PETRONA

Film review: No Way Out

No Way Out is a 1987 film that I enjoyed very much when I first saw it, and which I have recently watched again on DVD, many years later. It's an excellent film which stands the test of time extremely well;  I recommend it highly.

Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) is a naval officer who meets a woman at a Washington political party. After some repartee, they immediately begin an affair. He's assigned to the Philippines, but is soon recalled by his ex-college room-mate who is counsel to the Secretary for Defense David Brice (Gene Hackman), and offered a job. Farrell is a hero, and his appointment is more window-dressing than anything else, while Brice tries to stop a project to build a giant stealth submarine to spy on the Russians. Before much can happen, however, several shocking events and twists occur in quick succession, and Farrell is simultaneously running an investigation and hiding from it.

Not only is the plot of this film intelligent and exciting, but the film delivers on it, refusing the usual cop-out Hollywood ending (though there are a couple of cliches, for example when someone makes a secret appointment in a dark, isolated room to tell one other person of his suspicions). The context is also superbly convincing,with beautiful production values  perfectly capturing the Washington ambience. In particular Sean Young as the woman delivers a great performance, simultaneously Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, sophisticated, elegantly casual, vulnerable, witty and sexy. The second half of the film takes place in a basement incident room, where the technological advances since then would have destroyed a few of the tensions if applied now (waiting for a teleprinter or a scanner to deliver the goods). But the pace never lets up for a minute.

Kevin Costner plays an apparently straight-arrow officer perfectly. At the same time, the camera is deeply in love with his beauty, as shown by some of the earlier sequences on a boat in Chesapeake bay or when his girlfriend tries to take a photograph of one part of his anatomy but has to make do with another, to his amused embarrassment.  Costner's looks and physical grace are offset by the character of Scott Templeton, his old friend. At the start of the film, Scott looks normal. Yet when the pivotal event occurs, which is Scott's idea, he changes, and by the end of the film he is ugly, crazed and scary. He's overtly identified (by the head of the CIA) as being homosexual. Here is a (deliberate, I'm sure) paradox in the film: its extreme negative showing of the "labelled" homosexual character, and its intense romance with the clearly heterosexual, and did I say beautiful, Farrell.  Farrell, after his earlier scenes of romance, spends the rest of the movie in tightly fitting white uniform, which he has to change at least once, and the camera simply lingers on him all it can - but never at the expense of action and excitement. Marvellous - a film that has dated in all the right ways and none of the wrong ones. And it is one of those stories which, when the denouement comes, has one remembering back to many apparently innocent details, and realising what they actually signified.

The film is loosely based on the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, first published in 1946.  The book was made into a film of the same name in 1948, directed by John Farrow and starring Ray Milland. I don't think I have read the novel or seen the original movie; clearly the 1987 remake provides a very different setting from the original journalism context, but keeps the basic premise.

Over the years since 1987, I watched several other films starring Kevin Costner after seeing this one (unsurprisingly), but I don't think he ever subsequently matched his sheer physical perfection in No Way Out.

No Way Out at the IMDB.

Quotes from the movie (don't read unless you've seen it or don't mind spoilers).

New York Times review of the movie (contemporary to its 1987 release).

Some short videos from the movie.

Spiral is back for a third series later this year

Ever since the online version of The Times has been converted to paid-for, the print edition keeps featuring interesting articles to which I'd quite like to link. The new subscription-only website does not let you even create a link to an article without registering, which I am not going to spend time doing just to find out whether or not linking is even possible (some publications allow you to read an abstract free, others don't even do that).

So, I write here about an article on page 47 of the print edition on Wednesday (14 July) all about Engrenages (Spiral, though a literal translation is "Gears"), the French TV series which is jolly good   indeed. Seasons 1 and 2 are out on DVD in subtitled versions, and series 3 will be broadcast in the UK "later this year". I was first alerted to the existence of this series by Euro Crime, and have never looked back since. I do, however, recommend either watching these filmic series on DVD or recording the episodes and watching them more frequently than once a week, to keep up with the convoluted plots.

The Times feature is by Sarah Hay, and describes her experience watching part of the new series being filmed. She calls it "France's answer to The Wire" for its "complexity of its characters, realistic depiction of Parisian life and biting portrayal of the French judicial system". If the depiction of Parisian life is truly "realistic" then the city would never attract any tourists - this is the Paris of Dominique Manotti, not the Paris of Gene Kelly or Coco Chanel. I should also add in all fairness that the three main characters: the policewoman, her main antagonist and the prosecutor, are all extremely good-looking. 

From The Times piece: "In Engrenages, viewers follow Captain Berthaud, a workaholic cop played by Caroline Proust, as she tumbles between the gritty underlay of Parisian life and the Kafka-eque corridors of justice, where ambition and intrigue thrive. Standing between Berthaud's team and resolving their cases are Pierre Clement, the handsome, idealistic deputy prosecutor; Judge Francois Roban, whose doddery  appearance hides a sharp instinct for unveiling conspiracy; and the deliciously unscrupulous lawyer Karlsson. In series three the web of storylines tightens until a nail-biting denouement, hinting at corruption that reaches to the very top." (Sounds just like series 1 and series 2, then.)

Among other revelations in the article, we learn that red-headed Audrey Fleurot, who plays the unsavoury Karlsson, has a role in Woody Allen's next movie (currently shooting in Paris), and that a real-life lawyer recently gave a press statement on behalf of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, using the phrase "C'etait un engrenage") - a title which Kerviel used for his book. 

Like The Wire, the criminal plot lines are created by an experienced police superintendent, who says that all the situations in the TV series are based on real cases. Viewers who can't speak French and rely on the subtitles are often in the same boat as native French speakers, because the dialogue is full of argot and police insider-slang. The pace, the secondary characters, everybody is guilty and everyone is losing the plot, the sidekicks and, of course, the main characters - these, according to The Times, are the factors that make this series such a delight and why I am so much looking forward to series 3. (And the good-looking actors, of course!)

Official series website.

Engrenages at Facebook

Euro Crime posts about Engrenages.

Film (DVD) review: District 9

I don’t often attempt film reviews, or indeed see films these days. Nevertheless, I did enjoy District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp) on DVD over the weekend. This film was successful commercially and critically when it was first released, but none of the many internet outpourings at the time made me want to shell out for what has become a ghastly experience that has to be endured to see a film on a big screen. I made a mental note to watch it when on DVD. I must have then forgotten all about it, but was reminded of its existence recently by Gillian Slovo’s recommendation at the London Book Fair South African panel discussion. In HMV on Saturday, I looked up the movie and found it there for cheaper than a cinema ticket (and it is even cheaper on Amazon). Hence I bought it and two people so far have seen it, thus satisfying my inner craving for a bargain.

Enough preamble, what of the film? It’s both exciting and formulaic. The basic premise, as I am sure everyone knows, is that an alien spaceship breaks down above Johannesburg, South Africa, and for the next 20 years the rescued aliens (called “prawns” as that’s just what they look like, in giant form) cause annoyance to the humans by their ugly, messy ways, obsessive love of tinned cat food, etc.  All the prawns have to live in a shanty town called District 9, but at the start of the film public ire has reached the point of no return, so the aliens are to be moved out to a more distant “tent city”, District 10.

