13 FOR HALLOWEEN #12: Fido

Welcome to Canada, home of ice hockey, the Mounties and a population who are notable for not being American. Not that there seems to be much difference in the town of Willard. In a vision of Americana straight out of ‘Pleasantville’ and garnished with the swish materialism of ‘Mad Men’, executives in sharp suits drive shiny convertibles while their wives wear petticoats and mix martinis. The opportunities and good living the citizens of Willard enjoy are all thanks to Zomcon, a corporation that handles undead security in the wake of the zombie wars.

Let’s pause to exhume the backstory. Andrew Currie’s ‘Fido’ takes place in an alternative history 1950s where solar radiation has caused a plague of zombies. Military intervention forestalls the immediate threat. Meanwhile Zomcon pioneers a collar device that controls the zombies’ urge to eat flesh. Rendered docile, the undead are put to work as gardeners, housekeepers and unskilled labourers, Zomcon guaranteeing that any problems will be swiftly taken care of.

One such problem occurs after Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) acquires a zombie in order to keep up with the neighbours. She’s keen to propel husband Bill (Dylan Baker) up the career ladder and since their neighbour is Jonathan Bottoms (Henry Czerny), head of security at Zomcon, the couple seek to ingratiate themselves. Meanwhile, their lonely and socially inept son Timmy (K’Sun Ray) begins to bond with the zombie (Billy Connolly) and names him Fido. Yes, that Billy Connolly.

Bill’s an old-school zombie hater, mainly on account of his father being killed by (and subsequently turning into) one. He’s further antagonised when he realises how affectionately Timmy, and later Helen, regard Fido. Things take a macabre turn when Fido’s collar malfunctions and he attacks a bystander. Owing Fido a favour – the zombie interceded when bullies had him cornered – Timmy helps cover up the death. Inevitably, Fido’s victim comes back from the dead, one bite leads to another, and soon Willard is threatened with a bona fide zombie invasion.

‘Fido’ is an odd little film, not least for casting legendary raconteur Connolly in a non-speaking role. Tonally, it veers from poignant rites-of-passage piece (the title encapsulates the “one boy and his dog” aspect of the material) to Lynchian small town dystopia by way of a satirical enquiry into America’s complicated fear/dependency relationship with homeland security. Large scale alternative history world-building strains against budgetary limitations (the madcap finale suffers as a result), whereas steadily accreted minutiae paint a more effective picture. The POV flits from Timmy to Helen, with Timmy in particular too often sidelined. The director’s humorous broadsides are equally uneven, ranging from Hitchcockian black humour (a ‘Trouble with Harry’-style corpse disposal is inspired) to the kind of slapstick you’d associate with the final reel of ‘Blazing Saddles’.

If ‘Fido’ never quite coheres, then its flaws are not for want of ambition. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” Robert Browning once declared, “or what’s a heaven for?” ‘Fido’ exceeds the grasp of its pallid, bony, clutching hands. But Heaven’s the last thing on its mind; brains, however … brrraaaiiinnns.

13 FOR HALLOWEEN #7: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Seasons 1 – 4, I was a major ‘X-Files’ fan. This was back in the days when I used to watch TV. Back in the days when there was something on beyond so-called reality shows. ‘The X-Files’ was a reason to stay in instead of going to the pub or the cinema. It was worth taking the phone off the hook for. It was something you talked about at work the next day.

Season 5, it started going downhill. The mythology episodes became increasing dour and convoluted, to the point where it seemed like the writers were painting themselves into a corner. For a show that was at its best trading on sardonic humour and maintaining a deadpan aspect whilst treading a thin line between genuinely scary and ooops-there-goes-my-suspension-of-disbelief, it committed the cardinal sin of taking itself too seriously.

The first big-screen spin-off, the horribly titled ‘X-Files: Fight the Future’ appeared in 1998, a bridge between the fifth and sixth seasons. I’d pretty much tuned out of the series at that point, but trudged dutifully off to the cinema expecting little and getting even less in return. I’ve still not seen the last few seasons, including the Mulder-less ninth and final series which I have it on good authority is a case of not with a bang but a WTF.

One thing drew me to the decade-delayed second film (the title ‘X-Files: I Want to Believe’ only marginally better): Billy Connolly. That he could convince in a dramatic role was never in doubt – ‘Mrs Brown’ and ‘The Man Who Sued God’ were proof positive. But Billy Connolly as a paedophile priest with psychic abilities! At what point in the pre-production meetings did his name come up as a casting possibility and what were they thinking?

Whenever and whatever, it was inspired! With David Duchovny curiously enervated in his belated return to the role of Mulder and Gillian Anderson, while still on form and every inch the Scully of the series, relegated offscreen for large swathes of the second half, it’s Connolly who defines ‘I Want to Believe’. As the disgraced Father Joseph Crissman, Connolly is a revelation, his performance low-key but bristling with edginess and a sense of sullied enigma.

