Wheeler

Influence Map

wheeler — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:36:48 GMT

It has been a little while since I posted anything here, but I wanted to take part in the Influence Map meme, and neither of my blogs are about my creative endeavours, so I'm back here for the day.

The Influence Map started with DeviantArt user Fox-Orian as a way for graphic artists to present their influences in a handy-dandy visual format. I write rather than draw, but I wanted to get in on it anyway, so I put together a list of my own influences and... got very confused.

You see, artists appear to primarily use the influence map to present influences on their aesthetic style - as you would expect. As a writer I felt compelled to include writing influences - but I have aesthetic influences as well. Conflating them together made for a confusing and crowded map. So I decided to produce two Influence Maps, because I'm greedy. One is my aesthetic influences, by which I mean visual style and standards of beauty. The other is my narrative influences, by which I mean writing, plotting and non-visual storytelling.

First up is Aesthetics. If you're a non-writer, or a writer-artist, you may wonder why a writer would need an aesthetic influence map. I'm an especially visual person, but I think most writers have strong visual influences. I'm not just talking about how we describe a scene - though that is part of it - but about what motivates us. Aesthetics can inspire a character, or a dynamic, or an event. Most especially, aesthetics can inspire a mood. Often times a writer seeks to communicate an idea in prose that was communicated to him in art. I don't think writers talk very much about their visual influences, but I think they should. So I will.

The size of each image is meant to correspond to the scale of the influence. Click for largeness.

And because I'm a writer, I can't just let the images speak for themselves, so here's another big chunk of text to expound upon the above. Oh, writers!

The British Museum is my greatest fount of inspiration, and here's a secret about me and museums; I don't spend a lot of time reading the text on the displays. I like to drink in the artefacts. Museums make history visual, and that's a great inspiration for any writer interested in history.

Powell & Pressburger and Orson Welles are my directorial inspirations. P&P are for scale, splendour and the intimacy of madness (the image is from Black Narcissus). Welles is for his uses of shadow and iconography - think Touch of Evil and his version of the Scottish play (pictured). You might also want to think about The Third Man, but, of course, that wasn't his direction. It is also an influence, though.

Winsor McCay is the author of art nouveau fantasias that push the boundaries of the imagination. The other comic artists on the list are: Will Eisner, for the humanity of Dropsie Avenue, but more so for the pulp noir of The Spirit; Tom of Finland, for his iconic reinvention of masculine sexuality; and Sergio Toppi, for his wealth of texture, depth of diversity, and exemplary composition.

Art Nouveau gets its own nod, which covers the perennial influences of Mucha, Gaudi, Klimt, Lalique and Tiffany, plus the Musee d'Orsay and the architecture of Paris. Also included for architecture is Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the great defining visionaries of the 20th century. His style is something I have wanted to capture in words ever since Hitchcock did it in film in North by Northwest.

There are only three 'classical' artists in my list. JMW Turner is my favourite painter. His later works are so wonderfully turbulent, so isolating and emotional, while his mid-period works are exemplary storytelling - see the Fighting Temeraire, which is one of the most beautiful paintings of all time. Sargent is included for his appreciation of refinement and beauty - the painting is another favourite, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. Canova is included because I love the iconography of classical Greek and Roman mythology, but I love it best reinterpreted and idealised through the neoclassicists, and Canova is the best of them.

There are a lot of commercial illustrators on my list. In addition to the comic artists, there's Rockwell, Gruau, McGinnis and Leyendecker. Rockwell is a bit of a cliché, but he shapes my vision of the American 20th century. Leyendecker is another masculine idealist - his square-jawed heroes with an invert's soul are my heroes as well. McGinnis presents a more conventional view of masculinity. His paperback covers show adventure - sex, intrigue, death, betrayal - in a single image. I'm not much of a fashionista, but I adore Gruau. He is an object lesson in how expressive a simple line can be. Writers need to appreciate that lesson just as well as artists.

On the subject of fashion, I was going to include photographer Edward Steichen, but I discovered him only a year ago. More enduring is Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of photojournalism and the captured moment, who was anything but a fashion photographer. Like Sergio Toppi (and Hugo Pratt), he opened a window on the world. At the other end of the photographer spectrum are the hyper-contrived Pierre et Gilles, masters of the gay aesthetic, incorporating everything from sexualised goddesses to weeping soldiers. They are character builders.

Finally, there's Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen's ugly gods and rickety monsters are probably the reason I ever wanted to tell stories in the first place. he is not my biggest influence, but he is among my first.

The second Influence Map deals with my more expressly 'writerly' influences. It's impossible to entirely disentangle both schools of influence - film in particular is inevitably present in both - but I've tried to make it make sense.

I'll try to be a little briefer here. Try and fail.

Questions will be asked and eyebrows raised about some of these inclusions. CS Lewis? Chris Claremont? Rudyard Kipling? What sort of purple-prosed imperialistic choir boy am I, by jingo? But whether or not you agree with the politics of an influence, or even still hold them up today, you cannot pretend they were not influential. I can only read Claremont through a nostalgic mist these days, and god forbid I try reading any of his new work - but his strong women and tangled world-building are certainly an influence. Because of Lewis, there will always be God in my writing, and because of Kipling my writing will always be... well, a little imperial. I am fascinated by ideas of empire and culture clash.

On which subjects, there are two historical figures in my list whose stories have been major influences on me. I have read a dozen versions of the story of Alexander, and I'm not bored of him yet. Then there's Lady Hester Stanhope, crazy English adventurer and impromptu queen. Mad and brilliant. The colonial theme is also present in two of my favourite works - Shakespeare's The Tempest, which gave me some of my favourite character dynamics in fiction, and David Milch's Deadwood, which boasts the best character work ever seen on television.
Jim Henson's The Storyteller is probably not of the same high standard, but like Harryhausen, it lit the fire of my love for stories. Disney is not in here for its/his bowdlerised fairy tales, but for its lavish love of villains. My love of a good villain is also why Sax Rohmer is in here - his Fu Manchu is my Sherlock Holmes. More respectable pulp comes from Dashiell Hammett - regarded as hard-boiled, but in some ways as mannered and witty as Jane Austen.

America mores are also represented by Fitzgerald and Williams. The Great Gatsby remains my favourite novel; Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is my favourite modern play. Morality, repression, glamour, decay - this is the stuff great stories are made of! Class, culture and propriety are also recurring themes, which is why Chekov is in there to balance out those flashy Americans with his elegant subtlety.

Not that I don't also love melodrama. If you've ever listened to the dialogue in a Hitchcock movie, you know how good - and layered - melodrama can be. Hitchcock is my favourite movie storyteller. Brad Bird is my favourite living movie storyteller. Even before The Incredibles, he set a new standard with The Iron Giant. Movies also gave me James Bond - with the books coming later. Bond established my mental template for a ripping yarn.

The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton is a very recent discovery for me, but in reading it I discovered that it has been influencing me all my life. He is the author of a very English, very Catholic sense of subversion. He is absurd, heretical and ambitious, and his fingerprints can be found in everything from Monty Python to The Prisoner. Chesterton was a subtle knife compared to Lewis Carroll, but anyone who grew up loving Carrol's queens, cards, rhymes and inventions will probably claim him as an influence. And finally there's Dylan Thomas, who fed us brutal truths and transforming revelations inside the most exquisite lyrical rhythms. Read Fern Hill and be transported. That's what words can do.

Eurovision 2009

wheeler — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:30:58 GMT

No Eurovision rundown in LJ from me this year.

Because it's over on my blog! Huzzah! Alert the media! Or tell your friends, anyway. Or, you know, just read it yourself. Comments welcome! Preferably over there, not over here.

http://www.thepostgameshow.com/?p=581

wheeler — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:04:48 GMT

My Oscar highlights are over at The Post-Game Show, as well as my thoughts on episode two of Dollhouse.

The Post-Game Show

wheeler — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:05:39 GMT

New blog: http://www.thepostgameshow.com/
New LJ blog feed: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/thepostgameshow/

Thank you, Ciaran!

There's still a bit of housekeeping to do over there, but if you see any glaring screw-ups, let me know over here and I'll correct them over there!