The film is shot in documentary style, as the hapless military, public-health and corporate officials, followed everywhere by media cameras, make uncomprehending aliens sign their eviction orders preparatory to being moved out. Of course, everything goes horribly wrong in an assortment of funny and violent ways, not least involving a group of Nigerian opportunists who have set up shop in the District.

This film is extremely exciting and has a strong, if predictable, plot. Because it isn’t a Hollywood movie (the Lord of the Rings team of Peter Jackson and Phillipa Boyens are involved in the production), there is no mushy, compromise ending, thankfully. The film follows through on its premise. As an allegory for discrimination and prejudice, it is unlikely to surprise anyone, but it’s a nice touch to have revolting, unsympathetic (mainly) prawns as the underdogs and equally unsympathetic people as the oppressors. There are strong subplots about family loyalties, medical research and ordinary people’s attitudes to what they either can’t understand or don’t want to face.

The reaction in Petrona Towers was 50-50. I really liked the film as I was not expecting anything from it and it kept my attention (I didn’t fall asleep in the middle as I usually do in anything longer than an hour).  I liked the pacy docu-drama format which ensures no longueurs. There are no nice characters, which is also refreshing,  though I found myself quite liking the initially unsympathetic main protagonists (one  human and one prawn) more as the film progressed. The child  prawn is gorgeous and cute, thankfully not tripping over into Spielbergian Disneyfied sentiment. There is a rubbish “boys toys”, blood-splattered, shoot-out pre-finale, but I could forgive that given the great tension and excitement in the preceding hour and a half that did not fall into those common indulgences. And the real finale – it follows through. (Though of course there is lots of unexplained hokum about constructing spaceships and the like which you have to accept on its own terms or you’ll find the film annoying.) Prof Petrona was less keen on the movie than me. But then he had just finished a book about Dirac before watching it.
 

Gillian Slovo also recommended Invictus (dir. Clint Eastwood), which she said was unfairly overlooked on release as people assumed incorrectly it is a sports movie per se. So when that one comes out on DVD next month or thereafter, I’ll be watching that, too.

The Page Turner on UK TV on 23 September

Sometimes, something just catches your eye and you aren't sure why. I was flicking through the various sections of the Saturday Times this morning (a Sunday morning habit) when the phrase The Page Turner jumped out at me. On closer inspection this turns out to be the title of a 2006 film which is showing on Film4 on Wednesday 23 September at 2250 UK time. From the Times's blurb:

Revenge is a dish served icy cold in the French writer-director Denis Dercoult's taut, psychologically charged Euro-thriller. Catherine Frot plays a successful concert pianist who hires a new assistant (Deborah Francois), not realising that this seductive femme fatale has scores to settle with her from years before (85 min).

I may have read about this film when it was first released, but if so, I'd forgotten about it - it sounds good even if it is not, as my subconscious brain must have at first thought, about books. The 85 min is also quite appealing, so I might attempt to set up the timer for it (if we even get this channel), because even though it is a short film, it's too late to watch "live" as it were.

More information:

La tourneuse de pages at the IMDB

Film4 review and info about the film

Observer review by Philip French

Millennium 1: film of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Millennium 1 is the film based on the best-selling and superb novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, a book which very successfully combines the thriller with the traditional detective story as well as having a strong social conscience. Together with Karen of Euro Crime, I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to the premiere, part of the current Film 4 FrightFest season in London, by the lovely people at Quercus, the UK publisher of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy.

The film is an initially alarming 150 minutes long, but boredom hasn't a chance as the pace and action never let up for a second after the start in which journalist Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) is tried and imprisoned for slandering Hans Wennerstrom, head of a multinational company. The film moves through this part of the plot in double-quick fashion, missing out virtually all the publishing and relationship dynamics of Millennium magazine and briskly moving on to the lonely Henrik Vanger (Sven Bertil-Taube)’s last-ditch attempt to find out what happened to his niece Harriet, who disappeared without trace one summer in the 1960s.

Vanger and his lawyer hire a firm of private investigators to check out Mikael, who is out of work after resigning from Millennium and awaiting his jail sentence,  before asking him to re-open the Harriet case. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is a young computer hacker who does the investigative work for the agency – and this is where the film bursts into another dimension. Clearly unhinged and dangerous, Lisbeth is a punky drop-out, a be-metalled, aggressive rebel – black of eye and hair – with no interpersonal skills. Paring the descriptive aspects of the book to the bone, we strongly identify with Lisbeth – how she falls into the power of an abusive guardian, and how she exacts revenge.

The film cracks on at blistering pace as Lisbeth and Mikael combine expertise and forces to discover the secret at the heart of the Vanger family. The film strips out most of the extraneous details, including the subterfuge that Mikael is writing a biography of the family, with the result that the tracking down of the crimes occurs with cracking drive and makes the mystery of Lisbeth sharper and clearer – why is she a ward of court and a delinquent? Why does she behave with such vicious drama? We can’t wait until the next film to find out (even though I already know part of the answer!).

What more can I write? The acting is without exception superb; the story is brilliantly adapted from the book in the sense that it is faithful to it without being over-wordy or over-respectful to it; Lisbeth in particular is a fantastic filmic creation, given bright life and intense, dangerous energy by the superb personification of Noomi Rapace, a feminist avenger of men who hate women.

I haven’t seen a film as good as this for years, and I can’t believe I’ll see another one to beat it for quite some time. Unfortunately it is not on general release in the UK until next Spring, but let us hope that the second two films in the trilogy follow very soon after that. I’ll be first in the queue.

More information about the film, together with Karen’s review, is at Euro Crime.
Trailers of the film, and more, at Stieg Larsson's website.
My reviews of the books The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire.
Quercus, Stieg Larsson's UK publisher.
Yellow Bird (film production company) Millennium trilogy website. (Yellow Bird also produces the Wallender TV series in Sweden.)

The return of Harry

From Random Jottings: "as I stood in the check out queue there was at least one copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in each trolley. In front of me stood a gentleman with four copies and I could not resist asking him, Why Four? "Well, there is one each for the kids and one each for the wife and me and we are going to have a really great weekend as peace will reign in our house while we all read" ".

---------

Four poems written by 19-year-old Daniel Radcliffe have appeared in an underground fashion magazine under the pen-name of Jacob Gershon. The collection was published in November 2007 in Rubbish magazine, an annual publication with a circulation of 3,000 which describes itself as "a playful platform for fashionable people". This, and many other fascinating details, are revealed in The Guardian.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: Warner Brothers official site.

Little Dorrit

This is just wonderful. Not much more to be said, really.

Watching the film Jar City

So, one of the many good things about the recent snowy weather in the UK is that my younger daughter's parent-teacher evening at school yesterday (Tuesday) was postponed. Therefore, I could, if I wished, go to the cinema to see the one and only showing of the film Jar City in Kingston (2030 h on Tues). I decided I would see the movie, so tramped down to the cinema in the icy, silent and dark streets. It turned out that about six other people had made the same effort.

The film, based on the book by Arnaldur Indridason, is excellent. It is soon out on DVD (in the UK at least) and it is very well worth watching. Although the police team are not exactly how I had imagined from the books, the actor playing Erlunder was convincing in the role, really inhabiting the morose detective's skin and with the requisite intense focus. From my memory, the film stuck pretty closely to the plot of the book, and it was telling (if poignant) to note that the late Bernard Scudder, Indridason's superb translator, was responsible for the English subtitles.

