Film Review: Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor)

Russian Vampires!

What, you want more than that? Fine. For centuries there has been a truce between the forces of Light and Dark; each would police the other, and neither would go to war. However, Yegor (Dima Martynov), a powerful young 'Other', has joined the forces of darkness, whilst Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina), an equally powerful Other, has joined the forces of light, and if their paths should cross, it would end the Truce and bring about the Apocalypse. Stuck in the middle is Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), Yegor's father, whose attempts to use magic to abort Yegor before he was born drove him to the darkness.

Does any of that make sense? No? Good. Let's move on.

Night Watch, the film to which this is a sequel, was released in 2004 to a not insignificant amount of acclaim. The visual style of the film, mixing the dark aesthetics of film noir with hyperkinetic editing, fairly impressive special effects and inventive use of subtitles, as well it’s unusual, complex mythology propelled it from being a niche hit into a worldwide success. Just like any good sequel, Day Watch retains these basic qualities but goes far beyond the confines of its predecessor, and gives us a film which is epic, deep and completely batshit crazy.

Day Watch isn't just a film, it's about twelve films, all of which are fighting desperately to get out. On the face of it, it's an epic fantasy film with vampires fighting each other, but it's also a murder mystery, a melodrama (in the best possible sense) about fathers and sons. At the same time all of this is going on, it's also something of a rom-com, an action movie, a Billy Wilder-esque farce, a meditation on the ramifications of errors in judgment, an Indiana Jones film in which characters are all trying to get hold of an ancient and powerful artifact (in this case the 'Chalk of Fate', with which people can re-write their destinies) and a representation of the simple human desire to fix what can not be undone. In short, Day Watch is a free-for-all of a film in which it is constantly battling with itself to decide what the hell it actually is.

This is the primary weakness of the film but it is also its greatest strength. Throughout the film, the different strands keep pushing each other aside to move to the fore, so for much of the film the whole ''War is coming, we must prevent the apocalypse'' aspect of the film is actually kept in the background, and only really asserts itself in the final third. This constant shifting is quite disorientating but it also prevents the film from being even remotely boring and it remains, from beginning to end, completely unpredictable. This is partly because the film is an amalgamation of a couple of stories in the book 'Night Watch' by Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko, so there's a lot of plot to get through and much of it is condensed to fit the film's fairly brisk running time. As such, it makes very little sense most of the time, yet it's the freewheeling madness of the film that makes it so great.

Day Watch is a unique film, the only film in recent years that even approaches it in terms of frenetic, fun, joyously insane energy is the South Korean film The Host, which similarly didn't know what it actually was and made that into a huge benefit rather than a problem. Much like its predecessor, Day Watch leaps straight into things and doesn't really pander to the audience; apart from a brief introductory sequence in which the plot of the first film is summarised. Day Watch forces you to accept it on its own terms; it's a film that has its own individual world with its own rules, rules which are not for one second explained to the audience. The powers of the various characters are never fully detailed, so every time a fight starts or a character is trying to escape from enemies, you really don't know how they'll get out of it, and when they do you won't really understand how or why they did it. And you know what? None of that matters for a single second. It's a full-on mindfuck of a film that throws a million ideas around and expects the audience to catch them and it is this adventurous nature that makes the film so much fun. The fact that it's also visually very impressive and inventive, a sequence towards the end in which the entirety of Moscow is leveled is a work of pure genius, as well as being very well acted is just icing on a manic cake.

Probably what's most bizarre about the film is that it is genuinely touching. All the characters in it, dark or light, are incredibly likeable and you do find yourself caring for each of them. Even amongst everything else that happens, you do care about whether or not Yegor and Anton will ever be reconciled, if Anton will ever get together with Svetlana, and what will happen to all the minor characters if and when the war starts. It's just one more aspect of the idiosyncratic charm of the film that it can elicit genuine emotional responses in the midst of the rest of the crazy crap that's going on.

Day Watch is, without a doubt, one of the most singularly enjoyable films released this year. It's thrilling, funny, surprisingly moving, and it's unlike anything else out at the moment. Give yourself over to its logic, sit back, and watch the sparks fly. You'll have a blast.

Top Ten of all time...This week

Partly due to not having worked for the last few weeks and partly because I've just finished Uni, and the period after finishing University makes one open to introspective thoughts, I've spent the last day or so marvelling at how many films I've seen in the last three years. I'd estimate the number would be in the quadruple-figures and I'm really surprised by how much my understanding of film has improved during that time. As such, I've decided to list my top ten films at this point in my life. I'm hoping that this will be the start of a bigger experiment whereby I will list my top 10 every three years to see how much my favourite films, and myself as a person, have changed over that time.

Firstly, here's a rough approximation of what my Top Ten films of all time would have been in September 2004, when I was 18 and preparing to go to University:

1. The Empire Strikes Back (1981)
2. Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
3. Die Hard (1988)
4. Monty Python and the The Holy Grail (1975)
5. Wayne's World (1992)
6. The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers (2002)
7. Toy Story (1995)
8. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
9. City of God (2002)
10. X-Men 2 (2000)

As we can see, the list is dominated by fantasy films, action films and comedies. The only really ''arty'' film on their is City of God, which is also the only foreign language film their as well. The list is also largely devoid of animated films since I really went off them after I turned 13, which also coincided with the severe decline in the quality of Disney's movies. This is all very much in keeping with my geeky aesthetic at the age of 18, as well as my fairly limited cinematic upbringing and my tendency to dismiss any film that wasn't funny, action-packed or with a strong fantasy aspect.