(I'm not abandoning LJ, but as I said before, LiveJournal is largely a social thing for me. This will remain my personal blog, and I'll probably start defaulting to 'friends only' posting.)

wheeler — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:44:16 GMT

Your Friday Disco: The underappreciated King/Goffen classic I Can't Hear You, performed by Helen Reddy. There's also a fabulous Dusty version.

Wiki link of the day: Maria Rasputin. Imagine living in Los Angeles in the 1970s and discovering that the octogenarian lady living next door is a former cabaret dancer, lion tamer, shipyard riveter and 'psychic', and the daughter of Rasputin. She's officially the most fascinating female relative of a more famous male since I discovered Dotty Wilde, profligate lesbian ambulance driver, heroin addict and Parisienne bon viveur. They should have had a team up. Rasputin and Wilde: 20th Century Ladies at Large. (Hrm. That actually has potential. I could definitely win a Booker with that.)

wheeler — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:11:33 GMT

I take back what I said about the new season of American Idol being less of a freak show. After the second night of auditions I can confirm that it is still a freak show. They are showing more good people than they normally do at this stage, but they haven't cancelled the circus.

American Woman

wheeler — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:30:57 GMT

American Idol has returned. The audition shows have begun. I've heard tell that they're planning to focus less on the freak show elements and more on the talent this year, as the audition shows aren't as popular as they used to be. Last night's début does seem to haver in that direction.

In recent years the auditions have tended to be wall-to-wall freaks, and when we get to the show proper, we don't recognise any of the contestants. Last night's show did show a few decent candidates, and a lot of borderline ones, and some bad ones, but it didn't linger so much on the dangerously self-delusional ones. The only true idiot of the night was Ryan Seacrest, who tried to high five a blind guy.

There was also the amusing sight of the girl in the bikini threatening to make out with Ryan Seacrest, to Seacrest's obvious alarm and discomfort. He tries to pretend like he finds pretty girls in skimpy outfits in some way interesting, but he clearly doesn't understand why he might. In a stroke of cruel genius, the producers play out this scene to Katy Perry's 'I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It'. Irony has been found in America, ladies and gentlemen.

The real question of the day, though, is what do we make of the new girl, songwriter Kara Disomethingorother. First impressions are promising. She's saner than Paula 'but you look beautiful' Abdul, and she shows more musical aptitude than Randy 'it sounded pitchy to me, dawg' Jackson, and she seems smart enough to keep up with Simon 'it's a no, sweetheart' Cowell. She also seems to have a little of Simon's mean streak in her, which may be why he chose her. It's rather refreshing to have a second judge on the show with intelligent opinions that she's willing to deploy. That said, I suspect a lot of people won't like her because, well, she's a pretty young woman who says what she thinks. What a bitch!

The only thing I didn't like about Kara was her insistence that Simon pronounce her name correctly. He says 'kaa-rah', with a long 'a' sound. She says it's 'kyer-uh', with a short punchy 'a' and that horrible twangy 'y'. Now, she should know, sure; but Simon is from the same part of the world as me, and we men of East Sussex, we Oriental SouSaxons, we have certain standards. Even if he were to do the short 'a' - I'm sure he would if he were saying 'Farrah Fawcett' - it still wouldn't have that vulgar 'y'. Even Northerners don't do the 'y' sound. If you're not going to debase yourself by saying it exactly right, why make the effort to go halfway? So 'kaa-rah' is it.

Kaa-rah also seems a little insecure, but that's to be expected of the new girl on a panel that's been doing this for so long that any drinking game based on their utterances would be too dangerous and expensive to play. Watching Kara's obvious disgust with bikini-girl was a pleasure, but she should never have risen to the bait when bikini-girl said she couldn't do any better.

It will surprise no-one who saw the show that my early favourite contestant is the 'roughneck' (that's 'worker on an oil rig', to you and me). He is a big scary fella, with a body made entirely of pies and hard graft (which will all turn to fat very quickly if quits his day job and become a singer), yet he has a lovely sweet blue-eyed-soul voice. And his name is Jeremy! Jeremy the singing roughneck. How adorable is that?

On Dan Brown, and Writing. Not a non sequitur.

wheeler — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:12:45 GMT

"Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas."

If you recognise that opening paragraph, then shame on you. That's the opening to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I've been reading Geoffrey Pullum's rather amusing assessments of Brown's writing over at Language Log, which extends across several entries and includes such observations as, "to call this novel formulaic is an insult to the beauty and diversity of formulae".

The following is typical of Pullum's criticisms: '[T]he president has eyes which "mirrored sincerity and dignity at all times." Dan doesn't mean mirrored in that last one, not in either of its two senses — look it up. He might have meant displayed, or perhaps even reflected, but he didn't mean "mirrored"; once again he has picked a word out of his thesaurus that he doesn't know how to use.'

(If you decide to wade into the blog entries, ignore everything after "A five-letter password for a man obsessed with Susan", as those entries wander into a dull navel-gazing consideration of someone possibly plagiarizing Pullum's work. If you're in the mood for more Dan Brown-bashing, take a look at the alarmingly extensive Wikipedia entry, 'Criticisms of The Da Vinci Code'.)

I haven't read any of Brown's writing, but I am intrigued by it, for the obvious reason; How does a writer that bad become so popular? I watched the movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code the other day (because I have a Tivo and it's cold outside), so Brown was on my mind. His success is enviable, but as an aspiring writer what I envy more is his audience. I don't want to write a Booker Prize winner; I want to write yarns. I want to slum it in 'genre fiction'. I want to be a dirty, dirty potboiling slag. Like Dan Brown.

But not like Dan Brown, because I want to be able to write well. (People tell me I can, but they base their judgement on everything of mine they've read, not on everything of mine I've written. I live in perpetual fear that the next card I turn face up will be the one that exposes my bluff.) I went looking for samples of Dan Brown's writing to see if I could find something in it that would tip me off as to the cause of his popularity, since judging by the movie it had nothing to do with his plotting. What I found was Pullum, and proof that there is no rational explanation for Brown's success. His plots are messy, his writing is shocking; the best I can come up with is that he struck the zeitgeist, and his work was easy to swallow.

Still, it's useful to read criticism of Brown, and it may even be useful to read Brown himself, to see where he goes wrong. Bad writing is not only easy to do; in genre fiction it's also easy to get away with. I'd like to set my own bar a little higher.

I'm quite sure I'm capable of writing as badly as Brown. This list of Dan Brown eyebrow-isms feels all too familiar to me. My characters raise their eyebrows a lot, when they're not busy smiling or sharply taking in breath. It's a problem I still don't know how to fix. Where Pullum points out Brown's abuse of the word 'precarious' - 'precarious tone of voice'; 'her precarious body' - I find I completely understand what Brown was going for. It's not necessarily that Brown doesn't know what the word means; it's that he has tried to expand the word beyond its definition into a sort of prose poetry. Bad poetry. But it's not ignorance, it's bad judgement. I've done that quite a lot. Sometimes you can get away with it. Usually you can't.

Then there's the axiom, 'show, don't tell'. Brown is clearly guilty of a lot of telling, as in that opening paragraph; but isn't any description in a book 'telling'? I don't want to write a story entirely in dialogue and action! I've just written a scene set in Russia, where the narrative voice explains in retrospect how the characters got there from Persia, because it's necessary background but it's not the story I want to tell. Am I meant to 'show' all of that instead? I'm overstating my anguish here somewwhat; I understand (or think I understand) the principle of 'show, don't tell' - but I can still worry that I've got it wrong.

And, by the way, opening lines are a bitch. I can see how Brown fell into the trap of 'job/name/action/setting - ooh, aren't you intrigued to find out what's going on?' Wherever I start my story, I feel like I'm cheating, because inevitably it feels like you're trying to be coy and clever. "Look at me, I'm setting a scene! Where shall I start? I'll start with... a smell! Where is the smell coming from? Who is smelling it? Where are we? It's all so writerly!" What a dickbag.

The reason for all this noodling - and, see, there I am, wilfully using a word in a way that fits no known definition of the word but that makes sense in my head; to noodle is to pooter with a musical instrument, not to think meanderingly around a subject - and come to that, is it even right to write 'think meanderingly', and didn't I just use 'pooter' in the wrong sense as well? God, I'm a terrible writer. I didn't even finish the sentence at the start of this paragraph!

