Film Review - The Beaver

tl;dr Although competently made and not without it's positive points, there is just not enough in this film to earn it a reccomendation. Not a bad film, but not worth your time either.

***

Madness. It's a theme that artistic types love to go on about, and hold a fascination of sorts with the general public. Maybe there's a dark glamour to the whole disturbed mindset, or we like them 'cause they articulate something about all of us we daren't vocalise to others. Maybe they are just outright interesting. Whatever the reason, representations of behaviour that is rather outside the norms of our society are not uncommon.

The Beaver sets it's sights on mental illness, introducing us to the protagonist already in the throes of depression. He's a high powered business executive with a wife and two kids, and he spends almost all of his time sleeping. This information is delivered, naturally, in the form of voice over, which will occur another couple of times in the movie. When it comes it seems as if they are trying to create the impression of a narrator that is addressing the audience at all times, through the movie. This aspect is not carried over convincingly, however, and as such the voice over sections feel patronising and lazy.

After a couple of failed suicide bids, the protagonist finds himself in conversation with a puppet beaver he picked out of a bin earlier, and after this australian accented fake fluffy animal throws a bunch of cliches at our protagonist it goes ahead and starts to put his life back on track. He heads home, wins over his wife and youngest son again and heads into work is a sensation. Not his eldest son, however.

And, really, his eldest son is the heart of the movie, and by far and away the best thing here. We see the Porter coping with a near OCD obsession with his father, a loathing of his own genes. He's also a writer of other people's homework and when the attractive and intelligent cheerleader approaches him to write her speech, he's set on an interesting journey. The cheerleader herself is really the third protagonist, who goes on a journey that sees her character change as much as anyone.

Jodie Foster is a steady hand as the director, but perhaps too steady. This is a film about a man having a mental breakdown and living through a puppet, which is a premise with an edge and the capacity to disturb - at the very least it is a powerful concept. The end result is very middle of the road. This a movie you can take your family to, and on the whole lighthearted. There is a stylistic pretentiousness to it, but it's a very bland stylistic pretentiousness. It's a "serious human drama" made to appeal to the mass market. The result? Somehow, this movie really lacks a distinctive feel, or any memorable qualities.

The central metaphor here is a strong one, well executed until the final act. Early on we're introduced to the "memory box" - a box you make to keep your memories. Beavers use wood to build dams in real life, and by introducing wooden boxes and having so much work with wood in the film, we get a nice and clear idea of how the themes are working. Then the final act happens and introduces a fundamental thematic contradiction - can't go into it, without spoiling unfortunately. What had been a well balanced film - mostly lighthearted with a dark undercurrent - becomes very dark in a twist that causes the movie spills over into self-parody  for a good ten minutes at least. Whilst it does manage to regain a bit of dignity towards the end, the tonal dissonance and thematic messiness does rather spoil things.

Mel Gibson is very good as a troubled and mentally ill man (who'd have thought it?) and Anton Yelchin is similarly effective as his beleagured son. The females of the movie are not so convincing, as both Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence turn in very forgettable performances; perhaps more the screenplays fault in Jodie's case, however, as her character is always hovering around the peripharies.

There have been a few movies centred around mental illness I've seen relatively recently: Black Swan, Submarine and (on DVD) Memento. All three possess an incredible intensity, a crushing sense of suffocation. They get you into the protagonist's mind and let you feel some approximation as to what it must be like to be them. The Beaver? Nope. I liked the central metaphor, liked the music, there were a few very good performances and the story of the son was a good one. Pity that the end result is a confused and bland movie that never comes close to being anything but average, and I really can't reccomend it.

Strong female characters, and the Mary Sue

In the UK we have this thing called "The One Show" - it's an early evening show with a variety of features on a varied selection of subjects, and it runs every day of the week monday - friday. Each day there is a special guest, and one day a while back they had Jackie Collins on. Interested in what a famous and successful writer has to say, I decided to watch a bit of it. It's important, I reckon, to listen to what writers outside of your chosen genre have to say about writing. Gives you a sense of perspective of your habits and trends. Collins' words of wisdom? "I love strong female characters".

