The Coma (Alex Garland, 2004)

Faced with a sunny Bank Holiday Monday on my own, I decided to venture out into town for a spot of shopping and, since our balcony rarely catches the sun, I took a book along to read in the one nice grassy area I know of in the centre of Leeds. I picked The Coma, as it's a slim volume, light to carry and I didn't want anything either physically or metaphorically heavy. I enjoyed Garland's The Beach, and although I've read The Tesseract, I can't say I remember anything about it, so this The Coma, his third and latest novel (from 2004, he's been writing screenplays since then) completes the set. 

Several hours later and I've finished The Coma, which must be some kind of record for me. It's incredibly easy to read, and each 'chapter' is only around 6 or fewer pages long, divided up by full-page illustrations by Nicholas Garland, the author's father. I don't know how long the book is, as there are no page numbers, a part of the effect of the whole. Told in the first person by 'Carl', the first passage sees the narrator beaten up on a tube train, and from there the mystery rapidly unfolds. Is Carl awake, in a coma, dreaming? It feels a little like Ashes to Ashes in the way Garland keeps any truth from seeping through. 

The disjointed 'chapters', with their creepy woodcut illustrations, and the spare prose creates an eerie, suitably dreamlike quality. It's an approach that urged me to read on, and devour more nuggets of Carl's life. It's the sort of book I would read again (it wouldn't take long!), looking for clues, but I don't think there is any real resolution and answer to be found. I suppose the book is somewhat philosophical, without being pretentious, and the ending is oddly satisfying yet oddly not. The Coma is not just a novel, it's an experience, one which I would recommend to anyone.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Yesterday I watched the fifties' The War of the Worlds, and today was the turn of that decade's The Day the Earth Stood Still, another portentiously titled piece of sci-fi about aliens visiting Earth. While the Martians in War were alien-looking and bent on destroying all they came into contact with, the singular human-looking alien lifeform in Day, Klaatu, and his robotic assistant Gort, are here to save the Earth from itself. Or rather, to save his planet and others from the violent inclinations of the third rock from the Sun.

Where War explored themes of weapons/science vs god, here the Cold War serves as a backdrop to a cautionary morality tale about the nature of war itself. Klaatu lands his saucer in Washington D.C. and is shot in the shoulder when attempting to present a gift, from here on his visit to our planet is not a particularly happy one. Hysteria leads to his being hunted down like a monster, while he tries to blend in and learn about the people he is trying to save. To do this he rents a room in boarding house and gets to know little Bobby (one of those perfect fifties kids who says 'gee' and is generally agreeable, have they ever existed outside of movies?) and his mother Helen. He also tries to get in touch with every leader on the planet to impart his wisdom about how to save their future, but due to Cold War tensions, the world's leaders won't play ball, so he tries his luck with leading scientists.

There's more going on here than in the War of the Worlds, at least in the script, if not in terms of action, and for this I believe it's the superior film. Again starring a load of unknowns, the actings better than in War, and Michael Rennie gives the character of Klaatu a quiet dignity as he faces the sheer stupidity of mankind and it's resistance to be saved. It's a subtly that I assume will be missing in Keanu Reeves' 2008 portrayal in the remake. The 1951 movie can quiet rightly be called a classic of the science fiction genre.

The Grifters (Jim Thompson, 1963)

There's a link between my last post, about the movie Choke, and the book I've just skipped through in 3 days, The Grifters. Can you guess what it is? That's right, Anjelica Huston starred in both film adaptations! Full points if you got that right. So there's another of Huston's back catalogue I've yet to see, an Oscar nominated one too. 

And so to the book... I took this slim volume to read while I was travelling to and from Liverpool last week and it was a cracking read, the sort of book I could pick up for 5 minutes and read in litle bursts, thus reading much of it in two days of Easter laziness. The book opens with grifter Roy Dillon reeling from a slug to the stomach that subsequently almost kills him - it's a great opener and really grabbed me to read more. The book follows Roy's recovery, filling in his backstory along the way, and charts his relationship with his usually absent mother Lilly, just 14 years his senior, also a con artist within the field of horse racing, and with girlfriend Moira Langtry, who also turns out to be a fan of the long con. A nurse named Carol with a past in a concentration camp also appears for awhile before disappearing again. 