The reason for all this noodling is that I have thus far managed to keep to my new year's resolution, which was to write 500 words a day, not including blogging. This is working out quite well. I'm averaging about 800 words a day, which is not a lot, but for someone with absolutely no discipline as a writer it marks a substantial change in my habits. The simple fact that I'm writing every day means that I'm thinking more about my writing, and I'm feeling more writerly (more dickbag!). It's proving to be a very good thing for me. Mind you, we're not even two weeks in to the year yet, so I may be patting myself on the back too soon.

On which note, it's gone 9pm and I haven't written today's 500 words, so I should probably get on that. He said, raising his eyebrows.

Golden Globes

wheeler — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:54:34 GMT

The Golden Globes just happened. You can see the results here. My highlghts of the show are as follows:

Worst Dress of the Night: Renee Zellweger, wearing an inky ziploc freezer bag and apparently having an allergic reaction to whatever used to be in it. She always has the puffy face and squinty eyes, of course, but she looked especially drowsy tonight. To make things worse, her hairstylist had opted for a busy little nest thing that I like to call 'tête au lit'.

Surprise of the Night: Slumdog Millionaire - the little film that could. I really ought to go and see this movie, eh? I don't think anyone was predicting this to have such an extraordinary night, but it took best film, best director, best original score and best screenplay. An extraordinary result. Who could have predicted that, of all the cast of Skins, Dev Patel would be the one being catapaulted into Hollywood?

Non-Surprise of the Night: Heath Ledger winning for Dark Knight. Entirely deserved, of course, but Mirren-level predictable. (Oh, and Wall-E won best animated, of course.)

Delight of the Night: Kate Winslet winning best supporting actress and then best actress. Because I love Kate Winslet, and it's nice to see her happy, and she gives charming acceptance speeches (given the chance). You have to love Kate Winslet; she's Kate fucking Winslet. Doesn't this mean she has to get an Oscar at last? And isn't it ridiculous that she's still so young and it's already an 'at last'. Kate fucking Winslet!

Funniest Moment: Ricky Geravis (or 'Gervay', as the Americans do insist on calling him), telling Kate Winslet that he knew she'd start winning awards once she did a Holocaust movie, and bemoaning that such movies never have a gag reel on the DVD. He milked his part, but Gervais always gives great awards ceremony. (Sacha Baron Cohen, not so much.)

Weirdest Moment: Salma Hayek waxing lyrical about how beautiful she is. It took me a few seconds to realise that she was actually talking about Penelope Cruz, who is, after all, a different person. They were both in the same room at the same time, so it's definitely true. Mind you, they were never both in the same shot.

Favourite Speech: I didn't expect Colin Farrell to win Best Actor in Not A Serious Film, and I doubt he expected it either. He doesn't have the body of work; he's not overdue; he's not going to get an Oscar nod; and Brendan Gleeson was nominated in the same category for the same film. It was a deserving performance, but it was surely a long shot. Anyway, the point is, I don't know if he'd prepped a speech, and he can be a bit rotten at these things - he was chewing gum and saying stupid things during his presenter slot, and I was shaking my head in despair - but the boy done good. His scattershot acceptance speech was heartfelt and funny and showed an unexpected streak of thoughtfulness. Hated the earrings, though. Loved the waistcoat.

Other Favourite Speech: Kate fucking Winslet, both times.

Disappointment of the Night: Sean Penn not winning Best Actor in a Serious Film for his portrayal of Harvey Milk in Milk. Mickey Rourke winning has that sense of rewarding an old dog, even though Rourke doesn't really have a history of great and credible performances behind him, but having seen Milk just last night and been moved, devastated and amazed by Penn's transformational and humane performance, I was really hoping he'd get the recognition, and it was not to be.

BBC News Story of the Night: 'British people win lots of awards'. The BBC story is always 'how many awards did Britons win?' This year the answer is 'lots'. Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson, Kate Winslet (twice), Slumdog Millionare (several times); that's lots. Colin Farrell isn't ours, but everyone thinks he is, so we'll claim that one as well. And Paul Giamatti. He's a character actor, he must be British.

wheeler — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:24:56 GMT

Wow. Cleveland City Council created a 'non-binding registry of domestic partnerships'. What this does is, it allows couples, both gay and straight, to 'non-bindingly register' the existence of their domestic partnerships. Beyond that, it doesn't really do anything at all. Even so, a group called United Pastors in Mission tried to block the move because, and I quote, "that lifestyle goes against God". They meant the gay lifestyle, in case you're wondering. So, what are we saying here, reverends? Now those perfidious gays are redefining the meaning of non-binding registries of domestic partnerships? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? If there was any doubt left that these Christian crusades had anything to do with protecting faith rather than hating others, this just put the nail in that coffin.

By the way, I'd just like to thank Barack Obama once again for reaching out to these people. If he weren't sending the message that hate is an acceptable part of modern political discourse, who knows what they'd think?

wheeler — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:32:13 GMT

Answers:

1. Sexually repressed Natalie Wood bursts a packet of sweetener all over the front lawn
Splenda in the Grass

2. Barbra Streisand plays a Spanish surrealist painter in Yonkers
Hello Dali

3. Young Helena Bonham Carter can just about see through the sleepydust
A Rheum with a View

4. The story of a boy abandoned in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid kingdom
Empire of 'The Sun'

5. The people of Cwm Rhondda sing 'Take Me To The River'
Al Green Was My Valley

6. A misanthropic romance novelist learns about love from the God of Thunder
Asgard As It Gets

7. Ingmar Bergman's tale of a meeting between an outrageous TV chef and the conqueror of the known world
Fanny and Alexander

8. 'Rosuto'
Lost in Translation

9. Presidential private secretary, presidential private secretary, make me a match
Fiderer on the Roof

10. Native peoples of Rwanda, dresed up as a woman
Tutsi

11. Blind pianist unionises a cotton factory
Norma Ray

12. Frozen food spokeswoman is frustrated by her marriage to a closet homosexual
Katona Hot Tin Roof

Points:

Points are awarded based on timestamps and how close the answer given was to the one in my head, so if you were close enough, you get the point, unless someone else got the answer exactly right before your answer was unscreened.

tintintin - 2
chef_troy - 2
andyyyyyy - 1
burge - 1
redscharlach - 2
stu_n - 2
elethe - 2

Be sure to tune in for another round the next time I can be bothered! Huzzah!

So bored and bereft of LJ comments that I'm doing this...

wheeler — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:14:33 GMT

Name that bastard film!

1. Sexually repressed Natalie Wood bursts a packet of sweetener all over the front lawn
2. Barbra Streisand plays a Spanish surrealist painter in Yonkers
3. Young Helena Bonham Carter can just about see through the sleepydust
4. The story of a boy abandoned in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid kingdom
5. The people of Cwm Rhondda sing 'Take Me To The River'
6. A misanthropic romance novelist learns about love from the God of Thunder
7. Ingmar Bergman's tale of a meeting between an outrageous TV chef and the conqueror of the known world
8. 'Rosuto'
9. Presidential private secretary, presidential private secretary, make me a match
10. Native peoples of Rwanda, dresed up as a woman
11. Blind pianist unionises a cotton factory
12. Frozen food spokeswoman is frustrated by her marriage to a closet homosexual

ETA: All have now been guessed, so check the comments for the answers!

"Ve do not haff sharks in Venice."

wheeler — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:41:39 GMT

Snakes on a Plane! But the snakes are sharks and the plane is Venice! With a weird Da Vinci Code/Last Crusade treasure-hunting plot bolted on! Starring Alec Baldwin's brother and Scarlett Johansson's sister!

You've got to love a trailer that has sharks leaping out of the water and sneaking up wells, and people being threatened with buzz saws and gored by iron gates, yet it spares a second to show us a woman being slapped across the face, because that's human drama. We also get to see noted homophobe Stephen Baldwin doing his very best seething. The man is an acting phenomenon.

I will say this for Sharks On A Venice; dreadful shark special effects have come along way since John Barrowman's 2002 movie Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Really; some of these post-production superimposed sharks are almost at the right angle! Almost!

Real Stupid

wheeler — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:18:03 GMT

One of the advantages of being in North America is that I have increased access to terrible, terrible reality shows. Take, for example, True Beauty, which is as shallow as they come, but offers up a transparent self-justifying twist in a bid for credibility.

