Impending nuptials

According to the dust-jacket blurb on the recently re-issued hardback, Ian Fleming wrote 'Casino Royale', the first Bond novel, "in the run-up to his marriage ... [he] maintained he wrote it to take his mind off getting married". Wonder what his wife thought of that?

Well, Ian Fleming I am not. I'm getting married on Thursday and it's all I've been able to think about for the past couple of weeks. And even though Paula's sister Jodie and my best friend Lesley pretty much appointed themselves as wedding planners and have seen to all the major arrangements, there have still been any number of things demanding my attention. Accordingly, my cinema-going and DVD-watching have nose-dived, as evidenced in the lack of recent material on Agitation of the Mind and Guilty Pleasures. For which, my apologies.

Apologies, too, for the arid desert of unblogged space that it will continue to be for the next fortnight (we're honeymooning in Scotland for a week after the wedding).

But, like the indestructible 007, The Agitation of the Mind will return.

Bubba Ho-Tep

Bruce Campbell (he of 'Evil Dead' fame) plays the elderly Elvis Presley, atrophying in a South Texas rest home under the identity of an Elvis impersonator with whom he swapped identities. His best friend in this gloomy David Lynch-like establishment is a black man (Ossie Davis) who is convinced he's John F Kennedy. Having survived the Grassy Knoll, his identity was changed and he was put into hiding. When Campbell points out that JFK "was a white man", Davis argues with deadpan logic, "they dyed me all over - what better way to hide the truth".

Life in the rest home, bizarre as it already is, soon becomes a matter of grim survival when a revived Egyptian mummy begins stalking the corridors, sucking the souls from the residents in a most unhealthy manner. Elvis and Jack join forces to defeat their supernatural foe ("ask not what your retirement home can do for you, but what you can do for your retirement home").

On the surface, this frankly bonkers tale has everything working against it. Campbell is nobody's idea of a great actor yet, from nowhere, he conjures a complex performance of regret, self-doubt and, finally, dignity. Director Don Coscarelli, the man behind the 'Phantasm' series, has long been mired in direct-to-video hell. Writer Joe R Lansdale, on whose short story the film is based, practically defines the word 'cult'.

Perhaps it's Coscarelli's decision to play it straight that transforms what could have been prime material for Kim Newman's 'Video Dungeon' (a monthly feature in Empire magazine devoted to a trawling of lower-shelf direct-to-DVD pabulum) and molds it instead into a sombre, almost Bergmanesque character study ... that is, of course, if Bergman had been given over to no-budget special effects and tortured protagonists whose sartorial tastes begin and end with rhinestone nudie suits. Nonetheless, Coscarelli achieves a study of age, mortality, regret and the fragility of fame, all parcelled up in a B-movie plot and gift-wrapped with delicious performances from its stars.

Plus it's got a title that you just want to drop into casual conversation at the office or down the pub - 'Bubba Ho-Tep' - purely to watch your colleagues' and friends' faces twist into descended-jaw/raised-eyebrow mask of incomprehension.

'Bubba Ho-Tep'.

It's even better if you adopt a cheesy Elvis accent.

'Bubba Ho-Tep'. Thank you very much, good night.

Man on Wire

Asking for my ticket at Cineworld, I mistakenly called the film 'Man on a Wire'. Twenty minutes of adverts and trailers later, the BBFC certificate appeared on screen, rendering the title as 'Man on Wire'. Hmmm, a bit ungrammatical, I thought; wonder if it's a mistake. The opening credits, however, confirmed it.

Towards the end of the film, the provenance was made clear: "man on wire" is the phrase handwritten in sharply angled, authoritative capital letters on Philippe Petit's arrest sheet under the heading "nature of complaint".

Philippe Petit, for those not in the know, is a French wirewalker and all-round daredevil, a man who was arrested in August 1974 following a not-exactly-legal wirewalk between the two towers of the World Trade Centre. His earlier, similarly unapproved antics on the Sydney Harbour bridge also ended with Petit getting his collar felt. On that occasion, he lifted the arresting officer's watch even as he was being handcuffed. For this, if nothing else, Petit now has a place in my pantheon of personal heroes.

Now in his late 50s, Petit's contributions to James Marsh's documentary reveal a man no less infused with bravado and love of life ... just as long as that life is lived on the edge. Spurning the question of why he does what he does ("I had just done this marvellous thing," he recalls of his twin towers caper, "and all they could ask me was why"), Petit throws himself enthusiastically into recounting the events surrounding his iconic wirewalk. While other interviewees give static (but still emotionally vibrant) testimony, Petit prowls before the camera, acts out bits of the drama, produces models to demonstrate the intricacies of rigging up the wires ... The man is irrepressible. Marsh's film could have consisted of nothing but Petit talking to camera and it would have been 90 minutes of hypnotic cinema.

But Marsh does much more. He intersperses interview footage with re-enactments of Petit & co.'s conspiracy to smuggle into the WTC all the necessary equipment, get said equipment to the roof and rig up the wire, all the while avoiding detection by security guards. 'Crime' is a harsh word for what Petit and his collaborators did, but it was illegal, therefore Marsh's decision to shoot the grainy, urgent black-and-white re-enactments in the style of a '70s crime movie is both inspired and aesthetically valid. The latter stages of the plan - particularly when Petit makes it to the rooftop - would challenge any filmmaker given (a) budgetary restrictions, and (b) the unavailability of the towers themselves, but Marsh finds a way around this by employing a decidedly expressionist style for these scenes. The wirewalk itself is chronicled simply by using still photographs taken on the day. The result is no less vertiginous for the images being static.

It's not just the giddy heights Petit braved that induce a woozy light-headedness in the viewer. This is as much a film about the twin towers as it is about Petit's determination to walk a high wire between them. In 1968, the towers not yet built, Petit saw an artist's impression of them in a newspaper article. The sheer scale captivated him. He took a pencil and drew a line between them. This one moment decided the course of his life. The towers were the challenge that everything else he did led up to. And he broke the law - he and his co-conspirators (including an inside man who occupied business premises in the WTC) - in order to do so.

It will never be possible to watch 'Man on Wire' without the shadow of 9/11 falling over it. And maybe that's the point. Maybe Marsh, in bringing this astounding story to the screen in such electrifying style, is reclaiming two equally astounding buildings - epic feats of engineering - from the act of terrorism that has come to define them. Reclaiming them in the name of the acrobatic work of art that Petit achieved.

WALL-E

A week ago, as we exited 'WALL-E', Paula asked me, "Would you say that's Pixar's best yet?"

Floating rather than walking out of the cinema, suffused with a warm happy feeling, unhesitatingly my reply was, "Yes."

Then I spent a few days wondering if it really was. Did it quite match the colourful vibrancy of 'Cars'? Or the unalloyed visual (and damn near olfactory) perfection of 'Ratatouille'. Wasn't it, in fact, a film of two halves, the first - set on a garbage-ridden future vision of Earth - a joyous, imaginative, dialogue-free study of one robot's day-to-day life, his yearning for companionship and the sudden arrival of EVE, a sleek, balletic female robot; the second - set aboard a huge starliner whose entire human inhabitants have devolved into grotesque obesity - a frenetic chase story substituting manic set-pieces for the erstwhile poignancy? Were a couple of nifty musical cues homaging '2001: A Space Odyssey' any match for the welter of in-jokes in 'The Incredibles'?

There was only one thing for it.

We went to see it again.

And, yes, now I'm sure: 'WALL-E' is, by a short head, Pixar's best yet.

Here, at random, are six reasons why:

1) Boiled down to its simplest narrative arc, 'WALL-E' is about a robot, left alone on a wasted planet for 700 years with just a VHS tape of 'Hello, Dolly' for company, who finally breaks away from his routine, braves the stars and involves himself in a quest hitherto beyond anything in his understanding or experience, simply because he wants to do no more than hold EVE's hand. It's perhaps the most chaste and wonderfully innocent love story in all of cinema.