Roy's relationship with these two main women in his life is complicated, and his assault and recovery makes him reassess his grifting ways. The trouble is it's difficult to know who he can trust, and how he should or should not get out of the game. Thompson keeps the story zipping along in an unfussy style, drawing the reader into this grifting ménage a trois and making you care what happens to each of them. Unfortunately, the end ain't pretty. And another link with the film Choke shows itself as the book goes on, the main character has mummy issues, although Roy Dillon's are a little more Oedipal than Victor's...

Choke (2008)

I was drawn to Choke in the schedules by the presence of Sam Rockwell, an actor I could watch in anything. I find him curiously attractive and he's usually to be found in interesting roles (see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Welcome to Collinwood, Galaxy Quest, Lawn Dogs...), rarely in anything you could call 'typical'. Anyway, this film turned out to be based on Chuck 'Fight Club' Palahniuk's novel, although it shares nothing in tone or execution with the former movie. 

Choke is a pretty good comedy, with Rockwell on fine form as the lead, Victor, a sex addict who works as a historical re-enactor and is a small time con artist too, in order to pay for the fees at the private clinic in which his mother resides. Said mother is played by Anjelica Huston, who I've not seen in enough movies (she'll always be Morticia Addams to me, although I know she's an Oscar winning actress), who has dementia and often doesn't recognise her son. There are flashbacks to his youth and Huston has the years peeled away to effectively play twenty years younger, showing what a bad mother she was - she seemed to abandon Victor to foster mothers and then go on the run - she was some sort of activist (at one point letting imprisoned zoo animals free, causing Victor to be mauled by a lynx) - the backstory is never really fleshed out though, so leaving just the idea of neglect rather than anything too explicit.

Talking of explicit, there are way too many shots of boobs in this movie for me, as Victor pictures the women he's had sex with topless now and then, plus his best friend (a compulsive masturbator) has a relationship with a stripper. All of this possibly makes Choke sound like a Farrelly Brothers style gross out comedy, but it's not so gross and has a bit more to say. I'm not sure it says it loud enough though, and occasionally doesn't know whether to be comedy or drama, with several awkward moments - not least when (spoilers!) Victor seemingly chokes his mother (accidentally) at the end and discovers his love interest (American accented Kelly Macdonald) isn't really a doctor but rather a patient at the mental facility. The comedy sometimes obscures the emotional heart of the film that tries to beat through, that of Victor's abandonment issues and his relationship with his mother, who continues to forget him through dementia as she did through his childhood through neglect. Yet mother and son love each other. 

Choke was a good movie, and I really enjoyed the performances, particularly Rockwell and Huston, but there's something about the uneven tone that would stop me revisiting it and calling it excellent. 

The War of the Worlds (1953)

A couple of weeks ago Channel 4 put on some classic sci fi films over consecutive days, as they often do from time to time, and I recorded three of them - well I nearly did until I realised I've seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers already! The first one I watched was the original movie adaptation of HG Wells' The War of the Worlds from 1953. I've seen the Steven Spielberg directed, Tom Cruise starring one from 2005, which was action packed but hampered by a weak ass ending, so I was intrigued as to what a pre-CGI version would make of the story. 

Plotwise, the earlier film has the edge. And while it has no stars to speak of, and special effects that are fairly primitive, it is still more entertaining and the aliens are just as creepy, if not more so than in the remake. Martians land on Earth and begin wiping out huge swathes of the population, while mankind fires every weapon it has - including nukes, at a time when the Cold War was simmering - to no effect, until the spacecraft begin falling out of the sky, a result of contagion by Earth's bacteria. And that's the plot in a sentence - nothing too fancy - there's some science vs religion debate that seems to have been won by the latter at the end (it's God who created the bacteria that saved Earth you see, not science-made nukes), and an uninspired romantic angle, but the action is exciting and the world-wide nature of the invasion is well done. I seem to recall the 2005 movie is typically US-centric, but then I think the focus of that film was on a particular family, not the bigger picture as in the 1953 version. 

There's some ropey acting, particularly from wooden lead Gene Barry (who?), and screaming from the stereotypical female in the cast. This is par for the course with this sort of movie though, I wasn't expecting anything Oscar worthy! The special effects are effective and I can imagine they blew people away at the time. I thought that this take on War of the Worlds' ending was much better done here, as the narration of the ending in the 2005 film rushed over the explanation and suddenly the film ended - here there was more of a sense of relief, and closure. It's a good film then, just not as chilling and effective as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Eric and Ernie (2011)

Another of those BBC biographical dramas, Eric and Ernie told the (dramatised) account of Morecambe and Wise's youth, showing them as child performers, then their first meeting as young men, on to the development of their double act and the failure of their first TV vehicle. I've seen several Morecambe and Wise shows over the years, but I don't really know anything about them. This comedy-drama I assume has all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order... 