The concept sees ten beautiful people compete in various challenges to see which of them is the most beautiful. The twist is that there are also 'secret' tests of their 'inner beauty'. You can't win by being rilly rilly good-looking; you have to be nice as well. Will they hold a door open for a man carrying coffees? How will they react when a waiter knocks a chocolate fountain over their shoes? Will they sneak a peek at someone else's medical files? In such ways a person's true worth is measured!

The tests are banal, but it's an appealing premise - a premise appealing to terrible instincts. We all know that beautiful people are horrible, right? It's what allows us to feel better about our own unspectacular looks.

And indeed, the contestants are reliably spoilt and vicious, but the show doesn't exactly plumb their depth or challenge their powers of reason. In what may be an early contender for TV's lowest point of the year, a scientist (a real one!) claims he's devised a formula that can rate everyone's beauty on a scale of 1 to 100. One of the least-dim contestants (a self-professed 'former fat kid') challenges the idea that beauty can be measured, to which judge Cheryl Tiegs responds, 'this is scientific; he's an expert'. Yes, it's science. It's fact. You can't argue with a scientific formulae, bitches! (Tiegs is billed as 'America's first supermodel'. Janice Dickinson will tear her eyes out.)

So is this the stupidest TV show on television, or does that honour go to MTV's Bromance?

Bromance is a heterosexual man-on-man dating show, where several guys compete to be the new best friend of Brody Jenner. The two questions that immediately spring to mind are, how does one 'compete' to be someone's friend, and who the living hell is Brody Jenner?

The answer to the first question is, 'by building a raft out of blow-up dolls and rolling down a hill in a La-Z-Boy'. It's obvious, really. All my friends have done these things for me. The answer to the second question is, he's a 'socialite' and reality soap star. There is indeed such a thing as a reality soap now, and they have stars. Jenner looks like a Ken doll, but without Ken's hard edge and sexual allure. He's actually so witless and innocuous that he's not even half the twat he ought to be.

None of the men competing to be Brody's brofriend are gay - there was one gay contestant, but he found the atmosphere too fratboy - but the show does feature a lot of weeping, hot-tub sharing and professions of 'I love you man'. The very concept of the bromance conjures interesting questions about the nature of male-male love and the spectrum of sexuality. A reality show may not be the place to explore these issues. But it's not as stupid as True Beauty.

Incidentally, the show's concept was in part devised by Ryan Seacrest, and he definitely wants to be Brody Jenner's friend.

Finally, the granddaddy of trash reality has started a new season; The Real World. If you'te a Briton of a certain age, you may be surprised to learn that The Real World is still going. I thought it ended after the San Francisco season, but no, it's kept on going for the past seventeen years and is now embarking on its 21st season!

Anyone who watched the San Francisco season may have fond memories of the show for its progressive inclusion of a gay man dying from AIDS. It was genuinely groundbreaking and hugely compelling. Anyone unlucky enough to have seen it since may be less forgiving of the show.

The new season, Brooklyn, is being hailed as a return to form. It does seem to have brought together some interesting characters, including an Iraq war vet (who is a bit of a douche), a Mormon who is being presented as a bit of a closet case (and a bit of a douche), and the show's first ever transgender housemate.

At the moment the vet and the Mormon are both talking about the transgender woman, Katelynn, with obvious contempt - one of them even refers to her as 'it' - but I hope that their exposure to Katelynn will do as much to challenge their and audience attitudes as Pedro did in the 90s. The show has the potential for real relevance, if handled decently.

Katelynn looks like she'll have some support in the house, especially from gay dolphin trainer JD (he trains gay dolphins! No, not really). I'm more worried about Chet the Mormon, who insists he isn't gay. They ran a montage at the end of the episode of him complimenting the other guys on their abs, legs and shapely eyebrows. Now, he says he's saving himself for marriage - fair enough; not all Mormons are repressed homosexuals. Only 99% of them, maybe. But this guy seems pretty deep in denial. "Being metrosexual is not a sin", he mentions at one point. As opposed to what, Chet?

Further thoughts on the subject of one Mr Matthew Smith, aged 26 and one quarter

wheeler — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:12:38 GMT

Paterson Joseph must have had a bloody awful couple of days, with everyone he knows ringing him up and saying, 'Hey, P-Joy (because I'm pretty sure they all call him P-Joy); congrats on the new role. Oh, I know you have to tell everyone it's not you, but come on, you can tell me the truth, can't you? Great news, man! What's that noise? Are you crying?'

(No one is phoning up Chiwetel Ejiofor saying, 'Hey, Chewy Edge, great news', because Chewy Edge is a serious actor. He's probably in a cabin somewhere learning all the roles in King Lear just in case.)

By the way, a friend tipped me that it would almost definitely be Paterson Joseph, so I had money riding on it - and I'm still relieved it isn't. Matt Smith is officially a better choice than Paterson Joseph from a watchability point of view.

He's not a good choice from a fan-pleasing point of view, that's quickly becoming apparent, and I'm not sure how the BBC missed that. I think they were thinking, 'You all loved the last pale skinny young unknown actor we cast in the role; wait until you see how much paler, skinnier, younger and more unknown this new guy is! We really ticked those boxes! Go us!' At least James Nesbitt would have only upset 75% of everyone.

The more serious objection, of course, is that we'd all been primed for Whobama, the first black Doctor. How did that rumour get out? Was there any actual fire behind that smoke? A black Doctor would have been pretty awesome and, you know, different. Matt Smith? Not very different. As not very different as they come, really. Very much like the last fella, only less so. The BBC had the chance to be bold and they blinked. Now Matt Smith gets to be the guy who replaces the most beloved Doctor Who of all time and the guy who got picked over a ground-breaking piece of casting, and he doesn't have any pre-existing fanbase. Is it any surprise that people are throwing a strop? None of which is Matt Smith's fault, of course, poor kid. Poor ickle wickle pootie-wootie Matty-Watty Smiff.

And, see, there's the other problem. The eleventh incarnation of the worldly-wise war-worn occasionally godlike last of the Time Lords? That? It's First Year Medical Student Who. I'm not ruling out the possibility that he could surprise me with his gravitas and old soul - the kid's a good actor - but it would be a surprise. And I seemingly can't stop referring to him as 'the kid', and I still think that I'm eighteen. If they'd cast him as the effluent Who grown out of the Doctor's hand at the end of last season, I think I could have believed it.

On which note, it amuses me greatly that one of the main responses to the casting has been to say how ugly he is - unless you're a straight guy! I've seen so many straight guys saying, 'typical, another bloody pretty boy'. Oh, straight boys; you're really not very good at this, are you? On the scale from pretty to interesting, Matt Smith is absolutely fascinating. And it's funny how we never hear a peep from you when pretty girls get cast in TV shows, eh? 'Another one with perky boobs? Man, I'm so sick of all the nice boobs on TV.'

By the way, didn't they already do the storyline where David Tennant gets turned into an unremarkable nobody called Smith? God, Moffatt; derivative much?

Alas Smith

wheeler — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:21:50 GMT

So, yesterday I said "if that's true it'll be the very definition of a damp squib", and today, lo, it was true. Way to go, BBC, you berks! Fandom will destroy you! If they were going to cast badly, they should have cast Paterson Joseph, and if they were going to cast well they should have cast Chiwetel Ejiofor. Time for a black Doctor? Oh no, let's go with some scrawny twelve-year-old with a head like a cotton bud. If they were going to go that way then Harry Lloyd was right there.

Don't get me wrong; I like Party Animals a lot, and I liked whatsisname in it, but I don't see this 'Doctor-ness' the producers claim they saw in him, so I'm sceptical. He's not just young, he's young-seeming. As I also said yesterday; That kid? Who are they going to cast as his companion? Peaches Geldof?

Doctor, doctor, give me the news.

wheeler — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:51:30 GMT

The BBC reports that the identity of the eleventh Doctor Who will be announced tomorrow on Doctor Who Confidential. OooOOOoooh. Speculation right damn here.

First of all, I don't think they're done filming the specials yet, so I wonder if this means that the transition could happen before the end of this year? Filming on the new series starts in the summer; why not hold off on the casting announcement for at least a few more months?

