this just in

from my sister-in-law's sister-in-law.

The first 10 seconds had me quite bemused and it was a sweet click when it came (must be getting old)!

just watched School of Rock

It rocks.

In Bruges

Same preposition, same rudeness. Less creative in its insults, but more intensive. Somehow a virtue is (almost) made out of the storm of words. In this case it's the cute Irish accent saying various swear words rather than the Scots, but there is a distinct Celtic slant to them both. We Anglo-Americans are such vouyeurs of the peripheries...

A surprisingly old-fashioned film, with a very surprising turn by Ralph Fiennes as London crime boss. There are big issues, big principles, and no nudity.

Notice the simple/straightforward "morality" of the characters (though Brendan Gleason's Ken has a greater maturity there, scoring 0.00002 instead of 0.00001): rudeness, violence and killing are fine, but not killing children. The film’s morality is slightly wider than that of the characters. After all, those who live by the sword die by it, and no one else does.

Once again, however, I have reservations about enjoying something so rude and violent. To the pure all things are pure, but whatever is noble, whatever is good...

In the Loop

Armando Iannucci’s acclaimed political satire. Three stars out of five, I think.

But ten out of ten for rudeness – it might have scored higher than any Tarantino for swearing and truly offensive insults…

Although it’s the right length In the Loop is less a feature film and more an expensive exercise in astonishment. Desperately sad, like The Office; every cell in my body cringes at how dreadful the characters are, and yet how true and real they are. Frightening as well as compelling, but not one to watch again.

Performances were pretty good, in that faux documentary way, but unfortunately all the drama ebbed away towards the end. Minister for International Development, Peter Forrester, was too much of a caricature by that point for us to care about his resignation or about the ‘clever’ plan of the odious spin doctor to have him fired instead. Even the prospect of war was not very compelling. Jaded viewer or poor drama? Maybe both...

Chuckle-a-mungus

Thanks to no.2 brother (the only one with the real job) for this!

Since 1983 Admiral Ackbar has apparently been working elsewhere than the bridge of a rebel Corellian cruiser.

Recent film watching

The cinemas have done reasonably well out of me and various mates this summer. As have the manufacturers of Minstrels, that essential film companion. Alas I have not done all that well out of the cinemas...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2/5 Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber's rivalry was reasonable and there were some god set-pieces (and I suppose it helped make some sense of some of the other X-men films, though why that should matter, since the tangled web of comic books they are based on doesn't need to make much sense...) but most of the rest of the film was a wasted opportunity - a naff Gambit, a load of teenage mutants doing not a lot, silly effects, you name it.

Star Trek

3/5 Central plot twist so ludicrous that they pulled it off, and scenes set on the large Romulan ship were all over the place in terms of continuity and plausibility of movement (maybe no worse than Shakespeare in that regard?!), but excellent performances and good humour.

Terminator Salvation

1/5 Even the normally reliable Christian Bale was going through the motions here. The whole second half was pants, despite coming close to being heart-warming in the central robot-man (who am I?) plotline. Poor Helena Bonham Carter.

Red Cliff

3/5 A big canvas with a lot of paint, sometimes in unusual colours, shall we say. Chinese folk history and myth meets Hollywood, sort-of, in an epic swashbuckling thing. Lovely to look at, if rather stagey in execution. I think we Western Europeans have different dramatic expectations to the Chinese!

Sunshine Cleaning

4/5 At last something decent! Surely the smallest budget of the lot by a factor or 10, and certainly the best. Heart-warming without being cloying, funny without being silly, tender without being toooo sentimental, and perfmormed very well by all and sundry. Two sisters attempt to set up a crime-scene cleanup business while one comes to terms with being a grown-up and the other struggles to raise a child alone... Alan Arkin is their dad. Just see it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2/5 The performances were great, compared to the earlier Potter films, and despite its length I wasn't bored, but structurally the film was a disaster. Very much a 'middle' section, with no shape or direction, not to mention a very anticlimactic final twist.

horrific interlude

From a blog I just stumbled upon by the swashbuckling Dan Philips, of pyromaniac fame. When people can write and have a good eye it's a joy to spend time grazing. 