2) It tells so much - and implies so much more - through visuals alone. It's pure cinema.

3) It introduces themes of corporationism, environmental irresponsibility, dependency on technology (like all the best sci-fi, it holds up a mirror to contemporary concerns) without seeming preachy, political or heavy-handed. It's a slap in the face to contemporary America that still manages to be supremely entertaining and utterly heartwarming.

4) WALL-E himself has to be the cutest animated hero of all time. God, that li'l robot is adorable! I also love the fact that he's not a hero. Things happen to him. Most of the time, he's confused or scared when events snowball. In other words, he acts like most people would act when caught up in something beyond their control.

5) EVE is a fun and fiesty heroine. Even though she looks like a cross between an egg and an iPod, she's still pretty swish. (I'm starting to doubt my own sanity having just typed that sentence.)

6) For every moment that makes you laugh - WALL-E pursued by a convoy of runaway shopping trolleys, the manic cleaning robot on the starship - there's one that brings a lump to the throat - WALL-E rocking himself to sleep, WALL-E trying to recreate a romantic idyll with EVE after she shuts down - and director Andrew Stanton holds the humorous and the heartfelt in perfect equilibrium.

There are essays to be written about 'WALL-E' by future film scholars, perhaps book-length studies. I've bashed out about 700 words and barely scratched the surface. But maybe all that needs to be written about 'WALL-E' can be said in ten words:

It's Pixar at the top of their game. See it.

PERSONAL FAVES: From Russia With Love

The formula the franchise was built upon is virtually evident in the first Bond film, 'Dr No': exotic locations, glamorous women and a megalomaniacal villain with a fully kitted-out secret base.

The third instalment, 'Goldfinger', would truly establish the formula: exotic locations, glamorous women, a megalomaniacal villian with a fully kitted-out secret base and a shedload of funky gadgets.

Essentially then, the four Gs: guns, girls, gadgets and globetrotting. Plus the megalomaniacal villain lurking in his ever more gargantuan secret base (hollowed out volcanoes a speciality).

By the later episodes, it got so that Bond's profession (espionage) was almost an afterthought. Let's face, the man doesn't exactly go undercover; and unless blowing the bad guy's secret base to hell can be classed as clandestine activity, he doesn't do much spying either. The usual sequence of events boils down to: M tells Bond that something dodgy is afoot, normally tipping him off from outset as to who the bad guy is; Q gives Bond some funky gadgets; Bond walks into bad guy's favourite casino/golf club [delete as applicable] and announces himself as "Bond, James Bond" (told you he doesn't do undercover); Bond cleans out bad guy over the card table/roulette table/links [delete as applicable], pissing him right off; Bond dallies with a couple of beauties, at least one of whom is duplicitous; Bond gets caught by the bad guy, who invariably explains in great detail his plans for world domination before either (a) locking Bond in an easily escapable broom cupboard conveniently situated next to the armoury, or (b) suspends him over a pool of sharks/piranha [deleted as applicable], a low-burning night-light under the taut rope; Bond utilizes funky gadgets courtesy of Q branch, effects an escape, foils the bad guy's plans and blows the fully kitted-out secret base to smithereens.

'From Russia with Love' - the second and for my money the best of the Bonds - does things a bit differently.

There's no secret base. There's no megalomaniac seeking world domination; here we have a triumvirate of villains - the Machiavellian Blofeld, the spitefully cunning Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) and the brutally efficient 'Red' Grant (Robert Shaw) - and their plan is twofold: the theft of a Russian decoder, and the disgrace and demise of Bond. In order to achieve the former, they manipulate Bond into acquiring it for them.

And how does one go about manipulating an agent of 007's calibre? Piece of cake - dangle a pretty girl in front of him. Step forward Tatiana Romanova (Daniella Bianchi); a beauty queen in real life, but not the typical Bond girl to be sure. She's just as much a victim of manipulation as Bond. Tatiana is pretty much the innocent victim in all of this, and Bianchi, though limited as an actress, certainly imbues the the character with a human element.

Thanks to all the intrigue, the intricacy of the plotting and the delightful idea that Bond - every inch the uber-mensch in all his other outings - is basically being fucked with from start to finish, 'From Russia with Love' feels like a proper espionage thriller. It has the cynical brilliance of a le Carre novel. Double-dealings abound. Betrayal lurks at every turn. Director Terence Young keeps the tension racked, most notably in the cat 'n' mouse Orient Express sequence, climaxing in a vicious bout of hand-to-hand combat between Bond and Grant (the means by which Grant gives himself away - ordering red wine with fish - remains a classic bit of Ian Fleming snobbery) - a powerhouse scene, jarringly shot and edited. The seeds of Bourne-style visceral action cinema are present here.

The Grant/Bond fight is only one of a number of striking set-pieces: the theft of the decoder and the attack on the gypsy camp are standouts. Likewise, the extended finale - Bond's duel with a helicopter ("I'd say one their aircraft was missing" - surely the only Bond one-liner to reference a Powell & Pressburger film), followed by a speedboat chase - generate tension and excitement without recourse to blowing up a fully kitted-out secret base. And let's not forget that nasty little coda featuring Rosa Klebb and the kind of footwear you can't get at Clarke's.

'From Russia with Love' is probably the only film in the series where you could have a protagonist other than Bond - you could slide George Smiley or Bernard Samson or one of Graham Greene's world-weary and morally compromised anti-heroes into the lead role - and it wouldn't harm the film at all, wouldn't detract from its status as a first rate 60s spy thriller. It's the most un-Bond of the Bond movies ... and, paradoxically, that's what makes it the best.

There's a Bond-fest going on over at my other blog, Guilty Pleasures; the first five Connery outings are under consideration in the first entry.

Normal service will be resumed

Apologies for the lack of new material on this blog, and its scurrilous sibling Guilty Pleasures, lately. I started a new job last week, which accounts for some of the inactivity; my partner has heard that she's being made redundant, hence my mind has been elsewhere; and over the weekend I developed conjunctivitis, which has left me ill-disposed to staring at a screen - be it a cinema screen, TV screen or VDU - for long periods.

Medication has been prescribed, there are plenty of films begging to be watched and, hopefully within the next week, The Agitation of the Mind will return.

The Happening

Whoa! A week long hiatus on The Agitation of the Mind. This can only mean one of three things:

1) I've won big on the lottery and been spending the last few days haemorrhaging money on fast cars and even faster women (clue to unlikelihood: Paula wouldn't let me);

2) The commissioning editor of Sight & Sound, stumbling upon this blog, has liked what he's seen and retained my services as staff writer on his august publication (clue to unlikelihood: well ... check the next issue);

3) I really - REALLY - don't want to write about 'The Happening'.

Hands up everyone who guessed 3.

Hands up everyone who really doesn't want to read about 'The Happening'.

Hands up everyone who knocked off reading this article two sentences ago and has gone down the pub/cinema/rental shop.

'Kay.












Nah, can't leave it.

'The Happening' is a film that doesn't have a twist ending, isn't a fairy tale, and is free of the turgid trickery of 'The Village'. Yet it's the single worst thing M Night Shyamalan has ever made. Why?

1) There's no suspense. The (intended) enigma of the first half - is what's happening a terrorist attack, or something else? - is undermined by the fact that the film-makers were talking it up as an ecological horror movie six months before it opened. Also, the resolution comes down to one of the characters saying little more than "Hey, what if it's the trees doing it?" Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

2) It's not remotely scary. The litany of suicides becomes soul destroyingly repetitive after the first ten minutes. Thereafter, Shyamalan tries to conjure terror by frequently cutting away to shots of grass blowing in the wind, or the wind rustling through trees. The virus/infection/thingymajig is carried on the wind, you see. Thing is, wind is invisible. This is a movie. As in short for 'moving picture'. Do you see the problem here?

