarts of the schedule are at the moment.

On the flip-side, I do wonder if perhaps the powers that be shot themselves in the foot by failing to provide strong links between this show and its predecessors beyond the title itself. Barring a very brief and inconsequential visit to Accident & Emergency at the beginning of the first episode, there was absolutely no interaction between the programmes. Frequent mentions of A&E and trips to the hospital (supposedly the same one, but fairly clearly filmed on a different set) to interrogate injured suspects notwithstanding, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the executives in charge of branding said something along the lines of “Hey, we’ve got yet another cop show and we don’t know how to sell it. Which show that pulls in decent viewing figures can we tenuously link it to?”

The Season 2 premiere, therefore, did a significantly better job of selling this as a series taking place in the same world as its parent shows than anything in Season 1. The central concept was that of a two-part storyline, starting on Holby City on the Tuesday and continuing on Holby Blue on the Thursday, involving one of the former’s regular characters, registrar Jac Naylor, because accused of murder and hauled down to the local nick for a grilling. As written by both shows’ respective creators and showrunners, Tony McHale and Tony Jordan, the two-parter surpassed my expectations considerably, and a lot of this, I think, is down to Rosie Marcel, who plays Jac. She’s a decent actor, and has successfully sold the character as a ruthless, selfish, borderline psychopath throughout her two-year tenure on the show. It’s difficult to play a villain, particularly for so long, and have them remain engaging, not to mention convincing, and I think crucial to the character’s success has been the fact that Rosie Marcel recognises that her character is an absolute cow with little or no redeeming qualities. In recent years, both Casualty and Holby City have fallen into the trap of featuring characters who can only be described as absolutely loathsome, hoping that their insertion into the mix will stir up some drama (note to writers: “drama” does not always necessarily equal “conflict”), something which is continually undercut by an irritating habit, on the part of the writers, of suddenly transforming the aforementioned villains into angels, once they have exhausted all potential use of them as villains but can’t bear to let go of the people playing them. Often, when asked about these characters, the actors playing them will attempt to claim that they are simply misunderstood, a trap which Marcel has so far not fallen into, continually stressing in interviews that her character is absolutely loathsome and that she is not at all like her.

Anyway, Holby Blue did the impossible and made me feel sorry for Jac. That the character is more or less devoid of anything approaching human empathy makes this an all the more impressive feat, but watching her crumble in the interview room, when it became clear that the case against her was airtight, was actually genuinely moving. To use a tired cliché, it showed a different side to the character, and yet at the same time avoided falling into the trap of having her break down in histrionics (a tearful “I don’t understand” was sufficient to convey what was going through her mind). To the experienced viewer, it was obvious from the start that Jac was innocent (and, given that the actress has just signed another one-year contract, the character was hardly going to be convicted of murder), so the outcome was never in any real doubt, but, even so, the writers skilfully wove in an intriguing twist that seemed to come out of the blue and yet still made perfect sense.

The episode, as a whole, was far from perfect. Along the way, we had to endure the risible sight of a bobby barking like a dog in order to lure a criminal out of an attic (this sort of thing doesn’t even make sense written down, let alone filmed), and someone really ought to take Zoë Lucker aside and explain to her that it’s okay to make more than one facial expression. Still, the Jac Naylor case, as well as the seemingly unrelated storyline involving an assault victim that they successfully wove into it, were strong enough for me to overlook these irritations. It’s always nice when a series that is considered safe and undemanding manages to surprise you with a genuinely thoughtful and moving storyline, and, while I am of no doubt that the two shows will now go their separate ways and not interact again (at least until the next time a rating boost is called for), I’m now sufficiently optimistic about the remaining eleven episodes.

Incidentally, the first series of Holby Blue is coming out on DVD this April 21st. While I would welcome the opportunity to watch these episodes again, part of me is livid that this show, which is less than a year old, is already getting a DVD release, while BBC have yet to release any DVDs for Holby City (I would probably welcome the first two and a half series), or Casualty beyond its third series. Given that Casualty, at its peak, was pulling in 16 million viewers per week while Holby Blue struggled to hit 5 million during its first series, I’m not sure I see the logic.