And, sure enough, there is a very good argument that fiction needs more of such characters. We've still got a very patriarchal society, with the bias of misogyny still going strong. Good, strong female protagonists help counteract the tendency of storytellers to cast women as the prize to be won or damsel to be rescued.

Whilst this is still very true for Hollywood, personally I’d argue that its not such a problem in the novel medium. Women writers have always been better represented than in other mediums - to this day only one film directed by a woman has won an Oscar, but many women have won a Nobel Prize in Literature. The NYTimes fiction charts show that the top three bestselling paperback fictions are by women, and two out of five in the hardback fiction list, although this week the mass market paperbacks appear all to be men. Women are, on the whole, better represented.

But I knew the type of character that Collins was talking about and winced. There has been a trend in female written literature to characterise their female leads in rather a too positive manner, over compensatory even. Whenever I venture into female fronted stories with female authors, you can almost feel the world warping around them. This, I am afraid, is what you call a Mary Sue.

At this point I should mention I’m not saying all female writers do this. It’s most likely that I have just been unlucky with my novel choices, and I can name a few that are very good at not doing this. Hell, J.K. Rowling doesn’t fall into this trap.

It’s important to clarify what a Mary Sue is. Mostly, it is used to criticise a character without flaws and sometimes even just used to criticise boring characters. As I see it, for a character to actually be a Mary Sue, there needs to be more than these. For a character to be a Mary Sue, the world has to be wrapped around her finger. Everyone loves her, and anyone who doesn’t is evil beyond rehabilitation. The character doesn’t necessarily need to be all that skilled at anything, but they’ll never fail. It’s nothing innate to the character that confers Sue-dom, but rather the way narrative treats them. It was this type of character, a character unashamedly worshipped by the text, Collins was referring to.

The best example that springs to mind is Wolverine in the first three X-Men movie. He is almost the quintessential Mary Sue, and you can almost hear the writers orgasming every time he walks onto the screen. A big part of this comes from the way he is counter pointed. The leader of the X-Men and boyfriend of the romantic interest is Cyclops, thus a rivalry is set-up. And then the movie goes onto demonise Cyclops so incredibly thoroughly that he becomes something of an anti-Sue. He is arrogant and rude and stupid and boring and, frankly, a bit shit at fighting. He’s so incredibly dislikeable that Wolverine appears to be so much fantastic. On this point alone I’d happily class Wolverine a Sue, although the movie certainly has more than enough other material to back up this claim.

I’m not opposed to strong women. Hell, my favourite fictional character not written by Terry Pratchett may just be the Alien franchise’s Ellen Ripley. I am, however, opposed to this trend that seems to want to embrace womanhood - a strange, post-feminist thing - to the point in which a women is basically portrayed as the centre of the universe. Men do this too, don’t get me wrong. Hell, my example was of a male character.

If you want to avoid  Sues, just giving your characters flaws isn’t enough. Look at how they are represented in the narrative. Do other characters make them look like Sue in comparison? Do they fail? Are they shown to not be good enough? Separating a character from the story their in is not an easy thing, so if you want to make sure your character more interesting, look at the story.

Beyonce, Pyramids and Politicans

Last night I passively caught part of Beyonce's Glastonbury performance. If it's your kind of music, I guess I can't criticise it. The odd song had a nice energy and there was one catchy tune in there, although which one, exactly, has long since faded from my mind. They tried to make a performance, more than just a series of songs. Between songs music never stopped playing and the songs faded into one another. It was a landmark occassion, too, with it being the first time that a member of the female gender has headlined the festival.