3) It's reminiscent of Hitchcock's 'The Birds', but without the birds. Which is kind of like doing 'Alien' but without an alien. Or 'Debbie Does Dallas' sans Debbie. Also, 'The Birds' is only a partially successful movie: the first half is lousy, the second terrific. Shymalan achieves an inverse homage here: the first of 'The Happening' is average, the second half appalling. Subject of which ...

4) The film doesn't just fall apart in the second half, it kind of stops, looks around, realises it's lost and kind of wanders around dazed until the closing credits roll.

5) The whole and-then-the-threat-just-passed finale is tres 'Signs', as is the small-group-of-survivors-holed-up-in-a-rural-locale scenario. And doesn't that sound like a certain George A Romero film?

6) Not content to fob us off with the and-then-the-threat-just-passed-and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after-and-the-lady-got-pregnant-and-they-were-a-happy-loving-family ending, Shyamalan decides he wants to have his cake and eat it, and delivers a "shock" ending in which ... ooops, the happening happens again. Well, fuck me sideways.

Okay, I've just spent twenty minutes of my life that I'll never have again typing this - which, added to the running time of the film, clocks in at about two hours, and I'm still pissed off at James ("I'm the king of the world, woof, woof, woof") Cameron and Michael ("666") Bay for the three fuckin' hours apiece they owe me for 'Titanic' and 'Pearl Harbor', the only two movies that have had me cheering on, respectively, a large chunk of ice and a squadron of Japanese kamizakis.

Please, Mr Shyamalan, make a good movie next time. You deserve better than this kind of write-up.

Lady in the Water

The court is in session here at The Agitation of the Mind. In the dock: 'Lady in the Water'. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you will be asked to consider a film that many people flat-out can't stand. The prosecution have piled up a welter of evidence. The defence are relying on playing devil's advocate. You will hear much in the way of opinion and theorising. I would ask that you keep one question uppermost in mind during these precedings: does 'Lady in the Water' deserve the hate?

Before we hear from the prosecuting counsel, a brief opening statement:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, 'Lady in the Water' is a feature film written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It concerns the discovery of a narf (a type of water nymph) named Story (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in the communal swimming pool of an apartment complex called The Cove whose janitor, Cleveland Heap (Paul Giamatti), has slid into the anonymity of his dead-end job while he deals with the aftermath of a personal tragedy. Story's job is to locate "the Vessel", a writer whose work will bring about positive social change but at the cost of his own life, and inspire him to persist in his work. Others, including "the Healer" and "the Guild", will play their part in assisting Story's safe return once she has found the Vessel. Her task, however, is endangered by scrunts*, vicious beasts which blend, chameleon-like, into the long grasses surrounding the complex. Cleveland, motivated by the tragedy in his past, elects to help Story, but first has to determine which of the The Cove's residents fulfill the roles of Vessel, Guild and Healer .

Right, then. Case for the prosecution:

1) Shyamalan casts himself as the Vessel. This is essentially a Christ-like role and is therefore indicative of gross egomania on Shyamalan's part.

2) One of The Cove's residents, Harry Farber (Bob Balaban) is a movie critic and Shyamalan takes pains to paint him as a prissy, pedantic and humourless individual. This is indicative of contempt on Shyamalan's part for gentlemen of said profession, and sour grapes over negative reviews of 'The Village'.

3) The film is burdened with an incomprehensible narrative.

The prosecution calls the following expert witnesses:

Antagony & Ecstasy, who has testified that M. Night Shyamalan is an affront to art.

Brandon Fibbs testifies that it is Shyamalan's first misstep as a film-maker.

Kevin Koehler at Pretentious Musings discusses evidence that this is a director's love letter to himself.

Case for the defence:

Your honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I do not have a case to make for 'Lady in the Water' as a lost masterpiece, an overlooked gem, or a classic-in-waiting that is begging for re-evaluation. The film, as its creator has insisted all along, is a fairy tale. I refer to Mr. Shyamalan as the film's "creator" with good reason. As writer, producer and director on all of his projects - as a man who has yet to helm an adaptation or direct someone else's script - he personifies perhaps more than any other mainstream American director the auteur. This, I believe, exacerbates the severity of the first charge levelled against him.

Before turning to the three main areas of the prosecution's case, let us briefly consider the film's subject matter. We have already established that 'Lady in the Water' is a fairy tale; it is a mistake, however, to consider the milieu (the action never moves outside of the apartment complex) as the real world into which the fairy tale elements (quite literally) surface. 'Lady in the Water' is not realistic and is not meant to be realistic. It is a movie full of movie characters; I believe that such subtext as exists here is a send-up, by Mr. Shyamalan, on film-making and film theory, an irreverent and satirical deconstruction of established narrative tropes and structural requirements.

As regards the charges against the defendant:

1) Shyamalan as messiah/egomaniac. Given that Mr. Shyamalan had demonstrated, from 'The Sixth Sense' up to and including 'Lady in the Water', a commendable talent for drawing notable performances from first-rate casts, and given that there has never been a shortage of highly talented actors who want to work with him, he could easily have cast someone other than himself as the Vessel. Why did he choose not to? Moreover, Mr. Shyamalan has always come across, in both on-camera and print interviews, as articulate, perceptive and intelligent. Surely he would have had some inkling of the controversy that this self-casting decision would result in. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, he cast himself. Why? It is my considered opinion that Mr. Shyamalan's role in his own film is a satire on the auteur theory, and both an acknowledgement and refutation of any criticism that, as an auteur, he risks isolationism in his approach to film-making.

Furthermore, he is not the only director to cast himself in a showy and narratively important role. We call Mel Gibson, director and star of 'Braveheart' (a role which allows him to progress from romantic lead to action hero to martyr); Orson Welles in 'Touch of Evil' (seldom has a director filled the screen so completely with himself; and what of Marlene Dietrich's breathy "He was some kind of a man" epitaph?); or how about Woody Allen, star of a good couple of dozen of his own films - would Allen's nebbish protagonist copping off with a radiant Diane Keaton in 'Manhattan' be dismissed as wish-fulfillment if it weren't for their brief real-life relationship?

And doesn't the whole issue of director as actor depend on whether their performance is any good or not? Shyamalan is a low-key but quietly charismatic actor. Now look at, say, Quentin Tarantino's flashy, motormouth appearances in his own work - as Jimmie in 'Pulp Fiction' or the bartender in 'Death Proof'. A small but worthwhile consideration, I think.

2) The movie critic character. It is easy to see why Bob Balaban's portrayal of Harry Farber is something of a red rag to a bull. But pause should be given to consider a couple of points. Firstly, Balaban is terrific. He takes a potentially one-note role and turns it into a tour de force of deadpan comedy. A lot of things get overlooked in critical treatments of 'Lady in the Water': just how good Balaban is, is one of them. Secondly, Harry is not just a movie critic, he's a movie character. Ultimately - and again, this simple fact is often conveniently overlooked - 'Lady in the Water' is a movie movie. Let's establish a quick definition.

Tarantino once said something to the effect that while 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' were movies, the 'Kill Bill' duology (is that the right word? did I just make it up? whatever) were movie movies; that if the characters from 'Dogs' or 'Pulp' decided to go and see a movie, then 'Kill Bill' was the kind of movie they'd go and see. 'Kill Bill', therefore, is a movie that exists solely within the perameters of movie logic, where a vengeful woman can take a samurai sword aboard a plane as hand luggage, where the aesthetic can bend elastically to Eastern cinema and the whole "heroic bloodshed" subgenre or to the expansive vistas of the spaghetti western purely at the film-maker's whim. Shifts from colour to black-and-white are acceptable, as well as non-linear chronologies, hyper-stylisations and basically an entire bag of cinematic tricks. And Tarantino is feted for it. What do we make of this, ladies and gentlemen? It seems that Tarantino is permitted to make movie movies while Shyamalan isn't.