Now, let us flash forward 3 years to 26th September, 2007:

1. Boogie Nights (1997)
2. The Empire Strikes Back (1981)
3. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
4. My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
5. A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
6. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
7. Network (1976)
8. City of God (2002)
9. Rear Window (1954)
10. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

As we can see, a considerable bit of change has occurred. Though Empire remains, primarily because of nostalgia but also because it is an amazing film, it has been displaced by P.T. Anderson's multi-stranded look at the world of 70s porn, a film which I can watch again and again and just marvel at. And it's not just the tits, either, the story is pretty good. Elsewhere, my love of Kubrick shines through in A Clockwork Orange's high placing, as does my love for Studio Ghibli, and animation in general, as well as more 'serious' fare like Network, and the sublime fantasy of Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death.

I still very much love all the films in my old top ten, and prefer a film packed with explosions to most Oscar-bait released in any given year, but these are the films that I can watch forever never tire of, that make me laugh, cry and want to do something worthwhile. Die Hard's still fucking great, but it'll have to settle for a top 20, rather than a top 10 placing for me nowadays.

So, this is me aged 21, and these are the films I love. We'll check back in 3 years and see if anything has changed.

Bioshock

If Jules Verne and William F. Nolan teamed up and had access to the Unreal 3 engine, this game would probably have been the result. Well, you’d have to add in a team of elite programmers and some computers, not to mention a rift in the space time continuum that would allow all of these elements to appear together. But, if by chance it did happen, Bioshock would be the result.

This is a very appealing prospect, however the important question here is: is it any good? Well, yes. As much as I’d love to stand out from the crowd and be different, Bioshock is a very good first person shooter and to say otherwise would be clearly wrong. However, is it the huge leap forward that was promised in pre-release hype? No, but I’ll get to the bitching later.

The game itself looks amazing not only through graphical fidelity, but design. A crazed mixture of steampunk and art deco, pipes and machinery a theme which runs from the environment to its most dangerous inhabitants, the menacing ‘Big Daddy’s’. The enemy ‘splicers’ (people drunk on power from genetic engineering) maintain this feel, wearing masks and headdresses, as if from a 1940’s ball. As well as the exemplary design work, the water looks incredible, pouring through the many gaps and breaks in the walls of the sunken city Rapture. To add to this atmosphere, the sound work is superb, full of ambient groans as the pressure of thousands of feet of water crush against the crumbling walls of this once fantastical world.

Rapture is under the rule of the once great Andrew Ryan, a man who built a city on a dream, but it was eventually over run by human nature. This has lead to the underwater metropolis crumbling into the world seen in the game, with Ryan trying desperately to hold on to the remains of his life’s work. By basing the characters on such real desires, 2K Productions have provided a grounding for the fantasy world- as well as offering a genuine sense of Pathos to the protagonists.

So far, so great. The combat is very well handled, with all of the weapons (bar the horrendously underpowered pistol) feeling as dangerous as they should. In addition to the weapons, the player has access to a range of plasmids and tonic, that genetically modify the character with extra defensive and offensive abilities, that bring some degree of customisation to the game. These can be combined with environmental elements too. An enemy standing in oil? Use the Incinerate plasmid for extra damage. An enemy standing in water? Use the electro bolt plasmid for shocking results. That pun was too obvious.

Though the combat is one of the main strengths of the game, it also provides the cracks where the game experience starts to let water in. The open ended nature of weaponry allows the player to carry eight large weapons, with three different ammunition types for each at any one time. For quite a while, physics has dictated the impossibility of this, but then again it is set in an underwater city so realism shouldn’t be an issue. The reason this is a problem is that it doesn’t allow the player to develop their own character – you always have the choice to do something completely different, meaning that the gamer is never able to adopt their own identity. This is the other problem: the only choices in the game are how to kill people. In fact, it does seem that the solution to every problem the character faces is to shoot it. Even by hacking into gun turrets and security systems, it still only means that there will be more things shooting at the enemy. For a game that sees itself as being a complex moral play, you’d think there would be more peaceful options- Deus Ex and it’s sequel offered these, and they came out four years ago.

The morality of the game really boils down to the ‘Little Sisters’, genetically modified children that wander with the Big Daddies to harvest DNA from dead residents of Rapture. In this, the player is offered a simple choice: harvest, the child dies but you get more resources from it, or rescue, where the child survives but you get less. These dictate one of two endings that can be obtained- you’re either a charity worker or a megalomaniac. It’d be nice for some actual moral complexity- I played the earlier part of the game harvesting, but for the majority of the game decided to rescue the little sisters. The game didn’t take into account this change in character, and still gave the evil ending. Strangely for a game that involves massacring the population of a city, it sees killing the Little Sisters as evil, but doesn’t care about the other thousand people who get shot. Apparently you have to save all of the Little Sisters to get the good ending, so it might as well just let you decide on the first one, then act automatically later.

So, you’re not given the ability to really customise a player to your own tastes (you can choose plasmids and tonics, but by the end you have so many there isn’t a great degree of choice), the moral choices are only very basic. In addition to this, the player is only really given an insight into their own character about seven hours into the game, at which point the game improves immensely. It does seem a shame to have a world full of so much detail, then have a character without any personality. The story around it though is brilliant, with lots of exciting and intriguing detail on the way the world was made and how it was unmade. The moans of the splicers, the posters and the art around Rapture also add a great feeling of atmosphere.