Among many great pieces, here are some useful throughts from DP and from his comment-adders on the question of horror as a genre.

Funny how none of them seems to like Frank Peretti. I really do like him, but perhaps because I read his books as a teenager, insulated then from any charismatic or noe-pentecostal connotations which might be irking these hard reformed types. I also have a cassette version of This Present Darkness read by the author, and I think it's great! He didn't simply tack some cod theology onto the end of a Stephen King imitation there, let me tell you.

Art and the artiness of being

was the subject of a little email conversation I had recently with a distinguished evangelical pastor ;-) in South Leicestershire, no less... ;-)

After our NTI seminar on aesthetics back in April, he asked...

I also wanted to (if you have time) continue a little conversation about art that you began on Friday when you asked the question "on what grounds should we judge art?"

I think you asked it when I was madly defending Shrek 2 for its cinematic purpose, and you rightly asked "well, if you're defending Shrek 2, how can\ we judge something as bad art?"

Here's what Rookmaaker says:

"Some people feel we ought to define the principle of art solely by the aesthetic. Is this not the core of art? Is not this its true meaning? ...Personally I have many doubts about this...The strange thing is that artists, almost without exception, do strive to express something in their art, and only rarely are happy with the aesthetic element alone. To me, this is one of the proofs that any theory that goes too much in this direction is out of touch with real artistic practice... Another question often raised is this. Should art be criticized on two levels, one aesthetic, the other moral? I think not. First, the term 'moral' is too narrow. It is better to speak of content, or expression, or portrayal of reality..."

Of course his argument goes deeper than this, but I was wondering what you thought were the right grounds on which to judge art.

And I replied in a not-terribly-theorized fashion, along the lines of...

On the question of art, I like Rookmaaker's point there, and think that
we should have (at least?) two ways of judging art simultaneously, the
aesthetic and the moral. On aesthetic grounds there's lots of argument
to be had over what the right standards are to use, of course! And on
moral grounds, I like what HR says about not merely attending to
'content' or 'morality', but on a broader spectrum of things. I wonder [and only the Lord knows what I intended to write here - I unaccountably broke off this sentence!]

Another question worth thinking about is how the art is used, and how it
can be used. It seems to me that we need to look at this because from
the viewer/listener's point of view that is he prime consideration. We
can discuss the morality of art in the abstrct all we like, and talk
about, e.g., camera angles, cinematography, etc, but is it possible to
watch 'Hostel' (to pick a random example) in any other way than either
relish or prurience towards its goriness? If not, then in neither case
is the attitude worth having, and I'm not sure that any amount of 'good'
film-making can justify it being used as art.

So, I think I'm advocating a full-orbed hermeneutic of art - descriptive
(moral check on content), structuralist (the aesthetic, what the work
is), and reader-response (how it is used). Maybe with a combination of
all three measures we can arrive at a total score for each work of art!?
However, it must score above/below a certain threshold on each one to be
worth it.

What do you think? Perhaps we need some more examples...

And then I tried out this approach on Serenity.

FIlms at L'Abri

Two years ago we went to this film festival at L'Abri in Hampshire. PG kindly drove us there and back in his teeny old car and we had a whale of a time listening to Lionel Richie (an education for me).

The films were...

Breaking and Entering
East of Eden
The Story of the Weeping Camel
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Little Miss Sunshine
The Seventh Seal

The conversations were great (I stayed up for hours chatting with a Danish graphic designer working in Japan - just like being an undergrad at Cambridge all over again, except slightly less pretentious), the food was great, and although Ellis Potter's contention that "art = purposeful human activity" was slightly irritating, albeit nicely delivered, a good time was had by all.

We missed last year - just too busy - but this October we will be heading down to the Manor House again. The menu is...

Gran Torino

Mon Oncle

Persopolis

Kitchen Stories

Three Colours Blue

Tsotsi

Man on Wire

And although I have seen two of those already, I shall cope!

A Christian Evaluation of Serenity (2005)

Having posted before on this great film, I thought I'd share the extended version, which I recently wrote up for NTI...