If the main thrust of the drama is true, then Eric's mother had a lot to do with their success, encouraging the boys to bunk together during the War, then pushing them to 2nd billing in the West End. Played lovingly by Victoria Wood, Sadie is a formidable woman, some would say overbearing and perhaps even bullying poor Eric into showbusiness. She's only doing it for his own good though, since he's useless at everything else - and his father (Jim Moir a.k.a Vic Reeves) is happy to let her have her way. Ernie is left on his own in London early on as he became a big child star, famous before pairing up with Eric. The young boys and then the men playing the pair are great, particularly Bryan Dick as Ernie and Daniel Rigby as Eric, who you'd swear was dubbed by the man himself, his vocals are so spot on. 

Whether or not there's much real or invented for the film, I enjoyed it and it was fun to spot the references to the pair's later success, particularly when Eric's father comments that it's odd not seeing Eric and Ernie for Christmas, a reference to their massive Xmas specials of later years. One thing this did do was make me want to watch more of the original Morecambe & Wise shows.

Peter Kay Live: The Tour That Doesn't Tour - Tour (Liverpool Echo, 21/04/11)

Back in January 2010 my sister bought tickets for me, Andrew and her to see Peter Kay for our birthdays, the catch being we had to wait until April 2011 to do so! I'm pleased to say that it was well worth the wait. I was slightly afraid that Kay would rehash his old shows and trot out the same catch phrases and set ups used in his previous stand up DVDs (not to mention jokes that were recycled in Phoenix Nights). When I was at uni Peter Kay was huge in my social circle and 'garlic bread' was repeated ad nauseum to the point it became irritating, not amusing. I don't get people who just mimick and repeat comedy over and over, it kills the joke, it doesn't extend it. 

Anyway, my fears were allayed and the whole 90+ minutes of stand up (and music...) was fresh and new, albeit with references to his old stuff, e.g. Kay acknowledged that he gets given free garlic bread in restaurants now, so he's trialing a new catchphrase: 'plas... ma? TV?' The only bits I'd heard before came when he played snippets of songs on a dictaphone, showing that Celine Dion sings 'the hot dogs go on' and that Duffy was 'begging you for bird seed'... A couple of these he'd done at the Royal Variety show years ago - Duffy was new though, and like many occasions that night, had me laughing out loud until I was horse. Tears ran down my cheeks several times as Kay talked about his Mum's card draw, his Nan's problem with long words, his experiences at the dentist. All typical comedy tropes, given an extra level of hilarity by Kay. 

He finished the set with a few singalong bits of Amarillo and 500 Miles, plus We Are the Champions, playing along on his shovel. It was an explosive and upbeat way to end what was a great night packed to the gills with laughs. On an aside, it occurred to me and Andrew that we've actually seen Peter Kay before, years ago when he had a starring role in The Producers musical, in which he was fantastic. 

Hamlet (WYP, 19/04/11)

Now Hamlet has never been one of my favourite of Shakespeare's plays. I find it overlong and full of pretentiousness - far too many soliloquies - and the story isn't as exciting as some of the other tragedies. However, the performance I saw last week has altered my opinion of the play, for it was nothing short of excellent. I suppose that is par for the course, though, since it was performed by Northern Broadsides, who have enchanted me now 6 times over the years, with Macbeth, The Tempest (my two favourite Shakespeares), Romeo and Juliet, Othello and The Canterbury Tales. 

The companies use of humour and music where the play has none lifts scenes from being deadly dull, and adds sparkle to dry lumps of dialogue. It also helps that the cast was fantastic. No star names here (the only person I recognised was the wonderfully-monikered Fine Time Fontayne, from previous Northern Broadsides shows) - you can keep your David Tennants, John Sims and any other 'stunt casting' of the lead role, relative unknown Nicholas Shaw gave a barnstorming performance of the moody Danish prince. He came with no TV/film 'baggage' or expectation and he played Hamlet with relish, aided by the inventive stage direction, which included Hamlet occasionally putting his thoughts down on the black set, in chalk, writing out 'to be or not to be'. He bounded around the stage, making his Hamlet less morose and more likable as a lead character for 2.5 hrs. 