So, what of the film? It is a straight police procedural, in that Erlunder and his team investigate the death of a late-middle-aged man bashed on the head with an ashtray. The case reveals to them that the victim may have raped a woman many years ago, and this is somehow relevant to the birth of a girl, Aude, who died young of a disease. Erlendur, the lead detective, and his team (portrayed tellingly as real, believable individuals that one might see on the street or at work tomorrow) soon discover that the death is linked with the Icelandic genetic database. There are many wonderful, atmospheric scenes of the hamlets of this barren, rocky isle, where people seem to be clinging to a life in a harsh environment - a hardy people, content in their solitude. But scratch the surface and unpleasant adaptations begin to emerge.

The Icelandic database project is real. Every person on the island (who has given consent, which is most of this small and inter-related population) has his or her genetic data held there. The plot depends on one person having faked a research project, got through several ethical and scientific review boards, and having access to all these data. This could not happen. A person could not undertake such a course without a body of published research, an active group, and other types of accountability. Indridason, and the film-makers, want to explore the consequences of an individual having total access to this information, so they venture into unrealistic territory. On one level, I am glad that they have done so, because the core of the story involves the genetic "deviants" who carry the potential for disease, and how this affects human emotion and entire lives. This field is one that is very little understood, apart from those who live under the burden of such genetic darkness. (I have personal reasons to understand this subject, as well as a professional interest.) On another level, I feel disappointed that the plot has to depend on the scientific community being stupid - the system simply does not and cannot work in the way shown in the film.

In the film, more than in the book, this discrepancy does not matter. Erlunder pursues his goal - discovering the truth - and in the process we see many small, delightful quirks that could never be conveyed in a Hollywood or other commercial film. I loved the depictions of Icelandic life- whether eating a sheep's head (eyes and all), snacking in the mortuary, the knitwear, the little houses clinging to the windswept rocks and plains, the introspection, misery, boredom, drug addition (the story of Eva Lind and her father Erlunder is a moving aspect of the film, as in the books) and bleakness is all there, speaking to the audience. But above all, the enduring memory is the beautiful young child in her white communion dress in her coffin, the ruin of the lives of her parents, and the sheer tragedy of it all, reflected in the eyes of Erlunder as he sings in the choir that forms the elegy in the prologue and epilogue of this remarkable film, which drew me in and absorbed me totally.

Jar City: Observer review.

Jar City: Times review.

Arnaldur Indridason's books reviewed at Euro Crime.

Update: review of the film at Crime Scraps.

Films (too) inspired by books

Thanks to Clare Dudman, who has a good memory, here is a site that lists films by almost any category you could care to think of: science and scientists, for example, nuns with guns and women cops. Whether you are interested in the top-grossing movies of a particular year, or amputation and body parts, there is something here for you.

But the reason Clare sent me the link is because of its comprehensive listing of books into film. Last year we discussed "movies better than the books that spawned them", suggestions including The Graduate, Brokeback Mountain, Farenheit 451, The Election, The Birds, Children of Men, and more. (Someone even had the temerity to suggest Harry Potter!) Now, those interested in identifying titles for the honour can indulge to their hearts' content, with what seems to be about 100 entries for "books to film" for a wide range of authors. Enjoy! And thank you again, Clare.

Indridason's Jar City on screen

I've just finished Arctic Chill, the fifth novel by Arnaldur Indridason, CWA Gold Dagger winner and crime-fiction writer extraodinaire. My review of this fantastic book is to come, but to those who are unfamiliar with this author, the film of the first novel in the series, Jar City * (also known as Tainted Blood), is now finally out in England. Hooray: I'd read about this film a year or so ago when it was released in Iceland, then more recently on its Irish premiere, so I eagerly await its sojourn at my local Odeon. (At the moment my only option is Covent Garden.) In some ways, Jar City is not the best introduction to this fantastic series, because the solution to the crime rests on a scientific impossibility. Even so, the rest of the book is pretty ace.  From the Times review:

"....Detective Erlendur (a tremendous, glowering turn from Ingvar E. Sigurðsson) has to contend with the local criminal element flaunting their knowledge of his own unravelling family life – his daughter is a pregnant, heroin-addicted former prostitute.

The story starts with the discovery of the body of an elderly man in a malodorous basement. Meanwhile, Örn (Atli Rafn Sigurðsson), mourns the four-year-old daughter he lost to a rare congenital disease with a fierceness that borders on obsession. These seemingly disparate story lines gradually weave together with a slow, deliberate precision – although so entirely unrelated are the two strands that it’s obvious that Örn must have some link to the dead man.

It’s a terrific piece of direction from Kormákur. Everything, from the look of the film (a frosted half-light that lends a chilly beauty to the bleak, often rather sordid, locations) to the brilliantly unsettling use of food as a recurring motif (the image of Erlendur prising the eyeball out of his sheep’s head supper is one that will stay with me far longer than I would like it to) is judged perfectly....."

* I am prepared to be corrected, but I believe that Arnaldur Indridason is relatively unusual among Scandinavian authors in that his series novels have been translated into English in order, starting with the first.

O Lucky Man! on DVD

We've recently had the welcome release of Lindsay Anderson's If...on DVD, and next up is O Lucky Man!, not exactly a sequel, but featuring the same character, Mick Travis, memorably played by Malcolm McDowell. There is an amusing interview with McDowell in the Times today, in which he recalls Anderson's response to the script (into which McDowell had "input" as a result of his earlier career as a coffee salesman, also the profession of Mick in the film):

The urbane, spiky director of This Sporting Life and If ... had not made a feature film for five years, and hardly exploded with enthusiasm for the project. “He said, ‘Oh Malcolm, it's not very good is it?'” McDowell recalls. “I said, ‘Yes it is f***ng good, so f***ing good it's going to be your next film.'
The relationship between the two had changed since If ... “I had been a completely naive young actor who had never been in front of a camera. By the time we did O Lucky Man! I'd had a huge international hit with A Clockwork Orange, so I was much more on a par with Linds.”
McDowell became adept at getting under the skin of his prickly mentor: “I used to tease him like crazy about Stanley Kubrick being such a genius. He would say, ‘Yeah, but his films aren't very personal, are they?' I'd say, ‘But they're hits Lindsay, huge commercial hits, something that you wouldn't understand.'”

Unfortunately, my memory is that O Lucky Man! wasn't a very good film. And the last of the trilogy, Britannia Hospital, was even weaker. But perhaps that impression was coloured by the expectations that could not avoid being generated by the brilliant, exhilerating If... : exuberantly anarchic in those rather boring, constrained times (if you were about 14, that is). Maybe the intervening 30 years will provide a rosier perspective.

Mrs Gaskell's Cranford on DVD

I didn't watch the recent BBC TV series of Cranford when it was broadcast because weekly episodes aren't my preferred watching rhythm. But the day the DVD was on sale, I bought it, and we've watched the 5 episodes over the past week or so. If you haven't seen it already, I urge you to watch it as soon as you can: it is marvellous. I was laughing and crying in equal measure, sometimes even at the same time.