So, do these flaws sink Bioshock? No, it is fantastic and I do feel really bad for focusing on the negatives rather than the positives in this review. However, the positives are well documented elsewhere, but these were areas that I felt actually were flawed and should be taken into account. It’s definitely in the top three 360 games out at the moment (alongside the Darkness and Gears of War), maybe even at the top. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a promising return for 2K Productions and I for one can’t wait to see how they’ll build on this.

Quentin Tarantino: What now?

Hello everyone. What follows is a fairly long article which I have written for shefsteel.com but which hasn't been posted yet so I thought I'd stick it up on here instead.

Enjoy!

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This week saw the belated UK release of Death Proof, a serial killer film starring Kurt Russell. In any other situation, this would not be of particular interest to many people, however, Death Proof is not ‘just a serial killer film’, it is the fifth film by arguably the most influential film-maker of the last 20 years (more of this later), one of the most popular and well-known figures in the movie business today; Quentin Tarantino. Now, despite his frequent appearances in the media and the reverence for him amongst film fans, a new Tarantino film doesn’t roll along every year, he’s only directed five films, barring the odd ‘‘guest directing spot’’, since 1992, so this is something of an important occasion. As such, it’s a good time to look back on QT’s work to date, his influences, the influence he has in turn exerted on cinema, and what lies ahead for the video store geek extraordinaire.

A Worthwhile Failure: My Best Friend’s Birthday

Whilst Reservoir Dogs was Tarantino’s first proper attempt at directing, he first ventured behind (and in front of) the camera in 1984, when he became involved with his fellow video store colleague Craig Hamann’s independent film, on which he became co-writer and co-director. The two shot the film on 16mm cameras over four years using friends and fellow co-workers as the cast and crew. The film was never finished, however, as a fire in 1987 destroyed much of the completed footage, leaving only 36 minutes left, all of which can be seen on YouTube.

Due to the small amount of footage left, it’s quite difficult to offer any sort of detailed analysis of the film but it is worth noting because of the importance Tarantino attributes to it as a stepping stone in his career, referring to it on several occasions as ‘‘my film school’’ but also because aspects of the film resurface in his later work. A speech given by Tarantino concerning Elvis appears in a more refined form as the opening scene in True Romance, a character nearly dies after snorting something which they think to be cocaine, a plot device used in Pulp Fiction, and a number of minor details, such as character traits and radio station names crop in his later work. Even at such an early stage in his career, it is possible to see Tarantino’s obsession with pop culture, pithy dialogue and darkly humorous situations.

The Sundance Kid: Reservoir Dogs and stardom

Following on from My Best Friend’s Birthday, Tarantino became friends with Roger Avary, a fellow video store worker who was a budding scriptwriter. Avary gave Tarantino a script he had been working on, entitled ‘The Open Road’, hoping that he would be able to expand it to 120-pages, the standard length for a feature film. In the event, Tarantino delivered a 500-page script which Avary considered an amazing piece of work, if unfilmable in that form. The two worked to decrease the length and tried, unsuccessfully, to sell it around Hollywood for Tarantino to direct. This script would eventually be split in two, forming the basis for the films True Romance, directed by Tony Scott, and Natural Born Killers, directed by Oliver Stone.

At the same time, Tarantino was preparing to make another low budget film revolving around a heist gone wrong. However, Harvey Keitel got hold of the script through his wife, and told Tarantino that he wanted to star in the film, as well as produce it. With Keitel on board, the budget for the film increased hugely from roughly $30,000 to $1.2 million, and the stage was set.

The film was released in 1992 after it was bought at the Sundance Film Festival by Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax, at the time a small studio which dealt in foreign imports (My Left Foot) and films considered too arty for studios (sex, lies and videotape). The film did alright in the US, recouping its budget from its small run in 61 theatres, but it was the European release of the film that shot it into the stratosphere. Reservoir Dogs became a sensation in Britain, turning Tarantino into a star overnight, and the beginning of the rather elitist idea that people in Europe ‘get’ Tarantino’s films more than Americans do.

As with My Best Friend’s Birthday, Reservoir Dogs was notable for its pop-culture savvy dialogue but it also presented something which at the time was really unique in American independent cinema. The non-linear structure of the film, in which details of the heist are revealed after the fact and the whole story of the film is relayed out of sequence, was heavily influenced by the work of French director Jean-Luc Godard, a favourite of Tarantino’s, and it was a stylistic trait which was largely unused in American cinema. Reservoir Dogs represented a huge leap in skill from his earlier work, both as a director and as a storyteller. Whilst it was still quite rough around the edges, it was a real shock to American cinema, though not quite as huge a shock as what was to follow.

The Arthouse Blockbuster: Pulp Fiction

Whilst they had been working on ‘The Open Road’ script together, Tarantino and Roger Avary had talked about directing a portmanteau piece together, comprising three short films; one to be written and directed by Tarantino, one to be written and directed by Avary, and one to be written and directed by third director. When the third director failed to appear, and with Tarantino’s stock rising on the back of Reservoir Dogs and his script for True Romance, the two decided to expand their scripts, throw in some ideas they had elsewhere, and the end result was Pulp Fiction, a sprawling film comprising three inter-related stories of two hitmen (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta), a down on his luck boxer who had wronged a crime boss (Bruce Willis), and the possibly fatal relationship between one of the aforementioned henchmen and the aforementioned crime boss’ wife (Travolta and Uma Thurman).