But more importantly, who is it going to be? Rich Johnston assures me that he thinks it'll be Paterson Joseph, and certainly that's the name floated in the article. I don't personally much rate Joseph as an actor, but I'm all in favour of a black Doctor (Oh no, he'd stand out in historical settings, whatever would we do with plot points in a work of narrative fiction?). My fear is that Joseph can come across a bit like a 1980s Playschool presenter. I fear he would have just one setting, 'manic', and it would grate very quickly.

If we are going the black Doctor route, well, Chiwetel Ejiofor has also been hotly tipped, and he would be a much better choice. Joseph looks more plausibly like the Doctor (I don't even know what I mean by that, I just know that it's true), but Ejiofor is a terrific actor. He might be a bit too grown-up for a teatime family show, though. He has gravitas and everything! Does one need gravitas to fight a giant crab?

It won't be Robert Carlyle, who just got cast in Stargate: Ad Nauseam. James Nesbitt has been mentioned, and if you're looking for a diabolical ham who chews scenery so fast that he's officially banned from Tokyo, you couldn't do much better that Nesbitt! If Nesbitt gets it I may actually have to stop watching. Which would probably be a relief to people who think I'm too critical of the show.

It won't be Jason Statham. I've no idea where that rumour came from, but I think that would be hilarious if it were true.

More explicable rumours are the raft of people who have already been in the show, and they could easily justify such a choice with some babble about an unstable morphic field imprinting on blah blah blah. Those names include Anthony Head, Harry Lloyd, Russell Tovey, John Simm, David Morrissey and John Barrowman.

Now, Head and Tovey already have BBC shows to keep them busy, and it wouldn't be Barrowman even if he weren't too insanely busy. Simm is the one person who has said he wouldn't do it whom I actually believe, and I suspect he'll be back as the Master anyway. He says he's Tennant's Master, and I think that means he'll be back in the specials for a final face-off, at the end of which he'll regenerate into the next Doctor's Master.

Morrissey would be great in the role, as we've seen, but that ship sailed with The Next Doctor; it's not impossible that Morrissey's character was in fact the next Doctor, having lost his memory, but we do not want a Doctor with a heavily mascara'd urchin companion, and anyway it would rather undermine the emotional strength of that story.

If it were up to me, I'd go with Harry Lloyd. He was great as Baines in Family of Blood, and he is rather lovely, and he looks impeccable in a suit. He is rather young, though, so while I'll be overjoyed if it's Lloyd, I don't think it will be. I think it'll be Paterson Joseph. That would be a... consistent choice, and not a terrible one if he can keep his theatrical flourishes under control. Casting a black actor is of course a bold move (and it sort of amuses me that we'd have a black Doctor and a black president - can a black James Bond be far behind?). A woman would be bolder (and wouldn't Jennifer Saunders be great?), and if we get Joseph I'll always wonder what might have been with Ejiofor. But we'll find out in about 24 hours, and then the internet will melt, and then we'll have a year to wait before it will actually mean anything. Woo-hoo!

ETA: Betfair has Matt Smith (of Party Animals and Ruby in the Smoke) as a late favourite, and if that's true it'll be the very definition of a damp squib. That kid? Come on!

Men of the Year 2008

wheeler — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:23:08 GMT

This is a repost, as apparently the images weren't working before. Thanks LJ! It's my annual Men of the Year list - one of the only lists of its kind that Barack Obama isn't going to win. As ever, the list consists of the finest totty to make a splash in the past twelve months. The previous winners were Gethin Jones, Daniel Craig, Ray Stevenson, Colin Farrell and Craig Doyle. Obviously it's a very prestigious prize. No, Zac Efron, you can't have it. Not yours.

10. Jim Sturgess
Neither Across the Universe nor 21 were particularly great films, but their adorably apple-cheeked English star Sturgess is well on his way to boy-next-door heartthrob status - and he can sing, too! This winning combination means that he's apparently been linked to the lead role in the Spider-Man Broadway musical. No, really. There goes that career.

9. Bret Harrison
Some guys ooze sexual self-confidence and swaggering machismo. And some guys are dweebs. Reaper's Bret Harrison is a dweeb through and through. And don't we all love a dweeb? Well, handsome dweebs, anyway. Bret Harrison looks something like I'd expect the perfect doting boyfriend to look, were such a thing to exist. It doesn't.

8. The Housemates
Oh, I know, I know; Big Brother, how awful, death of civilisation et cetera and so forth. But for the first time this past year the show had some bona fide man candy, first in the hijack edition with prettyboy boxer Anthony Ogogo (above left), who is not only beautiful but also seemed genuinely nice, and then with the proper show's Dale Howard, who is terrifically easy to look at and good for absolutely nothing else. A long career in wearing underwear in public awaits him. Well, a short career. But hey, it's a living! These days.

7. Mike Vogel
Poor Mike Vogel; when you're that stunningly pretty, you really have no choice but to go into modelling and parley that into a career making schlocky horror movies. Somehow this lead to his accidentally appearing in Cloverfield and getting smooshed by a giant monster, so hopefully he'll now get to be a beautiful corpse in a much better class of schlocky horror movie.

6. Scott Porter
Speed Racer wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, but the best thing in it was Friday Night Light's Scott Porter as Speed's golden-boy brother Rex. What a shame that the movie (spoilers!) sees him get plastic surgery and end up as Matthew Fox. Matthew Fox is OK and all, but I'd still get my money back if that were me. I'm of the opinion that if Scott Porter doesn't get the lead in the Captain America movie there'll be no point making the Captain America movie. He was made for the part! In a lab! With a serum!

5. The Olympians
Olympic years are always good years for perving - in fact, that's what the Olympics are for! Oh, unless you're a straight man. Child gymnasts and women made of sinew? Sucks to be straight! My favourites this year were little Canadian diving pixie Alexandre Despatie (above, left), and gold-medal-winning rower, British Naval officer, part-time superhero and all-round god Pete Reed.

4. Sean Faris
Because Paul Walker doesn't quite have the range to play people who aren't blond, it was necessary to invent Sean Faris. Faris also serves to remind us how it is that Tom Cruise ever became famous, which is sometimes hard to remember now that he's old, weird and embarrassing - though Tom was never actually as handsome or as fit as Faris. I'm watching Top Gun right now, so you can take my word for this. The wonderful thing about Faris is that he makes movies about things like ultimate fighting and rugby, which is the male equivalent of Jessica Biel only making films about washing cars or modelling lingerie. His upcoming movies include an adaptaion of the video game King of Fighters. It's sure to be excellent.

3. Gabriel Macht
I've been waiting for Macht to get his big break since 2001, and now he's got The Spirit under his belt, so... I'm still waiting. Maybe Whiteout will do it? Macht has a very old Hollywood look about him - the square jaw, the twinkling eyes, the Errol Flynn smile - so he was absolutely perfect for The Spirit. A better director could have done wonders with that casting. Maybe it's time to remake Captain Blood? Won't someone please make this man famous?

2. Jon Hamm
Another actor with old school leading man dash, which is why Jon Hamm is so perfect as Mad Men's Don Draper. Hamm seems to have arrived out of nowhere - I'm sure I'd remember seeing someone that handsome before - so I suspect he fell into a chest freezer in the 50s and was only recently defrosted. And while we're on the subject of superhero casting; Christopher Nolan, might I suggest that this man would be excellent for a certain role should you ever decide to give Christian Bale his well-deserved pink slip?

1. Thore Schölermann
And this year's winner is... some obscure actor from a German soap opera! Hurray! But, hear me out. There are several reasons Thore Schölermann is my 2008 Man of the Year. The most obvious is that he's a gorgeous redhead with beautiful blue eyes. Also, his name is Thore. Do you need more than that? Oh, OK. Here's who Thore Schölermann is:

Thore is one of the stars of Verbotene Liebe, and if you don't know that, you probably aren't sufficiently immersed in 'boys kissing boys is hot' culture. Verbotene Liebe ('Forbidden Love') is a popular prime time soap opera in Germany that has become a YouTube phenomenon because of just one plot line; the ballad of Christian and Olli. Bi boy meets straight boy. Bi boy accidentally falls in love with straight boy. Bi boy kisses straight boy. Straight boy is confused about his feelings for bi boy. Straight boy is mean to bi boy. Then this happens:

The bit you're looking for is at around the four minute mark, but you may enjoy the whole clip.

