Not-so-Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book I read on my own and is very special to me. It was therefore with no small amount of trepidation that I approached Wes Anderson's version of Roald Dahl's classic book. However, I quite like Wes Anderson's movies, their gentle touch, sumptuous visuals and unabashedly slow and odd dialogue. So how bad could it be?

Well, pretty bad. Fantastic Mr Fox looks beautiful. It's just a shame that Anderson has shoved American and British culture together with little thought to his source material- one of the most British stories possible. The bad guys have British accents (awesomely played though) whilst the animals are voiced by Americans and include several animals native to America. The music is nearly all American. Anderson even takes the fantastic distinctive British stylings of Mr Jarvis Cocker and gets him to sing an American country fireside song. The British pub, town and train seemed incongruous on what appeared to be a very American countryside, whilst the dialogue was full of American terms and ideas. Did Mr Anderson think we wouldn't notice? Or was his only thought that the cultures would blend seamlessly as far as less internationally culturally aware US audiences were concerned? Why did he even bother with the small whiffs of Britain?

This is not a children's film. Sure, it lacks violence, swearing and sex , but it's dialogue - laden with adult psychology and Latin jokes is too cumbersome for children. Somehow the tale of an arrogant, cunning fox became another of Anderson's stories about a loving dysfunctional yet indie-cool American family. Not exactly something to keep the kids' attention. In extending the book to film length Anderson has naturally made some embellishments. Plot-wise these are still in keeping with Dahl's premise, but his world-building is somewhat strange. His animals inhabit a human-like world of clothes, professions and chemistry lessons, but yet the rules of this world are never fully explained or adhered to. Most annoying for me was the inclusion of Kylie, an opossum (not native to the UK) who fulfilled the standard Anderson role of platonic, odd pseudo family member. Why did soft spoken Kylie join in the raids and not -as-in-the-book- Mr Badger - an equally well developed character? In short Dahl's story lost out to Anderson's sense of style and snail pace.

Fantastic Mr Fox is a lovely Wes Anderson film about indie-American family values, portrayed in a beautiful environment, rich with style and pathos. A Roald Dahl film for kids it is not.

Fantastic Mr Fox - where 'Roald Dahl' is too obscure

'Based on the book by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. What a ridiculous mouthful for a tagline! Is it just me or does it also cheerfully imply that audiences only know the Roald Dahl *films*? Worrying, very worrying. The Return of the King - based on the book by the author of 'The Two Towers'
Edit: grammar baby!

The Room - all glory to Tommy Wiseau!

I have now seen The Room in all its jaw-dropping brilliance three times and I feel I must recommend it here. I cannot begin to describe just how bad this film is. You just couldn't make a film this bad if you tried and this is integral to its genius. Seriously, at any given nanosecond you are torn into a thousand atoms trying to establish if *anything* is correct with the scene you are watching. There is not a section of the movie-making process that is correct. From the editing, directing, acting, writing, lighting, set, music, cuts, plot, costumes everything is gloriously, wonderfully wrong. It is little wonder that it is a cult film.

The first time I saw The Room, I spent the entire film with my jaw open struggling desperately to work out what was going on [1]. As the glorious travesty unfurled I found that every time I managed to just about establish what the intended plot was, I was struck lightening like by yet another stand-alone piece of continuity/lighting/acting/directing error. I laughed only when I could, for there was not space to breathe and assess the next moment of filmic confusion and arrogance.

The Room requires at least 2 watchings for it is almost impossible to form a heckle whilst digesting the next onslaught of stunning failure. Of course some bits are more painful that others. Why are footballs only thrown 3ft? Why must we have so many sex scenes that last the length of the soft-rock soundtrack? Why is Johnny humping his girlfriend's hip? Why does everyone keep turning up and walking in and out again? What happened to the drugs/drug money? Who was the psychologist? Where the hell was Johnny from? What about the cancer? And the baby? Spoon! Johnny is Christ getting a blow job? What is wrong with Denny? What happened to the very specific pizza? Why doesn't Denny use a chair? Why are they wearing tuxes? The questions, like The Room 's panning shots across San Francisco will never end. Nor should they. Watch this film, it's good for your soul.

Brickyard jimmy says it all better than I ever could.

[1] In fact a friend, during his first viewing was forced to split one character into two to try and aid his comprehension of what-was-going-on.

If Chins Could Kill -how to inspire the would be B list

I recently finished If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B movie actor by Bruce Campbell. Hopefully Mr Campbell is known to most people as the King of the B movie (Especially the Evil Dead series) but is also a veteran of that other 'B' media: TV, in this case Xena and Hercules. The book chronicles his childhood and his erratic career, which has allowed him to cross paths with many well known names as well as be a first hand witness the elevation of colleague Sam Raimi to Hollywood 'A' director. However, as Mr Campbell is forever pointing out, his book is about the people not seen in front of the screen or at premières. It seems a shame therefore that most of his anecdotes still revolve around the more famous names (with the exception of his Evil Dead comrades). That isn't to say he panders to the Hollywood elite in any fashion. His book is both funny, insightful and quite inspired me to keep making amateur films. His tone cheerfully allows him to acknowledge his critics and his failures with both humour and honesty and it endears him to the reader. Bruce may be many things, but a writer he is not. I found the memoirs rambled around with space dedicated to not always relevant moments, anecdotes and opinions. I also found several sections quite flat, if not repetitive. The addition of photos, diagrams and lists hid quite a few of these faults and allowed the book to maintain it's cheery, non-snobbish outlook.

