DOCTOR WHO: THE Beast Below

 

So, I think it's fair to say that no one counts any of the second episodes among their favourites (although I remember re-watching The End of The World (2005), the second Christopher Eccleston episode, over and over because it was such a beautifully constructed statement of intent for the new show).  Second episodes are not the ones to showcase the big badguys and, compared to first episodes, no one really has that high an expectation.  So, pressure's off.

We are re-introduced to our shiny-new characters in their shiny new TARDIS as The Doctor is proving to Amy that it really is a spaceship.  She is out in space, flying, while he is fast hold of her ankle and ... looking up her nightdress.  Hm. Okay. 

Well, this shows that she is a spirited companion, as we have come to expect in these modern, enlightened times.  Her idealised analysis of his behaviour as being that of a documentary film-maker who has to observe dispassionately without getting involved is very succinctly put, and shows why The Doctor has no right to feel superior to her ... because, just like her, he can't help but tamper.

Matt Smith does pathos well, particularly when he, like Eccleston before him, struggles with the notion of being the last of his kind (again).  At least he succeeds in keeping this just the right side of maudlin.  He also does zany quite well, flapping his arms around in a childish, ungainly way like Basil Fawlty (an analogy which is, no doubt, aided greatly by his ill-fitting tweed and that ridiculous dickie-bow). To be fair to him, he does petulant and troubled well too and gets the chance to try on all those guises in this episode.  But I wish they'd stop giving him an acting work-out and settle on just one sort of Doctor for him to be, rather than an amalgam of all that came before.

Moffat has followed a couple of second episode traditions so, like Tooth and Claw (2006) and The Shakespeare Code (2007), this episode features the Queen of England and, like The End of The World it considers the diaspora of the human race.  Where that story had echoes of Douglas Adams'  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, in that its location was an observation platform set up to watch the Earth consumed by The Sun, this tale looks at what happened to the humans who fled.

Tom Baker's second story The Ark in Space (1975) featured a not-dissimilar idea and there is a very noble tradition in science fiction of generation starships (even Pixar's Wall E had one).  Here, the ship is Starship UK, a floating island of enclosed skyscrapers (as t'were) each named after a different county.  Nice touch that, pity nothing is done with the idea.

The population is under the thumb of an all-seeing authority represented by automated Smilers, who sit there in booths, remind one of eerie, haunted ventriloquist dummies and ... don't do anything.

As with The Eleventh Hour's jellied eel bad-guy, everyone is scared witless of them, yet they don't actually do anything.  They frown, they grimace and, when goaded, they stand up then ... fall over.  Oooh, scary.

The pre-title sequence involving the isolation and punishment of a child is not explained.  I get that people who protest get eaten.  I get that the titular Beast Below doesn't eat children ... but why are under-performing children fed to it then?

Of course, there is a real child-centric feel to the new show (so far).  RTD was determined to make it a family show, to not pander to children but rather to motivate them to aspire, to think, to work at understanding it.  He brought prime-time adult television standards to his scripts and to the production as a whole.  Sadly, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that retained here; instead, I'm seeing a children's show.

Having his protagonists slip and slide around in the whale's mouth was, I imagine, originally intended to have some mythical or fairy-tale overtone but, as presented, it is simply Star Wars' Garbage Compactor scene with added gunk.  It is the sort of messy humour that patronising, non-aspirational children's TV is all-too replete with.  That's two weeks on the trot, Steven.  Enough now, please.

But, of course, I suppose the focus should be on children.  After all, as is made clear by the end, The Doctor sees all humans as children.  But then, in asserting his superiority ("You look Time Lord.  We came first!") he simply comes across as childish and petulant.  Later, when he feels that Amy has taken some power away from him he really throws his teddy out, bellowing like a spoiled brat "No human has anything to say to me today!" In fact, he loses his temper so much that he misses the all-important detail that'll save the day.

Thing is, all this "I'm mightier than thou" routine should have been kicked out of him ... The Tenth Doctor's arrogance burned him and that, in the show's continuity, happened only a few days before, yet The Eleventh Doctor seems to have forgotten all he recently learned about hubris.  Well, memory loss has gone hand-in-hand with regeneration in the past, but not this conveniently.

So, however well performed it is by Smith, that just rings wrong for me.  But, however much he hates it, I do like the way Amy thinks for herself, took his advice to see and understand the world around her and acts without consulting him - even after he did get all pissy at her.