The bi boy is Olli, played by Jo Weill, who is also good looking in a dewy-eyed, porcelain-skinned sort of way. The 'straight' boy is Christian, played by our Thore. Both actors are straight, and Thore was reportedly initially a little reluctant to do a gay storyline. It's to his credit, then, that he does it well - and his reward is a worldwide cult following.

Gay love stories are few and far between. Good ones are virtually unheard of. Throw in gay characters played by hot actors - is that even allowed? - and you've got one of the best gay love stories ever told. In a German soap opera! I know! And once they'd told the story, what did they do? Break them up? Have one of them hook up with a girl? Kill one of them? Kill both of them? Ooh, ooh; AIDS? No! Apparently you don't have to do any of those things! Christian and Olli went from having perhaps the best gay love story in all of fiction ever to having perhaps the cutest, most beautifully portrayed gay relationship in all of fiction ever. Olli and Christian: officially the best gays in the history of made up stuff.

Thus I present to you my man of the year 2008; the adorable, gorgeous and really very wonderful Mr Thore Schölermann.

If you'd like to explore the story of Christian and Olli for yourself, some very nice Germans have put their entire saga up on YouTube as a playlist - with subtitles! Thanks Germany! I forgive you for the whole war thing!

And if you have any thoughts you'd like to share on this year's MOTY, or if you'd just like to acknowlegde that, hey, you turned up, the tip jar is, as always, what we like to call the comments section.

Of the Year: Games, TV, Albums

wheeler — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:38:30 GMT

Favourite Games of the Year

4. Fable II, XBox 360
Equal parts frustrating and addictive. The fights are fun, but there is such a thing as taking an immersive world too far. Do I really want to play a game where I have to worry about my looks and my relationships and take on dull, monotonous jobs in order to pay the rent? Apparently I do.

3. Wii Fit, Wii
Naturally everyone who buys it gives up on it after about three months, but that's because people are crap, not because of the game, which surely represents a remarkable seachange in what we use gaming for. I was noticing real results from my Wii Fit use at the point where I moronically allowed myself to fall out of the habit of using it!

2. Mario Kart, Wii
I'm terrible at racing games, which I blame on the fact that the controls are always rubbish. Mario Kart works because turning the wheel left takes you left and turning the wheel right turns it right - clever, eh? And it's cute, original, and the wheel is wireless! It's a racing game I actually enjoy! But it needs more levels.

1. Little Big Planet, PS3
I've only played this once, but I fell in love with it that one time. Yes the sackboy characters are adorable, but the brilliant thing about the game is the user generated levels; it's a game that, in theory, never gets old. And that one time I played it was at a party, by the way, which is a sign of how things are changing; playing video games at a party is no longer rude; it now is the party, especially when a game is not just fun to play, but fun to watch. Playing this in multi-player mode had the whole room in stiches.

Favourite TV of the Year

5. Mad Men
In 2008 I saw the 2007 season, so I'm actually a year behind on this cold, stiff, dry martini of a show, but I look forward to catching up. The premise - a look at the lives of 1960s advertising execs - is hardly compelling, but using the shifting cultural sands of the era to hold up a mirror to modern mores makes this one of the smartest shows around.

4. Weeds
The fourth season of the show was about as radical a retooling as a show can have and still hold on to its cast, and as much as it stretches credibility for the drug-dealing suburban housewife to get in as deep as Nancy Botwin has, the new direction has kept the drama fresh.

3. Burn Notice
A suave spy gets burned in Miami and turns into a latter day Rockford. Saturday afternoon action TV lives again!

2. The Rachel Maddow Show
In a year when US politics was the most exciting drama on TV, Maddow was the go-to pundit for liberals looking for a voice of reason. Yes, she's snarky and sarcastic. She's also smart, sharp and funny and helps make the world a little less agonising.

1. Supernatural
Cute boys. Evil monsters. Increasingly smart scripts. The only show I can name that gets better every season, and the show I most look forward to watching every week. This is the sort of entertainment that TV was made for.

Favourite Albums of the Year

5. Let It Go, Will Young
With 2005's excellent Keep On, our Will demonstrated that Friday's Child was not a fluke. With Let It Go he officially has an oeuvre, a body of smooth, soulful, easy listening pop songs of ever increasing gayness. There are now enough Will Young songs for an entire dinner party!

4. I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too, Martha Wainwright
Folk princess Martha is turning into a bit of a siren temptress judging by the title and cover of this year's album, but she's still more Joni than Marlene with this collection of mature, weighty folk torch songs.

3. Alive and Screaming, Jake Walden
Walden is about as unknown as they come; I heard of him because Out magazine promoted him and two other artists as part of a gay music tour. Of the three, he's the one that stuck. Walden has a voice you really wouldn't expect from a skinny gay boy; a yearning emotional growl that delivers raw, heartfelt, romantic folk. He deserves to be much better known.

2. Acid Tongue, Jenny Lewis
I spent most of this year listening over and over to Lewis' excellent Rabbit Fur Coat, and was pleasantly surprised to discover a follow-up in the same American gothic vein. The nine minute Next Messiah is as good a short story as you'll hear, and anthemic rapture See Fernando is one of my favourite songs of the year.

1. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
I don't even remember how or why I ended up downloading this album, I just know that it found its way onto my iTunes shuffle, and every time one of the tracks came up I had to pause and let it wash over me. Gorgeous, glorious, soft and sweeping harmonies that give balladry a good name.

wheeler — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:14:35 GMT

To get your new year started on a special note, some unique entertainment that has to be seen to be believed; An abridged West Side Story, starring Cher. In all the parts. I swear, I think she actually sings Tony's part an octave down.

Part One

Part Two

The Spirit: A Review

wheeler — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:58:02 GMT

I'm just now back from seeing The Spirit. I'm no longer sure whether I wanted the film to succeed or fail; on the one hand I'm no fan of Frank Miller, and couldn't imagine him as an effective curator for Eisner's legacy. On the other hand, I'd like to see The Spirit succeed, and I'd like to watch and enjoy a Spirit movie done right.

It's not The Spirit done right. But I still enjoyed it. In fact, given the terrible reviews, I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it. Isn't this meant to be the new Battlefield Earth? I'm not seeing it.

I can see a lot of flaws. There are animated 'shadow puppet' sections - the rooftop running, the elevator sequence - that just don't work at all. Samuel L Jackson is overexposed, and any scene he's in seems to drag. Frank Miller isn't anywhere near as witty as he thinks he is. There's an ill-advised scene with an apparent paedophile character that sits very uncomfortably in the film, and gives Miller a chance to throw in a gratuitous Batman and Robin joke to serve his own particular fetishes. Then there's the Nazi scene.

I'd assumed the Nazi scene would involve characters dressing in the style of Nazis; Nazi-inspired costumes without the damning insignia. No. They're dressed as Nazis. There are swastikas everywhere. Big swastikas. At one point Scarlet Johansson delivers dialogue in front of a giant photo of Adolf Hitler. It's extroardinary and inexplicable.

I've always found Miller's use of swastikas in Sin City rather strange - Gail has swastika earrings; Miko has swastika throwing stars - but Sin City was such a well-loved work that I assumed we'd all decided it would be crass to mention it. Now, though, I'm thinking it merits inquiry. Is Miller is trying to sanitise the swastika as a symbol? Just how extreme are his particular ideological 'quirks'? Yes, he gives the swastikas to villans and whores, but these villains and whores are not Nazis, and in Miller's world the villains and whores are glamorous figures. He can't give the swastikas to the heroes, can he? That would be a little blunt.

It's also very definitely Miller's Spirit, not Eisner's. That's not necessarily a flaw, just a disappointment if you happen to be an Eisner fan (or, you know, a fan of The Spirit). Miller apparently knew Eisner well, and I'm sure he's sincere when he says he believes he's honouring Eisner's vision, and that this movie is not a Sin City retread. Visually, this owes everything to Sin City and very little to Eisner. It has Sin City's angles, shadows and patois, not Eisner's. Eisner is there, in the bricks and the trees, and in specific lines of dialogue that are tossed scattershot into the script ("What's ten minutes in a man's life anyway" stands out like a red tie on a blue - sorry, black - suit), and in cute references to folks like Iger and Ditko, but this doesn't look or feel the very distinctive world that Eisner created. It's revealing that the end credits use Miller sketches rather than Eisner sketches, and the closer we get to an Eisner illustration is a Geof Darrow 'meat chart'.

