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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a pivotal film in its franchise, saddled with the unappealing task of making a viable film out of what was until recently the most constipated book in the series, and with not just a new director but a new screenwriter sitting in for regular scriptsman Steve Kloves, who pleaded the burden of adaptation duties on a film version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (of which, curiously, no further bark has been heard). Increasingly the Potter films are having to do the work that should have been done to the novels at editing stage, finding shape in the shapeless and a tellable story somewhere in the fog; and Order of the Phoenix let itself go badly, with rumours that Rowling had got bored with the series. (She got her mojo back to a considerable extent in Half-Blood Prince, though as it now turns out only temporarily.)
In turning the series’ fattest book into its shortest film to date, Order has had to go even further than Goblet of Fire in the degree to which it allows itself to reorganise and even replot, in ways that would have been unthinkable in the first couple of instalments. Some of the devices of narrative liposuction verge on the desperate, such as the relegation of large chunks of the storyline to arrays of announcements on huge plot noticeboards and clippings on a mirror. But director David Yates and script stringer Michael Goldenberg have managed, like their predecessors, to find genuine filmic strengths in the source novels that aren't by any means apparent to the casual eye: the enormous potential, as plot focus and scenery-masticator alike, of the character of Dolores Umbridge; the huge cast of supporting characters assembled for the finale; the way Gary Oldman's performances have turned one of the most uncertainly used characters in the middle books into one of the strongest in the films. The young cast, particularly the supporting players, are developing fascinatingly as performers, in a way that not only reminds you how daring and unprecedented is this whole colossal experiment in filming adolescence in real time, but effectively mirrors the books’ own attempt to grow the genre up with its readers. If it doesn't quite match Le Guin's boldness in growing her series over a generation to mirror her readers’ progress from young-adult to advanced middle age, at least the near-simultaneous appearance of Deathly Hallows with the Order film has made for some interesting and uncomfortable juxtapositions that deepen its effect. (Dumbledore's Army is a lark in this film, but the ultimately lethal consequences of its revival in Deathly Hallows gives it in hindsight the disturbing semblance of a children's crusade.) It's not quite Prisoner of Azkaban, but has more than earned Yates his custody of The Half-Blood Prince. It would be nice to see Goro-san get another shot of his own.
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It's all too easy to see Michael Bay's Transformers as just a Michael Bay film, a series of noisy, hyperbolic action sequences fetishising the USAF. But it's also the most carefully thought-out toy film in Hollywood history, and a purposeful piece of mythmaking on the potent American pubertal theme famously pitched to Bay as “a boy and his car".
Since the only driving our sixteen-year-olds do is in stolen vehicles, UK viewers will inevitably connect less strongly with this fable of the peculiarly American male puberty ritual of a boy's relationship with his First Car, and the various ways in which it becomes part of his emotional body armour in the absence of everything he might actually want, including any reason for girls to show the least interest.
The central conceit of Transformers is that the morph of toy action robots into vehicles enacts the transformations of masculinity at the moment when cartwheels turn to carwheels and a boy has to make the move from children's toys to men's.
In this dream version, your car—he pointedly calls Bumblebee “my car” even when he's in robot form—actively cooperates with unprepossessing geeks to hook them up with fantasy babes who look like a more vacuous clone of Jennifer Connelly but themselves transform into cool chicks with secret greasemonkey skills and criminal records.
A problem with toy movies is that the characterisations have to be sufficiently skeletal to allow space for creative play, so that unless you've actually bonded with the Autobot cast in your own time their personalities and dialogue come as rather minimalist—though Ironhide makes an impression by offering thoughtful script notes ("The parents are very irritating. Shall I take them out?"), and the elderly teens aren't much better written.
Bay has worked hard at getting a modest 112-page script to transform into a 142-minute city-smashing mecha spectacle, but the rubble of earlier plot drafts lies rather awkwardly strewn around, particularly in the scenes involving Boombox and the whole purpose and point of the All Spark.
But then this is a film in which high-level technical advice is provided by a Tasmanian blonde who says things like “You need to move past Fourier transfers and maybe consider quantum mechanics” without anyone leaping in with “Surely you mean ‘transforms'?"
Copyright © 2007 Nick Lowe
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LASER FODDER—Tony Lee's Regular Review of DVD Releases
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As he proved with the brooding Wendigo (2001), US filmmaker Larry Fessenden is particularly imaginative when evoking supernatural invisible menace, as when the shockingly hostile environment brutally overwhelms human-scale consciousness. Low-budget drama The Last Winter is no ‘cosy catastrophe’ for the Alaskan oil workers (including Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton) stranded at an isolated camp because the Arctic Circle itself is their antagonist, violently rejecting the industrialisation of unspoilt wilderness. Montage info-dumps and increasingly personal conflicts presage sour winds from nowhere and the onset of exponential climate change. Burn injuries after the plane crash adds tragic insult to frozen grief, and hysterical survivors are caught between fire and ice during the apocalyptic thaw, which releases a wraith-like fury from the brittle permafrost. Like John Carpenter's classic The Thing (1982), naturalistic intensely-charged performances ensure the morbid disquiet conjured by Fessenden's astutely intelligent direction is pointedly effective, leading to a shatteringly downbeat finale that chills like instant frostbite.