The rest of the cast were top notch (although Laertes was a little over-dramatic for my tastes), with Natalie Dew's Ophelia suitably mad. The only thing I thought they didn't get quite right was that there didn't seem to be any sense of a relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. They barely interacted and the performers didn't have any spark. Still, this play is not a romance. The action and music and humour all added up to a thrilling show, and the use of twins to play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was inspired. I can't believe it, but I actually enjoyed Hamlet!

OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions / OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

Another one of those 'pot luck' movies, that I recorded knowing little about other than the Radio Times star rating and description, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was yet another success! A spot-on hilarious spoof of sixties spy drama, James Bond being a particular 'victim', although the source material is a real 'OSS 117' adventure, a French movie from the same period. This I learned after seeing the film, while I watched I figured it was Sean Connery's Bond they were spoofing because that's my cultural reference point!

Played much straighter than Austin Powers spoofery, OSS 117 sees Jean Dujardin play Agent Jack Jefferson as he is tasked with, among other things, solving peace in the middle East, and he travels to Egypt to do so. Dujardin could easily play a straight French Bond, he's the definition of Connery in the sixties, although his performance is aided by cinematography that makes the whole film look fifty years old. The 60's feel continues in the use of grainy rear projection footage when Jack drives anywhere. 

Jack is such a preening poseur he could be unlikable, but the whole thing is packed with a real love for the source material, and the scipt is peppered with sub-Roger Moore level one liners. The treatment of women, the casual mysogeny of Connery's Bond, is mimicked and shown up, while Jack's lack of knowledge about the cultures he mixes in (at one point he beats up a Muslim calling others to prayer as he's disturbing his sleep) is not just funny, it provides comment on the situation the world finds it in now, with invading Western armies involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and finding a cultural mismatch. 

The film had me laughing all the way through, and marked Dujardin out as a (French)man to watch. There's a sequel out there, Lost in Rio, which I'll have to hunt down. If it's anywhere near as good as this one I'm in for a treat, as Cairo, Nest of Spies is easily the best Bond spoof there is.

Ash Wednesday (Ethan Hawke, 2002)

I picked up Ash Wednesday some years ago in a charity shop, drawn by the fact the author is Hollywood star Ethan Hawke. I didn't know what to expect, but I knew he'd written a few novels and I thought they'd been well received. Ash Wednesday tells the story of Jimmy Heartsock and his pregantn ex/girlfriend/fiance/wife Christy over a period of a few weeks as they travel in his battered car around America. I suppose it's a love story, but the characters' love lives are pretty fucked up. Speaking as someone in a stable, long-lasting monogamous relationship where we rarely argue and certainly don't shout at each other, I find it hard to identify with such a troubled couple - I have a hard time working out why such opposites want to try to stay together, even with a baby on the way. 

I enjoyed the style of the novel - one chapter narrated by Jimmy, the next by Christy, so you get both of their points of view on their relationship and events that happen to them. Trouble is, the events are not very exciting. There's a basketball game, a reunion with family, a wedding. I never really began to care for any of the characters, thus I didn't care how things turned out for them. There was probably a lot going on in terms of what Hawke is trying to say about the state of American youth, both male and female, although despite getting to narrate chapters, Christy feels like a supporting player. I just didn't care that much to look much beyond the surface, as what was there didn't do much for me.

April in Paris (WYP, 13/04/11)

Another night at the theatre, another gamble on something unknown. And another success! All I knew this time going in was that Wendi 'Cilla from Corrie' Peters was in it. Turns out she was half the cast, and Rob Angell made up the other half of this hilarious two hander. I tried to explain how great this show was to my Mum the other day. I talked about the wonderfully realistic relationship that the dialogue and cast both share glory in, the warm, witty verbal exchanges, the glorious use of colour and space in an unusual set, the rather simplistic plot (couple wins holiday to Paris, goes to Paris, come back and miss it) which contains much heart and truth... 

I don't feel I did the production justice though. As with Love, Love, Love there was an opportunity to talk to the cast after the performance (we booked it knowing this). Also there for questions was the writer and director, John Godber, a most interesting raconteur, who made me consider portions of the play from a different angle and revealed more depth that I'd read into it. 