Pulp Fiction opened in 1994 to rave reviews and has since gone on to become completely and utterly ingrained in popular culture. Though now it has become over-quoted and parodied, Pulp Fiction was one of the freshest breaths of air in mainstream cinema at the time and formed an important part of 90s culture. Everyone of a certain age (usually in their later 30s) can remember the first time they saw it, and for those of us who are somewhat younger it remains an important milestone in cinema education. If you’ve not seen Pulp Fiction, huge swathes of popular culture become incomprehensible, particular much of the Simpsons episode ‘22 Short Films About Springfield’. That it still gets referenced these days, largely in films starring John Travolta such as Be Cool and Hairspray, is a testament to its lasting appeal.

The film ended up grossing over £100 million, won Oscars for best Original Screenplay for Tarantino and Avary, and made Miramax major players in Hollywood, fundamentally altering the relationship between independent and mainstream cinema. Tarantino was given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted to do was an adaptation of a novel by acclaimed pulp novelist Elmore Leonard.

The Golden Boy loses some sheen: Jackie Brown

The novel in question was Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch, a story about a 44-year old airline hostess who, after years of smuggling money for a gunrunner decides to betray him and hatches a plan to steal some money from him. Adapted by Tarantino, it would be renamed Jackie Brown and starred Pam Grier as the eponymous air hostess, Samuel L. Jackson as the gunrunner, and Robert De Niro as Jackson’s drug-addled friend.

Jackie Brown opened in 1997 to a muted critical response, although revered American critics Siskel and Ebert were immensely positive about it, and the box office didn’t quite match up to the success of Pulp Fiction. As such, Jackie Brown is rarely mentioned when discussing Tarantino’s films, being less popular and obviously quotable than his others, despite the fact that it is his richest, most mature and least pop-culture fixated film; whilst it did serve as an homage to blaxploitation films, of which Grier had been a notable star, the film relies less on overt references and recreation of scenes than his other films and is decidedly less violent, at least in terms of on-screen violence, with much happening outside the frame.

However, this apparent move away from some of the hallmarks of his earlier films is not where the maturity of the film comes from; it comes from the genuine emotion evident in the script and the performances. It’s clear that Tarantino felt deeply about the original novel, citing Leonard as one of his favourite authors, and it presented him with the chance to impose his style and vision onto a world which had been created entirely by someone else. As such, the film has an emotional punch to it which is lacking from Tarantino’s other work; his other films have an air of affected cool, a detachedness that comes across in the witty dialogue, self-awareness and playing with form, as well as the distanced performances of his actors. This is intentional, of course, since Tarantino has often described his films as ‘movie movies’; the movies that characters in other movies would kick back and watch to relax, so the hyper-reality of it all makes sense in that ridiculous world. Jackie Brown, however, feels much more real and the characters are easier to identify with, even if they are murders, drug dealers and smugglers. Furthermore, the relationship between Jackie and Max Cherry (Robert Forster) is the only example in Tarantino’s films to date of a real, slow-burning romance. It’s a classy film which is sadly overlooked.

What’s most sad about the Jackie Brown situation, though, is that it seemed to drive Tarantino back towards the childish, cartoonish tendencies of his other films and brought them to the fore. Part of this more openly ridiculous Tarantino had already appeared in the 1996 vampiric crapfest From Dusk To Dawn, which Tarantino co-wrote with director Robert Rodriguez, who Tarantino had met and befriended at Sundance in 1992, when Rodriguez was showing his legendary debut feature El Mariachi, but seeing as that was a film he co-wrote with someone who was already known for silly, excessive films and since it was a film they made for fun more than anything else, it probably didn’t indicate anything of where he wanted to go next with his own films. However, following the relative lack of success of Jackie Brown, it would be 6 years before Tarantino would return with another feature, and the film he returned with signalled a definite return to the realms of silliness, pop-culture references and overt cinematic pillaging.

Arrested Development: Kill Bill

Rewinding for the moment, we briefly return to 1994, and the end of production on Pulp Fiction. Tarantino and Uma Thurman are sitting around one day and they start toying with an idea for a film. A film about a woman named The Bride, martial arts, and revenge. Tarantino likes the idea, and says to Thurman that they’ll do it one day. Nine years later, that dream comes to fruition in the form of Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, a film focusing on Thurman as The Bride, a female assassin who, after being betrayed by her fellow assassins on her wedding day, vows to seek revenge against those who wronged her, including the eponymous Bill, the leader of her former organisation.

Originally intended as a single film, Tarantino’s script expanded and the film was eventually split in two for theatrical release, something which didn’t hurt the box office, Volume 1 grossed over $180 million and Volume 2 grossed $150 million, but did seem to damage the critical standard of the two parts.

Since Volume 1 detailed the attack on the Bride and then followed her on her quest to rehabilitate herself before facing off against her enemies, it got most of the plot out of the way early on and could focus on the business of revenge and allowed the film to end on a huge, beautifully orchestrated fight sequence involving the Bride and eighty-eight masked swordsmen. Volume 2 had to pick things up afterwards, lead to the final confrontation against Bill, and tie up all the loose ends. In the end, Volume 1 was praised for its energy, action and pace, and Volume 2 was accused of being self-indulgent, overlong and lacking in action, with a final scene that was unnecessarily melodramatic. Critical opinion has since levelled out, and Tarantino has announced that Kill Bill will be released on DVD as a single, four hour film, entitled Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, at the end of the year.