'Lady in the Water' is a movie movie. Harry is there to highlight this - cueing Cleveland's gradual understanding of the narrative he's found himself complicit in - as well as sending the whole thing up. Harry reminds us, right up to his stand-out final face-off with a scrunt - that this is just a movie.

3) Incomprehensible narrative. Or is it? It's an offbeat narrative, sure, but - hey! - Shyamalan's telling an offbeat story. And, once more, he's doing so in a deconstructive manner. He takes traditional narrative requirements and turns them upside down. For instance: a character is called up to decipher something; the resulting message gives the protagonist another piece of information, therefore the plot advances. In, say, 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', Harrison Ford directs a beam of sunlight onto some arcane markings on a dusty stone floor; in 'The Da Vinci Code', Tom Hanks blathers on about the Fibonacci sequence and gets his head round a couple of infantile riddles. How the codes/clues/messages are worked out is unimportant: these scenes are about (a) making the hero look cool because they figured it out, and (b) moving the film's narrative from point A to point B. So when, in 'Lady in the Water', a little kid divines a hidden message in the colours of a cupboard full of cereal boxes, not only is it no less arbitrary than in either of those other films, but Shyamalan is actually admitting, satirically, how arbitrary such narrative devices truly are. This brings us back to the fact that it's just a movie. It does what a lot of movies do - and has no more complex a narrative than most movies - it just does these things in a deliberately deconstructed manner.

But doesn't all of this make 'Lady in the Water' an exercise in anti-film-making? Maybe so. But I must admit, having recently watched it for the third time, that I find 'Lady in the Water' a relatively entertaining film. It's not without its flaws - there is too much of the hushed, portentous dialogue that stymies 'Signs' and 'The Village'; there is a directorial heavy-handedness in dealing with 'meaningful' themes; the healing scene just plain doesn't work - but it has its share of pleasures, not least a terrific cast obviously having fun with their movie movie characters. Christopher Doyle's cinematography nails the slightly off-kilter atmosphere crucial to the non-realistic movieness of the film. After the solemnity of his earlier films, the playfulness of 'Lady in the Water' is a pleasant change; and - best of all given the flogging-a-dead-horse inclusion of it in 'The Village' - there's no frickin' twist ending.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, here, at random, are a few mainstream films I've seen in the two years since 'Lady in the Water' opened, all of which, I think you'll agree, are egregiously bad examples of film-making: 'Next', 'Ultraviolet', the aforementioned 'Da Vinci Code' and the piss-awful 'Wicker Man' remake, none of which I'd waste my time on with a second viewing. And yet Lee Tamahori, Kurt Wimmer, Ron Howard and Neil LaBute received none of the vitriol that was directed at Shymalan for 'Lady in the Water'.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the decision is yours. But I for one do not believe that 'Lady in the Water' deserves the hate. It's just a movie.


*And depending on your knowledge of low-brow colloquialisms, you might raise an eyelid at how ill-chosen the name is.

The Village

On 20th August 2004, I took my seat in Nottingham's UGC (now Cineworld) for a screening of 'The Village'. My mood: high anticipation. I'd rationalised 'Signs' as one of those occasional dips in quality that all artists are entitled to, and was confident 'The Village' would prove a return to form. There had been plenty of advance publicity. The trailers were creepy as hell. The cast was to die for: William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody ... Oh,yes, I was looking forward to this one!

An hour and three quarters later, as I wrote in my maiden post as a blogger, I stumbled out of the cinema mumbling vehemently. I felt that I had to get on my soapbox and sound off.

That soapbox was MovieBuff, my first blog. And here I am, four years later, in my third incarnation on the blogosphere, revisiting one of the most disappointing, dispiriting experiences I've had a in movie theatre (perhaps only rivalled by 'The Departed', Scorsese's flabby, tired, by-the-numbers desecration of the taut Asian thriller 'Infernal Affairs', and - yes - 'The Happening'). But let's remain in the past for a moment. Here's the rest of the article I wrote on 'The Village':

I will not spoil the film for those who have not seen it. The obligatory twist ending will remain under wraps (one clue: ten minutes in, a snippet of dialogue betrays a specifically modern context). Suffice it to say that the final quarter of the film turns everything that has gone before on its head, revealing more than an hour's worth of sumptuous and beautifully acted film-making as little more than obfuscation; a cheap parlour trick.

It doesn't help that trailers and advertising site the film firmly in the horror genre. Nothing could be further from the truth. The first full appearance of the creatures in the woods (or the creature, singular; only one of them actually shows up) provoked disdainful giggles from most of the audience. The revelation as to their identity elicited groans.

M Night Shyamalan is too intelligent a director, too consummate a craftsman, for 'The Village' to be dismissed as a bad film. Nonetheless, this hasn't prevented me from wanting to wallop him and ask for my money back. There are many good things on display: the quality of acting is uniformly high, the cinematography gorgeous and the music atmospheric (the acclaimed American violinist Hilary Hahn features prominently on the soundtrack). The frustrating thing is that these elements are bound up in the first three-quarters of the film; once Shyamalan reveals his hand, the audience is forced to dismiss all of these things as a con job. In short, the payoff kills the movie stone dead.

All that remains is the poignant and bravura performance by Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of director and former 'Happy Days' alumnus Ron Howard). Her star-making turn can only be compared to seeing Kate Winslet for the first time in 'Heavenly Creatures'.

Ms Howard's glittering career starts here. Sadly, so does the M Night Shyamalan backlash.

Fast forward to a couple of hours ago. I'd made the decision from the outset to rewatch all of Shyamalan's films in order. It was, I felt, the only way objectively to assess the man's career to date. Between me and Paula's respective DVD collections, we had all of his films ... except 'The Village'. And I wasn't going to shell out for a copy, even a cheapie off eBay. I asked around and finally a colleague gave me a lend.

I squared up to it. I had a bottle of wine to hand. I consoled myself that there was a big pile of ironing to be done while I was watching it, so at least the evening wouldn't be wasted. I told a deep breath and slid the DVD into the player.

"Cannot read disc."

You're never supposed to use the deus ex machina in fiction. It's a nice little added bonus, then, when one happens in real life.

One day, I'm sure, I'll see 'The Village' again. If, on that day, I realise that I was wrong all along and it's a masterpiece awaiting rediscovery, then I'll revisit the Shyamalan-a-thon and publically admit it.

Signs

To everyone who lambasted M. Night Shyamalan for egomania and self-importance over 'Lady in the Water', I would say this:

Watch 'Signs'.

For all that Shyamalan wrote himself a role in which he functions as MacGuffin, messiah and hero by default in 'Lady in the Water' - or, as Tim at Antagony & Ecstacy puts it "cast himself as Christ" - a case can be made for that film as satirical comedy. My reading of 'Lady in the Water' has always tended to the film as anti-film, a deliberate subversion/parody of structure, narrative and film theory ... so why not go the whole hog and indulge/mock the egocentricity inherent in the auteur theory of film-making?

But this is a discussion for two posts in the future ... and can't you tell that I really can't be bothered to write about 'Signs'?

The more I think about it, I realise this Shyamalan-a-thon delineates, like Jacobean tragedy, into three acts:

Act One: Shyamalan as the next big thing ('The Sixth Sense', 'Unbreakable')

Act Two: in which a sense of disappointment emerges ('Signs', 'The Village')

Act Three: the torch-bearing mob demand our beleagured hero's head on a film canister ('Lady in the Water', 'The Happening')

It's almost scary, how cleanly - clinically, even - a six-film career bends to the three downward points of this critical arc. But having said that, I'm quite looking forward to my role as Ye Olde Critick in Act Three, mainly because I don't believe that one of these particular films quite deserves the hate while the other isn't quite hated enough.

And yes, I'm prevaricating again. Because I don't want to write about 'Signs'. Even 'The Village' is freighted with a certain significance, given that it prompted my earliest efforts in blogging. But that's a story for the next post. Right now I'm going to get 'Signs' out of the way. Over and done with. Filed, archived, boxed up and -

Oh, for fuck's sake, Neil, just write about the movie already!