I recall reading quite a bit of pre-broadcast mockery about bonnets on various Guardian blogs before the series was broadcast, and I don't wish to resuscitate those here. Instead, I refer you to two articles on Random Jottings blog: here, Elaine writes about the first episode, reminding us that however "funny and delightful though Cranford is, we must not make the mistake of thinking it is just ladies taking tea and being all fluttery.  We see Cranford, unchanging and unchanged, and yet the railway is coming threatening their world.  How do they cope with it all?" And in a subsequent post, Elaine writes about the last episode, which has left her a "wreck surrounded by empty tissue boxes". She writes: "The weaving of the three stories into one to produce a whole has been seamless and though there have been minor changes to the story lines, these have been done with sensitivity and commonsense and add to the dramatic intensity." Thank you, Elaine, for these informed and sensitive summaries, written with your characteristic verve.

In an unrelated post, Bibliophile reviews the book on her blog Another 52 Books. She explains that the book "was first published as a serial in a magazine in 1851-2, but in 1853 it was gathered together in one volume and published as a novel....  It isn’t until the latter half of the book that a story begins to be told that continues from chapter to chapter, so in fact the ‘novel’ is really a collection of interconnected short stories and a novella." Very well suited, in fact, to the modern TV series.

Incidentally, when I was a teenager and reading her books, this author was universally referred to as Mrs Gaskell -- including on the cover of the books. Now I note that she is universally called Elizabeth Gaskell, or even Elizabeth C. Gaskell on the cover of the version I have recently bought. I wonder at the reason for this change. (I can guess.)

Biggest movies of 2008

Link: The 50 Biggest Movies of 2008 | 2008 Movies Guide - Times Online.

This link has been sitting in my draft posts for ages, as I've been too busy to check out the actual article to see which movies the Times thinks will be biggest (in the UK) in 2008. For 2009, one assumes there won't be many or any US movies because of the writers' strike, so we will have to make the most of these. My favourite was the idea of Will Smith as Tony Hancock but a second glance made me realise I'd got the wrong end of the stick. Here are a few highlights (not many of which I'll be actually going to see, but they look possible DVD rental material). If you go to the Times link above, you can click through to trailers and other info about each movie [descriptions below are from the Times site, not mine!]:

29: The Time Traveller’s Wife

After having been derailed by the Pitt/Aniston divorce Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘sci-fi for women’ finally reaches the big screen with Eric Bana as the man who can’t control his progress through time and Rachel McAdams as the girl who grows to love him anyway.

23: Burn After Reading

Clooney turns up again as part of an incredible cast assembled by the Coen Brothers for this tale of two losers who find a disk containing CIA secrets. As if that could ever happen.

22: Be Kind, Rewind

Michel Gondry’s next movie has the most original plot of the year, guaranteed. Jack Black’s magnetised brain erases every tape in his local video shop which leads to him re-making the classic films he has inadvertently destroyed.

15: Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The second most popular instalment in CS Lewis’ Lion, Witch and Wardrobe series of fantasy novels, Prince Caspian will be the children’s movie most likely to please accompanying adults in 2008.

7: Hancock

Superhero comedies can be as knowingly funny as Mystery Men or as plain silly as Condorman. Hancocks’s secret weapon will be the perennially likeable Will Smith in the title role as a super-powered crime fighter who creates almost as many problems as he solves. 

6: Sweeney Todd

Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bohnham Carter conspire in a dark plot of pies and hairdressing. Spectacular somgs from Steven Sondheim are the icing on a wonderful, sinister, cake. [Already open in the UK, rave reviews (on the whole) and seems to be doing well.]

5: Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Transformers star Shia LaBeouf pops up as the son of the world’s hardest-working archeologist in what must surely be the final Indy adventure.

3: Bond 22: Quantum of Solace

After a shooting schedule more secretive than the ageless super-spy, Bond 22's title has finally been revealed.That doesn't offer too many clues as to the storyline, but it looks as if the adversary from Casino Royale, Mr. White, is going to be replaced by a no less sinister Mr.Greene. The suggestion that it continues almost immediately from the end of Casino Royale, and in much the same vein, is all the advertising most movie fans will need.

2: Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince

The vast regiment of Potter fans will already know what they’re getting. Despite Guillermo del Toro’s pleas this instalment of the boy wizard franchise will be directed by David Yates, who everyone except Guillermo seems to agree made a decent fist of Order of the Phoenix. 

1: The Dark Knight

The hype machine is almost up to full speed now for The Caped Crusader’s next outing. Great notices for director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and an irresistible trailer make The Bat the boy to beat in 2008. [Written before the sad news about Heath Ledger, another reason why the film will be a success. This is the first of the 30-plus online reader comments to the Times piece [also written before the event]: "The Dark Knight is without doubt gonna blow a lot of us away, not only will we have a darker and angrier Bale as Batman but Heath Ledger looks absolutely phenomenal as The Joker......". Even so, I doubt I'll be seeing this one.]

Tell No One on screen

Last night, I watched the DVD of the film Tell No One, based on the novel of the same name by Harlan Coben. I wasn't sure what to expect: the book was the usual Coben dose of excitement, having a great hook (wife sends husband an email eight years after she was murdered), exciting execution (unputdownable), but a bit over-convoluted at the end, not living up to the tension generated previously. Nevertheless, when I saw the film available to rent via Amazon, I thought it was worth a try.

First shock upon pressing "play" - the film is French! (It isn't really called "Tell No One" it turns out, but "Ne le dis à personne".) This fact made Malcolm put down his computer and come over to watch it too (he is even less keen on Hollywood than I am). And it is jolly good. The events follow the book closely, but the Versailles setting and characters add a dimension that was missing in the written form. The acting is superb (the wonderful Nathalie Baye and Kristin Scott Thomas are in it), the characters and situations draw you in, the suspense builds up well, the pace never lets up, and the parts of the book that seemed a bit unrealistic are much more persuasive on screen. (The lack of Hollywood macho is really a huge advantage.) Although it is possible to work out what is going on before the denouement, it doesn't matter - our interest was more than held right through to the final credits. Highly recommended.

Best worst movie lines

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - film: The best worst lines in film.

As it says on the label (above), what are your favourite worst lines in films? Ronald Bergan in the Guardian post at the link highlights a couple of beauties (but as usual with Guardian blog pieces, there isn't much more to it as the author of the piece can't remember the lines, as opposed to scenes, that he found funny in recent films):

• El Greco (bravely played by a British actor called Nick Ashdon) says to a priest that he expected the Inquisition to come for him, the priest replies, "They will, but there's backlog at the moment".
• Merle Oberon as George Sand in the Chopin biopic A Song To Remember tells the composer, "Discontinue that so-called Polonaise jumble you've been playing for days."
• In I Wake Up Screaming, Victor Mature, dining Betty Grable in a smart restaurant, impresses her with his sophistication by saying to the waiter, "We'll have the wine with the meal and coffee afterwards."

Do you have any favourites? "And did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?" is an apocryphal example that comes to mind, but whether it actually was in a movie I don't know.

Northern Lights diminished

Among the usual collection of Christmas holiday season movies is The Golden Compass, the film of Philip Pullman's wonderful Northern Lights. I saw the film a few weeks ago with my stepdaughter and two daughters, between us ranging in age from 150 (me) to 24, 16 and 12. We all think we enjoyed it, but we aren't too sure - something of a curate's egg.