What worked brilliantly was the character of Liz Ten: "I'm the bladdy Queen, mate!" Wonderful.  The process that has kept her on the throne for so long, the Forget / Protest buttons is a lovely philosophical commentary on the General Election we are now immersed in ... even if the idea does bear a family resemblance to The Matrix's red and blue pills. 

As with The Eleventh Hour, this script felt almost finished, but there were some continuity, motivation and narrative beats that needed more work.  Moffat's fascination with bio-mechanics (seen in the gas-mask faces of The Empty Child - 2005 - as well as the clockwork robots and cannibalised crew of The Girl in the Fireplace - 2006) is here in the spaceship / alien hybrid and in the half human / half Smiler crew.  But the culture of The Smilers and The Winders suggests at masses of fascinating back-story, but there is no time to fully develop or explain that.  That's a problem.  That suggests a script that still needed work.

One final (small) example.  The realisation that "very old ... and the very last of its kind" things can be very kind is a lovely idea.  But did we really need to have it explained to us three times?  Once, of course, twice, fair enough ... but thrice?  That, again, feels to me like a script that needed one final polish.

And (cue tenuous link here) while we're on the subject of polish ... The new TARDIS.  Same as the old TARDIS.  Not being a hardcore Whovian I didn't realise that the sudden appearance of the St. John's Ambulance logo on the shiny new door is a reboot to William Hartnell's TARDIS way back when.

So I did a (little) bit of research and I didn't realise there had been so many TARDISes over the years.  Here is an exhaustively researched and well-written analysis of the evolution of the TARDIS.  Enjoy.

DOCTOR WHO - The Eleventh Hour

 

My immediate knee-jerk reaction to the extremely-long-awaited debut of the eleventh Doctor:

My first thought, during the first few moments of the new much-heralded Doctor Who, was: For a show which now features an actor with the most precipitously high forehead in all British telly, the level of humour in the new Doctor Who is ironically low-brow.  Firstly we have him almost being castrated by the minaret atop Big Ben (as previously featured in several episodes) and then, in a matter of moments, he is spitting out food.  Again and again and again.

This left a bad taste in my mouth ... Because my big fear for the new series has been that the BBC will use the departure of the three people who brought the show back to life (Russell T, Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner) as an opportunity to make the show safe and predictable and just like every other bland, compromised, lowest-common-denominator show they pump out at a mass audience.

Spitting food and dipping disgusting things in custard is exactly the sort of 'humour' to which Saturday morning children's TV has been reduced.  Please, not Doctor Who too ...

Well, okay, people's opinions on what is and isn't funny are as divisive as their opinions on religion and politics, so I'll just have to let that slide.  But humour there is here, more than I expected.  New show-runner Moffat has, of course, worked very successfully in comedy in the past and has hired a lot of comedy writers for the new series so, maybe, we should expect a show with a lighter, less funereal tone than of late.

Moffat has, at least, retained the child's sense of wonder which, of course, is the show's stock-in-trade.  Little Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) is a delightful creation, praying to Santa and treating the new-born Doctor with a willing exasperation.  The moment when she dashes out of the house in her nightie, duffel-coat and woolly-hat to sit on her suitcase and wait for the Doctor's return is delicious.  A great testament to children's willingness to accept.

Much as Smith and Moffat must be hoping the children watching will accept them.

So, Matt Smith ... Well, his youth certainly gives him an energy and athleticism greater even that David Tennant's.  It's a logical progression to have him act even more wildly than Tennant did; always before Doctors have had to be pointedly different than their predecessor (Baker was wackier than Pertwee, Baker 2 was more solemn than Davidson) but, as Moffat points out in the Confidential documentary that followed on BBC Three, there is no Eleventh Doctor, just the eleventh face of the same Doctor.  He's the same person, therefore he should carry a lot of the same traits.  Maybe this is why Smith delivers many of his lines exactly as Tennant would and also why Moffat will have (one assumes) deliberately written them to make that happen.  Hopefully, this will fade away as Smith and Moffat establish their own character.

The "Geronimo" catchphrase is already annoying me, but at least they got "Trust me I'm a Doctor" and "The Doctor will see you now" out of the way early.