Whilst the entire Kill Bill saga is a hugely enjoyable one, it also represents the regression of Tarantino to being someone who just makes fun movies. On one level this is not a bad thing, since Tarantino's fun films are just that, fun. However, his regression from the more mature and accomplished fare of Jackie Brown represents a sort of intellectual cowardice on his part; just because his first foray into a different kind of movie for him failed, he abandons that style and returns to his juvenile, blood-soaked fantasies. However much fun it is to wallow in his self-indulgence, it is still a shame that he probably won’t expand on the more subtle style of his one grown-up film.

Hurtling into a brick wall at 100mph: The Grindhouse debacle and Death Proof

After finished work on Kill Bill, Tarantino was screening a double-feature in his private screening room for Robert Rodriguez when Rodriguez noticed that Tarantino had the same poster for the 1957 double feature Dragstrip Girl/Rock All Night and told Tarantino that he had always wanted to do a double-feature. Very quickly the two had decided that they would each direct a segment in an homage to 70s exploitation cinema. And they would call it Grindhouse.

Rodriguez settled on the idea of a zombie film named Planet Terror, in which a chemical released into the atmosphere turns innocent people into shambling, disintegrating monsters, complete with schlocky effects, scratched frames and missing reels and the end result was an enjoyable and messy piece of popcorn entertainment. To act as a counterweight to this lighter film, in much the same way as double-features had done in the past, Tarantino settled on an altogether darker film that was rooted in something at least vaguely resembling reality. After learning that stunt drivers ‘death proof’ their cars so that, should the worst come to the worst, they could walk away unscathed, Tarantino developed the idea of a stuntman (Kurt Russell) who kills women by getting them to sit in the unprotected parts of his car, then crashing it. The end result was Death Proof, a film that is part intelligent twist on the serial killer film and part celebration of the heyday of movie car chases, when real cars would travel at extreme speeds, jump in the air, and risk the lives of all involved. Both halves of the film work extremely well with Russell making a suitably menacing antagonist and some of the finest car chases seen in recent films. The only problem in the Grindhouse version that I saw was that the dialogue seem really rather lacking. Whether it was the bored performances of those involved, or maybe just the fact that the dialogue wasn’t very good is unclear, but it seemed strange that a director who built his reputation on the sparkle of his words should falter so noticeably.

The films were put together, along with fake trailers by the likes of Eli Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie, and released in the US on April 17, 2007. Whilst audience reactions were very good, attendance wasn’t, and Grindhouse opened to $11.5 million, half what Tarantino's and Rodriguez’s films generally open to, and the film failed to make back its budget during its theatrical run in America. Blaming the failure of the marketing department to ‘sell the experience’ of Grindhouse, a controversial decision was soon taken to split the film up for release in all other territories where it had previously been expected to open as one film, such as Europe and Australia. Though Tarantino and Rodriguez have since stated that they wanted to release separate versions of the films anyway, complete with missing reels in place, they also hoped that the Grindhouse experience would be shown first.

So now we in Europe get Death Proof, the extended, recut version, and one which, according to most reviews, is an improvement on the original, at least in terms of plot; the original plot, whilst straightforward, also didn’t make much sense at some points since events relating to the relationships between various characters were left out intentionally. Whether or not it makes the often inane and boring dialogue of the characters any better remains to be seen.

Back and Forth: Inglorious Bastards and the influence of Tarantino

All through this article I have spoken of Tarantino’s influence in terms of American cinema and his role as probably the most important film-maker of his generation. I feel it is necessary to clear up what I mean by this and explain why I think he is so vital, despite my misgivings about his recent work.

On one level, Tarantino is the most influential director of recent times because of the sheer number of films made since 1992 that have tried to imitate his style. Some carry it off and are very enjoyable (Guy Ritchie’s first two films) and others have been, well, crap (Guy Ritchie’s fourth film). However, to focus on these aspects would be to miss what is crucial about Tarantino’s success.

Quentin Tarantino was a video store clerk with no technical training in directing but an encyclopaedic knowledge of film, he was one of the first of the so-called ‘VCR Generation’ to become a success and make films which were thrilling and original, despite being heavily indebted to the films he took ideas from. He was followed by the likes of Kevin Smith and P.T. Anderson, and provided an inspiration for anyone who thought that they couldn’t make a film just because they didn’t know how. Admittedly not everyone who is a fan of films can actually direct, most notably Uwe Boll, but the sheer quality of those that do realise their potential just about outweighs the crap. Just.

The impact that Tarantino had on the film industry is also quite startling. The success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction helped transform Miramax into a major player and brought independent cinema into the mainstream in a big way. Films that may otherwise not have found an audience were given a chance by large studios and the setting up of ‘independent’ offshoots like Fox Searchlight shows that independent cinema has become big business. This is not necessarily a good thing since many would argue that independent cinema has been co-opted and watered downed as a result. For good or ill, Tarantino had a hand in this major change.

Tarantino has announced that his next feature will probably be his long-gestating World War II epic Inglorious Bastards, a film that will no doubt push Tarantino as directing the swordfights in Kill Bill or the car chases in Death Proof did, and which will no doubt be hugely entertaining, as all his films to date have been in one way or another. You can accuse him of being a plagiarist, an adolescent fantasist, the saviour and/or the destroyer of independent cinema, but you can’t accuse Quentin Tarantino of lacking ambition.

Coming soon

...Bioshock, is it really THAT good?
...3:10 to Yuma Review
...Video games: Violence, freedom and fun- a feature discussing the nature of games, whether they are too violent and 'free-form' gameplay
...Bob Evans album review

Ed will be doing some stuff too no doubt, I just don't know what he's up to. He went rogue at 18:43 last night...

Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS)

A lot of people are interested in aliens. Where they come from, what they look like and, seemingly, how to kill them. The Metroid Prime series doesn’t differentiate from this formula, but actually goes that little bit further and lets you kill the ones that aren’t even trying to take over the world, like the Zoomers. To me, they look a hell of a lot like hedgeghogs. If this was set in Cumbria, Animal Rights would have a field day. But it’s not, they’re Zoomers and they look just different enough from real hedgehogs not to worry any animal lovers.

This latest release is the first Metroid Prime game to make it to a handheld console, unless you count Metroid Prime Pinball, but that’s just themed pinball. As a rule, first person shooters don’t work on a handheld console, even games as basic as the original Doom seemed overcomplicated on the Game Boy Advance, but Metroid seems to have solved the problem.

The game is controlled in a similar fashion to the classic PC Mouse and Keyboard combination, instead using a D-pad and the touch screen. This takes very little getting used to, and allows fast access to a variety of weapons as well as improving your in-game accuracy. I wasn’t able to master the accuracy in my play through, but it’s there if you want to try it. Although the control system is the greatest feat of the game it’s also the weakness. I tried to play it on the bus and found it very difficult to play, and also after extended use of the game I got cramp. I may be the first person in the world to suffer from DS elbow. You can play the game using a more standard system, using the D-pad to move and the face keys to aim, but this really misses the point of what makes ‘Hunters’ so special.

The single player game revolves around Samus and some strikingly similar bounty hunters looking for the ‘Ultimate Power’ by visiting four planets, each holding two of the key like ‘Octoliths’. This means, as one may have noticed, that not only is there no Metroid Prime, there are actually no Metroid at all, with only Samus making it from the series to this release. Still, that’s no bad thing as they’ve managed to bring most of the best elements of the Gamecube classics to the DS.

The morph ball and scanning have been brilliantly ported across, and the touch screen approach to weapon selection actually feels a lot more natural than that on the Gamecube. Sadly a lot of the more exciting tools had to be removed (such as the grapple beam) but given the platform this is understandable. The greatest flaw though is found during the boss battles. In the game, there are four different end of area enemies, however for most of the game you’ll fight variants on the same two over and over again. These, incidentally, are a lot less interesting than the final boss fights as the forms they take are: A floating eye and a stick. It does damage the experience somewhat, as it lowers the excitement of reaching new areas of the game.

Multiplayer is handled very well, with Nintendo providing a stable server that seems more than capable of organising games. Unfortunately, I can’t testify too well on the balancing of the game, as due to the aforementioned accuracy issues, I was usually killed before I could work out what was happening. This suggests that perhaps the makers could create a better player matching system. Still, it provides a variety of modes, a huge amount of levels, wifi compatibility and download play.

Overall, Metroid Prime Hunters provides a fresh experience on the DS with lasting appeal. The single player campaign is quite short, so you’ll need either friends or a wireless connection to get the most out of the game. Even if you don’t, there’s still plenty of fun to be had with the game, even if it’s just to shoot Zoomers on the go.

4/5

The Supergood work of the Superbad boys

This week saw the release of Superbad, the second film this summer to come from the fertile, filthy comedic minds of Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow, who have already notched up one huge hit with Knocked Up. Since they have become the comedykings du jour, with a further two writer/producer collaborations due for release within the next 12 months, and Apatow producing a further ten movies during the same time, it seems like a good time to look back at their previous collaborations. Specifically, I'll be looking at the work Rogen and Apatow did on television some years ago on two short-lived, much loved shows; Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared.

In 1999, film director and actor Paul Feig (known to a certain proportion of the world as Mr. Poole in Sabrina The Teenage Witch) came up with the idea for a television series based on his teenage years growing up in Michigan in the 1980s. Judd Apatow, fresh from working on the Larry Sanders Show, a show so clever and funny it can be fatal in large doses, came on as a producer and developed the show with Feig and the first series aired over the 2000-2001 season in America on NBC, where it recieved considerable acclaim and a devoted following.

Freaks and Geeks focuses on the trials and tribulations of a fairly large cast of characters at a Michigan high school. Unlike most high school comedy-dramas (also referred to by the mind-numbingly awful phrase ''dramedies''), the series was set in 1979-1980. Rather than making for a nostalgic, niche show catering to people who were alive at the time and alienating younger viewers, the show creates a world which is different to the one in which we now live but which features characters who are universally recognisable. In much the same way on can watch American Graffiti and feel nostalgic for the last days of childhood, despite the fact you might not have been alive at the time the film is set, you can recognise the people and empathise with them, even if you don't get the cultural references.

The characters in the show consist of two main groups; the 'Freaks' and 'Geeks' of the title. The 'Freaks' consist of the stoners, the burnouts and punks who don't really fit into any other group and exist the edge of school society. The series starts when Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), a straight-A student who had previously been a mathlete, witnesses the death of her grandmother and begins to question her life up to that point. Determined to find out if there is something better for her, she starts hanging out with the burnouts, who include Daniel (a brilliant James Franco), Nick (Jason Segal), Ken (Seth Rogen, who doesn't really do all that much until the end of the series but what little he says is always hilarious) and Kim (Busy Philipps) and it is the relationships, struggles and interactions between these characters that forms much of the comedy and the emotional core of the series.