Okay: 'Signs' is about a preacher, Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), who loses his faith after his wife is killed in a car crash (driver: M. Night in his obligatory cameo role ... makes his Christ-like role in 'Lady in the Water' even more ironic, given that he's pretty much playing the devil, or at least one of his minions, here); and about how God gets said preacher back on the home team by having aliens invade earth, wreak havoc and almost kill his son.

Now, a drama about the loss of faith or the reaffirmation thereof is one thing (even though I'm an atheist, I don't deny the dramatic potential of such material); but not when it's a flashback to the agonisingly slow and lachrymose death of Hess's wife that gives him the clue he needs to defeat the alien*; not when the means to defeat the alien is laboriously set up in any number of earlier scenes and is as arbitrary as the invaders' death by the common cold in H.G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds' ... shit, if you're going to come up with patently stupid ways to kill martians, at least go wild like Tim Burton did in 'Mars Attacks' and have their heads explode at the sound of Slim Whitman records - at least be funny!

And in some of its earlier scenes, 'Signs' almost succeeds in becoming (an intended) comedy: Joaquin Phoenix in particular, as Hess's brother Merrill, a could-have-been baseball star now merrily idling his life away, provides some fantastic moments. And speaking of Phoenix's performance, 'Signs' again demonstrates Shyamalan's facility with actors: Gibson does probably his best work, while Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin are a million miles away from the standard annoyingly-cute-kids-who-you-secretly-wish-would-die-horribly so beloved of Hollywood. Breslin already shines, four years before her astounding portrayal of the beauty paegant obsessed young girl in 'Little Miss Sunshine'.

Too, the film looks good. DoP Tak Fujimoto exploits the rural setting to impressive visual effect. In the director's chair, Shyamalan crafts several tense set-pieces (his Hitchcockian ability to create suspense has yet to be deployed to its fullest: I'd love to see what he'd make of a thriller or a murder mystery). His decision to keep the aliens offscreen as much as possible pays dividends: early glimpses come courtesy of shaky hand-held camcorder footage; even the final, full appearance of the vengeful alien is staged so that it is mostly seen in reflection.

'Signs' had a lot of potential to be a bloody good film. It damn near makes it in several places.

And yet ... and yet ...

The humour dries up and is replaced with hushed, "meaningful" dialogue; the uber-talky mid-section locks away all the carefully orchestrated tension from earlier in the film and concentrates, instead, on a cinematic equivalent of navel-gazing; the self-important reverence of the finale - and specifically of the final shot - leaves me feeling that the film-makers have purposefully denied the audience enough emotional or cerebral room to engage with this film should they, like me, be of the opinion that there is no god.



*I use the singular because the vanguard of the alien invasion has buggered off back wherever they came from at this point and just one grey-skinned Roswell-boy remains - this renegade is out for revenge given that the preacher chopped his fingers off in an earlier scene (I guess it says "forgive thy neighbour" not "forgive thy cosmic visitor", but still: such behaviour from a former man of the cloth!)

Interrupting the Shyamalan-a-thon ...

... which, frankly, I’ve been procrastinating over. I watched ‘Signs’ last weekend and have been implementing blogging-avoidance strategies ever since – and with only the pompous seriousness and house-of-cards twist of ‘The Village’ on the horizon, my motivation isn’t just ebbing but doing a pretty good impersonation of a fully-fledged drought.

But, still … interrupting the Shyamalan-a-thon:

Kudos to the BBC for last night’s ‘Imagine’ documentary on Werner Herzog. A joy to see Alan Yentob, who frequently puts himself at the centre of the programme (he all but elbowed the – admittedly reclusive – Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami out of the picture in last week’s programme), getting put in his place by the great director. “As a German living in Hollywood – ” Yentob begins, only for Herzog to correct him on two counts: he’s Bavarian and he lives in LA, not Hollywood. There is a difference.

The documentary itself was a bit scattershot, trying to reference too many of Herzog’s films (he’s made over 50) during its 60-minute running time; nonetheless, a through-line emerged of Herzog as a chronicler of the extreme, be it extreme conditions of filming (‘Aguirre: the Wrath of God’, ‘Fitzcarraldo’) or extreme personalities (Timothy Treadwell in ‘Grizzly Man’; Klaus Kinski in every film he made for Herzog); a man whose themes, concerns and images resonate down a four-decade filmography; a man attuned to the physicality and landscapes of the locations he shoots.

The payoff was fantastic, Herzog recounting a legendary incident during the filming of ‘Aguirre’: with ten days of principle photography remaning, Kinski, in one of his archetypal bouts of mania, had packed his belongings and was ready to zoom off in a speedboat. Herzog assured him he’d be shot before he reached the first bend in the river.

Dispelling the myth that he’d spent the film directing Kinski from behind a shotgun, Herzog recalled, “I didn’t have a gun in my hand when I told him this, but he knew I meant it.” (Incidentally, Herzog speaks in a very precise manner, his tone of voice always reasoned and calm; there is not a trace of hyperbole about him.)

Yentob, briefly speechless, responded, “And you seem like a gentle man.”

“I was very gentle with Kinski,” Herzog replied, “I gave him a choice. I would not have shot him without giving him a choice.”

Wunderbar! A large glass of Riesling was raised to Herr Herzog at chez Fulwood last night.

Unbreakable: the love in continues ...

Damn near 1,000 words on 'Unbreakable' last night and I didn't even mention the look of the film, the extended takes or the performances.

Quickly, then, before I descend into the purple realms of sycophantic fan-boy prose:

1) The look of the film. Eduardo Serra's cinematography: autumnal; richly evocative of the characters' doubts and their loneliness; dark when it needs to be, but without tipping entirely into gothicism.

2) The extended takes. Further proof that Shyamalan has no interest in MTV-style cutting or show-offery. The man gives his actors space to work and the opportunity to realise the full potential of their performances. His commitment to extended takes, in 'Unbreakable' more than anywhere else, is comparable to Tarkovsky.

3) The performances:

(i) Bruce Willis builds on his introspective, controlled turn in 'The Sixth Sense' to deliver what is arguably a career best; restrained and disciplined.

(ii) Samuel L. Jackson is simply peerless. In a filmography stuffed with iconic moments (from "I don't recall asking you a goddamned thing" to "AK-47, when you absolutely positively gotta kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitute" to something about some motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane), I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he achieves his apotheosis in 'Unbreakable'.

The scene in question introduces us to Elijah. He's about to sell an incredibly rare drawing, pre-dating the first issue of the comic book the character debuted in, to a yuppie positively dripping with cash. "Jeb's gonna love this," the yuppie enthuses.

"Jeb?" Elijah repeats, an icy tone creeping into his voice. "Is this a child we're talking about?"

The yuppie affirms that, yes, the aforesaid Jeb is his young son.

Elijah rounds on him. "Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it? Did you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put a quarter in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb."

Samuel L. Jackson hobbling around on a cane, his bones in danger of fracture if he starches his shirts too much, and he's still being a badass, voice dripping with contempt.

And doing so without using the word 'motherfucker'.

Marvellous!

Unbreakable

Okay. I'm just going to come right out and say this:

In my humble opinion, 'Unbreakable' is M. Night Shyamalan's best film. If I wanted to be cynical, I could add that there's probably not that much competition, since 'Signs' didn't quite deliver and 'The Village' signalled a certain transition in terms of audience anticipation. You know: the moment it went from "wow, it's a new M. Night Shyamalan film, I must get me to a cinema" to "it's a new M. Night Shyamalan film, hope it's better than the last one".

But such things are easy to say in retrospect. Coming, as 'Unbreakable' did, just a year after 'The Sixth Sense', it was hard not to think of Shyamalan as the next big thing in American cinema.