The film opens with Scully as a practising doctor at a hospital run by a Christian administration, which automatically opens up a debate on science vs faith. Approached by FBI agents Drummy (Xzibit) and Whitney (Amanda Peet) who are keen to benefit from Mulder’s work in cases involving psychic phenomena, Scully reluctantly persuades Mulder to re-enter the fold. Although equally reluctant initially, Mulder’s interest in the case soon reaches the obsessive heights of old.

It’s a strange beast, is ‘I Want to Believe’. Absent anything to do with aliens, it puts an “x” in the box (pardon the pun) of most of the show’s thematic concerns – the unexplained vs rationalism, the nature of belief (in this case both religious and non-religious), and the barely tolerated maverick’s place with a protocol-ridden organisation – and yet it seems so unlike an ‘X-Files’ story that if you changed the protagonists’ names and cut maybe a dozen lines of backstory-specific dialogue, you’d have a stand-alone piece of work that would function perfectly well on its own merits. This alone accounts for the critical head-scratching and lacklustre box office that greeted its release. That winning combination I mentioned earlier, the key to which was sardonic humour? ‘I Want to Believe’ is almost entirely devoid of humour (the exception being a couple of monumentally politically incorrect comments from Mulder apropos of Crissman’s kiddy-fiddling); with its snowy vistas, its glum and claustrophobic interiors, and its determination to meet thorny and existential concerns head-on, this is ‘The X-Files’ as if directed by Ingmar Bergman.

The usual Mulder/Scully belief/rationalism debate is fragmented by Crissman. Mulder is inexplicably drawn to him, perhaps viewing him as a last chance to prove to his still sceptical former paymasters the truth of his convictions; or perhaps recognising in Crissman a guilt and self-loathing that mirrors Mulder’s lifelong state of mind stemming from his inability to save his sister. Scully on the other hand is utterly repulsed by Crissman. Yet Crissman’s “visions”, which lead the FBI agents to a series of grisly discoveries, proved geographically accurate if frustratingly vague in other respects. There’s enough that’s tangible to fire Mulder’s beliefs and enough vagary to shore up Scully’s pragmatism. Until, that is, Crissman makes an off-handed comment to Scully which resonates in her dispute with the hospital’s administration over whether to continue treatment on a young boy whose chances of survival are minimal.

The film shifts between Crissman/Mulder, Scully/her patient, and a narrative strand involving stem cell research and illegal organ harvesting that coheres these various aspects. In its final act, ‘I Want to Believe’ strays into ‘Hostel’-lite territory, complete with eastern European villains straight out of central casting. At this point Crissman fades into the background as comprehensively as Scully did earlier, and the nature of his involvement – mystic or fraud, unforgivable pederast or redeemed visionary? – is never fully settled upon. But of course it wouldn’t be; this is an X-File after all, and while the truth might well be out there, concrete proof is considerably harder to come by. The difference is: what’s dark and disturbing about this X-File derives from the recesses of human psyche rather than aliens or the unexplained.

Brave

Has the Pixar bubble burst?

Two years ago, I came out of ‘Toy Story 3’ with mixed feelings – so mixed that I elected not to post a review on these pages. I found much of it inventive, delightful and entertaining; some of it utterly lachrymose in a Spielbergian emotional pornography kind of way; and an extended sequence in the third act just plain mean-spirited. A year ago, I came out of ‘Cars 2’ thinking that whichever bright spark had decided that Mater was protagonist material needed his arse kicking all the way to Radiator Springs and back again. 

Now we have ‘Brave’. And before we can discuss a single frame of film, there’s an elephant in the room as big as the bear that appears in the castle in a crucial scene. (And can I just say … bears in Scotland? Maybe prior to 900 AD, however the historical period the film takes as its point of reference seems to be concurrent with the Dunkeld monarchy of 1058 to 1290.) ‘Brave’ was originally announced as Pixar’s first pro-feminist production, boasting not only a heroine (all Pixar’s previous protagonists, right down to a gender-specific robot, having been male) but a female director, Brenda Chapman. Back then the project was called ‘The Bear and the Bow’, a more appropriate title than ‘Brave’ since the overriding theme is family, loyalty and age difference rather than any rites-of-passage requirement necessitating proof of valour.

Then Chapman was given the push – Pixar’s PR trotted out the hoary old “creative differences” line – and replaced by Mark Andrews (although Chapman retains a secondary “directed by” credit) and the project was retitled ‘Brave’, presumably for no other reason than to evoke ‘Braveheart’, another bit of Hollywood McScotland-ism. Chapman’s original concept of the project was an examination of the mother-daughter dynamic inspired by her relationship with her own daughter. Andrews and his co-writers (or should that be re-writers?) turn in something considerably more simplistic and infinitely less satisfying emotionally.