Most espeically, this Octopus is not Eisner's. I was disappointed that Miller didn't go the 'gloves only' route of the character in the comics, but I can understand how difficult that would be, and I thought the overt theatricality of Miller's version was a nice shift. But the character was so far from The Octopus that I'm not sure why they used the name at all. A lot of the film felt that way, actually; Miller would have been better off making up his own character than trying to tell a story with these ones. Miller's reinvention of Lorelei feels like an unnecessary addition to the character's mythology, and Miller's Sand Serif is a departure as well, though she could be seen as a blend of Serif and P'Gell. Perhaps the biggest crime is that the film's logo is not an impressive Central City monolith. That is just a fundamental oversight on the director's part.

I also found the 'period' aspects of the film bizarre. It looks deliciously 50s, but why throw those modern and obvious mobile phones in there? They don't serve the story. The modern armaments are forgivable, as they would seem absurd in any era, but what's with the Aquafina bottle prominently placed on Ellen Dolan's desk? Did the set dresser forget to remove it?

So that's what's wrong with it. Is there anything left to be right with it? Well, it is arrestingly beautiful. Miller is an excellent stylist, and that shines through. In terms of shaking up the visual language of cinema, Miller's impact in three films has been impressive, and I hope it produces some aftershocks. Not every shot works, mind you, and they don't necessarily come together with much fluency, but even the failures are brilliant failures. The visuals alone ensured I was never bored. Well, except during the Octopus/Silken Floss scenes. Those were frequently dull.

The casting is also generally good, especially in the case of Gabriel Macht, who is perfect in the lead role. Macht has the right matinee idol looks, the broad shoulders and square jaw, and he could teach Christian Bale a lot about doing a deep growly voice, and he also throws himself into the role with obvious relish. Scarlett Johansson is a little stiff, and as mentioned before, Samuel L Jackson could afford to be a little stiffer, but Eva Mendes steals her scenes with style (except when struggling to walk slinkily in a Chanel suit; that she cannot do), and I thoroughly enjoyed Louis Lombardi as the henchmen.

And although Miller isn't witty, his excesses can raise a laugh. The audience I saw the film with seemed to throughly enjoy themselves, and one guy even applauded at the end credits. For all its flaws, I still had a really good time watching this movie, and I'd happily watch it again. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a contendor for worst film of all time. On the contrary; this is a future camp cult classic that a lot of people will love.

Favourite Films of the Year

wheeler — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:57:38 GMT

... and a long diversionary discourse into The Dark Knight.

Yes, it's time for the 'of the year' posts. Except this time around I'm not calling them 'top' or 'best', because I've realised how vain that is. These aren't the best films of the year; they're just my favourites. What I look for in a movie may not be what you look for in a movie, and hey, let's all learn to respect and appreciate each other; huggles. Anyway, the Oscars will tell us which movies are the best. Ho ho.

I always think choosing the best - sorry, favouritest - films of a given year at the end of that year is a bit of a mistake anyway, because too many good films come out in the closing weeks and odds are good that I won't get around to seeing most of them. I'm sure Slumdog Millionare is excellent, but I haven't seen it, so it can't make the list. The system is flawed! Why must the powers-that-be force us to conform this way?

On the other hand, I have seen 10,000 BC, In The Name of the King and Step Up 2 The Streets, and they don't make the list either. (Sadly I missed The Hottie and The Nottie, but I'm sure it was everything I could have feared it would be.) I will say, by the way, that if you're ever on a plane with a terrible hangover, you can do much worse than watch What Happens in Vegas. It is surprisingly endurable. And Speed Racer is really not that bad. But Meet The Spartans really is.

In point of fact, I don't think I saw many truly good movies this year, and I don't remember any previous summer being such a wasteland. No wonder Dark Knight and Mamma Mia were able to smash box office records; people kept going back to see them again and again, bereft of anything better to see.

On which note, obviously Mamma Mia doesn't make my favourite five, stupidly pleasurable though it was in parts (I've rarely seen a film more cack-handidly put together, though), but nor does Dark Knight. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Dark Knight, much much moreso than the shamefaced Batman Begins, but I watched Dark Knight again on Christmas day, and while Heath Ledger is indeed excellent and the film offers up some gripping set pieces, the film has a terrible flaw that audiences have very charitably forgiven.

I'm not referring to Nolan's unrecognisably generic Gotham, nor to the bizarre Dick Tracy villain that wanders in during the film's fifth act and sticks around to force a sixth when the movie is already over and we're ready to go home, nor to the Gordon's Alive sequence, which requires a write-in No Prize to make it work, nor to the Joker referring to Maggie Gyllenhaal as 'beautiful' as if she were a totemic representation of the conventional standards of attractiveness that he was looking to scratch away when in fact she resembles a prettily avant-garde turnip, nor am I even referring to the film's psychological discourse on human nature, which ultimately comes across as naively optimistic given the film's 'dark' drag. No, all of those things are hand-waveable. The problem the film has is that its Batman is just rubbish. Those ridiculous John Travolta's jowls and that hysterical Harvey Fierstein voice; fight scenes that look more stagily choreographed than anything on Strictly Come Dancing; and worst of all, the acting talents of Mr Christian Bale.

Dear readers, like many of you I have fallen for the myth of Christian Bale; the strange belief that, because he takes himself extremely seriously, does ridiculous things to make his body fit his roles, and does not fall drunkenly out of taxis with Playboy playmates hugging his legs, he is one of the finest actors of his generation. It has also helped his cause that he is deceivingly, deliciously, decisively handsome.

Unfortunately I've come to the slow realisation that Christian Bale is not actually that good. Throughout his entire oeuvre he has two expressions; heavy-browed stern disapproval, and slack-jawed stupefied dumbness. See him be stern in 3:10 to Yuma! See him be dumb in Hard Times! See him be stern in Equilibrium! See him be dumb in The Prestige! No prizes for guessing how he deploys these remarkable skills in the dual role of Batman and Bruce Wayne. His line readings are also rather... 'consistent'. Accents and outfits change, but his characters are always the same. He is the Mr Ben of actors.

Now, a lot of movie stars make a career out of playing themselves, and there's no shame in that, but those actors generally have charisma and personality, and the 'themselves' they are playing are magnetic. Bale does not have any 'himself' to play; he has substituted charm with aloof seriousness, and the result is an actor who acts as placeholder where the character is meant to be. His Batman is dull, stiff and empty, and while it would be foolish to even try to match Ledger's Joker (someone has to be the straight man), Batman should not be an echoing void in his own movie. In some of Bale's films, his cipherousness can actually be effective - cf American Pyscho. But not in this one. Batman should have presence.

All that said, Dark Knight would have made sixth or seventh place on my list if it had been a longer list, because Ledger is that good, and the film is full of great moments strung together like bloodied teeth on a necklace. But my list is not that long. Sorry. Here's my list.

5. Cloverfield

And now I've said that, I have to admit, this feels too high a placing for this movie. I feel like it should be about ninth, and that there are four good movies missing from the year that should have bumped it back. Maybe they're four movies I haven't seen from the end-of-year Oscar-bait glut. Still, Cloverfield is a great novelty that deserves praise. The first-person viewpoint of something as ridiculous and wonderful as a giant monster attack creates an experience akin to a choose-your-own-adventure book, but a particularly fatalistic one where you only think you have a choice and your doom is inevitable from the outset. I feel they could make the same movie all over again another six or seven times, each from the point of view of a different group of people on the same night, and I'd enjoy it every time.

4. Son of Rambow

How surprising that this delightful movie should come from the same team that made the disappointing Hitchhiker's Guide adaptation. Having had an 80s British childhood myself, obviously this film has some resonance, but I think the humour and heart of it are fairly universal. Where Lee Carter starts out as a very odious reflection of too many brats I remember from my schooldays, the usual strings are plucked to bring us around to him by the end, and while it may not be subtle, it is still done with ample charm.