If 'The Sixth Sense' was a slow-burn, character-driven, thoughtfully-directed piece of old-school film-making, then 'Unbreakable' was all of these things and more. Chief amongst its achievements is this: it stands as a weighty, intelligent, meticulously thought-out piece of work ... on the foundations of, frankly, Shyamalan's most far-fetched plot.

Now just hold it right there, buddy, I hear you cry. Surely nothing surpasses 'Lady in the Water' in terms of the just plain bonkers. Perhaps not, but 'Unbreakable' - if only in terms of narrative concept - certainly equals it. Think about it: 'Lady in the Water' is about a depressed janitor who discovers that a fairytale has come to life in the swimming pool of a residential apartment block; 'Unbreakable' is about a depressed security guard who discovers that he's actually a comic book hero.

The suspension of disbelief is just as great in either film; the difference is the way Shyamalan approaches it. 'Lady in the Water' acknowledges from the outset that a suspension of disbelief is de rigueur; it presents its story in bold strokes and primary colours; reminds us with every scene that, hey, this is just a fairy tale.

'Unbreakable' goes about things very differently. It takes as its main character a regular guy with regular problems. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is a security guard at a football stadium, every game he patrols a reminder of the promising career he had as a sportsman in his youth prior to the car accident that consigned him forever to the humdrum existence of a troubled marriage and an awkward relationship with his son. He's introduced on a train, heading back from a job interview; the first pro-active thing he does in the entire film is surreptitiously slip off his wedding ring as an attractive woman settles into the seat next to him.

Minutes later, David experiences a moment of clarity: he senses something, knows that his life is about to change. The next we see of him, he's in hospital, a doctor bemused that not only is he the only survivor of rail accident, but he hasn't sustained even the mildest injury. His wife and son arrive at the hospital and he leaves with them before the conversation can continue.

Later, leaving a remembrance service for the victims of the crash, David finds a note under the wiper of his car asking him how many days in his life he's been ill? He raises the query at work; his boss begrudgingly offers him a rise ("clever way of asking for it"). Perplexed, he asks his wife if she's ever known him to suffer even a cold or a sore throat? Apart from two near-death experiences - one in a swimming pool as a child, the other the car accident - nothing has ever affected him, up to and including the train wreck.

The note leads David to Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson), owner of an art shop called Limited Edition, so named for a limited edition comic book his mother gave him as a child ("they say this one has a surprise ending") as a sop to the illness that keeps him from the company of other children. Elijah has incredibly brittle bones; the smallest slip or tumble results in multiple fractures. The kids, as he reiterates momentuously at the end of the film, call him Mr Glass.

Elijah is almost a dark prophet; he chisels away at David's ennui, his surrender to a stagnant life. He asks questions that, finally, David cannot ignore or get around. His son believes Elijah from the outset and becomes dangerously convinced that David has superhuman powers. This leads to two standout scenes - one involving an exercise bench, the other a loaded gun - that are as squirmily tense as they are dramatically compelling.

Finally, David accepts who he is, and acts on it, but there is one more revelation to come ...

There are those who find the ending abrupt - and it is. But, I think, deliberately so. Shyamalan has said that his script was originally to have followed the traditional comic book three-act: the origin of the superhero, the application of his powers to the betterment of mankind, and his battle with a nemesis; but that the first act became the focus of the movie. Viewed in this light, 85% of 'Unbreakable' deals with the first act, 10% with the second and 5% with the third. Yes, the ending's abrupt, but watched a second or third time (and 'Unbreakable' definitely improves with repeated viewings), the clues are all in place. It was always heading towards that conclusion. Shyamalan's genius is to deny the catharsis of an actual climactic smack-down between superhero and nemesis.

Why? Take your pick: because he's not making a day-glo FX-laden comic book movie; because his protagonist, for all that he takes on the mantle of protector of the innocent, remains a regular guy; because the film is about the asking of questions, particularly that of one's purpose in life, and Shyamalan wants some of those questions to follow you out of the cinema.

The Sixth Sense

One of the most pleasurable cinema-going experiences is seeing a film without any prior knowledge of it, not having read a review, seen a trailer or been exposed to a single opinion. You watch with a completely open, unprejudiced mind. You get to discover the film. If it has a startling plot twist or narrative development, or a sucker-punch ending, the effect is that much more powerful.

I saw 'Seven' first time round without knowing anything other than Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman were in it, and with a Sunday afternoon to kill, that was good enough for me. I remember checking out the poster in the cinema's foyer, squinting to read the director's name. David who? I wondered, and went and got my ticket and took my seat.

An ex-colleague told me he watched 'From Dusk Till Dawn' without the slightest inkling that it was going to turn into a vampire movie at the half-way mark. No idea! I wish I could have experienced it like that.

With 'The Sixth Sense', all I knew was that it had paranormal subject matter and there was a twist ending. Even knowing that was knowing too much. As the opening credits rolled, I thought to myself: Right, then, let's see if I can second guess it. Ten minutes later I was thinking to myself -

SPOILER ALERT!

- Yeah, got it: Brucie's a ghost. And spent the rest of the movie being proved right. And didn't take much away with me when I left the cinema. A friend of mine has a diametrically opposite memory of his first viewing of 'The Sixth Sense': the twist blown by a blabbermouth DJ as he listened to the car radio while driving to the cinema.

Watching 'The Sixth Sense' for maybe only the third time over the weekend, I re-evaluated it and found myself wishing, like my friend, that I'd known the ending from the off. That way I could have saved myself a wasted two hours playing smartarse and being disappointed when the film-makers didn't deliver something beyond my educated guess. I could have appreciated how finely nuanced the performances are and what a generous actor Bruce Willis is in his scenes with Haley Joel Osmont, letting his young co-star set the pace; playing off him. How brilliantly Toni Collette nails the harrassed, nervy single mother, portraying not only her character's stressed brittleness, but her desperate affection for her troubled son. Alongside 'Japanese Story', this represents the finest work she has done onscreen.

I could have appreciated how atmospherically shot it is, Tak Fujimoto's autumnal cinematography setting the tone; Shyamalan's use of colours as clues remaining just the right side of clever-cleverness.

I could have appreciated how restrained and confident the direction is, Shyamalan taking his time establishing character and setting. If there's anything that redeems even his lousiest films (because, oh, the mighty was soon to fall!) it's his commitment to slow, calm, studied pacing. Compared to the frenetic MTV-style of chopping and splicing so beloved of that Satan of contemporary cinema Michael Bay - the venal epitome of a generation of directors who cut their teeth making music videos - Shyamalan's approach to film-making is thoughtful; careful. Old school.

Fortunately, over the weekend, I sat back and appreciated all of these things. And believe me, when I slid the DVD into the player, my thoughts were along the lines of: Right, then, let's see if this is really as good as its adoring aficionados make out. I now find myself thinking that, yes, it is. But not for the reason that most people remember it. The twist ending is the least thing 'The Sixth Sense' has to offer. Watch it for its craftsmanship; for what it says about family, memory and human frailty.

The Not Happening

Wow! And I thought I didn't like 'The Happening'.

Lou Kije has started a site, The Not Happening, dedicated to encouraging audiences to walk out of the film, protest its dire shortcomings and petition Rupert Murdoch for their money back.

This is not just shouty prozelytising. Mr Kije writes as a film fan, a man who has watched thousands of movies and has now - for the first time in his life - felt compelled to walk out of a cinema.

His postings are lucid, intelligent and basically take an objectively-wielded scalpel to Shyamalan's movie.

I feel kinship with Mr Kije - I started my first film blog, MovieBuff, after I was so incensed by 'The Village' that I needed a platform to fulminate. Hence this post: visit The Not Happening. Leave a comment if you agree.

Do not go gentle into that good Night

Okay, Neil, write out one hundred times: "I did not start this blog to slag off movies."

I did not start this blog to slag off movies.

I did not start this blog to slag off movies.

I did not start this blog to slag off movies.

I did not start this blog to slag off movies.

I did not -

Oh, screw it!