What's the other thing we know about Moffat?  Well, he does creepy really well.  Here we have an alien which shapeshifts into a man and his dog, which then mirror each other’s actions (which oddly reminded me of Philip Kaufmann’s Invasion of the Bodysnatchers).  We then have a mysterious mother and her haunted children in a room-full of comatose people (all of which reminded me just a little of Moffat's first foray into Doctor Who - The Empty Child).  That's creepy enough and the big shiny eyeballs in the sky are also just icky; but the main monster, Multiform Prisoner Zero, a big jellied eel, really isn't that scary.  It has no motivation and, to be frank, doesn't actually do anything except make the sonic screwdriver sticky and turn into a barking man.

But then he (she?) isn't the real threat, The Atraxi are, because they are going to destroy Prisoner Zero and the planet on which he hides.  But why are they?   To make way for a hyperspace bypass? Why are they so threatened by the Multiform?   The script doesn’t find time to explain this during its 65 minutes (which is feature-length by TV standards) run-time.

What it does give us is a sexual charge between full-grown Amelia (Karen Gillan), now abbreviated to Amy, and the newborn Doctor, which begins with her revelation that she's a "kissagram" (but we all know what that really means) in her tight mini-skirt, and continues through her watching him get undressed to her positively flirting with him inside the new Tardis.  Maybe this is the result of a heterosexual in the show-runner's seat?  We'll see if it develops into something interesting or, given the fact that she leaves behind her fiancé, (either Rory [Arthur Darvill] or Jeff, presumably, we’ll find out soon enough, I imagine), is it simply a retread of the Doctor/Rose/Micky triangle from series one?  The face-off on the roof in the latter moments certainly reminded me of David Tennant's "That's the sort of man I am" exchange in The Christmas Invasion.  The Atraxi crystal star-ship is itself very similar to The Runaway Bride's Racnoss starship (and let's not even think about how that ties in with the shot of the wedding dress at the end).

The new, improved Tardis looks shiny an more solid and the interior is suitably impressive, with touches of many of the previous control rooms hidden in the details, just as the script reminds one of many elements from previous episodes.

The music, during the dramatic sequences is just as bombastic as we've come to expect from Murray Gold, yet the new arrangement of the main theme is oddly cheery and almost whimsical.  I've listened to it a few times now and I think I'll get used to it.

So, overall, how is Smith; do I think he has the energy and gravitas to pull off the role since it has been layered with so much God-like significance?  Hard to say yet.  I think he may have a greater acting range than Tennant who tended to act through his teeth, but I also fear that his age will continue to preclude me from taking him entirely seriously.  But then, maybe that is why they have made the theme chirpier and added more humour, to get away from the weight of consequence that Russell T. brought to the show and which, ultimately, began to hang around its throat like an albatross.

As for Ms Gillan, she'll certainly give dads a motive to watch the show again; although, as a character, I confess I preferred her as a child.

So, the show was certainly not a failure, it rattled along like all the more popular Davies shows, had a good mix of clever ideas and one-liners, introduced some potentially interesting supporting characters, dropped one or two hints of what is to come but, ultimately, didn't quite hang together for me.  The villains were not fully-drawn, they had no clear motivation.  The script didn't feel as polished as we've come to expect from Moffat and, since this will have been the first he wrote and, therefore, the one he had the most chance to re-work, that troubles me a little.

Various elements will, presumably, become clearer as they return in later episodes, such as an explanation of the knowing looks that pass between Gran (Annette Crosbie) and Jeff (Tom Hopper) while The Doctor is hacking into the world wide web.  The 'Myth' brand on the laptop will, one presumes, be a hint of this season's Big Bad.  Both suggest that we'll be back in this quaint little village later in the series. 

Then, of course, we get  the Multiform fulfilling its only significant role (that of dramatic foreshadowing) when it explains to The Doctor that, as with Amy's wall, The Universe is cracked, The Pandoric (?) will open and "silence will fall".  Since neither we not he know what any of that means, it'll obviously come back to bite him later.  I hope Moffat deals with it better than Russell T. did with all that tedious "He'll knock four times" twaddle that dragged through last year.

But we shall see if he can assuage my concerns as well as if he can answer some of the questions the show left me with, such as ...

Why is it called The Eleventh Hour when the countdown lasts twenty minutes (even if it is twenty TV minutes that last nearer forty) and the show itself lasts 65? (Yes, I know he's the eleventh Doctor but that's not sufficient justification for a punning title).

What's the whole duck-pond exchange about?  Was it leading to a pun about Amy's surname, that then doesn't happen.

What about Amelia's aunt?  Where is she?  Why is the child alone in the house?

Exactly how does Jeff make the world's scientists believe him and help him save the world?