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Out of his television success as a green-skinned vigilante from The Incredible Hulk, bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno acquired fantasy feature stardom in Hercules (1983), a Golan-Globus production directed by Lewis Coates (alias Luigi Cozzi). Unlike its big screen contemporaries, Conan or Superman, which celebrated the genuinely mythic qualities of superheroes, whether barbarian warrior or costumed alien, this colourful, somewhat bizarre, Italian fantasy combines naff space opera (gods live on the Moon) with campy adventure, signified by laughably inept visual effects, and the statuesque presence of Sybil Danning as villainess Ariadne. With Hercules’ famed twelve labours often reduced to throwaway scenes, and nothing whatsoever to commend the writing, acting or directing, all the entertainment value that can be derived from this remains fixed at the level of unintentional farce or woodenly pantomimed action sequences, which don't merely invite ridicule from viewers, they make it compulsory. Although hugely enjoyable as childish Euro schlock, even dedicated fans will cringe at some of the antics.
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Echo Bridge, the DVD label that knowingly tried to insult your intelligence with such Z-grade flicks as Star Knight (1985), Space Mutiny (1988), and Firehead (1991), now offers Tibor Takács’ monster movie Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. A Canadian TV production, this somewhat under-budgeted underwater horror stars Victoria Pratt (of Mutant X), and Charlie O'Connell, younger brother of Jerry, both of Sliders fame. Obsessive marine archaeologist Nicole, and ocean photographer Ray, team up to find an ancient gold mask and a mythical opal, before modern day Greek pirate Max (Jack Scalia at his slimy best) locates the precious artefacts first. So everything's neatly set up for scuba dives to search old wrecks, criminal sabotage of boats, aggressive rivalry, and repeat appearances by a giant squid (so-so CGI), the very same beastie that killed Ray's parents. Ther
e are dismembered bodies in the water, severed tentacles on deck, and spear-gun shoot-outs with bad guys, all eventually reaching a suitably restrained but emotionally satisfying conclusion. Over the last twenty years, genre journeyman Takács has maintained a laudable track record, and this movie is a worthy addition to his directorial work.
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Sheldon Wilson (maker of compelling ‘invasion’ movie, Shallow Ground) unleashes Kaw, an eco-thriller that benefits immensely from a sterling performance by Stephen McHattie as wretched yet crusty school-bus driver Clyde, who helps defend a small town under siege from homicidal ravens. The absurdist, chiefly incoherent narrative, concerning the results of unchecked mad-cow disease, remains strangely likeable on a messily primal level, despite a rash of hoary clichés as the body count rises, and the presence of wrinkly Rod Taylor cements a blatantly calculated link to Hitchcock's classic The Birds. Abundant gallows humour (of a sort entirely avoiding the distinctly British in-jokes of Conor McMahon's lively zombie comedy Dead Meat) brings little, and only temporary, relief from a scarily escalating situation that foreshadows inescapable doom for all.
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The first volume of Skuko Murase's anime series Ergo Proxy has four episodes, with a mix of conspiratorial intrigues and cyber action in model sci-fi environs of a domed utopia, where emotionless citizens live, attended by entourages of androids. A clichéd feisty heroine, granddaughter of the maze city's regent, finds herself under suspicion after she inexplicably survives a home attack by the hideous humanoid monster later embarking on a killing spree. Unfairly demoted after that massacre, heroine Re-l is determined to uncover the secrets of that homicidal ‘proxy'. Muted colours, and the obvious American SF influences, including Blade Runner, detract from enjoyment of the developing storyline, yet the borrowing from Battleship Potemkin's Odessa Steps ends in tragedy for the baby. Radiohead's ‘Paranoid Android’ is the closing theme.
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There's no obvious fandom consensus, but season two of Gerry Anderson's TV opus Space 1999 is, nowadays, considered superior to the first. Its good sci-fi ‘fun’ is the deciding factor, whereas the earlier season was overly sombre, lacking essential wow appeal, despite its occasional moments of gravitas from regular Barry Morse as Prof Bergman (notably absent from these 24 episodes closing the show). As produced by Fred Freiberger (taking over from co-creator Sylvia Anderson), season two upped the programme's basic silliness concerning a runaway Moon—nuclear explosions kicked it away from Earth, carrying the unprepared Alpha colony on a cosmic journey, led by Commander Koenig and Dr Russell (married couple, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain)—boosting the romance, adding new characters like exotic alien ‘meta-morph’ Maya (Catherine Schell), and generally Americanising the format. Picking up, more or less, from where the final season of Star Trek (1966-9) left off, Freiberger steered the Alphans to increasingly weirder encounters (with slave traders, lonely artificial intelligences, evil doppelgangers, whip-cracking Amazons, inexplicable plagues, or uncanny monsters), much like Kirk and Spock's least serious adventures. Dealing with mutinous crew, time-travel experiments gone awry, immortal beings, hidden tombs, even a clichéd Adam and Eve scenario; while Alphans are used as templates for killer androids, or gifted with scary powers, Landau's stalwart Koenig met with sneering dismissal from the moon-base's would-be conquerors or destroyers, but enjoyed ‘philosophical debates’ with guest stars like Brian Blessed, Freddie Jones, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Mower, Sarah Douglas, James Laurenson, Stuart Damon, Hildegard Neil and, finally, Patrick Troughton. The quintessential mid-1970s SF-fantasy series, this remains watchable and amusing today while most other 30-year-old genre shows, of less tolerable datedness, have lapsed into deserved obscurity.