The younger generation all felt that you had to have read the book in order to understand the plot and hence enjoy the film. I wasn't so sure -- because for me the film was "good enough" (in the sense that the Harry Potter films are "good enough" renditions of the books though lacking a dimension or two), but it had two stand-out dreadful flaws. The first of these was a voice-over right at the start, which solemnly explains the entire plot in words of one syllable -- what Lord Asriel is doing in the North, the existence and meaning of dust (including detail from book 2) and all you ever could want to know about daemons. Hence, dramatic tension was ruined.

The second horror was that the film ended three-quarters of the way through the book, destroying the terrible balance of Lyra's two parental confrontations and hence the awful power of the story. One of the many reasons why Northern Lights is so thrilling is that Pullman is not afraid to go "all the way" with the evil parent motif -- not just with one parent but both. The author backs down somewhat, but not very far, in subsequent books (one reason why they are weaker); the fierce independence and strength of Lyra, such a fresh character in all of fiction, is severely undermined by this bizarre plot decision.

I can forgive the omission of Lord Asriel's dramatic slamming of the head on the table of the senior common room to the shock of the dons, and (apart from in a brief aside) the gliding over of Iorek Byrnison's true status. These, and other, simplifications weaken impact but don't detract from the power of the story. There were lots of very good things about the film, as described in two excellent reviews at Stephen Lang and at Material Witness. But I can't forgive the awful, unnecessary dumbing-down of the initial voiceover, and I was left high and dry by the decision to truncate the story before its end. It is as if Far From the Madding Crowd ended before Bathsheba finally reciprocates Gabriel Oak's devotion, or as if Othello ended at the death of Desdemona.

A list of lists for the holidays

The Internet is full of people who love categorising items into groups, and also provides easy ways to achieve that goal. List mania is at its highest before holiday seasons: summer and winter. I find so much on the Internet in the usual run of things and bookmark them all away for the aforementioned upcoming holidays when I might have time to read them. So the lists, for me, are gilding the lily. Enough said, here's a bit of meta-listing (a post of links to lists) just in case you have the odd spare moment in the next week or two:

Easing in gently, here's a short list: Susan Hill's two best books of the year (one fiction, one non-fiction).

Here's a collaborative list: favourite TV shows of the year (previous year's lists are linked) at the Organ Grinder (Guardian).

January Magazine's editors have chosen their favourites from thousands of books: fiction, non-fiction, crime fiction, children's books and "art & culture". Congratulations to Linda Richards for a magnificent, and no doubt exhausting, achievement in putting all this together.

After that lot, you will be relieved to see a list of one: Uriah Robinson's non-fiction book of the year. Looks like a good one to me.

Back to the Guardian, this one is top 10 DVDs to give this Christmas. I daren't even look at it as I still haven't watched any of the sets I impulsively bought after a blog discussion on the topic about a year ago.

David Montgomery of Crime Fiction Dossier is asking a range of authors and others to nominate three favourite books. The recommendations are collected at this link -- all I can write is "help"!

Books with a Christmas theme are being featured currently on Euro Crime blog in the series "It's Christmas Crime", aggregated here so you can see the list of short reviews and Yule-themed covers. 

Last but most definitely not least is CrimeFic Reader's excellent "books for Christmas 2007" series that has been running on It's a Crime! for a month or so. Here is the aggregate link from which you can see the whole set of recommendations (so far) by an impressive range of authors, nominating some tantalising books.

Movie updates of the classics

In our stimulating discussion about movies that are better (arguably!) than the books they adapt, Henry Gee writes: "I would point to the film Clueless, which is Emma set in modern Beverly Hills, as the very best Austen adaptations that there has ever been."

Clueless is one of those films from which I have seen 2-minute segments  about 100 times, as I've been in and out of the room during three girls' perpetual enjoyment of it. (Personally, I'd rather read Emma, but I'm an old stick.)

Henry's comment made me think about other presumed good updates of the classics. My daughters love some of these, watching them over and over again. Apart from Clueless, there is:

Ten things I hate about you (Taming of the Shrew)

O (Othello)

She's the Man (Twelfth Night)

Bride and Prejudice (you guess it)

Pretty Woman (Pygmalion) (Unlike all of the above, I have actually seen this one from beginning to end, years ago in the actual cinema.)

Great Expectations (Curaon version)

And, via BBC TV: Shakespeare ReTold (updates of Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing).

I'm not sure whether to count big favourites The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband because although they take liberties with the originals, they are essentially the originals -- most of the dialogue is Wilde's, even if not all of it is from the works being portrayed. (And you can shut your eyes in the Reece Witherspoon fantasy passages easily enough.)

Can anyone think of more?

Books, films, chalk and cheese

Movies better than the books that spawned them is the title of an article at SignOn San Diego, which I picked up via Books, Inq., who in turn picked it up from Dave Lull (who, as Books, Inq.'s blogger, Frank Wilson, once wrote, is probably single-handedly responsible for maintaining the Internet).

But, back to the plot. Here's the list, with my comments in brackets: The Graduate (film good, can't recall if I've read book, no wish to now); The Birds (film and book (a longish short story, in fact) about the same -- good suspense build-up, disappointing end); Shane (book great, a massive early influence on me, not seen film but I know that people acting opposite Alan Ladd had to stand in a trench); Babe (managed to avoid both, thankfully and amazingly, given ages of film and my children); The Godfather (liked the book, found the film bloated and boring); Wizard of Oz (disagree, book (read as a child) was far better than the film);  To Have and Have Not (quite liked the book, can't remember if I've seen the film); From Russia with Love (both are good if light, but different. If I had to choose, I'd say book was better); Carrie (tough one, both excellent of their genre, though too cruel for me in both cases); The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (avoided both, I am thankful based on the title).

Jeff in Frank's comments suggests The Natural -- I quite liked the film (well, the Robert Redford bits at least), I may well have read the book but it didn't leave an impression. I've thought of a lot of films I've seen of books I've read, and I can't think of any examples of films I've liked better--- though some have been impressively different and hence distinctive in their own way. I am sure there are some, though, so will leave this post here to see if any float into my mind in future. (Children of Men by P D James is one possibility -- but it is so long ago that I read the book that I need to read it again to remember it.)

If I can think of any examples, I will log them in the comments. Of course, I can think of lots of books that I found better than films made of them, but that isn't the point.

Vicarious quiz night

Cathy and her friends have gone to their school's quiz night, for a laugh. The phone has rung several times this evening concerning a "famous movies" question - a set of pictures, with the task "name the film".

Q Mum, what's Robert Redford's most famous film?

A The Great Gatsby?

Q No, don't think it's that. Any others?

A Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Q No, it is after they invented phones....he's got a phone in his hand and a suit.

A [Thinks, obvious, why didn't she say?] The Sting.

We have also been questioned on: "number 13 and 14 winning a race" [Chariots of Fire]; Clint Eastwood looking young in army uniform [Where Eagles Dare]; "man in moustache with a plastic arm" [Dr Strangelove]; some famous old actor next to a car......very famous.....think his name is James someone [Rebel Without a Cause]; and Tom Cruise with long hair and a moustache [Born on the 4th of July - which I haven't seen, but have seen the publicity shots].

There were quite a few more in this ilk but these are the highlights. I don't know yet how I did but having "old" (my era) movies described by a gaggle of uncomprehending sixteen year olds was probably better than actually being there.

Daniel Craig on a tea towel

Go here if you want a Daniel Craig tea towel: Alpha Mummy - Times Online - WBLG.