Background

Serenity is a feature film developed from a cult sci-fi series called Firefly, broadcast by Fox in 2002. Disappointed at the axing of the series after only 14 episodes, fans and the scriptwriter-director (Joss Wheedon, of Buffy and Angel fame) lobbied the industry for funding to a least get a film made, if not more episodes of Firefly. The New York Times verdict on the original series was, ‘A very funny, very hip, very terrific sci-fi show’, which is about right, and in my opinion the film is even better. Serenity works perfectly well as a stand-alone story, though it is enriched if you are familiar with Firefly, so I shall confine my analysis to the film, with occasional reference to the world described and explored in more detail by the earlier series. This world exists hundreds of years in the future, when ‘Earth that was’ has been abandoned by the voracious and fecund human race, who have colonised many other worlds. Their galactic culture is a neat blend of American and Chinese – the more rural settings often look like the Wild West, as do some of the weapons and costumes, and the dialect English they speak is redolent of 19th century America; however, the urban settings are like the seedier parts of Hong Kong and the characters usually swear in Chinese! The writing is all in letters and pictograms. There are no aliens!

Plot Summary
This is the 100-word version: for a fuller summary see the Appendix. Better still, stop reading this and watch the film so you can enjoy the unfolding story as it was intended!

Lead by charismatic rogue Captain Mal Reynolds the crew of Serenity, a smuggling ship, stumble across a massive state cover-up concerning population pacification technology, the murder of millions, and the creation of human monsters. The key to the mystery is locked away in the memory of a traumatised teenage girl (a fugitive, with her brother, on Serenity) who has been psychologically conditioned to turn her into a weapon with the right trigger. Pursued by a sinister and ruthless Parliamentary Operative, after various adventures, battles and tragedies, the crew overcome self-interest and succeed in broadcasting the information at great personal cost.

Aesthetic 
The script is successful at a macro level, with the plot developing through tension and resolution, propelled by various contingent and necessary motors. The challenge of introducing those who have never seen Firefly is overcome nicely. Occasionally there are clunky moments are a lot of information is shared with us through a conversation (e.g. 6 minutes in when the Operative discusses Simon and River with the doctor responsible for her conditioning) but in most cases we learn what background we need through odd phrases and through action. A fairly conventional meta-story (a rag-tag bunch uncover a conspiracy and through adversity being largely thrust upon them discover the courage to sacrifice for a greater good) with several stock characters (muscle-for-brains, repressed rich boy, cool British villain) is enlivened through cinematic and directorial splicing techniques on display from the start. Serenity opens with a narrator over documentary footage explaining human history since the exodus from ‘Earth that was’, which is revealed to be the voice of a teacher in a gazebo-like garden classroom of 12-year-olds, which is shown to be a flashback-dream in the mind of crazed River, strapped into a sinister lab chair just before she is rescued, a dramatic sequence which itself turns out to be a holographic recording of said rescue as viewed by the Operative on their tail. Russian dolls eat your heart out!

The script is even more successful at the micro level, as Wheedon manages to bring out his characters with their flaws and their humour through a convincing dialect version of English. The language has enough grace and charm to conjure up centuries past where eloquence was valued more highly, while still being comprehensible to modern viewers. Combined with effective set design and sparing use of quality CGI Wheedon projects a world that grabs the audience. Nothing is too grand or too clean. Making a virtue out of the necessity of budgetary constraints, there is general celebration of parvus pulcher est, which is also an important theme within the world of the film.

The cast perform extremely well. Each of the characters is rendered consistently and the actors are completely believable while more than coping with a demanding script that ranges from flippant to deep grief and is peppered with cod-Chinese curses. I was engaged by their relationships and moved by their struggles and tragedies. The stock characters are given their own flavour through great facial expressions, quirkiness and costume idiosyncrasies.