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Mary Shelley's quintessential mad doctor scenario has received several new wrinkles of late. Since Roger Corman's film of Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss, further additions include Peter Werner's monster-mash House of Frankenstein, a TV mini-series from Kevin Conner, Marcus Nispel's occasionally fascinating genre variant of Dean Koontz's immortal serial killer, Leigh Scott's gory cheapo Frankenstein Reborn, and now Jed Mercurio, director of mediocre British TV mini-series Invasion: Earth (1998), also has a Frankenstein production underway. Aesthetically, John R. Hand's Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare is more like a student's experimental project, imitative of early Cronenberg and Lynch with a torpid pace and jarring scene breaks, than a conventional horror movie. It's hardly innovative, despite randomised images of surreal decay, countryside stalkings, techno sterility, explicatory waffle, showings of the grotesque lumpy headed beast, irregular switching to discoloured negative, narratively inconvenient use of educational medical film excerpts, and intermittent—apparently unsynchronised—sound, mean this lame clodhopping zombie of a movie shuffles on so ineffectually that a six-pack of muscle relaxant is required to constrain impatience and irritation, among other unexpectedly extreme reactions that could well pose a problem even in sufficiently pleasant or distracting company. To avoid side effects like screaming fits or sudden faints due to stressful annoyance, view only while happily intoxicated.
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Now available in budget-priced slim-line packs, Star Trek Voyager (1995-2001) was by far the best TV space opera marketed under the Roddenberry banner, partly because all ten of its main characters were instantly likeable (even hapless everyman Harry Kim), but also for the overall quality of its consistently intriguing stories, with sci-fi ideas and action-packed thrills spanning seven seasons, totalling 172 episodes. The starship Voyager's crew included a roguish Native American (Robert Beltran), a black vulcan tactician (Tim Russ), a feisty half-klingon engineer (Roxann Dawson), a smugly-brilliant holographic doctor (Robert Picardo), rehabilitated borg drone (sexy blonde Jeri Ryan), jovial alien handyman (Ethan Phillips), and a young girl psychic (Jennifer Lien). Quirky non-humans, techno-wizardry, and a convoluted Homerian epic story-arc aside, it was the female captain that really made Voyager such a great series. Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, who left an indelible feminist signature on the whole Trek milieu) faced trickier moral dilemmas, and more personal betrayals, desperate situations, potentially overwhelming challenges or seemingly un-winnable military conflicts than any other Starfleet captain, before or since. With her scientific curiosity and independent spirit, sustained by gritty determination, and frequently devious feminine wiles, she overcame every adversity and (in more than one episode) passed the ultimate test of self-sacrificial courage with human integrity intact, while rarely abandoning professionalism or Federation ethics for expediency, during the galactic journey home. Among Starfleet officers, Kirk was the explorer, Picard the diplomat, Sisko was the cynic (while Archer was merely bland!); but only Janeway was a leader of men.
Copyright © 2007 Tony Lee
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SCORES—John Clute's Regular Review of the Latest Books
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Butcher Bird
Richard Kadrey
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In that realm of fantastika called Horror we find ourselves, at the beginning of the tale, walking the surface of the world in a state of high anxiety until, in the blinking of an eye, we see something of the truth inside. Something shakes us loose from our fixated gaze on the things that constitute the visible world, the things of the world whose scree innards we mask and normalise and make use of and inhabit the mcmansions of. Something suddenly opens us to one of those moments of slippage whose sighting characterises the greatest Horror novels, those instants of utter horror when the true grammar of perception lies bare. It is then that ‘metonymy contagion’ becomes visible—this is a term which has been used in Gothic Studies to describe how the truths which lie below attach themselves to bits of the surface of things, Jekyll in this sense being a metonymy of Hyde, who does hide to keep the Doctor going—and no longer can we strut like Jekyll in daylight, for (in the blinking of an eye)
we have seen the whole, the whole sees us. Which is the first sentence great Horror stories lay on us: Our lives (great Horror stories tell us) are false. Hell is not being able to forget this.
There was a moment in Butcher Bird, Richard Kadrey's new novel, before its innumerable climax whams began to wear us down, when something like an exposure of metonymy contagion seemed to occur. We are in San Francisco, round about now on human Earth, which is only one of three spheres calved out of primordial Reality when the internecine warfare amongst the orders of beings threatened to end in terminal chaos; the other spheres being inhabited by all the critturs and folk humans think are chimaerical, and by angels and demons (and gods). All three spheres interjaculate, but humans cannot perceive this, even in the deep cities which are isomorphic with the First City where the initial decision to calve was taken: in Butcher Bird, cities are where the action is. It is a genuine urban fantasy.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #212 Page 16