I went to see 'The Happening' this afternoon, and I'm not happy. I'll tell you how unhappy I am. I'm unhappy enough that I almost titled this post 'This Happening's just not happening, dude'. That's how unhappy.

I could easily type up a checklist right now, an enumeration of all the things that don't work about the film - from the appalling dialogue to the wonky acting by way of Tak Fujimoto's curiously lacklustre cinematography - but that would only skim the surface.

What really annoys me is that it could have - should have - been so much better. Here's an example: Zooey Deschanel's leaden line-reading of "Just when you thought there couldn't be any more evil that could be invented" (a howlingly awful sentence) while the camera frames her in a bland, unflattering composition. Let's break these elements down: Deschanel is one of those captivatingly attractive actresses who isn't merely pretty - there's something radiant about her. For a lensman to make her look dowdy takes a special (lack of) talent. Yet Tak Fujimoto is the man who shot 'Something Wild' and 'The Silence of the Lambs'. Bad dialogue notwithstanding, Deschanel's performance throughout is wooden - and yet she's vibrant and sassy in, say, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

And if I've not mentioned the bad dialogue enough already, here's one more go-around: 'The Happening' is indubitably the clunkiest script M. Night Shyamalan has ever written, eclipsing even the breezeblock-like exposition of 'The Village' ("he found one of the suits we kept under the floorboards"). And yet Shyamalan's screenplays for 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable' develop their themes with subtlety and sureness of touch.

The people involved in this film have talent. Granted, Shyamalan's career has pretty much defined 'up and down', but for all his tendencies to self-indulgence he is quite obviously an intelligent man; and at his best, a highly capable film-maker. I'm hesitant even to criticise him for self-indulgence. Quentin Tarantino is the very embodiment of directorial self-indulgence and the same critics who are quick to knock Shyamalan are just as eager to laud Tarantino.

Subject of which, an argument can be made for both men delivering their best work with their first two features (if, that is, we discount the little-seen 'Praying With Anger' and 'Wide Awake' (shelved by Miramax for three years) and count 'The Sixth Sense' as Shyamalan's debut).

So, before I take my axe and get to work on 'The Happening', I'm going to revisit M. Night Shyamalan's previous work. Is 'The Sixth Sense' the masterpiece many would have it? Could 'Unbreakable' be his best film to date? Were the first warning signs there in, well, 'Signs'? What's the connection between 'The Village' and my debut as a blogger? Is 'The Lady in the Water' really the disaster everybody has it? Will I find anything positive to say about 'The Happening'?

The Shyamalan-a-thon starts tomorrow.

There will be spoilers.

Summer of the superhero (1): Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk

Empire magazine has this to say about 'Iron Man':

"[It] is an origin story is more ways than one ... Origin stories are tricky things - they often feel like feature length pilots. And where is it written that comic book franchises need origin stories. Looking just beyond the genre, it didn't hurt Indiana Jones, Connery's James Bond or Captain Jack Sparrow that they arrived on our screens fully formed."

Well. What can you say to that? Nothing really, except to state the obvious:

Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones. James Bond is James Bond. Jack Sparrow is Jack Sparrow. None of them have alter egos. All superheroes, however, do have alter egos. They have to, otherwise they wouldn't be superheroes. The very point of the superhero is the concept of a secret identity. Therefore Superman is Clark Kent and Superman. Batman is Bruce Wayne and Batman. And for this work, for character motivation to be established, and for the crucial dramatic dynamic between the two halves of their personalities to function, you have to explain why Clark Kent became Superman or Bruce Wayne became Batman*.

Two effortlessly entertaining blockbusters, adding up to four and a half hours of big-screen fun, exploit the dynamic between public persona and iconic alter ego to brilliant effect.


Empire's bone of contention vis-a-vis Jon Favreau's 'Iron Man' - an odd choice of director, but by God he makes the material work! - is, actually, precisely its strong point. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jnr, following up his storming comeback turn in 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' with another storming turn sure to put him right back in the A-list) is an arms manufacturer: clever, cocksure, terminally irresponsible, Downey plays him like a child revelling in the sheer fun of playing soldiers ... except imagine a child who's grown up to earn unprecedented wealth, drive an Audi R8 and hang out with centrefolds.

Then, in the film's most compelling section, he learns a swift lesson on the nature of responsibility when he's captured by terrorists and forced to build a weapon they can deploy against Stark's best customers (the United States military). Stark responds by creating an armoured (and armour-plated) exoskeleton which also has the capacity for flight, and blasts his way to freedom. Returning to America, he realises that (a) some dodgy corporate dealings within the company have seen arms shipments sold to the selfsame terrorists who imprisoned him; and (b) his ad hoc invention is possibly the greatest weapon he's yet created. Rather than let it become public (or even shareholder) knowledge, he keeps it under wraps ... and re-invents himself as Iron Man.

'Iron Man' isn't quite a straight-up classic of its kind (all its best scenes are in the first half; the climatic smack-down is nothing compared to Stark's escape an hour beforehand), but it works because the script pays attention to who Stark is, who he becomes and why. And because Favreau draws good performances out of quality actors: Downey Jnr owns the role the way Johnny Depp makes Jack Sparrow completely and utterly his own; Gwyneth Paltrow is radiant as Stark's Miss Moneypenny-style PA, 'Pepper' Potts - there's a palpable chemistry in their scenes together; and Jeff Bridges adds a measured amount of gravitas as the Machiavellian Obadiah Stone.

Canny casting is the key, also, to Louis Letterier's 'The Incredible Hulk'. Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner, a scientist seeking a cure to the gamma poisoning that provokes his transformation into something big, green and afflicted by serious anger management issues every time something gets his goat. Genius casting! Edward Norton has always excelled at playing schizophrenic characters. Remember 'Primal Fear', Norton's rivetting performance making an otherwise by-the-numbers courtroom yawnfest compelling whenever he was on screen? Or how about 'Fight Club'? Norton wears the hounded, world-weary character of Banner like a ragged old coat. Liv Tyler, as Dr Betty Ross, provides the human element, much as Paltrow does in Iron Man; while William Hurt and Tim Roth are value for money in fleshed-out, well-considered supporting roles.

'The Incredible Hulk' isn't an origin story per se, but delivers the Banner/Hulk backstory with admirable speed and efficiency during the opening credits sequence. This achieves two objectives: it allows us to (a) disregard the earlier movie, Ang Lee's 'Hulk' - at best, a noble failure - and (b) narratively speaking, cut to the chase. For 'The Incredible Hulk' is essentially a chase movie. Banner wants a cure so he can live a normal life; the military want Banner so they can use what's inside him to create an army of 'super-soldiers'. No quarter is asked or given. The stakes are raised when General Ross (Hurt) uses fanatical soldier Emil Blonsky (Roth) as a guinea pig in an attempt to engineer another creature with the Hulk's physical prowess. But power corrupts, Blonsky is consumed by his dark side, and the Abomination is born.

Ang Lee's take on the Hulk was misconceived: a bright green blob that bounced around like a screensaver on crack. Letterier's is the real deal: muscled, veiny, dark green to the point of shadowy, and - crucially - fucking angry. Again, it isn't without flaws. As with 'Iron Man', the denouement is overly protracted, but a cracking script and genuine chemistry between the characters lift it well above the usual standard of comic book movies. Nifty last-minute vignettes link the two movies (although you'll need to stay until after the end credits with 'Iron Man') and point towards an upcoming Avenger adaptation.

In the meantime, however, there's Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' and Guillermo del Toro's 'Hellboy II: the Golden Army' to look forward to, hugely anticipated sequels to two of my favourite comic book adaptations, both reuniting original cast and original director.

It's gonna be a good summer!


*Subject of which: 'Batman Begins', which is arguably the best comic book adaptation yet produced, is an origin story all the way down the line - and it took a defibrilator to waning heartbeat of a near-dead franchise.