What happens to Doctor Ramsden (Nina Wadia), why was she even in the script, she served no purpose?

And finally ... the montage of coming attractions at the end left me untroubled and unexcited ... it even starts like the prologue of Ashes To Ashes, which doesn't bode well, but there's one image ... a brilliant, striking, perfect Doctor Who image: of Spitfires fighting a Dalek Warship in orbit.  Spitfires in Space! Oh yes.  Roll-on episode three: Victory of the Daleks!  Meanwhile ... see for yourself (Click twice to get it fullscreen):

GREEN ZONE

So, you know the pitch: it’s “Bourne in Baghdad”.  Set in the weeks and months following the initial invasion of Iraq, Matt Damon is leading a team who risk life and limb to drive out of the safe ‘Green Zone’ into enemy territory, hunting for the WMDs that were the pretext for the war.  What we already know (and he’s slowly learning) is that there aren’t any.

Damon’s Chief Warrant Officer, Roy Miller, is becoming all-too aware of the disjoint between the war as it is being fought on the ground and how it is being planned and perceived by the civilians back in the Green Zone.  This puts him in the difficult position of being smart enough to know that something is wrong, but he is still soldier enough to take and follow orders.

In-keeping with the way this war is always depicted; the dialogue between Americans and Iraqis is almost entirely made of yelled, hysterical mis-communication.  Damon shouts so much that he sounds hoarse throughout.  Sadly, the dialogue between the Americans is hardly more effective, meaning that Miller is at odds with most of his fellow troops, particularly Briggs, played by the ever-malevolent Jason Isaacs, who glides through the film like a shark (albeit a shark in a ridiculous ’tache).

 This is your typical political thriller with all the underhanded double-dealing politicos, conniving CIA agents and scary special-forces operatives you’d expect but, instead of being set in the relative calm of decadent DC, its in the dust and heat of an actual war zone.

Everything is set to pounding music and the trademark Greengrass wobbly camerawork with staccato editing.  Indeed, the camera never sits still; dialogue scenes are walking and talking, action scenes are shot hand-held and at the run, even a scene of Miller on the computer has the camera prowling restlessly around him.  The action sequences follow the Bourne aesthetic well, cutting from satellite shots to computer screens to heroes on foot, with loads of radio cross-talk.  The pace and sheer volume of this film doesn’t give you chance to think about what you are seeing, so the political message about WMDs is clearly not the point of the proceedings.

They obviously wanted to avoid the trap that many political thrillers fall into, of being too dry and confusing.  This film is certainly neither of those things but, amid all the noise, chase-scenes and gun-fights, there isn’t really any news.  We know our governments lied to us.  We know that blood was spilled and continues to be spilled under false pretexts.  But this film does nothing to address our confusion over politicians’ motivations or our quiet conviction that the war was capricious.

But, are all soldiers as idealistic as Miller and all politicians as corrupt as Poundstone (played with easy, greasy charm by Greg Kinnear)?  Of course not.  Are all Irish actors’ pretend American accents as dodgy as Brendan Gleeson’s?  Thankfully not.

To its credit, the film is careful not to tar all American soldiers with the same brush, but it is also careful not to demonise the Iraqis.  We see them planning to defend their country, but are made aware that many Iraqis feel that this rebellion is simply protracting the torture.  In the character of Freddy, the taxi-driver and translator, we find someone who is desperately doing what little he can to bring around peace in his ruined country.  He is, by pretty-much any measure, the bravest character in this film, being that he is the only one who has no Green Zone to which he can escape.

 The final fire-lit chase / showdown through the burnt-out, Hellish streets of Baghdad is visually extraordinary and as tense as any chase scene shot in the last few years (certainly since the last Bourne movie) but, even during this master-class in how to make great action sequences, I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that an on-going war is not really an appropriate framework over which to stretch this action/adventure yarn.  It neither adds to our understanding of the war nor offers any realistic closure to it.  How could it? 

So what does the film do?  Sadly, it simply whets the appetite for another proper Bourne movie.

Dir: Paul Greengrass

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Stars: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs

Dur: 115 mins

Cert: 15

FIVE SCI-FI FILMS YOU'LL PROBABLY NEVER SEE

The UK cinema market isn't a big deal, globally speaking.  There aren't enough of us here to make our island that important - from a purely financial perspective.  Therefore, sadly ... annoyingly, a lot of films simply never see the light of day here, either because they can't get a distributor or because the distributor they do have doesn't think a UK release will be financially worthwhile.