Essentially, ‘Brave’ – and I’m still fucked if I know who or what the title refers to – gives us a theme-park version of the Highlands in which Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), daughter of unreconstructed warrior king Fergus (Billy Connolly) and diplomat queen Elinor (Emma Thompson, trying for a Scottish accent in her early scenes then giving up entirely), rails against being offered as bride to whichever son of clan chiefs proves himself at the highland games. She visits a witch (Julie Walters, doing an inspired “old crone” routine) and asks for a spell which will change her mother. Meaning change her mother’s mind re: the marriage arrangements. Instead, Elinor is changed into … well, check out the original title. 

Thus far: a princess, a wicked (ish) witch, a curse, enchanted woods and fairies (in the shape of will-o’-the-wisps). Disney acquired Pixar in 2006; six years down the line, the assimilation begins.

To be fair, ‘Brave’ isn’t necessarily bad. There are some truly inspired scenes: everything involving the witch’s hut is terrific, most notably a genius gag that turns a cauldron into an answering machine. There’s also a low-brow but funny-as-fuck moment where a band of arms-bearing clansmen, finding themselves on the roof of a castle and locked out, abseil to the ground by means of tied-together kilts and file sheepishly past the camera, arses prominent. This ties with a ‘Mission Impossible’ style retrievable of a cell-door key from a serving woman’s pneumatic bosom as the least PG moment in a PG-rated kid’s movie.

The animation is gorgeous, no questions asked. Historical inconsistencies notwithstanding, ‘Brave’ captures the grandeur of the highlands so sweepingly that, on exiting the cinema, I immediately wanted to get in my car and drive north. The choppy surfaces of lochs, the vibrant colour of the heather, the spray of waterfalls – all of captured in a standard of CGI that, at its best, verges of photo-realism. Judged solely on visual aesthetics, one could easily pronounce ‘Brave’ a masterpiece and leave it at that. Indeed, the beauty of its imagery is enough to justify a DVD purchase and multiple viewings.

And yet … and yet …

I’ve been spoiled. I’ve got used to floating out of the cinema after a Pixar film, not walking out. Finding myself in the pub afterwards trawling my vocabulary for superlatives, not making do with “yeah, it was okay”. Itching to get home and start writing a review, not reluctantly putting finger to keyboard and wishing I could be more enthusiastic. Or, to put it another way, there have been other Pixar films that have been more emotionally compelling, other Pixar films that have been funnier, other Pixar films that have provided better entertainment, other Pixar films that have delivered better narratives.

For two decades, Pixar have successively raised the bar in every artistic aspect. Perhaps now they are falling victims to their own success: they are producing films that are merely good, rather than groundbreaking masterpieces. And maybe this is because, despite their technological advances, Pixar remain regressive in one crucial respect. It’s still a boy’s club.

Sort it, fellas.

Fuck

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: documentaries / In category: 9 of 10 / Overall: 85 of 100

How to tell if people have too much free time on their hands: they make models constructed entirely of matchsticks; they can recite painstakingly memorized screeds of useless information; they write letters of complaint, usually to do with the disgraceful, decadent, wouldn’t-have-happened-in-my-day standards of film, TV and music. They count the expletives in movies.

Seriously: when was the last time you had a pad and pencil on your knee during a Scorsese DVD marathon, keeping score? You’d wear the pencil sharpener out during ‘Casino’!

‘Casino’, according to this page on Wikipedia, has 435 uses of the word fuck or a derivative thereof, leaving its perfume-mouthed-by-comparison precursor ‘Goodfellas’ lagging way behind with 300 and ‘The Boondock Saints’, a film by this reckoning so clean in its dialogue it could be programmed for children’s TV, even further behind with 239. ‘Bad Santa’ ain’t so bad at all with just 173, while ‘The Blair Witch Project’ has 154, most of them apropos of losing the fucking map. ‘In Bruges’ uses fuck a paltry 126 times, but wins out in the cunt stakes. ‘Swingers’ only just scrapes the three figures, proving that being the money don’t mean shit when it comes to saying fuck.

But, dear readers, the fuck-laden swear-fest that is ‘Casino’ is by no means the sweariest film of all time. In fact, it’s number three on the Wikepedia list. Number two is Gary Oldman’s chuckle-free directorial debut ‘Nil By Mouth’ with 470 fucks, but since it’s Ray Winstone who says most of them it’s actually pronounced “faack”, not that I’ve got a problem with that, not at all, this is Ray faackin’ Winstone and he can pronounce fuck any faackin’ way he faackin’ wants. Innit?

Number one with a bullet, though, is Steve Anderson’s documentary ‘Fuck’, a film that uses the word fuck so many times, it’s even in the title. Fuck, it is the title! ‘Fuck’ uses fuck 824 times. That’s a fuckload.