One of the cleverest bits of the show was the way the first part, set in Hull was all black and white - the magazine Bet reads, the character's clothes, even a grey ketchup bottle - and confined to a small linoleum space. Then when they get the ferry from Hull there's a splash of colour as an orange bouy appears to represent the ship. After the interval, the curtain came up to reveal a set that filled the stage, with lit up Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe and Moulin Rouge providing a spectacle as Al and Bet wandered around in colourful clothing, their eyes opening to the world beyond Hull. Based on April in Paris I will definitely look out for other plays by John Godber whose name I didn't know before Wednesday. 

The First Wives Club (1996)

A slight but fun movie, the main joys to be taken from The First Wives Club are from the interactions of the (at the time) massively starry trio at the heart of it - Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler. The story's fairly predictable - all three women have been treated badly by (ex)husbands and they decide to club together to extract appropriate revenge on each of them - but it's so light and fluffy it would seem overly harsh to criticise. Equally there's not a massive amount to praise, other than the powerful comedic talents of the three leads, who are ably supported by Sarah Jessica Parker, Marcia Gay Harden and an odd cameo from Ivana Trump. I watched the movie a week ago and already it's mostly forgotten - I enjoyed it while it was there!

Boy in the Water (Stephen Dobyns, 1999)

Although Homicide read like a thriller and gripped me from the start, it wasn't fiction and I wanted to read some if only to cut down on the numbers of unread books on my shelves and so I picked up Boy in the Water. It's a cliche to call a book 'unputdownable' but I did really get absorbed by this one, only putting it down so that I could pick up Homicide and read a little more of that. It's an unusual thriller in that nothing much seems to happen for a great deal of the book, or rather there are no murders to solve, no standard whodunnit.

The book opens with a prologue in which the title is expanded upon only briefly - a young boy is found floating dead in a school swimming pool - and then chapter 1 takes the reader back a couple of months and describes the events that led up to this point, and eventually, perhaps 2/3 of the way in, past this point. So it's not just a 'whodunnit', it's also a 'who-is-it-floating-in-the-water' and a 'how-did-it-happen'. I'm not describing this well, but it's not the standard template for a crime thriller. 

The tale takes place at Bishop's Hill school, where naughty kids are sent when their fee-paying parents cannot send them anywhere else. Jim Hawthorne is the new principal with baggage of his own (his wife and daughter died in a fire) and a determination to stop the school failing and closing. He is thwarted at every turn by a school staff packed full of suspicious characters, who spin any event or utterance from Jim into a doom-mongering negative. They gossip amongst themselves about job losses and closure while Jim tries to reassure them he's not out to let people go. Dobyns creates a very realistic atmosphere of distrust and destructive rumour and Jim's frustration translates to the reader - I know I just wanted to reach into the book and throttle some of the pessimistic teachers! 

Other new arrivals at the school, along with Jim, include 15 year old Jessica, who was abused by her stepfather and plots revenge; and Frank LeBrun, who kills a man with an ice pick when we first meet him, and then runs off to Bishop's Hill to be an assistant cook. He's a dodgy one all the way through, but then there are members of the staff, like cheery Skander, who previously held a caretaker principal position and turns out to have been embezzling funds, who turn out to be potentially worse in a moral sense than killer Frank. 

Jim experiences hoax phone calls from a woman purporting to be his dead wife, sees the portrait of the school's founder at random windows and has to deal with the school psychologist's suicide at the same time as keeping the school afloat against a tide of indifference and outright hostility. This is such an enthralling book, with many mysteries jostling along together, with a cast of tens of teachers and students so it really takes a long time before I could positively identify who I thought might be the titular Boy in the Water and who might have put him there. If I wasn't trying to cut down my library of books I'd seek out more of Dobyns' fiction on the basis of this fantastic piece of fiction. I'd recommend it to any lover of books.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (David Simon, 1991/2006)

I picked up Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets probably for the same reason a lot of other people will have done, because as the front cover says it's from 'the creator of The Wire', David Simon. And while I've only got through the first season of what it supposed to be the best show on TV, that didn't stop me being intrigued by this work of non-fiction, that Simon wrote in 1991 and formed the basis of the US crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street.

This book was more compelling than any other non-fiction book I've read. I was utterly absorbed by the cast of detectives, criminals and and civilians. Simon's prose is a pleasure to read, and he makes the process of homicide investigations so easy to understand and yet he writes with grand brush strokes, giving an overview of the whole process in chunks along the way. He explains crime scene investigation (such as it was in 1988, no shiny CSI-style stuff here), interrogation techniques, how white murders differ from black, police internal investigations, autopsies, court-rooms and juries... I really feel that he gives an entire picture of what life is like for a homicide detective. 