Serenity pays homage to a great many other films from a variety of genres, notably Westerns and spacebound science fiction. Labouring the intertextual links would be wearing so I’ll mention just a handful. The use of the Universal Studios logo in the first scene recalls Waterworld, another futuristic human survival story (considerably more expensive and less successful!) River and Simon’s escape through a lift shaft into the belly of a spaceship honours Star Wars (episodes IV and V). Mal Reynolds is Han Solo, only better (“Heresy!” I hear you cry). The climactic and claustrophobic desperate rearguard battle with its high attrition is both Zulu and Aliens and more… This film is an artistic gem and a lovely example of how to work within a tradition but with originality.

Moral
A great many themes are picked up by Serenity in passing, many of which can be celebrated by Christians (in modified form), several of which cannot. Eccentricity and individuality in community is a major concern of the film. The crew have to deal with their differences and learn to recognise that fellowship is more important than ego or point-scoring, something they are not always successful at. Heroism expressed in sacrifice, not for the sake of glory but for the sake of others, is a clear theme; the crew, particularly Mal, learns that self-interest or feigned amorality as regards politics will not suffice in a fallen world if justice is to be done, even in a limited historical sense. 

There is a right suspicion of empire and human power, which chimes in with the Bible’s perspective, as does the recognition that people are in no way perfect. An optimistic/utopian belief in human ability to engineer goodness actually drives the plot. The explicit clash between this belief and the liberalism of the ‘Independents’ (neither blind obedience to the state nor chemicals can solve the human condition) occurs in a powerful piece of dialogue before the final act. Against a background of the slaughter of the innocents, Mal confronts the Operative on video phone about their respective motivations…

O: You should have taken my offer, or did you think that none of this was your fault?
M: I don’t murder children.
O: I do – if I have to.
M: Why? Do you even know why they send you?’ 
O: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
M: So me and mine gotta lay down so you can live in your better world?
O: I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil, I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

As Mal stirs the crew to embark on a probably suicidal mission to broadcast the suppressed data he says of the state, 

They will try again… [t]hey’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I don’t hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

What Serenity lacks, however, is any answer as to how people are to be made better – by implication a celebration of diversity and resistance will be OK, but this is a serious aporia in the worldview. 

In its opposition to tyranny, Serenity also displays abhorrence of cover-up. The crew struggle, as we all would, with the cost to them of exposing the truth, but there is no doubt as to the morality of what they settle on. Mr Universe’s motto, ‘they can’t stop the signal’ displays a faith in exposure and in final justice, the idea that someone, somewhere is watching crimes and that the truth will out. CCTV and other technology along with independent-minded vigilance provide the all-seeing eye here, but Christians know that someone more reliable will provide ultimate justice.

 Several of the undercurrents or explicit messages of the film are less susceptible of a Christian embrace. While we can be grateful for a film in which the ‘Christian’ characters are neither pushovers nor hypocrites, the Christian faith of this galaxy is pretty bland, and the crew are happy to exploit this religiosity, carrying out their payroll heist during ‘Sunday worship’. The character of the Shepherd, representative of a deeper religious commitment, is ultimately called upon by Wheedon to be the mouthpiece for a kind of content-less will to transcend the self – as he urges Mal, with his dying breath, to fight on, he says ‘I don’t care what you believe, just believe it’. The clash between the Operative, ‘the kind of man who believes hard’ and Mal is ultimately a clash between the adherents of political philosophies who prove willing to die for their beliefs. But which belief is right? And is the morality of belief really to be reduced to the strength of feeling in the believing subject? Serenity appears to suggest this at the emotional climax, while of course undermining it in the case of the Operative and his beliefs.

 To put it another way, the gospel according to Serenity is that salvation can be had through cunning, decency and fighting for freedom with a strong dose of ‘belief’. Salvation is needed because people are not perfect but especially because big governments are tyrannical. The ‘fall’ was the formation of the central planetary Alliance at some point in the past. The moment of regeneration, as it were, comes with the enlightenment of knowledge – so long as we have unmediated access to information about everything (‘the signal’) we can deal with the evil. The major idols of the film are personal liberty and self-determination.