Thankfully thanks to the miracle of internetography and free trade ... it is possible to import DVDs or download films you really want to see, irrespective of where they were released.

Nowadays, if you know a film is out there ... you can usually track a copy down.  I hardly need add at this point that independent and art-house films need your support even more than big mainstream Hollywood releases and, therefore, downloading them illegally for free is even more damaging to the careers of the people who made the film.  So, if you like their work please pay them for it.  Then they will be able to make something else you enjoy. 

Now, a few cases in point ... trailers for films which, unless I'm very much mistaken, will not be playing at a multiplex near you any time soon ... if you, like me, live in the UK.

Because of the page width of my blog, these YouTube links run off the side of the page on some browsers so, to see the full picture double click on the image.  A second window will open taking you to YouTube where you can watch the trailer in glorious fullscreen if you choose.

Cos, well, cos this is my blog ... I'll start with science fiction films:

The first is a film that has just played at the SXSW festival - Cargo: a horror/sci-fi from Switzerland that bears more than a passing resemblance to Pandorum and contains not a hint of a cuckoo clock ...



Secondly, another SXSW debut: Mars, a film which seems to follow on the motion-capture work Richard Linklater did with Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly:



This atmospheric little piece was released in Europe in 2009, Metropia:



And finally, two films which became available on DVD in The States in 2009, firstly: Battle For Terra:



Last and very much not least is the only one of these films I've seen: Dreams With Sharp Teeth - a documentary about the great SF writer Harlan Ellison.  I saw this film at its only UK screening at 2008's Edinburgh Film Festival.  It is a great film about writing as a career, it's a great film about this particular writer and, even if you don't know how great a writer he is, he'll win you over in what is, essentially, as magnificent an extended interview as I've ever seen an SF writer give.  A real must see ... and only available on DVD in The States.



Go on, try something the big corporations don't want you to see ... because they don't think you matter.  If enough of us import enough films ... they might decide that we are important enough, after all.

THE WOLFMAN

“Never look back, Lawrence.  The past is a wilderness of horrors.”      - Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins)

 For some, the definition of Universal Studios is “the company that made the monster movies” even though that cycle ended almost seventy years ago.  I like Universal’s classic horror films!  They still stand tall and proud in the imagination from those far-off childhood days when I was allowed to stay up til 9pm to watch them. 

I also like Universal’s more recent raidings of its corporate tomb, like  Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).  I’ll sidle nonchalantly past Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), gazing innocently the other way, before admitting I also like Steven Sommers’ Van Helsing (2004)!  It’s a weird, unwieldy mish-mash of pulp fiction tropes and camp as a row of tents but it delivers.

What it doesn’t do is pay due deference to its source material.  Of course, one could easily argue that Universal itself didn’t treat its properties with appropriate respect, since the genre-defining monsters were all-too-soon reduced to playing straight men to Abbot And Costello.

Now The Wolfman has come along to redress that balance by using the finest of modern CGI effects to revisit the 1941 original.  Benicio Del Toro was obviously doggedly determined to play Lawrence Talbot, having stuck loyally with the project through a long, traumatic gestation and a last-minute change of director.  Initially, during the film’s long, slow first act, you really wonder why he bothered, since there’s very little for him to get his teeth into. 

In terms of mood and mise en scène, the film has all the hallmarks of the original Universal horrors and their British Hammer siblings: the local village which is obviously a set, the moody, mist-shrouded forests of skeletal oaks, the dilapidated ancient monuments and statues hinting at civilisations long forgotten, the ancient circle of standing stones beside the gypsy camp and the snarling, drooling predator in the dark.

These latter two elements furnish the film with its first stand-out set-piece, as the beast attacks the gypsy camp with all the speed and ferocity of a lightning bolt.  It is a furry blur hurtling between caravans but, oddly, when you do catch a decent glimpse of it, it looks disappointingly like a man in a teddy-bear suit.  Bungle The Werewolf … be afraid!

But Hugo Weaving has no fear.  He turns up at the beginning of act two and the film promptly comes vividly to life.  He is playing Inspector Abilene of The Yard, fresh from failing to track down Jack The Ripper.  This is an interesting inter-textual cross-over which owes more to Alan Moore than Lon Chaney.  Weaving is wonderful, with his dignified cynicism and wry one-liners lifting the whole project into another league (not quite an extra-ordinary one, but you get my point).  His performance successfully changed my mind over a film which, by this point, I had all-but written off as a failure. 