Simon followed this squad of Baltimore detectives for a year, and his immersion in their world shows through - not only does he detail the heartbreaking child murders, the frustration of whodunnits, the joy of dunkers, the meaninglessness of yet another drug-killing, he also picks out the gallows humour of those poor souls who's job it is to clean up after so much destruction, he shows how some detectives are haunted by particular cases, and the camaraderie of these men (and they're all men) is sometimes touching, often laugh-out-loud funny. 

The front cover quotes the Daily Telegraph as saying Homicide 'reads like a thriller' and I'd have to agree - the scope, the attention given to each character, the sheer readable nature of the narrative, they all add up to the classic thriller, but with the added edge of these characters being living, breathing, real people. After I'd devoured the 600+ pages of the original text, I was pleased to read Simon's 2006 post-script, which provided an update on where the detectives are now, and how his book influenced his TV shows that followed. It's the cherry on an overwhelming delicious cake, albeit one filled with gunshot wounds, grieving relatives and world-weary police - a masterpiece.

Love, Love, Love (WYP, 06/04/11)

Ben Addis (Kenneth) & Lisa Jackson (Sandra)

Another one of those plays I entered into knowing little except what was in the theatre brochure when I booked it a couple of months ago, Love, Love, Love turned out to be an utterly wonderful experience. Written by Mike Bartlett in 2010, it's a play in 3 acts, each separated by an interval, the first act is set in 1967, the second 1990 and the final 2011. The play follows Kenneth and Sandra from their initial meeting, when she was Ken's brother's girlfriend, in the '60's on the night of the One World event that was broadcast live across the globe, to 1990 on the night their marriage falls apart in front of their teenage children, and finally to the present as their screwed up kids Rose and Jamie watch them potentially reunite in their twilight years. 

Each character is played by the same actor from ages 19 to 60+ and rather than using distracting make up, the character's dress and subtle changes in body language signal the onset of the years. After the performance we stayed for a question and answer session with the cast of 5, and it was really interesting to hear their views on the characters, as well as to hear other audience members express, for example, dismay at the cliches in the 60's set segment, or decry the liberal use of drinking, smoking and drug references, as well as praising the acting talent and the writing. 

I found Love, Love, Love to be an immensely relatable play, whether set in the 60s (where the freedoms that university can bring, and the optimism for the future rang bells), or the present (Rose has a rant at her parents about them having it easy and her life being so hard, she can't afford a house and wants them to buy her one - I see this wanting to have things given to you on a plate in society today). It's also very funny, particulaly in Lisa Jackson's portrayal of Sandra, who's forever with a glass of wine in her hand, but never falls into an Absolutely Fabulous parody. As a whole, the play was involving, witty and very relevant, and I would be happy to watch it again.

The Godfather (1972)

So The Godfather is, according to some polls, the greatest movie of all time? With that endorsement it's hard to go into the film without certain high expectations. And it's almost guaranteed that this or any film laden with this accolade is probably going to come up short, because it's a lot to live up to. We finally made the plunge and slipped this near-3 hour epic into the machine last Saturday night, fuelled by a Facebook poll which reminded us that we'd not seen what Empire's Top 500 movies found to be The Best Movie Ever. 

When the end credits eventually rolled, it turned out that I liked The Godfather more than Andrew, who's main complaint was that he didn't like any of the characters. And I can see what he means, they're mobsters with barely any redeeming qualities, meting out death with gay abandon. This isn't The Sopranos where the mobsters are humanised, or Analyze This where it's all played for laughs. No, here everything's played straight, female characters barely get a look in, and the male characters basically compete in a penis-length comparison contest. 

I had to keep turning up the volume when Marlon Brando appeared on screen, and almost reached for the subtitle button in order to tell what he was mumbling. He suffered from the same affliction that plagued Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, where acting is replaced by incoherence. Very youthful Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall where the main core of the movie, playing the new heads of the Corleone family, once Brando's Godfather had been shot down, recovered, retired and eventually dropped dead in the vegetable patch in a truly creepy, weird scene with his grandson. 