Pity it was such an unremittingly overproduced borefest, meandering and padded by covers. If you took into account the Destiny's Child songs (and her collaboration with Lady Gaga) as kind of half covers, the amount of Beyonce original songs was likely equalled by the amount of songs not originally by her. Not that I'm opposed to covers, but when it makes up as large a chunk of your set as your own material. Also, it's just not music that benefits from the live treatment, so reliant on studio production. There was a sort of grandeur to the lighting that the music just didn't seem to deserve. This is club music, not festival music. If you like that kinda stuff, all the power to you, just never seemed to do justice to the attempt at spectacle. Then again, I missed a bit of it whilst a friend introduced me to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, so maybe I missed something essential.

But yeah, past few days have been good to me. Not sure if I have mentioned it here before, but a mate and I are co-authoring a Harry Potter fanfic. We decided that the world of magic was too stuffy and boring; HP could do with excitement and romance of politics. So we've got a rough outline, a lot of ideas and are doing a chapter apiece. I just finished chapter 2 these past few days, and will post it somewhere once it has been edited and shizzle. Look out for that.

I wanted to have a review for Gears of the City up by now, but the damn book has disappeared. Could review the first two thirds, but some I doubt that'd be doing the book justice. Ah well. Expect another villain study or something soonish.

Utter Madness...

I grew up in a family of football fans. There is a nigh religious reverence to the sport at times in British culture in general, and whilst my I didn't grow up in the most extreme of such environments, it was certainly an omnipresent factor. This blog is written for those of you who don't like football.

Gonna try and condense a lot of history and information, so here goes:

Hearts, are my family's team of choice. They are (kinda) the third best team Scotland, but not in any clear cut manner. Scottish football has, more or less, two tiers: Rangers and Celtic, the Glasgow teams, both tussle each year for the title, whilst everyone else goes for the third position. The Old Firm, as the Celtic and Rangers are known, are rarely troubled, and beyond them there is no real solid hierarchy.

A while back, Hearts got into financial trouble, and it looked they'd have to sell their much beloved stadium. In swooped a rich Lithuanian businessman named Vladimir Romanov, however, and all was saved! Right?

Well, fans have ordained him “mad Vlad” if that’s any indication.

Recently, after a season that shows that Hearts are on the right track to become stronger, with ambitions of going after the Old Firm, one of the Hearts players has been put on the sex offender’s register after, well, preying on two underage girls, 12 and 14. Much to the anger of much of the fans, Hearts have decided to keep him on. An utterly stupid decision.

But that’s not what this blog is about. With all this controversy flying about, Hearts have released the following statement. And, really, you have to give this a read:

***

The Hearts Board of Directors has issued the following statement in relation to outside influences on players and the club.

"What's happening with the club today is not a new thing. For almost 7 years we have been fighting to shield the club from crooks, criminals and thieves. Many of the top players at the club have felt the bitter results of the swindles that have been carried out with them on their own skin. Skacel and Webster have returned to the club after realising where these 'football patriots' have led them.

"Over a short space of time 4 players at our club have been on the wrong end of the law. We note that 3 of them are represented by the same agent - Gary Mackay - who has been so vicious in his attacks against Mr Romanov.

"Taking into account the facts that have been omitted by the media it can be presumed that each of these cases is not a coincidence, but the result of targeted actions of a mafia that wants to manipulate the club and the results.

"Every year Hearts fights to be in the top 3, but even last season in the last 12 games of the season it was almost like someone replaced the team with a different one. Whose fault is that? Players? Manager's? Or it is mafia.

"Stealing players, bad games, problems with the law - all of that on top of record SFA fines. Problems are just shifted to another level.

"Mafia are dragging kids into the crime, in order to blackmail and profit on them. It is not possible to separate these people from pedophiles, and you don't need to do that. Each year we are forced to fight against these maniacs harder and harder. We are standing in their way not letting them manipulate the game of football in the way they want. As such they undermine us in every possible way they can.

"The task of the club is to tear these kids out of hands of criminals."

Source: http://www.heartsfc.co.uk/articles/20110624/hearts-statement_2241384_2381659

***

Yeah. What?