It’s at about this time that Anthony Hopkins (who had, up to this point, been sleep-walking through his role as Del Toro’s father, Sir John Talbot) suddenly becomes a much more animated character – giving Hopkins the chance to present us with another of his wonderfully wicked, casually evil performances.  Although, I still wonder about the thick Irish accent he (and only he) employs.

Other performers include Art Malik, who gives a confident and subtle performance with what could have been a horribly stereotypical character, Talbot The Elder’s Sikh manservant, Singh.  Meanwhile, Anthony Sher turns in a thankfully brief cameo as the stereotypically German psychiatrist in charge of the London asylum into which Talbot Jnr is confined.

Once transformed, the lycanthropic Del Toro quite deliberately bears a distant resemblance to Chaney’s and, unlike any other screen wolf I can think of (except, unfortunately, Michael J Fox’s Teen Wolf – 1985) Del Toro can still give a recognisable performance through the make-up.  Obviously it was important to make-up maestro Rick Baker (who, one hardly need mention, transformed all transformation scenes forever more with his still-remarkable work in An American Werewolf in London thirty years ago) to retain the subtle distinction between Man Wolf and Were Wolf.

The film’s truly stand-out sequence comes when Talbot The Wolf cuts loose in old London town, one part Phantom of the Opera to two parts Murders at the Rue Morgue, the scenes of him galloping across the rooftops really do make you yearn for someone to green-light An American Werewolf in Victorian London and to do so double quick!

After such a slow, contemplative start, it is delightfully shocking to have a crescendo involving a wolf fight that easily caps the Nicholson / Spader fight which concluded Wolf (1994), especially in a film which has also encompassed sub-textual considerations of the relationship between ancient myth and modern (by Victorian standards) Freudian analysis … I can’t be the only one who noticed that the son’s silver bullets were loaded into the father’s gun!

Director Joe Johnson makes the special effect sequences buzz with a drama and a vibrancy, as you would expect from someone who began his career at ILM but, sadly, he fails to draw out of the dialogue and character development scenes, despite sterling work done by a, generally, excellent cast.  I appreciate the slow dramatic build to the big transformation and I bemoan the films that plough straight in with the gore and don’t bother establishing any characters; but, in a werewolf movie, the characters have to be thrilling and the dialogue positively electric to sustain a full hour of screen-time with no wolf. 

They aren’t.

To be fair, they aren’t in Curt Siodmak’s original 1941 script, either.  But they are in the afore-mentioned An American Werewolf in London which similarly waits a good hour before unleashing its wolf on-screen and which retains its crown as the best-written, best-performed, scariest, goriest werewolf film ever.

Dir: Joe Johnson

Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, Emily Blunt

Dur: 102 mins

Cert: 15

Images © Universal Pictures

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL

As the shreds of the so-called British Film Industry quivers in the shadow of Hollywood’s big, bullying three-dimensional behemoth … one of the few things we can do that they can’t is create a musical biopic with balls.  Possibly because of the lawyers, possibly because Americans are, reputedly, just so darn polite, their biopics tend to be limp, deferential affairs.  Even when they do admit to their subject’s faults (like, say, in Ray - 2004 - or Walk The Line - 2005) they still manage to eulogise and forgive. 

However, you can always rely on an independent British film to show you the grit and grime behind the glamour of the music business.  From fictional depictions like That’ll Be The Day (1973) and Stardust (1974) through Slade’s Flame (1975) to the ugly truths of Sid And Nancy (1986), Twenty-Four Hour Party People (2002) and Closer (2004) we never seem to tire of demonstrating just what arseholes our musical heroes are. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is no exception but, in this case, its subject, Ian Dury, wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Taking the spotlight, centre-stage as Dury, is Andy Serkis who, as has been demonstrated many times in the past, is a very physical performer.  He has shown impressive physical prowess and a mime-like finesse in throwing shapes for his pioneering of the mo-cap technology that nowadays underpins the creation of most cartoons and video games.  He turned a soulless, mechanical process and made it an art.