Well, actually, don't. Although you can have a look at said tea towel by going to Caitlin Moran's Times blog entry above, her link to the place for ordering it doesn't work. Probably, by now, someone has provided the correct link in the comments. But before you get too excited at the prospect of Daniel on a tea towel, it is just words, no images -- although I am a words rather than an images person, I would make an exception for DC on a tea towel --- to me these particular ones lack the charm of the personification.

Caitlin Moran's blog post is mildly amusing in another way -- yet another one of those posts in which the blogger mentions someone's inability to spell while themselves not spelling correctly.

To return to Daniel, I am sure he will make a good Lord Asriel, but honestly, it is a part made for Viggo. Definitely a missed opportunity there. I'll forgive whoever made that decision, though, as Nicole Kidman is inspired casting for Mrs Coulter. (Viggo M and Nicole K have appeared together, in the film of a Henry James novel, Portrait of a Lady. Bit different from Northern Lights or, as we must learn to call it, The Golden Compass.)

Reviews of Beowulf

I have read several positive reviews of the new Gollum-style (motion-capture) film of Beowulf, and Crime Scraps liked the movie if not the cinema. Although I enjoyed the TLS review, by Carolyne Larrington, who writes that "Zemeckis’s Beowulf is in touch with critical debate about the poem" and also reviews a new translation, by Dick Ringer, in my opinion Henry Gee's review of the film (on a "mere blog") is transcendental. Please do read it.

Herny re-read the poem before he saw the film (he makes that account a story in itself), then he summarises the story in his inimitable style, and continues:

"What the film does is very clever: it assumes that the poem that has come down to us is a bowdlerized propaganda version (which it assuredly is, having been through several scribal hands since its original composition) – and proceeds to tell us what really happened. In so doing the script exploits all sorts of odd foibles in the text, showing that Gaiman and Avary well those passions read, stamped on those lifeless things."

And there is lots more, Angelina, Keats, Tolkien (coming to a different view than the TLS on that last gentleman): just read it. Lovely.

All I have to do now is to decide whether I can face the hideous Odeon multiplex fleecing operation so soon after last week's disappointing Elizabeth (only half the required number of beards), or if I can wait until the DVD.

Francis Drake was robbed

Elizabeth: the Golden Age was presumably better than Children in Need, but nonetheless disappointing. The acting was superb, particularly Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth) and Samantha Morton (Mary Queen of Scots). The first half was atmospheric, beautiful and involving, as Elizabeth fends off various suitors and Philip of Spain and Mary Q of S plot to remove her. But the second half is, well, weedy. The plot disintegrates into Elizabeth's mooning over Clive Owen's Walter Raleigh -- a handsome rake indeed, but it doesn't work to try to turn him into Johnny Depp/Captain Jack Sparrow and at the same time have him impregnate and feel obliged to marry a lady in waiting -- a predictable event but not carried out with much enthusiasm on Clive's part -- he is much more convincing when he talks about the joys of sailing off to America. I don't understand why the director and writer decided to focus on the love triangle aspects (boring and hackneyed) and skip over the aftermath of the failed conspiracy and barely feature the dramatic story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Francis Drake hardly figures at all: he has a couple of late scenes in a ship's cabin with map on table, saying "what shall we do, Walter?", while Clive Owen's Raleigh is the hero of the hour, single-handedly directing a fireship into the advancing CG Spanish fleet (special effects worse than an episode of Dr Who) and hence repelling the invaders. Meanwhile, on shore, Elizabeth gets on a white horse and does an Aragorn-imitation speech instead of the (excellent) real thing.

Far from being a pale adjunct to Raleigh, Francis Drake was another bearded pirate much favoured by Elizabeth, who was only too pleased when these two gentlemen (and others) plundered Spanish trading ships or colonies and bought her the spoils. After the events shown in the film, Drake was the first Englishman to sail round the world; on his return the queen knighted him on his ship The Golden Hind. He was in charge of the navy at the time of the Spanish threat (Raleigh was, as the film shows, imprisoned in the Tower at the time, and it is possible that, as the film portrays, the reason was because Elizabeth was annoyed that he had married). Drake famously refused to do anything about the Armada until he had finished his game of bowls in Plymouth. When he was ready, he sent eight fireboats into the Spanish fleet which was anchored off Calais. This caused them to scatter and, aided by a convenient storm, they were easily attacked by the much smaller English ships. Spain lost seventy ships and England none: Elizabeth became a legend in her own time in this amazing triumph over the odds.

So why the film couldn't have featured some of this instead of shots of Clive Owen and a white horse swimming in a tank, I don't know. Yes, Clive is suitably bearded -- though not quite as luxuriously as Sir Walter's portraits -- but just think, we could have had two pirates instead of one, two beards (in the movie, Francis is clean shaven! The horror!), lots more action -- including the game of bowls, I was looking forward to that -- and far fewer shots of rustling petticoats and yearning looks across the throne room.

(I wrote about Francis Drake off the top of my head, but here is one place where you can read more, and see the beard.)

The movie star they missed

Who is Hollywood's most well-adjusted star? asks Abby McGanney at the Guardian blog, providing a top ten list. The list may be all very well, but they missed the top guy. I don't need to provide the name to regular readers, but for those just passing by, the answer, without a doubt, is Viggo Mortensen. If you need to ask why, just go to the link.

The Painted Veil

Having recently bought you news of a film not to see (Amazing Grace, scroll down a bit), I can now counter myself by a positive recommendation: The Painted Veil (2006; out on DVD), based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Forget all the pyrotechnics and special effects, there is nothing like a movie based on a good book. (Atonement being a recent case in point.) The Painted Veil is produced by the two main actors, Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.

The title of the book is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet "Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live." Here's a brief plot summary from Wikipedia: Shallow and lost Kitty marries the intellectual and passionate Walter Fane, bacteriologist, who is madly in love with her. Kitty has an affair with the "perfect" Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter finds out of their affair, he leaves Kitty with an ultimatum. Heartbroken, Kitty decides to accompany Walter to the cholera-infested mainland of China.

Viggo Mortensen's promises

Link: Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg Team Up for 'Eastern Promises' - Fall Preview 2007 -- New York Magazine.

As my kind friend Jenny Davidson points out, there is no beard (see link, which she thoughtfully sent me). But there is Viggo. I will watch Viggo in anything, and I'm fond of Cronenberg - earlyish Cronenberg, anyway. So I'm looking forward to their latest collaboration:

"Describing Eastern Promises, Mortensen also quotes Montgomery Clift, who said, “The only line that’s wrong in Shakespeare is that art is holding a mirror up to nature. You hold up a magnifying glass.” And sure enough, if the violence in A History of Violence was shockingly rough, here it’s absolutely hard-core, intensely magnified. A fight in a bathhouse will be one of the most talked-about scenes this year. “It all has such a strong impact because it’s done in real time, not in a fancy way,” says Mortensen. “It’s the forces of nature at work, like watching a snake swallow a frog.”  "

I think the review oversells "A History of Violence". It was a good movie, and extremely well acted by Viggo (not that I'm biased), but I wouldn't agree that it was a shoe-in for the Oscars or the Cannes awards (which it also just missed out on). Certainly worth watching on DVD while waiting for "Eastern Promises". Or you could just be normal and have a life, without bothering much with either.