3. WALL-E

The WALL-E I was expecting would probably be my #1 film of the year; a 90-minute wordless comedy of extraordinary animated slapstick (which, it turns out, is actually a highly sophisticated form of comedy - who knew?). It would have been tough to sustain something like that, but I had faith in Pixar. Sadly the rumours turned out to be false, and this was not quite the second coming of Buster Keaton. All too soon the film takes us into space and gives us beanie-humans to worry about. Even so, this is a beautifully crafted comedy, and even Heath Ledger can't hold a candle to WALL-E when it comes to performance of the year.

2. Iron Man

Ah, how I remember the nervous anticipation that surrounded this - and every - geeky film. Can it be good? Is Downey Jr the right choice? Will they get the armour right? Will they make Tony Stark likeable, given that the comics have been less and less able to achive that feat over the past twenty years? Did that trailer look OK to you? Is the CGI all right? It could be Ang Lee's Hulk, where we desperately try to convince ourselves that it was all right. It could have been X-Men 3, where we can't quite believe how bad it actually was. It could be Blade, where an average film is made to seem magnificent simply by dint of exceeding our expectations. I think there's even some subconscious horse-trading that goes on with films like this; do we want Iron Man to be good, if it sets the bar for Dark Knight? Is there enough karma to go around? Would I rather have a good Iron Man film today, or a good Wolverine film next year, because I'm probably not allowed to have both.

It turns out that Downey Jr was exactly the right choice, and they did get the armour right, and the CGI passed the test, and this and Dark Knight were both good (and Wolverine might yet be!), and it wasn't The Hulk, and it wasn't X-Men 3, and it wasn't Blade. This was a comic book adaptation that so invested in the character and his milieu that it got it right in a way that no comic book has ever managed to do. This was a great superhero movie, and Downey Jr's Iron Man is the best Iron Man there has ever been. Thank God Marvel's marketing department is so incompetent that they never seem to be able to exploit their big cinema releases, because it saves the editorial team their blushes when realise they've got absolutely nothing decent and coherent to put up against a movie like this.

1. In Bruges

Martin McDonagh's bleak hitman comedy is already well on its way to becoming a cult favourite among a lot of my contemporaries. I think it's the next Three Kings - a film people will keep discovering and adopting for years to come until it reaches a sort of saturation point, where everyone privately thinks it's awesome, but no-one knows that anyone else thinks that. Martin McDonagh writes wonderful blue prose, and while the plot relies heavily on contrivance and coincidence, the beautiful one-reality-removed setting of misty medieval Bruges allows him to get away with it. And, of course, the movie gives Colin Farrell a rare opportunity to go back to acting, and it is both his best film and the best he's been in a film. Incidentally, if you saw the trailer it may have made you think this was a cod-Guy Ritchie film and that you'd be very much happier avoiding it. The trailer was misleading, and this is a much smarter film than that, and you'll be happier for having seen it. (Though, Ritchie's RockNRolla is actually pretty decent too, come to that. Yet still very Ritchie.)

wheeler — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:31:50 GMT

But let's not just focus on the ugly side of politics. After all, it is Christmas. Let's look back on what could have been. Here's Keith Olbermann's Sarah Palin highlights reel - sure to raise a smile, now we know that she's safely back in Alaska just, y'know, huntin' and shootin'.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28356123#28356123

wheeler — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:30:23 GMT

A little more on Warren, specifically an excellent opinion piece from the LA Times. Turns out Warren doesn't just hate the gays, he hates the Jews and the womenfolk too! Way to reach out and bridge the divide, Barack! With this pastor, you're really including us.

"To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.

"Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead." (Read the rest.)

Salon also weighs in, with some interesting insights. "Making matters worse, the Obama team evidently decided not to alert anyone who was likely to be upset about the pick ahead of time. News of Warren's involvement in the inauguration came out of the congressional committee working on the inauguration instead of from Obama's own inaugural committee, a wholly separate entity. At least initially, aides for Obama's inaugural committee said the decision had come from Congress, not Obama. In fact, that wasn't the case at all."

One wonders why America has political parties at all. Elect someone from the right, and they pander to the right. Elect someone from the left (well, centre-left. Well, left-of-centre-right), and they pander to... the right! It sure must be wonderful being a bigot in the chosen land!

Obama: Moving On To Pastors New

wheeler — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:13:11 GMT

I read an article in the Economist not so long ago about how Rick Warren was being positioned to succeed Billy Graham as 'America's pastor' - not an official role, but a widely recognised one that has seen Graham counsel successive presidents. With Warren chosen to lead the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration, his ascendancy seems more assured than ever - but it's a little disappointing that Obama has laid the palm fronds across Warren's path to the high altar.

No, wait; not disappointing. That's not the word I'm looking for. Disgusting, that's the word. See, it turns out Barack Obama is a dick. After all that talk of hope and change, it seems the smooth-talking snake oil-selling former senator from Illinois is in fact a shitheel.

You see, Rick Warren preaches that homosexuality is akin to incest. He believes it can be cured. He refuses to allow homosexuals to join his church. He is what we like to call a bigot, and he rather perfectly embodies the vile pseudo-religious anti-gay lobby that is the single biggest and most insidious opponent to civil rights in America today. By giving Warren the plum spiritual job on inauguration day, Obama is saying that this man represents the soul of America. He's sending a big thumbs up to evangelical America, and in the process turning his back on the gay Americans he teasingly remembered to mention in his acceptance speech.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, does this really matter? This is gesture politics; it's the policies that count. Let's judge Obama by his substance (on the offchance that he should ever get any). You might even be thinking, 'Oh, don't do that, you damned uppity gays. He's supposed to be the hero. Why do you have to be the ones starting the liberal backlash? We love Obama and we love the gays; don't make us choose. You might not like our decision. And remember, you gays cost us the election in 2004 with all that equal rights hullabaloo; don't think we've forgotten that, you gays'. You may very well be thinking that, but you're probably pretending that you're not.

Make no mistake; this does matter. Yes, there have been dodgy pastors at inaugurations before. Billy Graham himself was and is a terrible old anti-Semite, and most likely no fonder of homosexuals than is Warren. But isn't Obama meant to represent change? Isn't he the new broom? If ever there were a president who could wriggle out of the White House's self-imposed sense of indebtedness to right wing evangelicals, it was surely this guy. And Graham kept his unsavory remarks on Jews to himself; Warren makes his homophobia a plank of his preaching. Warren's rhetoric belongs in the same class of speech as Holocaust denial or racist invective. It should not be honoured by the president voted in on a mandate for change.

When Obama was the candidate, I chose to bite my lip at his continued pursuit of the safe line on gay marriage, the odious lie that 'marriage is between a man and a woman' - even when, in the vice presidential debate, Gwen Ifill put things neatly into frame with her comment to Biden and Palin; "Wonderful. You agree". Yes, Gwen; wonderful.

No, during the campaign I think a lot of us were exercising discretion, because we did not want gay rights to be the wedge issue again - and the sacrifice in this was the right of gays to marry in the state of California. Now, though, Obama is the president elect, and it is intolerable to learn that on the day that he becomes president, he intends to make a public gesture of accord with one of the most divisive and potent homophobes in America by inviting him to lead the nation in prayer. I say again; it is not disappointing. It is disgusting.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Obama made a mistake. Maybe the usually cool, calm, forward-thinking politician didn't think this one through, and maybe he'll realise that the message he's sending is unacceptable, especially in a post-Prop 8 climate when gay Americans already feel maligned and disaffected, and especially in light of his personal failure to stand up for gay marriage, and his mealy-mouthed endorsement of 'separate but equal' policies. Maybe he will reflect that he would never allow a pastor to speak at his inauguration whose church was not broad enough for black worshippers, and perhaps he should extend the same level of consideration to another minority. Maybe, as a man of principal and a proponent of change, he will withdraw the invitation to Rick Warren. Obama is meant to be a friend to gays and lesbians; he supports hate crime legislation and is in favour of expanding employment discrimination law to cover sexuality. He opposes Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He's in favour of gay adoption and gay civil unions with rights equal to marriage. Maybe his first term in office will see him take positive action on all these fronts. Maybe Barack Obama is not a dick.

If he's not a dick, he has to say thanks, but no thanks to Rick Warren. And then we'll take it from there.