 Furthermore, while it may seem a little moralistic to bring it up, the crew are a bunch of crooks! Our heroes make their living from crime, and to argue that their hearts of gold make up for this is to veer towards Gnosticism on the one hand ('what you do doesn’t matter, it’s who you are'; as if such things could be separated) or anarchism on the other (power is bad, authority is bound to be worse than independence). Serenity thankfully does not endorse a revenge ethic – the one moment where revenge briefly captures the grieving Zoë, she becomes reckless and endangers her companions – but, rather, a libertarian and pro-prole approach to society. Petty crime and prostitution are OK, so long as it’s only the rich that are made to pay. 

To conclude this section I want to consider Serenity’s take on two old chestnuts, sex and violence. The film stands in an ambivalent relationship to the interplay of these most misunderstood of human activities. Final answers on whether certain levels of violence in a film are gratuitous or whether particular costumes/scenes constitute soft porn (or a prelude to it) are not easy to settle on. In a general sense as regards film I am not entirely happy with my current stance of feeling slightly uncomfortable while trying not to be puritannical, but neither general flight nor general embrace are satisfactory. 

There is a lot of violence in Serenity, but with two exceptions our heroes only use it defensively. Their spaceship is not armed. Male strongman stereotypes are in some ways upset: although physically brave Mal is in fact an expert at getting beaten up; hard-case Jayne is knocked out twice by River; the Operative is a martial arts expert but clearly of a very cool Oriental variety in contrast to the generally less effective and more blustery ‘Western’ style fighting. Across gender lines, the upsetting occurs in a surprisingly conventional way. Ex-military Zoë is an Amazon figure (something of a trope in science fiction) who is in fact happily married and demurely dressed; River, effectively invincible in combat, conjures up Artemis – a (teenage) warrior maiden who really is a maiden. But better than Artemis, she is clothed and not the object of anyone’s desire. The action scenes featuring River in fact cast a shadow on efficient martial arts even as we marvel at the physical skill of the ‘dance’. The first time she uses violence it is on a room full of innocent people – a dark parody of the typical cinematic bar-room brawl. Serenity thus just manages not to revel in violence and furthermore succeeds in dissociating its violence from sexuality – no mean feat amid the genre expectations of ensemble sci-fi/fantasy not designed for kids. There are relatively reasonable standards of modesty in female dress, and only occasional lewd jokes. Prostitution is treated as a fact of life in the film, and barely mentioned – whereas in the original series it was seen as somehow a noble career choice (perhaps one reason why Fox axed Firefly was its willingness to discuss the hypocrisies surrounding prostitution in modern society without condemning the prostitute).

Use value
An important measure of whether or not a work of art is “good” is what it can be used for. An aesthetic (structuralist or technical) analysis is only part of the picture of assessing artistic value. A moral analysis adds more but the morality of the art does not exist in a static or abstract fashion – it is blended by the artist(s) and is appropriated by the audience. So we need a third approach to the artwork in order to answer the question of its value.

Serenity can be used as entertainment. There is nothing wrong with diversion and entertainment in themselves (although in fact there is no such thing as entertainment-in-itself, we are always entertained in and by something), and along with the quality of the story what Wheedon asks us to enjoy is largely positive – heroism, sacrifice, humour, mocking the proud, valuing eccentricity, anger at oppression, and so on.

 Serenity can also be used as a way in for analysing culture and commending the gospel. I would suggest that the following questions could be asked of non-Christian co-viewers who are interested in exploring the film more deeply.

(1) What is meaningful “faith”? Can it simply be, or must it be in something or someone?

(2) Is there any hope for the future (personal and species) other than quick wits and whatever resistance we can muster to oppression?

(3) Is the centralized state really our biggest problem? Is the Operative right to suggest that sin is the problem? Given the flaws in his solution,

(4) How then shall we be made “better”?

(5) What is “the signal” in the real world (e.g. supposedly unmediated access to information, or divine revelation)? Can anything stop the signal? Do we need the signal?

comprehensive education

This concept has reached new heights/depths in Japan. The poop museum has to be seen to be believed. Actually, although the register of the language may be a little coarse (and is that just the blogger's fault?), one can't complain about an increase in human knowledge and intellectual curiosity among the young! [Thanks to Dionysius for this link]

And speaking of human knowledge and intellectual cuiriosity - why not peruse an introduction to some great lines over the years by James Earl Jones, all bundled up and delivered by his most memorable role, Darth Vader. Here's one, and here's another. Warning, you may cry with laughter... [Cheers to PG for those!]