I enjoyed chins. It made me laugh and as the very kind person who gifted it to me hoped, it inspired me. As even Bruce would put it, 'If these idiots, can make a film and sell it, why can't I?[1]'. So, if you like films, read this book. Don't expect a literary masterpiece but rather a scrapbook of humorous anecdotes and nuggets of knowledge about the antics of Hollywood's middle-class and you won't be disappointed.

[1] Who needs 'Man with the screaming brain'? 'Woman plagued by teleporting gummi bears!' - a Chemie production!

Moon - keeping it retro on the dark side of

Last night I saw Duncan Jones's film Moon. Set on -you guessed it- the moon, it follows single astronaut Sam (Sam Rockwell[1]) as he finishes up his 3 year contract drilling for Helium and prepares to head home. Of course nothing is quite as it seems and soon Sam is faced with the sort of booming questions that echo across thousands of sci-fi tomes. Who or what is he? Sam is accompanied by GERTY, the as-standard talking robot who earns the audience's instant mistrust by being the same race as HAL, but the film remains for the most part a one-actor film. Moon was clearly cheap to make (by Hollywood standards) and the bouncing models and limited set nicely reflect the 70s thinking-man's sci-fi such as Silent Running or Dark Star the film attempts to emulate.

Whilst Moon doesn't really have twists, you can easily spoil the plot by knowing too much about it. Unfortunately, I had sussed out the situation about 30 minutes before Sam began to get close to it and felt a little cheated. Have I read or seen too much Sci-Fi? I suspect that a gentle exposition was more in tone with the film's slow pace and implication that time was dripping past and subsequently I wasn't meant to be surprised. I loved the retro set, the inherent claustrophobia it brought and the crumpled mess of marker pens, duvet suits and post-its that was Sam's 'home'. I was also very impressed by the decidedly Amstrad looking GERTY, who managed some fine acting with nothing but emote icons.

My greatest problem with Moon is that whilst it is a beautifully shot, well acted, much needed antithesis to recent blockbuster sci-fi films such as Transformers, I can't bring myself to like it. I never liked Silent Running or it's ilk. Deep thinking Sci-fi books have annoyed me more than interested me for years and I have always wanted to fire photons whenever Star Trek brought up a philisophical episode. This somewhat dulled my enjoyement of Moon, I had a real sense of 'seen it before - got anything new to say/do?'. If you don't have such strong feelings about Sci-fi pondering, go and see Moon. Even if you do, go and see some fine film-making . Just don't think too hard about the antagonist's motives they, unlike the big philosophical questions posed by the film really don't stand up to lengthy consideration.

[1] I met a lovely man called Rockwell Flint once. Possibly the most awesome name EVER.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - How Hollyoaks does it better

I'm not sure how you could not know the plot by now, but spoilers for anything Potter

I like Harry Potter films, there is something cosy and Sunday afternoonish about them and I always get a little tingle in my spine when that melody kicks in. I even just about forgive the atrocity that was film 2, mostly because it taught all future directors and writers that they were going to have to slice and dice the books to make a decent film. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince sees Harry and friends return for another year of education, adolescent development and fighting Lord Voldemort. Film 6 is as much about the raging hormones as it is about the raging battle between good and evil outside the school walls. Large amounts of film time are dedicated to the teen-angst relationships between the teenage heroes. The problem is the actors aren't very good at portraying it. Ginny in particular drove me mad with her very strange motherly seduction techniques. Shoelace tying only works with naughty smile when kneeling down and mince pie feeding is sort of sexy if you don't precede it with a matronly 'open up'. Poor Ginny managed to exude fewer (admittedly adolescently incompetent) 'come hither' messages in the entire film than the waitress sweetly managed in 2 minutes. Quiditch and Ron's relationship with Lavender (wonderfully hammed up) is all well and good, but mentioning that people are dying and disappearing outside the walls might also have been relevant.

The relationship between Harry and Ginny was eventually OKed by Ron via Hermione as an afterthought during the Empire-Strikes-Back-window framing final scene. Why go to all that painful effort for one throw-away sentence? That among with a few other strange cuts, such as the hourglass and the burning newspaper has led me to believe that several parts of the film that were shot were edited out. Sections of the book were also cut, the Tonks subplot, the Ministry politicking, Bill Weasley and the Dursleys plus all the staring into the swirly memory bowl has thankfully been minimised. References to previous books were present without further painful exposition (Aragog, the marauder's map, Harry's parents). But two points were strangely absent: Sirius, (something of an important figure to Harry) was barely mentioned or grieved for and the fight in the castle was completely missing, having been mostly transferred to the Weasley home. The last I found to be the most confusing; it seemed that Draco had been filling his time (and a portion of the film) with his efforts around the cabinets, so that the deatheaters could arrive and provide...moral support?

Film 6 is the set up for book 7 (films 7+8 if you will) and it truly felt darker and more epic. The young cast look and act like nearly-adults (although hilariously Neville looks about 30) ready to unsteadily face the world. Broadbent's Slughorn worked perfectly and Draco's change from snide bully to a far more dangerous,clever and scared foe was well handled. So the younger actors are erratic and they could learn something about portraying teen relationships from the cast of Hollyoaks. But the cast of Hollyoaks isn't sharing a screen with the pitch perfect royalty of British acting, where nearly anyone is going to look weak. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is a solid lead into the final book, lets hope the actors practice their goo-goo eyes and body language before it starts filming.