He brings this same flexibility to the jerky, stumbling, spastic shapes of Ian Dury.  His transformation into Dury is, like Tom Hardy’s transformation into Charles Bronson last year, quite extraordinary.  Shedding weight to give his face the appropriate lined, worn look, and spending months exercising just one side of his body, he manages to ape Dury’s Polio-derived gait with painful accuracy … but the real revelation is the voice.  Those deep, gravely, Estuary tones are reproduced remarkably, especially when he is performing Dury’s trademark numbers, which were all re-recorded with him by all the surviving members of the Blockheads.  It is an extraordinary performance fully deserving of the BAFTA it didn’t win and the Oscar for which it wasn’t even nominated.  The fact that neither this nor Hardy’s performance last year have received major award recognition is a travesty which leaves me almost lost for words.

Almost.

Director Mat Whitehouse has learned a lot from his mentor Michael Winterbottom about shooting in a documentary style.  Consequently, the aesthetic of the film is convincingly in-keeping with the grainy, poorly-lit music-films of the seventies.  It is clumsy and amateurish and aggressive and passionate, much like its subject and very much like the Punk music scene through which he rose.  Like Dury’s lyrics, there is a simple, dirty poetry to this film.  At one point, musing about his disability, Dury comments: “Polio … it’s like love … There’s no cure for it!”

Dury comes across as a git, frankly.  He’s needy but endlessly uncaring as a husband, selfish and manipulative as a boyfriend, mute and mostly useless as a father.  But, as with all artists, he is surrounded and supported by people who tolerate all this because they love him.  They love his passion and his talent, his angry joie de vive and his frequent moments of desperation.

To its credit, the film steadfastly refuses to sentimentalise Dury or even sympathise with him, he is a true grotesque and we see him here, warts and all.  He calls the song Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll “ … a celebration for The Outsiders … The Uglies!”  He is definitely an outsider but, in-keeping with his merciless refusal to feel sorry for himself, this status energises him.

Ray Winston, by contrast, gives a restrained, dignified performance as Dury’s father, appearing only in dreamy flashbacks.  He represents a vanished, steadfast generation and the greatest lesson he teaches his little boy is about standing up proudly and hiding your pain inside.

By contrast, the other flashback narrative gives us Toby Jones as a cruel, disappointed warder at the Boys’ Home where Dury is deposited by his father.  Here he is brutalised in ways that only young boys can conceive but this, sadly, is Dury Snr’s plan - to have his son beaten so severely and so often that, like metal, it makes him stronger.  There is a mission statement on the wall in the dormitory: Men Made Here!

This is why the adult Dury maintains his steely exterior at inappropriate times with the people to whom he should actually be opening up.

We’re over an hour into the film by the time he first burst onto the stage as a Blockhead, spasming and scary like some brutal Bauhaus clown.  But the unique man and his unique music were created by his unique circumstances.  To appreciate the music (as, presumably, we must already do, since we’ve chosen to watch a film about it) we must experience the emotional swamps from which it arose like marsh-gas and mouldy corpses.

Sadly, once he achieves some modicum of fame, he promptly falls into all the stereotypical drink and drug traps of the untrained pop-stars of the time.  I suppose  this had to be here, since it’s the name of the film, but it does serve to make the whole project feel more familiar and far less unique.

Never-the-less, if you, like me, have always been intrigued and exhilarated by the music and more than a little curious about the man who wrote it, your appreciation of it will grow exponentially with having seen this film.  Furthermore, if you feared that Serkis would be fated to forever play henchmen and heavies in expensive Hollywood productions (his role as Lumpy in King Kong - 2005 – Mr Grin in Stormbreaker – 2006 - and Captain Haddock in the up-coming Tintin movie all spring to mind) then fear not, with Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll he has proven himself to be a formidable leading man. 

Even though BAFTA, this year, elected to go with the dapper charm of Colin Firth instead of Serkis’ scary, sweaty energy … his day will come.  There are unfathomable depths of talent within that man, much more than can be contained within the fragile framework of Britain’s nebulous film-industry.

Dir: Mat Whitecross

Stars: Andy Serkis, Bill Milner, Olivia Williams, Naomie Harris

Dur: 115 mins

Cert: 15

EDGE OF DARKNESS

So, Edge of Darkness.  It’s edgy.  And quite dark. 

Of course, that’s the ground-breaking 1985 BBC TV serial I’m talking about.  It gazed into the abyss of 1980s political corruption and asked doom-laden questions about mortality … all haunted by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen’s sparse, jarring score and the fathomless depths of Bob Peck’s pain.  Edge of Darkness also brought director Martin Campbell to the attention of Hollywood.  Already 45 years old, he had worked his way up through directing TV shows like The Professionals (1977 – 83) and Shoestring (1979 – 80) to the pinnacle of Edge of Darkness, which showed a restraint and a maturity that has, sadly, been all-but entirely absent from his subsequent movies.