Julie Christie is blogging

If you are "of a certain age", as I am, and are English (or British), the chances are that Julie Christie is your favourite actress. As a young person (too young, but I was good at sneaking) , I watched her uncomprehendingly in movies such as Darling and Farenheit 451. I didn't understand them, but knew I wanted to be there. Later, I adored her in The Go-Between, Dr Zhivago and Far from the Madding Crowd. Then there was Don't Look Now, and "that" scene in addition to her usual brilliant, empathetic performance. In her Warren Beatty phase I saw awful movies like Shampoo, or "flawed masterpieces" like McCabe and Mrs Miller, just for her. And in later years, it was great to catch a glimpse of her in gems like The Railway Station Man (BBC Screen 2), as she came out of "retirement" the odd time to make the occasional film that appealed to her. Wonderfully, she revealed herself recently as a Harry Potter person, even though the role she took was the relatively uninspiring one of Madame Rosmerta in "Goblet of Fire". (Wonder if she will reprise the role for "Half Blood Prince"?) But even more wonderfully, she's a blogger! See Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - theatre: Cries from the heart: the role I just couldn't refuse.

Marvellous. There are many film actresses I've admired since: Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Pfeiffer, Francesca Annis, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley and more, but who can hold a candle to the peerless Julie Christie? Nobody.

The fourteen million dollar movie

Link: DVD Dossier Blog: Amazon Glitch Prices DVD For The Rich.

Amazon.com is charging $14,049,429 for "The Gunrunner," a 1984 crime drama starring Kevin Costner. The website says that the suggested retail price for the film is $20,070,612. But if you pre-order you can cleverly save more than six million dollars ($6,021,183 to be exact), and also qualify for free shipping.

If you don't believe me, there is a screenshot at the link above.

Print is dead!

"Print is dead!". How often have I heard this assertion? I've just heard it again, confidently emerging from the mouth of Howard Ramis, on being asked if he likes reading books. I am sitting at my computer while the girls are watching a DVD: Ghostbusters. Date of release? 1984.

Well, print has staggered on quite happily in the intervening 23 years. I trust it will continue to do so.

The lives of others

The last time Malcolm and I went to the cinema together (sans children) was, I believe, to see The Ice Storm in about 1998. Last night, thanks to the awful Saturday evening TV programming that is of compelling interest to teens and tweens, we decided to go again.

The film we saw is called "The Lives of Others". It is about the transforming power of art, culture and integrity. It's a tragedy, a thriller and a true-to-life story; exciting, tense and deeply moving. I can't recommend it highly enough: well worth waiting 9 years for. If you see only one film this year, make it this one.

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for the film. "It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, along with seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor and best supporting actor, after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards. The thriller/drama is about the cultural scene of East Berlin, monitored by secret agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police...... A piano sonata ("Sonata for a Good Man") is used as the main transformation point of the Stasi Agent Gerd Wiesler. In the film, the score doesn't carry the name of the composer, as it is original music written for the film by Gabriel Yared"

Here is the Time Out review;  the trailer is available here (not seen by me).

If.... out on DVD this summer

I didn't think it could ever happen, but it has, almost. One of the movies that influenced me tremendously is Lindsay Anderson's If..... And it is coming out on DVD -- on 11 June, according to Amazon (UK). The question is, do I dare watch it again, after it shook me to the core at the age of about 17? I shall probably succumb. Here is the Amazon synopsis:  "An alternately funny and bizarre drama set in a fictitious but authentic public school. The story moves from intimate scenes of life in a boy's world, through fantasy and farce, to a violent climax as discontent turns into rebellion."

I wonder if there will ever be a DVD release of Charlie Bubbles, another of my long-lost favourites? Written by Shelagh Delaney, it was directed by and starred Albert Finney, with a cast including Billie Whitelaw, Colin Blakely and an extremely young Liza Minnelli. The plot summary on IMDB is very amusing, in total it is:  "A married writer has an affair with his secretary." Rather far from what the film is actually about.

What makes a great ending?

As you do when you are too tired to do anything else, I was just wandering round the Amazon "3 for £15" DVD pages (as I've  had two in my basket for ages and"need" a third before making my order) when I came across Is Paris Burning?

Now it must be ages since I have seen this film, and I don't remember all that much about it. I seem to recall it was a documentary-style story about the Nazis' attempted destruction of, er, Paris. One of the first "drama-docs"? (I remember another such, the excellent but ludicrously hampering low-budget film called "It Happened Here", but that was more of a "what would have happened if the Nazis had invaded Britain?" film in docu-style than a "drama-doc".)

But the one thing I remember about Is Paris Burning? is the ending.  The movie ended with a phone receiver lying on a desk in a destroyed office, with a disembodied voice (Hitler's?) shouting down it "Is Paris Burning?" "Is Paris Burning?", while all around the Germans were being routed -- which of course the caller could not see.

Can anyone else remember any stunning ends  to movies? I can never forget the ending to The Long Good Friday (close-up of Bob Hoskins the back of the car that went on for ever -- his expressions ran through the gamut of emotions that told you everything about his realisations of past, present and future -- perfect and brilliant acting). But I am stuck on others. Any suggestions?

Sopranos: seven minutes, six seasons

Link: The Sopranos video.

I have never watched The Sopranos, but I know from my "DVD boxed set" post that they come highly recommended, and I also know from looking on Amazon that there have been rather too many seasons to try to catch up now and remain solvent.

Help is at hand. The link above, from the Open Culture blog, features "all six seasons of the Sopranos recapped in a seven-minute video". I haven't watched it (who has seven minutes to spare? Not me), so can't offer any comment on it -- but Douglas Adams would have approved, I'm sure.

Did Hitler have a base in the Antarctic?

Link: news @ nature.com - Did Hitler have a base in the Antarctic? John Whitfield wonders why fringe fantasies get attracted to the edges of the Earth..

"After the initial flurry of interest, International Polar Year (IPY, launched this March) seems to have gone a bit quiet. I propose pepping things up with a good conspiracy theory. Handily, a recent paper in Polar Record (ref 1) describes one. The Nazis, some believe, established a secret base in Antarctica to which they spirited Hitler at the war's end, fought off British special forces and an American military taskforce, partly by shooting down US planes using flying saucers. The Americans eventually destroyed the base with nuclear weapons in the 1950s. Since then, various governments have striven to conceal this."

I was thinking of John's article when the eagerly, even in some quarters desperately, awaited witching hour struck: 1900 hours, Saturday 30 March 2007. Doctor Who! Would the "new companion" measure up to the late lamented (by some) Rose -- who has fled to Hollywood via Sally Lockhart and Fanny Price? Can Dr Who ever recover from being Barty Crouch Jr? Would I be able to stand watching a whole episode?

Answers: (1) yes (companion more than OK); (2) Oh, Ok then Michele, yes; and (3) yes. The new "companion" has a brain, independence, sex appeal and beauty. David Tennant is doing his level best to being as un-Barty Crouch Jr-like as possible: my heart warmed to him slightly when he shook himself like a rockhopper penguin so that several hundred million Roentgens of radioactivity fell down into his toe, causing his shoe to overheat to the extent he had to drop it in the bin. And yes, I could indeed sit through the episode without retiring to my computer or book. Well done to all concerned.

Ian Hocking has also provided independent confirmation that the episode passes muster. He's a bit troubled by the wonky science, but to my mind you can't expect proper science in science fiction, you are better off just suspending belief, with a gin and tonic if necessary. If it is hard to accept, just remember Hitler at the Antarctic. 