Je ne regrette rien

This evening, I watched Olivier Dahan’s biopic of Édith Piaf, La Môme (La Vie en Rose outside its native France), and I have to confess I found the experience to be a bit like eating at one of those nouveau cuisine restaurants: the meal was impeccably designed and very artistically arranged on the plate, but it left me unsatisfied.

I know more or less who Édith Piaf was, but none of the specifics. After watching the film, I can’t say I know any more about her than I did before. Oh, I know she grew up in a brothel, that she was a heavy drinker, that she had an affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan… I can recite all manner of factoids about her life, but I can’t tell you anything about Édith Piaf the person, or what made her tick. Part of the problem, I think, is that this is less a sustained narrative and more a series of unconnected vignettes from various stages in her life. I suppose that is, to some extent, unavoidable when you’re making a biopic, particularly one which attempts to span the duration of the subject’s life, but I suspect more could have been done to give the various events depicted greater meaning. Why does it matter, for instance, that she spent her formative years in a brothel, or that she was briefly her father’s assistant at the circus, or that her first manager was murdered by mobsters and she herself was initially suspected of involvement? None of it gives the impression of adding to our understanding of the character, and, when the credits began to roll, I ultimately found myself wondering “So what?”

Would it all have made more sense if I had had a stronger knowledge of Édith Piaf before going into the film? Perhaps, but, in that case, I would still feel that the film had failed to convey the essence of the character. I’m a big believer in films having to hold up on their own merits rather than requiring any external baggage to be brought to the table. If having additional external knowledge about a person or an event enhances your appreciation for a film, so much the better, but if a lack of prior insight prevents the film from coming together as a cohesive whole, as I suspect is the case here, then I believe the filmmakers haven’t done their jobs properly. Olivier Dahan is undeniably skilled behind the camera, as the film is absolutely gorgeous from start to finish, and I feel that he and cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata were overlooked at the BAFTAs and Oscars (Nagata, did, however, bag himself a César), failing to garner even a nomination in that category. He also extorts fine performances from his cast, in particularly (and most obviously) Marion Cotillard in the role of Piaf, but I get the sense that, at a basic level, the script itself is the loose thread in this tapestry.

As a point of comparison, another film released in 2007 that I recently watched was Across the Universe. For those who don’t know, Across the Universe is a musical set at the time of the Vietnam war, its soundtrack comprised entirely of Beatles songs. Now, the thing is - and this is going to reveal just how pop culture unaware I am - I assumed they were original compositions for the film. I didn’t realise they were Beatles songs until they started singing All You Need is Love… and the only reason I knew that wasn’t an original composition was because I’d previously heard elements of it in Moulin Rouge! The point I’m trying to make with this little detour is that I completely missed the point of the film, and yet was still hugely entertained by it. It doesn’t matter whether you understand the context of the songs in Across the Universe or not: they’re enjoyable in their own right, and the plot and characters are engaging enough to captivate you from start to finish.

You don’t get that with La Môme. Instead, the impression I get is that we, the audience, are being fed a whole lot of moments from a person’s life and left to work out their significance (if indeed there is any significance to them - it is a biopic, after all, and as such is largely limited to portraying what really happened, and what really happened doesn’t necessarily mean anything) without any attention being paid to whether or not a layman will be able to make anything of them. Maybe I’m not the target audience, but I do tend to think you should be able to enjoy a film without having any prior knowledge of the subject matter.