One such movie is … Edge of Darkness.  Yes, the man who helped make the original an event which is still discussed admiringly 25 years on, has directed the big-budget feature-film re-make.  I fear this will not live quite so vividly in the memory.

The film begins with dead bodies rising to the surface of a lake … something forgotten, long-buried, rising up to cause misery and confusion.

Of course, the main reason this film is considered of significance is because Mel Gibson has himself risen back to the surface after, what, seven years either behind the camera or in the headlines.

Here, he is well-liked copper and proud father, Tommy Craven, just getting on with his life when his daughter suddenly starts vomiting blood – something else unwanted coming up – and she is very soon cold in his arms.  At this point Mel becomes the character we have seen before … a steely-eyed hollow man on the edge of sanity with nothing to lose and no fear of losing it.  His confusion and grief gives way to flashes of fury and an icy determination … ole Mad Mel has resurfaced.

He begins his own investigation into his daughter’s death and that eventually brings him to the attention of (Darius?) Jedburgh a mysterious Security Specialist without portfolio.  Joe Don Baker brought a real charisma to the original role, a flamboyant American amongst a cast of dour, grey Englishmen … Ray Winston here reverses the cultural divide … but plays Jedburgh as a very calm, still man. 

I like watching Winston in a film, he is at his best when his obvious physical size is held in  check, threatening to break out into acts of extreme violence at any moment.  He was fascinating in The Proposition (2005) and, of course, utterly mesmerising in Nil By Mouth (1997); but Hollywood has never really found a role that fits him.  This film is no exception.  His role in the narrative is never entirely clear and I fear that is because the point of him was lost somewhere in the adaptation.  His line “I don’t know what it means to have lost a child but I know what it is to not have one” should be redolent with sadness and significance but, instead,  just sounds like fortune cookie rhetoric.

Much about this film is less than clear.  To some extent that is deliberate because, after all, it’s a political thriller – filled with long scenes of people sitting in dark rooms delivering pages of exposition … a sure sign of a political conspiracy.  But then the weighty nature of the conspiracy is interrupted regularly by the obligatory fist-fight, car-chase and shoot-out which interrupt the gradual accretion of suspense that sustained the original TV version through almost five hours.

Again, the original had a faceless, systemic corruption with no single villain at its core, but here we have Danny Huston who, like Winston, has pretty consistently failed to capitalise on the screen-burning potential he demonstrated with his breakthrough performance in The Proposition.  As the evil industrialist, Bennett, he is asked to do nothing more than arch that eyebrow and exudes slimy charm.   He may as well have ‘Bad Guy’ printed on his business cards.

Edge of Darkness doesn’t have the genuine political credentials of 1974’s  The Parallax View or 1976’s All The President’s Men (the films that all conspiracy thrillers want to be) but then it doesn’t have the pace or energy of The Net (1995) nor Enemy of The State (1998) either … leaving it just floating between these two shores.

To be fair to Mel’s performance, you are actually more interested in his journey than in the details of the actual conspiracy.  That’s irrelevant.  What you are actually getting is the story of a man unravelling because his reason for being has been taken away. 

As a character, Craven is infinitely more interesting and more convincing in the moments where he is hallucinating conversations with his dead daughter … these scenes are genuinely affecting.   

Out of curiosity, I dug out my old DVD of the proper version just for comparison purposes and was very quickly reminded that Peck’s performance in those scenes, when he goes from joy to despair in a moment, joy at hearing his daughter’s voice, despair at realising it is just a memory and he is still utterly alone in the world, are genuinely heart-breaking.  His performance is a master-class in how an actor can allow the calm surface of his face betray the turmoil roiling in the depths below.

Gibson gives of his all and is to be congratulated but, ultimately, this new version of Edge of Darkness merely has a few hidden shallows, it lacks the gloomy depths and solemn clarity of the original.   Ultimately Jedburgh’s coda, in the original, has a grandeur which helped lift the whole serial far above the tame and tepid police procedural it could so easily have been.  Here it just reads like a flaccid pastiche of the end of the Marky Mark movie Shooter (2007) a film that is, frankly, best left to sink without trace. 

You see, some things are just best left where they lie, Martin.

Dir: Martin Campbell

Stars: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic

Dur: 117 mins

Cert: 15

Images © Icon Productions & BBC