While the acting was top notch, the whole was so drawn out and long that I had to stop nodding off at times. The iconic horse's head in the bed scene came early on, and I spotted various mobster 'cliches' that only became such after this movie, otherwise I agree with Andrew, the characters aren't particularly likable, so it's hard to care too much when one or other is killed off, especially since it's their business to murder left, right and centre. Having said all this, I didn't hate the film, I didn't love it, I thought it was good, but I am still intrigued enough to want to watch Part II, and possibly Part III although I've heard many bad things about that one - at least my expectations will be low going in to it.

Kick-Ass (2010)

I'd read so much about Kick-Ass in Empire around it's release last year that it almost put me off watching it, just because I thought my expectations would be too high. Sitting down to watch it on shiny blu-ray last week I found that after a bit of a slow start it really sucked me in and I enjoyed it muchly. 

It reminded me a bit of Scott Pilgrim, although less stylised and 'comic book' looking than that movie, it had a very modern spin on the superhero genre and its conventions. The beautiful Aaron Johnson (who I raved about in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging) is our hero, a regular teen who decides it would be cool if super heroes really did exist, so he puts an outfit together online and goes out to find some crime to fight... and ends up beaten and stabbed, though handily this results in his having Wolverine-style metal grafted onto some bones and a lack of feeling in his nerves. 

Meanwhile Nic Cage, who's at his best here, sees how Kick-Ass' exploits go down with the public and becomes Big Daddy, with his young tween daughter a potty-mouthed killing machine, Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz). And then there's bad guy Mark Strong and his son Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. Red Mist, who Big Daddy targets to avenge the death of his wife, while Kick-Ass is blamed for the deaths of Strong's gangsters... It's all quite involved and takes some explaining. One thing I'd say is that the buzz around the film seemed to be all about Moretz and her foul mouthed action ways, which unfairly left Johnson in the background. I personally think he makes this movie, although I've seen him in just two films so far, and he's utterly gorgeous (it's the eyes), I really think he's a talent to watch.

The action, with a *ahem* kick ass soundtrack, is kinetic and savage, but thankfully not bone-crunchingly violent a la Watchmen. The dialogue is peppered liberally with cuss words, but they don't detract from the knowingness of the characters, who regularly reference Batman, X-Men and other superheroes. There's a nice love story with Dave/Kick-Ass and his crush Katie, who initially thinks he's gay and he's happy to play along if it means he can help spray tan her naked body! The film isn't too knowing though, it does have buckets of originality and some gloriously over the top gun play to recommend it. So yeah, Kick-Ass certainly does what it says on the tin. An awesome film.  

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Not being a fan of the Shrek franchise, I generally approach Dreamworks animations with some caution, although with Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens showing marked improvement in the studio's output (they'll never be Pixar) I was optimistic about How to Train Your Dragon - especially as the directors were also responsible for the wonderful Lilo & Stitch. I managed to receive two copies of the blu-ray for Christmas, after Andrew told both my mum and his that I wanted it - I managed to find a buyer for the extra copy. 

The film turned out to be highly enjoyable - it looked gorgeous, particularly during the action scenes and in the dragons themselves, of which there were many different, imaginative varieties. Set on an island where the adult Vikings are Scottish (!) and the young are American (!), the film sees the ancient Danes (!) terrorised by a plethora of dragons. Of course our hero, Hiccup, doesn't want to kill dragons, he's the town joke, and of course he befriends a lame dragon, teaches everyone they're not killing Vikings for their own ends, and it all ends happily after a big fight scene. The plot writes itself, there are few surprises here. What raises the film above the glut of sub-standard CGI movies littering the multiplexes are the lack of instantly dated pop culture references and a concentration on characters with genuine humour and warmth.
 
Hiccup is a likable hero who I wanted to see succeed, and his dragon friend Toothless, a non-speaking, non-cute and cuddly sidekick part, is more developed and endearing than Shrek's annoying Donkey pal for example. I found the relationship between Hiccup and his mighty father funny and tender and utterly believable in the way they interacted nervously, as each doesn't really know the other. While I don't think the movie is unique or funny enough to be in my top ten favourite animations, it's a solidly entertaining, well crafted slice of movie-making.

Human Planet (2011)

Human Planet seems like the natural successor to the Life of Mammals/Birds/in Cold Blood strand that David Attenborough has made over the years, taking humans as its subject instead of animals. Filmed with the same gorgeous cinematography as more usual BBC natural history programmes, the show was narrated with some bombast by John Hurt, who I kept imagining was about to launch into the Merlin preamble about magic. The choice of narrator added gravitas but not authority, which Attenborough would have brought, but still this show wasn't about the narration, it was more about the people.