At the other end of the scale are the 'Geeks', who consist the charmingly awkward trio of Lindsay's brother Sam (John Francis Daley), Neal (Samm Levine) and Bill (Martin Starr, who gets a lot of the big laughs in Knocked Up). The Geeks are younger than the Freaks and, as such, offer up a lot more laughs since they don't really do angst and have much simpler needs; focusing on Star Trek and Steve Martin, rather than love or worrying about the directions their lives will take. That's not to say that they don't get some genuinely emotional stuff to deal with; Sam's unrequited affections for a cheerleader, Neal struggling to come to terms with his parents' divorce and Bill experiencing the embarrassment of his mother dating the school gym teacher are all key points in the series arc, but they general pack in more gags per minute than the Freaks.

The show also boasts an impressive array of guest stars, both recurring and one-off, including Jason Schwartzman, Ben Stiller and Tom Wilson (Biff from the Back To The Future trilogy) who features fairly regularly as the aforementioned gym teacher who dates Bill's mother towards the end of the first season and who gets a hefty share of laughs every time he is on screen.

It is the juxtaposition, and reflection, provided by the two groups which forms much of the drama and comedy of the series. Episodes don't wrap things up neatly every week, no one learns any lessons and, more often than not, the characters end up worse at the end of the episodes than they did at the start. Rather than making for a depressing watch this allows for the few, brief moments when the characters actually succeed to feel positively euphoric. You really feel for these characters and their struggles and I personally have never empathised with a show as much as I have with Freaks and Geeks.

So, Freaks and Geeks was an intelligent, hilarious and, at times, very touching and sweet show. It garnered critical acclaim, a loyal following and a handful of Emmy nominations. And, in the time honoured tradition of beloved shows, it was cancelled after one season, ironically winning an Emmy for Outstanding Writing 18 months after it's last episode aired. Rather than sitting around, moping and feeling dejected, Apatow sprang back and developed a new show which, in his own words, was partially intended as a means of keeping the Freaks and Geeks cast and crew together. That project would become Undeclared, a sitcom about the lives of first-year college students.

Undeclared, whilst a quality show, is a different beast to Freaks and Geeks. Whereas the earlier show had hour-long episodes, Undeclared stuck to a traditional half-hour (or 22-minutes plus adverts) running time. The show was also contemporary, rather than being set in the 198os. Furthermore, the show was more unashamedly comedic, presenting a different challenge for Apatow since ''with Freaks, if a scene wasn't funny, we called it drama. With Undeclared, if it wasn't funny, it just wasn't funny.'' This lack of seriousness might make it seem as if Undeclared was Freaks and Geeks lesser sibling, but that is to miss the point entirely. Shorn of the need to stretch a show out for an hour and infuse it with drama, Apatow and his team were able to cram each episode full of great characters, fun situations and wonderful dialogue.

The show also marks the writing debut of Seth Rogen, who so impressed Apatow with his sense of humour and improvisational skill on Freaks that he hired him on as a script consultant, eventually bumping him up onto the cast list. By the end of the series, Rogen would have written 5 episodes of the show, almost a third of all the episodes produced, as well as helping to craft the relationships between the various characters as one of the main cast members. Pretty good going for an 18-year old.

As with Apatow's previous show, it is the large and diverse cast that really makes Undeclared a great show, rather than merely very good. The rapport between all involved is really wonderful, each character is very carefully drawn and, over the course of several episodes, each is given room to breathe and develop so it never feels like it is a one-or-two-character show, even though the emotional core of the show is the burgeoning relationship between Steve Karp (Jay Baruchel) and Lizzie (Carla Gallo). The rest of the main cast is rounded out by Rogen as Ron, an awkward but charming economics major, Timm Sharp as Marshall Nesbitt, a fairly unambitious guy who just likes to get drunk, Monica Keena as Lizzie's room-mate Rachel, and Charlie Hunnam as Lloyd, an English exchange student. And, in case you were wondering, Charlie is actually English, despite having a accent that broke Dick Van Dyke's 36-year stranglehold on the title of ''most implausible English brogue'' when the show first aired in 2000.

Though no primetime network television show could accurately show what University life is like, Undeclared had a good crack at it and manages to maintain the essence of what it is to be a student without sanitising things too much. The show deals with real situations and concerns but never forgets to actually make these funny. A case in point being the Rogen-penned episode ''Sick In The Head'', in which Marshall gets sick and, in the absence of his parents to take care of him, ends up being convinced to take herbal medication and becomes increasingly more sick as the episode progresses. Anyone who has moved away from home for the first time and has experience their first bout of unsupervised illness can relate to this and it is just one of several moments throughout the series that manage to tread the line between truthful and hilarious.

As with Freaks, the show had a fairly strong selection of guest stars including Adam Sandler, who plays himself in a very funny cameo, Will Ferrell and Loudon Wainwright III in a recurring role as Steve's dad, Hal, who starts the series by telling Steve that he is getting a divorce and increasingly finds reasons to hang out with Steve's friends as a means of dealing with his mid-life crisis. Several members of the Freaks cast also wound up in the show at one point or another, including Jason Segal in a funny/scary role as Lizzie's ex-boyfriend, Busy Philipps as a girl Ron falls in love with, and Martin Starr as the geeky friend Steve left behind. All these moments are highlights of a series that was pretty much nothing but highlights, barring the slightly uneven first episode, and one which should, by rights have been a hit.

However, Apatow continued to have a streak of appallingly bad luck when Undeclared was cancelled after only 17 episodes, one less than Freaks managed, and without even giving them the opportunity to have a proper 'last' episode as Freaks had. As such, the show feels even more incomplete and, ultimately, comes off as the weaker of Apatow's efforts, though that doesn't mean it wasn't very, very good.