Mansfield Parked

I feel compelled to add my comments to the many others that have been made about the new "Mansfield Park", shown on ITV a week or two ago, and watched by me and the rest of my family last night via recorded DVD.

The production as a whole is the usual sincere, respectful but somewhat glossed-over (for time constraints) interpretation of a "classic" novel that one sees so often these days. Sometimes, when watching the formidably detailed set design or costumes in these productions, I wonder if people in those days really were as conscious of their own period's constraints as are today's film designers. The acting is good, particularly Douglas Hodge and Jemma Redgrave as the parents, though some characters barely appear after the first third, and the play scenes were truncated ruthlessly.

But the core of it is Billie Piper, and I am very sorry to say this, but I just have to: hopeless. She is no more Fanny Price than Kevin Costner was Robin Hood. She is the "star", so the production orbits around her, exactly counter to Fanny's character. Her hair is golden, curly, long and free; in almost every scene she is running-- down or up stairs, along leafy avenues, among the fancy furniture, etc. Her neckline is plunging; her bosom heaves attractively and constantly. Her accent veers between extremes of posh diction enunciated slowly and carefully, and cockney aitches or dropped "ts". Her dialogue, actually, is safely kept minimal (as in the recent Philip Pullman adaptation), though of course she is given a line at dinner to indicate her emancipated disapproval of the practice of slavery. Most gratingly of all, she laughs out loud all the time to indicate joie de vivre , giggles, stares knowingly and adoringly at Edward for the entire duration: in sum, she is a thoroughly modern young female who has been beamed down intact, unchanged and unchangeable, into nineteenth century England. Fanny Price, she most definitely is not.

Cathy and Jenny loved her and the whole caboodle. Malcolm and I felt a strong common urge to immediately read the book again -- for me, on the "wash your mouth out" principle, I think. If you want to watch a production of Mansfield Park (as opposed to reading it), see the American feminist "hint of lesbiana" reworking, or see the ancient but worthy BBC production, both of which remain true to the essence of  Austen, but don't see this. 

Crime and family in books and film

Some book highlights from my rss reader, sadly neglected for about a week (which is an eon in blog terms; how quickly one becomes overwhelmed with tempting and fascinating information by not keeping up for a few mere days).

I thought Susan, in particular, would like this review by Bluestalking Reader of "Kate's Pride" by Renee Russell. Like the author of the book, Susan is creating a biographical record of her family. Russell has written a book about her ancestor based on the facts she was able to discover; I wonder if Susan will do the same for her family? From what I've read of her story, it would qualify on interest grounds.

Nicole Rafter has posted a review of the film Deja Vu on her monthly crime film review at the OUP editors' blog. It is a very clever article, as it starts out by saying that the film isn't very interesting. Yet, one reads on, and is absorbed by the analysis of what makes a "surveillance" film. More is promised, next time on Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd.

More crime film news, or more precisely, TV news, Eurocrime and It's a Crime! note that Andrew Taylor's "Roth" trilogy will be on ITV1 from 11 to 13 March. I haven't managed to read a Taylor book yet, despite the generous CrimeFicReader sending me one, so for me this TV series will be one to record and watch later, rather than to see live. But from the crime blog buzz and the evident production values, it looks like one to watch.

Frank Wilson tells us that the new biography of John Osborne is one of the best literary biographies he has ever read. Osborne is certainly a dream subject for a writer: talented, horrid and "larger than life". I've read all his plays and I read the columns he wrote regularly in the Spectator in his later years with a ghastly fascination.

M. J. Rose promotes the ITW (International Thriller Writers) new blog. This is the outfit that has the "150 Thrillers" website. Apparently the organisation now has 500 authors and 9,000 readers signed up. M. J. also points to an article by author James Grippando about his appearane on a panel discussing Patterson and book sales -- just why does that brand (one can no longer call him an author, he's just franchised his third series and that doesn't count his standalones or "young adult" novels) sell so much as his quality goes down? I don't get it. Well, read JG's post -- most revealing on supermarkets, marketing and sales figures.

Before I end this (overlong, sorry) post, I want to mention two book posts I recently very much enjoyed: a review of Amsterdam (Ian McEwan) at Random Jottings,  and a poignant retrospective of Andrea Badenoch, and her book Blink, at It's a Crime!

BBC classics on special offer

The BBC is offering DVDs of its classic drama productions "from £7.99". The BBC shop's website is featuring the "old" Pride and Prejudice (Andrew Davies/Colin Firth version) for £11.99 -- it is twice as long or more than the current (Deborah Moggach/Keira Knightley) version, and although it contains a few Andrew Davies-isms deviating from the book, it is a wonderful production.

Persuasion is £9.99,  Wuthering Heights £7.99, North and South £9.99 and many others are listed. I can recommend the North and South (starring, as Cathy tells me, "Guy of Gisborne"), but have not seen this version of WH. I have seen a good ITV production which covers the whole story and not just the first half, but I trust the BBC to do the same and not go the Hollywood route of missing out all of part 2. The ITV version, incidentally, features the current Mr Darcy, Matthew MacFaddyn, in an earlyish role as Hareton Earnshaw.

It is probably worth doing a price comparison on Amazon, but the BBC's listing is a quick way to see what classics are currently available, which Amazon does not do so well. (Amazon's definition of "classic" being unintentionally amusing, when you see some of the titles interspersed with those that would be more generally considered to be qualifiers.)

Carry on Wuthering

A post on BrontëBlog: The Brontës know no borders (and earlier posts linked to therein) reports news of not one, but two upcoming productions of Wuthering Heights. One is due on ITV, end of this year or beginning next. No details of who is to play Cathy or Heathcliff. The other is a "Hollywood comes to Yorkshire" supposedly starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. OK, let's have some better suggestions in the comments: nobody could think up less suitable actors for the two roles than that, surely?
Incidentally, there are competitions and prizes at the BronteBlog, one prize being a copy of the DVD of the recent BBC production of Jane Eyre.

A short film about measuring the world

Quercus publishing has placed online two five-minute filmed re-enactments from the book "Measuring the World" by Daniel Kehlmann. The novel is a bestseller in Germany (600,000 copies sold, apparently) and will be published in the UK in April, when the author will appear at Hay and Edinburgh festivals. It is about Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, who are played in the short films by Anthony Sher and Justin Brett, respectively. Apparently the idea is that the filmed scenes will encourage people to buy the book.

For more about the book, here is the review in the Philadelphia Inquirer (mixed), and here is a short piece on ReviewsofBooks (which provides links to other reviews and to Amazon sites).

OUP goes to the crime movies

I recently discovered various university press blogs, and have been following one of them, the Oxford University Press blog. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when today I discover that it runs a monthly crime film round-up. This month, the film reviewed is  The Departed . I presume crime films are a personal sideline of the OUP official blogger(s), and not strictly "core" to a university press business.

I am allergic to Martin Scorsese, whose latest outing is reviewed this month at the link above, but previous films reviewed have included the very good "A history of violence" (disclaimer: anything connected with Mr V. Mortensen gets a minimum "very good" rating on this blog, even when he's beardless, as in this particular case), and the intriguing-seeming "Babel", recently opened in the UK. As well as stand-alone reviews, there are thematic entries as well. Worth checking out.

An archive of the OUP crime-film column is at this link.