Anderson’s film, while stylistically bland (a succession of talking heads against a black backdrop punctuated by occasional bits of animation), engages in a genial way with its subject. The contributors basically fall into one of two camps: pro-fuck or anti-fuck. The pro-fuck brigade include porn stars Ron Jeremy and Tera Patrick, who talk a lot more sense than the self-appointed moralists in the other camp, gonzo journalist-cum-demented-prophet Hunter S. Thompson, and comedians Bill Maher, Drew Carey, Janeane Garofalo and the Big Yin himself Billy Connolly (without whom no documentary on swearing would be complete). Here’s Connolly on the universality of the expression “fuck off”:

“ ‘Fuck off’. It’s such a lovely pair of words. And it’s international. I don't care where you are - if somebody’s fucking with your bags in Lhasa Airport in Tibet and he’s got a shaven head and saffron clothes on and you say ‘Hey, fuck off’, he knows exactly what you mean. Exactly! He will fuck off. Off he will fuck.”

The anti-fuck faction includes conservative statesman Alan Keyes (the words “conservative” and “statesman” should tip you off), self-styled “Miss Manners” Judith Martin (a woman who looks like Mrs Bates resurrected and given a bad haircut), and whiter-than-white 50’s poster boy Pat Boone (and when I say whiter-than-white, that’s just his teeth!) who advocates without a trace element of irony that swearing is indicative of sub-literacy and that there’s no reason to tell someone to go fuck themselves when you could just as easily invite them to “impregnate yourself on the way to the door”.

Stop and think about that for a moment. What Boone is essentially saying is that it’s perfectly fine to reach a point where you no longer wish to debate intelligently with someone, where you reach for an insult, a kiss-off or a term of offence, where you make the decision to put together a sentence designed to show your contempt for the other person, to leave them stung and offended … and that it’s okay to do this just as long as you don’t use the word fuck. To my way of thinking, that’s the stuff of hypocrisy and moral cowardice. And besides, if everybody stopped saying “go fuck yourself” and started saying “go impregnate yourself” instead, “impregnate” would eventually take on the force and offensiveness of “fuck”. Why? Because they’re both words. Fuck, screw and shag have the same colloquial meaning. The only difference is that some arbitrator of moral decency decided, seemingly at random, that fuck was deeply and unutterably offensive while the other two were merely slang. They’re all just words, put together with the building blocks of letters. The only power they have is the power we give them.

Neither for nor against, expert witnesses Geoffrey Nunberg and Rheinhold Aman (both linguists) provide important testimony. Aman is the unsung hero of the film, discussing the etymology of vulgarity with academic gusto (on the myth that fuck is an acronym for Fornication Under Command of the King: “that’s 100% bullshit”) and even widening the remit to the non-verbal usage of fuck. Here’s Aman on what it truly means to flip someone the bird:

“This gesture … means ‘I’m going to fuck you in the ass’, which literally means ‘I’m going to make a woman out of you’.”

(Tomorrow, when that asshole in the 4x4 cuts you up as you’re driving to work and you give him the finger, that’s what you’re telling him. Fucking awesome!)

If I wanted to be critical, I could say that Anderson gives the pro-fuck fellas and the neutrals a fairer hearing than the anti-cuss-word camp, but to be honest the moralists make asses of themselves quite effectively enough without Anderson needing to resort to cheap editing tricks. It’s never as one-sided as ‘Religulous’, though, and Anderson is wise enough not to get hung up on a “to swear or not to swear” debate. ‘Fuck’ goes on to consider the word historically, its place in the changing social and political tides of the 70s, its use by protestors, its increasing proliferation in movies and music (did you know that NWA’s ‘Fuck Tha Police’ prompted the FBI to write to the band denouncing their music, the first time the Bureau has publically taken a stance on a creative work?), and the issue of censorship. Particularly in America. Particularly the FCC. This organization has the power to fine broadcasters up to $325,000 per incidence of obscenity. As the film approaches its end credits, Anderson notes that there have been over 800 uses of fuck in ‘Fuck’, meaning that if it were aired on public television and fined per incidence, the total fine would be in the region of $260,000,000. (By way of comparison, there are 48 fucks in this article which means that if it were read out on a public broadcast station in America, they’d be hit with a fine of over fifteen and a half million dollars.)

Anderson really comes out of the pro-fuck closet here, choosing this note to end the film on and Steve Earle’s magnificently rallying ‘F the CC’ (chorus: “fuck the FCC / fuck the FBI / fuck the CIA / living in the motherfucking USA”) as his end-credits ride-out. And it’s hard not to raise a glass at the fact that this 93-minute film achieves a celebration of two so frequently overlooked things: common sense and freedom of speech.

After all, it’s just a word.