Judd Apatow may be the greatest loss to televised comedy. He managed to craft not one but two shows which have gone on to become cult classics for all the right reasons; both were intelligent, featured well-crafted characters, superb performances, great writing, strong story-telling and, most importantly, managed to be very funny and heartfelt. They were clearly very personal projects to Apatow and his decision to focus on producing, writing and directing films suggests that the pain from the cancellation of both shows has driven him from television for the foreseeable future. Whilst he, along with Seth Rogen and the various other alumni of both shows, may be able to deliver more gems like Knocked Up, I doubt they'll ever be able to conjure up quite the same magical combination as they did here. Though I sincerely hope they never stop trying to.

Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared are both available on Region 1 DVD and you can import them reasonably cheaply from many online retailers. Be warned, though, since the episodes on the Undeclared DVD are listed in production, rather than chronological, order, so if you click ''Play All'' you'll end up thinking ''when did they get together?'', ''what happened to him?'' and ''what are they all talking about?'' quite often. For a helpful guide to the right order, follow the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeclared#Episode_Order

Second Chance Film Club: The Iron Giant

Welcome back my friends to the show that frequently ends. This time around I'm cheating ever so slightly since the film I'm looking at is a film which I didn't even give a first chance to, dismissing it out of hand when it was initially released for being 'just a cartoon'. However, since the writer/director, Brad Bird, has gone on to direct two of my favourite films of all time, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and become something of a personal hero of mine, I feel it is right to go back and actually watch his take on Ted Hughes novel 'The Iron Man', The Iron Giant. Before we get into things, this will contain spoilers, and I'll say here and now that I and the many millions of people who didn't see this film when it was released were very wrong to do so. As always, the following contains many a spoiler.

The film opens with a shot of Sputnik orbiting the earth, before panning to show a meteorite heading towards the Earth. The camera then follows the meteorite, overtakes it, then shows us a storm in progress, during which we get our first glimpse of the Giant in question. Within this first two or three minutes of the film, we see the basic themes of the film and its many technical merits. Sputnik very clearly represents the paranoia of the period in which the film is set, 1950s America, and it is this that drives much of the drama of the film. No one in the film truly knows where the Giant has come from or what his purpose is, least of all the Giant himself. Whilst some of the characters accept the giant, others are suspicious of him and believe that he must be a Communist weapon. Chief amongst these characters is Kent Mansley, a low-level government agent who believes so fervently in the government propaganda and the fear of the time that he orders a nuclear missile to be fired at the Giant in the final moments of the film. Despite the fact that he is standing more or less directly next to the Giant when he orders the strike.

The animation throughout is really very impressive with most of it being hand-animated, an art that has very rapidly disappeared in the last 8 years. The whole world and the characters in it feel vibrant and alive in the same way that old Disney films used to feel. The technical prowess of the film is even more impressive when we consider the fact that it was made for only $48,000,000, which is quite a small amount of money for an American animated film. The film also had a very low budget for marketing, a factor which contributed to the relative failure of the film at the box office. However, what matters is not the budget or even the quality of the animation, but the emotional impact of the story.

For a long time now I've believed that there is something seriously wrong with me, that there's something in my subconscious that is horribly askew. My problem? I cry at cartoons. I don't know what it is but there is something about them that really gets to me. Sporting events, heartwarming news stories, family funerals, none of them affect me quite as much as the end of the ''Mother Simpson'' episode of the Simpsons or Sully seeing Boo again at the end of Monsters Inc. Within this specific, some may say perverse, emotional problem of mine, Brad Bird occupies a special place. He is one of the few directors who has managed to not only make me cry but also have me openly weeping whilst watching their films. And these have all been watching cartoons! For the record, those moments are the instant when Syndrome shoots down the plane in the Incredibles, making Bob Parr believe that his family have been killed, when Anton Ego eats the meal in Ratatouille (those of you in the UK will have to wait until October to experience this but it really is something very special) and in the Iron Giant. Towards the end of the film, the army fires a nuclear weapon which is intended to destroy the Giant but which will also destroy the village he is in. Rather than see all those around him die, the Giant flies up towards the missile, intending to impact with it before it can do any harm. The look of serenity of his face before the impact and the way he says ''Superman'' gets me every time. I've watched the film three or four times in quick succession recently and it never ceases to make me tear up. It's a really beautiful moment which more or less encapsulates what is wonderful about this film.

So powerful is the emotional impact of the ending, that whilst watching the Iron Giant for the first time, I willed the Giant to somehow survive. I was literally crying out for an ending which I would otherwise consider to be sappy or something of a cheat. Bare in mind that I'm someone who believes that Amelie, quite possibly the happiest film ever made, would be improved markedly by having both main characters die at the end. Imagine the sheer sense of happiness and relief I feel whenever I see that the film does bring the Giant back at an end. Admittedly he's in pieces, but he slowly rebuilds himself and hints at future films. These have not so far appeared and I'm unsure about whether or not I want them to. On the one hand, I'd love to see more of these characters and see what other adventures they might have, yet the Iron Giant on its own stands as a pretty much perfect piece of work.

Maybe it's just me and my bizarre fascination with animation, but for me The Iron Giant is one of the finest animated films ever made. It's great looking, fabulously paced and has genuine emotional resonance to it. It's also quite strange in that it is one of the very few, non-propagandist, animated films that explicitly deals with Communist paranoia, and that's got to be worth something. You missed it at the cinema but I urge every person who reads this to seek out The Iron Giant, it's a real gem.