Each show was themed and followed people from around the world in various locations - in the desert, around rivers, in the polar regions, and finally, oddly, in cities - and focussed on feats of endurance or curious methods of finding food and water in seemingly inhospitable environments. Several stories stick in my mind - the communities who catch and kill auks, and then stuff them in a bag to go rotten before eating them; the jungle dwelling children who catch massive tarantulas and then barbeque them in the fire until good enough to eat; the divers who use cheap garden hose to help them breathe underwater; the sulphur miners who risk death every day; the young girl and boy who must spend days walking on a freezing, thawing river just to get to school... Such an array of people and astonishing human behaviour. 


The programme regularly had me gasping in amazement at the lengths people must go to in some areas of the globe just to eat and drink. You wonder why they don't just move somewhere easier, but then some of these skills would be forever lost. Human Planet was always fascinating and looked beautiful, and the 10 minute making of that closed each episode was equal interesting, showing how much patience and endurance the camera crews went through to capture these amazing stories. I'm glad they did.

Being Human: Series 3 (2011) & Becoming Human

The latest series of Being Human was the best yet! Relocated to Wales, Mitchell had to contend with a burgeoning relationship with Annie as well as the consequences of his train-car massacre last series, while George and Nina had to deal with the latter's impending pregnancy and the implications of a werewolf baby. Throw in the return of Herrick, initially amnesiac and living in the attic, along with the introduction of Robson Greene as a new werewolf vampire-hunter and the usual off-centre, British humour along with some visceral horror and the result was real edge-of-your-seat perfection. 

Initially I thought that bringing Herrick back was a bit lazy and unnecessary, his story had ended when George in werewolf form ripped him to pieces last year. But it proved to be a masterstroke, the question mark over whether he was pretending to have no knowledge of his vampire status and the eventual realistation when he feeds off the hapless young detective that no, now he's back is terrifying as he lays waste to a housefull of police before stabbing Nina in the kitchen. Oh that was shortly after killing Robson Greene off too. I didn't see that coming! 

There was some great story of the week stuff too, such as the 'young' vampire, who went on to star in Becoming Human, a 'Red Button' series that was shown in one 50 min whole after the main series finished. That was a fun one-off with a young werewolf and young ghost too, set in a school, that put a new spin on the Being Human template. I'm not sure if they're planning to spin these new characters off into a series of their own or perhaps do another like this one next series, either way, I'll watch!

The final scene of Being Human's third series raises massive questions for the already commissioned fourth series, since one of the main characters has been killed off, seemingly with no chance of a return. Well, he is off in New Zealand filming The Hobbit, so it was sort of inevitable. I can't wait to see where the writers take George, Annie and Nina next series!

South Pacific (01/04/11, WYP)

A weekly run of theatre trips in April begin on Friday with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Rather than a touring spectacular with a celebrity of dubious vintage, this performance was by Leeds Amateur Operatic Society (LAOS), but you'd never know they were amateur. Solid performances all round, although some of the extras/smaller parts calling for American accents were a little ropey, the overall impression was a good one. 

Set on a couple of islands in the South Pacific during WW2, the show tells the story of Nellie Forbush and her love affair with Frenchman Emile de Becque, with a sub-plot involving dashing Joseph Cable and a dalliance with Liat, a Tonganese girl and daughter of comedy character Bloody Mary. Mixed in with a plot to get one over on the Japs, it's all quite a jolly jape, although one in which the cruelty of war kills off one of the main characters off stage. Still, there's always time for a song and dance. I found I knew a handful of the tunes, not realising their provenance in this show, including Some Enchanted Evening, There Is Nothin' Like a Dame, Happy Talk, and I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out-a My Hair. 

Nellie Forbush could be a very irritating character, but Gemma Durkin's charm managed to stop this happening. There's a strange scene later on when Nellie refuses de Becque's proposal after learning he had a Polynesian wife previously, and Cable turns down Liat because she's not white and American. This blatant racism is shrugged off with a number called You've Got To Be Carefully Taught that argues the characters have been brought up with these prejudices. It explains things but doesn't excuse them, and although it's not made a big deal of (Nellie realises how much she loves her Frenchman in the end) it leaves a bit of a sour taste behind. I suppose it's honestly reflecting an attitude of the time though, it just jars alongside the upbeat jollity of the rest of the show.