100th Post: PERSONAL FAVES: Ratatouille

'The Incredibles' was a work of genius, the film that got me genuinely enthusiastic about Pixar. The follow-up, John Lasseter's 'Cars', attracted some of the most indifferent reviews the studio has yet received. Its main failing - so the critical consensus seemed to have it - was that it wasn't 'The Incredibles'.

Personally, I enjoyed 'Cars': even if it's not the out-and-out masterpiece its predecessor was, it's still a damn good film - with a great ending. And there's no arguing that the level of animation raised the bar yet further.

Then came 'Ratatouille'. It arrived on a wave of publicity that made the marketing campaign for 'Revenge of the Sith' look reserved. It had a title that didn't exactly roll off the tongue (the posters featured a pronunciation guide!) and it was about a rat who enjoyed cooking.

A rat? I thought. In a restaurant? This doesn't look good.

I was wrong. I was about as wrong as I've ever been about anything. 'Ratatouille' is Pixar's cleverest, most nuanced, most imaginative, most beautifully animated work to date.

Where to start on what makes it so great?

Brad Bird's script and direction. The very idea of a rat taking advice from the ghost of a dead chef as he teams up with an incompetent dishwasher/garbage boy to create culinary masterpieces which turn around the fortunes of an ailing restaurant calls not so much for a suspension of disbelief but a bloody great industrial crane to winch up the audience's disbelief, lower it onto one of those low-loaders that are so big and so wide that the truck towing it needs a police escort, and haul it off to a warehouse the size of Texas. Bird achieves this by taking time to establish character and situation, the main character here being Remy the rat (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt).

The first act sets up Remy as a connoisseur of good food, his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) as an archetypal rat living off the barely edible (Remy's attempts to broaden Emile's palate provide much of the comedy in the early scenes), and their over-bearing father Django (Brian Dennehy) as the pack leader. Django scorns Remy's dietary refinements and insists that Remy is just a rat, the same as the rest of the pack. The conflict between them - family vs. individuality; the human perception of Remy as vermin vs. Remy's desire to integrate with a world beyond the pack - gives the film a surprising depth and poignancy, particularly when Django shows Remy a shop window filled with traps, poisons and the dangling corpses of rats thus disposed of.

Human machinations are just as insensitive elsewhere. Remy's infiltration of a farmhouse kitchen (Django and the pack are all nested in the rafters) sees the little old lady who lives there go psycho with a shotgun, almost demolishing her home in her obsession with blasting the rodents. Fleeing the carnage, the pack heads for a nearby river where Remy becomes separated from them. Washed up in a sewer beneath Paris, Remy goes above ground, guided by the spirit of deceased restauranteur Gusteau (Brad Garrett), and finds himself embroiled in shady dealings at Gusteau's old restaurant, where current chef Skinner (Ian Holm) plots to retain ownership of the establishment when he discovers Gusteau had a natural heir.

It is against this background that Remy forms an unlikely partnership with Linguini (Lou Romano), a complete clutz working a dead-end job at the restaurant. They hit a winning streak with Remy's inspired creations, but things are complicated by Skinner's increasing suspicions, the attentions of vituperative food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), a prying health inspector and a budding romance between Liguini and fellow chef Colette (Janeane Garofalo).

Then the pack find Remy and again he is torn between dedication to family and the desire to prove himself ...

'Ratatouille' has an intricate, multi-layered script. Sure, there's plenty of fast-moving set-pieces - most notably a chase through the streets of Paris and a mass raid by the pack on the restaurant - but Bird's emotional investment in his characters is what counts. Just as attentive and detailed is the animation, which even bests that of 'Cars'. Instead of waxing lyrical about how astounding textured everything is, let me just say this: halfway through seeing 'Ratatouille', sitting in Nottingham's Cineworld and my stomach growling even though I'd eaten before coming out, I turned to Paula and whispered, "We're going a restaurant the moment this ends." The cooking scenes are so evocative you can almost smell the food.

Some films make me laugh, some make me cry. Some films transport me in the world they create. Some make me feel infinitely better about things. 'Ratatouille' does all of these - there's a lovely vignette where a simple meal evokes a childhood memory that's damn near had me blubbing on more than one occasion - as well as making me hungry. I can't think of any other film I can say that about.

Robots

Three years ago, I wandered half-heartedly into a screening of 'Robots' with a friend of mine, our choice of film a second best after the preview screening of 'Constantine' that we'd got ourselves hyped over proved to be sold out.

Okay, we thought, so there's this young robot who leaves his parents and heads off for the big city, all full of dreams and ambitions, only to find that things aren't as he imagined them. But he has his friends. And he has integrity. And he has heart. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Lachrymose, morally trite kiddie-fare, right?

Au contraire. 'Robots' turned out to be the funniest, cleverest, most brilliantly realised (both narratively and visually) piece of animated film-making I'd seen since 'The Incredibles' (my immediate thought was that Blue Sky, the people behind 'Ice Age', looked set to give Pixar a run for their money). Of course, it wasn't too long before Pixar came out with 'Ratatouille' - up next in the 100 faves project - and reminded everyone who might have been remiss enough to have forgotten that they pretty define animated film-making.

But back to 'Robots' ...

The vocal cast is top-notch: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes and Paul Giametti. The look of the film is fabulous: a fully integrated world of delightful retro stylisations which subtley reference everything from 'Metropolis' to 'Forbidden Planet'. The in-jokes cover just as broad a spectrum, a spot-on '2001: A Space Odyssey' send-up rubbing shoulders with any number of 'Star Wars' homages (I seem to recall that the 'Episode III' trailer was shown with 'Robots').

The narrative clips along at a fast enough pace to prevent the under-fives from getting bored, but director Chris Wedge and his screenwriters invest time in the characters, a decision that pays dividends when the idealistic Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) and his plucky band of friends are outnumbered by the villains at the end. The climactic fight (oh yes, it may be U-rated, but 'Robots' contains scenes of "ass-whupping") is a bravura set-piece, managing to generate real tension, while at the same time firing off throwaway gags in all directions: one minute it's 'Braveheart' revisited, the next there's a Britney Spears song and dance number ... then it's back to the dust-up.

An hour and a half after slumping sullenly into our seats, me and my friend came exited the cinema beaming, in agreement that 'Robots' was a delightful, hilarious discovery. A week later we got round to seeing 'Constantine'. Oh dear, oh dear. We exited that one wondering why it is that the imagination, wit and attention to detail which Hollywood lovingly applies to films made ostensibly for children is so often absent in the productions it tailors to an adult audience.

Did a bad bad thing

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,
Find me guilty when true guilt is from within.
- Metallica


A couple of months ago, during a notably boring day at work, I created a companion site to The Agitation of the Mind. A dark side. A twisted side. The blogosphere equivalent of the B-side.

You don't want to admit that you listened to it, let alone that you liked it, that you tapped your foot to it.

And maybe - to reduce my blogging efforts to a Russ Conway analogy - that's why I did nothing with Guilty Pleasures (thusly did I christen this blog's bastard sibling): I saw from the outset that Guilty Pleasures would forever be the 'Pixilated Penguin' to The Agitation of the Mind's 'Side Saddle'.

But I started The Agitation of the Mind in order to write about cinema - to celebrate it. The only criteria was that it inspired a reaction in me.

But what about bad reactions? Guilty reactions? Cold shower and two dozen strokes of the birch kind of reactions? Those would require another blog. A blog that didn't mind adding the works of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin to the Amazon Rentals list. A blog that was completely unabashed in admitting that it's seen at least two Lindsay Lohan films on the big screen.

A blog that, sometimes, wants a little sapphic vampirism, exhibitionism, explotiation and downright bad taste, if for no other reason than to clear the palate between 'proper' films.

Thus it is that I invite you to either:

Hit this link and check out my less-than-cerebral musings on 'Ma Mere';

or:

Completely ignore this post, cling on to such tenuous misconceptions as you have that I am a worthy film critic, and wait for the next article.

Your call.