So, in the end, what we have is a very nicely shot film, coupled with an extremely impressive (and deservedly award-winning) performance from Cotillard, who transforms herself in the truest sense of the word. (One of my co-workers told me he couldn’t believe it when he saw her arriving on stage to collect her Oscar, as, until that point, he had no idea of what she actually looked like.) It’s not just hair and make-up, though: it’s a truly brilliant piece of acting that doesn’t even feel like a performance. (I do think it’s a shame, though, that her singing was dubbed over with Piaf’s. It detracts from the realism, and apparently her own singing, briefly heard in various behind the scenes pieces, was pretty impressive in its own right.) La Môme is worth seeing for that reason alone, but as a whole, it’s an uneven and often frustrating piece of work.

DVD review: Tragic Ceremony

It’s difficult to recommend Tragic Ceremony to all but the most dedicated collectors of European cult cinema. While labels such as Dark Sky are to be commended for salvaging so many rare and forgotten titles, this is one case where I’m not convinced that the effort was actually worth it. About the strongest case I can make for this release is that I found the Camille Keaton interview to be a delight which almost made the film itself worth slogging through. Almost.

I yawn my way through Tragic Ceremony, a plodding and ineptly made Italian shocker starring Camille “I Spit on Your Grave” Keaton. Review courtesy of DVD Pacific.

Aw, gimme a break

Back in January 2004, I wrote a review for DVD Times of Freddy vs. Jason, that monumental melding of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises, culminating in a grand showdown between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Back then, I gave it a 7/10 rating, which on my scale equates to “good”.

The problem, unfortunately, is that the film is not good by any stretch of the imagination. I knew this back then, but was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt for two reasons: (a) it’s of the “so bad it’s good” variety, and (b) there’s something undeniably entertaining about watching these two icons of the horror genre whomping on each other during the climactic fight.

Unfortunately, this is the moment when, tail between my legs, I come crawling back, wishing to retract my previous review and beg for forgiveness. You see, I rewatched Freddy vs. Jason the other night for the first time in four years, and it’s not so bad it’s good - it’s just bad…

From start to finish, this film is staggeringly ineptly written, shot and acted. I understand that writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have been handed the keys to the kingdom and are penning Michael Bay’s Friday the 13th remake - which, if true, may do the impossible and make the original look good in comparison. Their script for Freddy vs. Jason is absolutely cringe-inducing, essentially consisting of 85 minutes of painfully contrived filler serving as nothing more than an excuse for the 10-minute fight around which the film has been marketed, and along the way we have to endure a pitifully unconvincing explanation as to why these two villains from separate franchises come into contact, not to mention a gaggle of annoying twentysomethings pretending to be sixteen-year-olds spouting lame exposition and just generally disgracing themselves. Here are some choice examples of the dialogue they spout (handily cribbed from IMDB so I didn’t have to actually make my way through the film again):

Freddy: The only thing to fear, is fear himself!

Kia: Oh, God, y’all, two killers? We’re not safe awake or asleep.

Mark: “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” Do you know why they sing that? Because that’s when he comes for you.

Freddy: You’re slow… you’re stupid… and you got no style!

And last but not least:

Kia (to Freddy): So you’re the one everyone’s afraid of? Tell me something. What kind of faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater? I mean, come on. Get real. You’re not even scary. [adopts sing-song voice] Ya not even scaaaary! [resumes normal voice] And let’s talk about the butter knives. What is with the butter knives? You trying to compensate for something? Maybe coming up a little short there between the legs, Mr. Krueger? I mean, you got these teensy-weensy little things, and Jason got this big ol’ thing…

Simply for writing and performing this garbage, I believe that the writers and actors should each have their respective Writers’ Guild and Screen Actors’ Guild cards confiscated permanently. Please note, though, that I use the words “writers” and “actors” loosely. When your cast consists of John Ritter’s son, a Destiny’s Child singer and a former Dawson’s Creek actress, it’s not exactly surprising that Robert Englund, doing the comedy Krueger of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare rather than the more menacing figure of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street or Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, is the least clown-like of the bunch.

So, seriously, guys, I apologise for the earlier review. I don’t know what I was thinking. All I can say is that we all get it wrong sometimes, but honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got it that wrong.