Comic Review - Sandman: A Game of You

There are rare moments where everything comes together, like the smooth flowing and detailing of textures as you surface from dreams, and suddenly I know how I stand in relation to Gaiman's much vaunted Sandman series. The first volume never convinced me, but The Doll's House proceeded to make me excited about the series. Dream Country was cool, but felt a bit fruitless and then the much hyped Season of Mists was good, yet rather too much like set-up. My feelings going into the fifth volume of Sandman were mixed.

A Game of You follows around New Yorker Barbie (Barbara) and her neighbours, catapulting them all into a strange world of dream and magic when creatures from Barbie's dreams come looking for her in real life. Throughout these characters runs the theme of identity: Barbie paints her face in an elaborate fashion each morning; Wanda, her best friend, was born called Alvin; a lesbian couple lives upstairs. There's also a weird perverse man called George, and a disquietingly normal girl. Then there are the four creatures from Barbie's dreams and the antagonist - the fact that Gaiman imbues all these characters with a distinct personality and sends many of them on an emotional journey is astounding.

One of the real strengths of the story is it's pace. Gaiman crams a lot in to six issues, but he also takes his time and finds a strong storytelling rhythm. Characters and plot points are introduces in a strong and clear way, and everything is given the development it deserves. This, in turn, lends weight to the drama: much of what happens here could have felt forced, but instead it is genuinely affecting. Atmosphere, too, benefits from the pace. The macabre evokations would not be so pervasive if they were in a story with a faster and more upbeat pace, but the structure has already created a sense that allows these aspects to really shine.

There is always something very much feminine about the way Gaiman writes. He possess an introspection of conflict - the battlefields are not phyical ones but emotional ones, and the focus of the stories is always on what is happening inside his characters. This works well with the darkly mystical stories, conveying a sense that this mysticism and spirituality is actually a facet of the emotional world rather than the physical one. This approach, too, marks it out as original in a medium that is very much male dominated. (Yes, I get the irony of saying this when all of the creators of Sandman are male)

I'm really not qualified to talk about art, beyond whether or not I liked it. It suited the story, but on the whole I wasn't too big a fan. The art in Sandman has always put me off it a little. A little bit too messy and unclear, a bit crude. Partially this is on purpose, I imagine, and partially suffering from datedness as it may have looked better when taken in context of when it was drawn. To me, now, not my cup o' tea.

Really, A Game of You is the volume that makes me a believer. No more sitting on the fence: I'm willing to declare that I think Sandman is awesome.

Film Review - Green Lantern

tl;dr It's bad. Not as bad as other movies I've seen recently, but really, really not worth your time.

Green Lantern - space cop, camp costume, aliens, ring which projects solid green light. It's an incredibly silly concept, but it's one that also works damn well. I've been reading the comics and, on the whole, I've liked what I've found. Sure, the man masterminding it all - Geoff Johns - has his drawbacks, but he's a great storyteller. Without the strength of his storytelling some of the rather more questionable aspects of GL and his own take on the mythos end up rather dragging the story down.

Take our protagonist, Hal Jordan. A playboy, a fighter jet pilot, a hothead and something of a man who has a problem with authority. Got daddy issues too. In other words, insufferable jerk. Yet in the comics we can sympathise partly because he does possess some sort of humility, and partly because he still has a vulnerability to him that offsets the inevitable over idealisation of such assholish traits. Well, being a pilot doesn't make you an asshole, but you know what I mean.

So despite his archetype, in the comics Hal Jordan is deep enoguh to be likeable; give Hollywood this archetype, however, and the reward is just simply insufferable. His daddy issues are brought up and then dropped. He has an incredibly phony scene with his young nephew, a hamhanded attempt to make him more relatable. People who are the victim of his hotheadedness are dismissed as violent thugs, and the same hotheaded behaviour, it is concluded, is what makes him special. Development happens, but it's shoe horned in and never has any real substance. Towards the end he reveals, apparently, he does feel fear and then lots of heavy-handed speeches occur telling him to conquer it. No prizes for guessing how successful he is.

Really, it's the structure of this movie that lets it down. Many of the reviews I checked out  theorised that a lot of scenes had been cut, and this would make a lot of sense. Things are not introduced properly and the three main subplots develop without any decent connections to each other. Central to the story - arguablely, as it is really unclear - is the relationship between Hal and Carol. In a special effect driven space opera, the entirely earth bound romance is what the movie takes the msot time over. The subplots involving the Lantern Corps struggling against giant space entity Parallax, and evil psychic biologist Hector Hammond researching aliens are both shoehorned together.

But if the romance is good it can work, right? Sure, if the romance had been good, the story may well have worked. It wasn't. It was dull and underdeveloped and there was a painful lack of chemistry. Neither of the actors lent the relationship much credibility. Carol's characterisation - one minute towing the rival line, next minute the love interest - was incredibly inconsistent. Like everything else in this movie there was no flow to her character and this really hindered the relationship.

Aside from Carol, probably the next character with the most screentime, and even less consistency, is Sinestro. He comes across as the leader of the Corps, aside from the silent and Yoda-esque Guardians, but this is never really confirmed. At one point he decides he dislikes Hal and starts beating him up. Then, later, he is not so harsh on Hal, after Hal quits the Corps.

I would criticise Hal's quitting, but I'd repeating myself. It's poorly established, badly explained. The real villain here is the film's structure. Nothing is properly grounded and there is no consistency. It's probably clear by now just how much of this film didn't work, so here is what did work:

Hector Hammond was the best character here. He feels shoe-horned in, sure, but his motivation is the best established and the connection he and Hal have is the one that feels the most genuine. Hell, the best scene in the movie happens when the two of them first battle. It makes no sense that Hal would know to interfere, sure, but it is genuinely an intense scene.

The whole idea of space battles is awesome. What we get of the action in that department is rather mixed, admittedly, but nonetheless it is conceptually very cool. Space evil cloud thing Parallax actually looks rather impressive too, carrying a real gravity to him that never really comes to fruition in the plot.

This is a pretty bad movie. It has bad acting, bad directing, bad editing, godawful writing...it's not the worst film I've seen in the cinema as of late, but damn. This had promise, too. I know from first hand experience that there are great stories to be told with this mythos, with these characters. I expected something derivative and lacking in creativity when I went into the cinema, but what I got was properly bad. Bah.

Television Review - Moving On: Skin Deep

This could have been an engaging story. It deals with a woman who becomes obsessed with her physical appearance, after a school reunion sets her off on a mid-life crisis. She's sixty now, and struggling with her image of herself. It's not an easy story to tell, but one that is unusual enough to have potential.

It seems, on surface level, to be in decent hands too. Moving On is a series created by Jimmy McGovern, a writer who also was responsible for The Street - a series of incredibly strong and dark dramas concerning the eventful and depressing lives of one particularly street. All the pieces seemed to be in place.

But, alas, it was not to be. Nothing works here. The directing - and by extension the acting - is piss poor. The script is terrible. Between clunky dialogue and endless melodrama, the characters are all dislikeable and annoying. It was filmed and directed in something of a light way, but there was only the odd moment that relieved the atmosphere of neuroticism.

The main character, really, is where the story could rise or fall. It's a character study, an intense look at one individual specifically. And, damn, is she annoying. She comes across as neurotic and petulant, and, frankly, by the end I wanted to see some sort of comeuppance. Instead, the story panders to her obsession, tries to play it off as a happy ending.

There's a tired predictability to it all. The husband withholds information that drags the plot out for another twenty minutes for no good reason. Their two daughters crow on in a thoroughly bland way, playing out a series of particularly non-engaging interaction about their tribulations when their parents look like they are going to split up.

One to be avoided.