Prince Caspian (making of)

The recent Prince Caspian film has come in for a lot of stick – “Ben Barnes’ accent is tosh”, “the children are annoying”, “the Telmarine army is too small”, etc. I watched it again the other day and actually thought it was quite good. Most criticisms probably occasionaed by jealousy at the rather good performances by the younger actors and their obvious enjoyment of the project. 

The book is perhaps the weakest of the Narnia series, consisting of long flashbacks, and with quite compressed action (not that any of this prevents the imagination from having a great time with the material, of course) which the film expands on, even adding a long extra plot element, the attack on Miraz’ castle. Although ‘inauthentic’, that sequence is exciting, and effective in underlining the early gung ho hubris of Peter and is well done on screen. Even better is the conjuring of the White Witch – fabulous cameo from Tilda swinton and very effectively done. 

Not surprisingly the filmmakers didn’t know what to do with the almost surreal bacchic revelry that occurs at Lucy’s encounter with Aslan towards the end of the book, so they ommitted it altogether. For me the loss of this section and the generally scanty appearances of Aslan were the disappointments. Maybe they couldn’t take Lewis’ Christianization of classical cultural themes and figures? They prefer a Disneyfication instead.

The documentaries on the DVD certainly show that many in the production team do not understand Narnia, whether willfully or because of ignorance.

The message of Narnia is that ‘we’re all one’
No it isn’t. That’s the “message” of Disney.
At the end of the movie, the day is saved by nature
Well kind of… The next comment does spot who’s behind that…
it’s Aslan
OK…
and Aslan, really, is an animal
D’oh.
CS Lewis is showing us that we can learn from animals and that we can learn from nature
But ripped from its context of dominion, gody rule, as found in Genesis 1 and 2 (which the script even recognised – “Narnia was never right unless a son of Adam was on the throne”, they rightly retained from the book) this is mere tree hugging.

The endless pre-menu adverts were also advertising a (straight to TV) film set in a corny pseudo-Indian setting with elephants, white marble and petals, plus a bronzed girl band… “The Cheetah Girls: One World”, on the Disney channel… Hurrah for vacuous universalism – that’ll save us, yeah

Film recommendations

A friend from NTI decided to start watching films recently after decades of indifference. He emailed round asking for top 5 recommendations. Needless to say I could not reply with true brevity, not with only 5. Even these ten leave out some real classics, but, hey, you have to start somewhere...

PERSONAL FAVES

Tremors
top pick: a total masterpiece! Attention to detail, characters, dialogue, suspense, silliness... This should be top of everyone's list of quality and love!
My Cousin Vinny
fun courtroom drama with oscar-winning Marisa Tomei and a host of B-movie figures to spot.
La cite des enfants perdus
earlier, darker work from the director of Amelie, like a modern fairy-tale.
Serenity
wonderful, tongue-in-cheek spin off from sci-fi series 'Firefly'; quite thought-provoking, and incredible quality to budget ratio!
Galaxy Quest
spoofy blockbuster sci-fi, child-friendly, which pushes all the right buttons.
Raising Arizona
young Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter in Cohen brothers farce, much nicer than their sinister later films (which are also excellent, of course).

MORE SERIOUS

Boys Don't Cry
utterly harrowing, painful, important, tough issues, incredible performances.
Crash
the new one about race in America and cleverly interlinked stories, not the twisted weird one based on Ballard's novel.
East/West
Russian-French family return to Stalin's USSR and find that life is not nice.
Kekexili
true story of locals vs poachers in Western Chinese icy desert.
Grand Canyon
like an 80s version of Crash - big names, big drama, big heart.

Firefly and Serenity

We started on Serenity, which number two brother has long recommended to me. For about a year I was slightly put off by the DVD cover art which made it look much more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (by the same writer-director) than it really was.

Don’t get me wrong, Buffy may be very good, I’ve never seen more than snatches of episodes. However, marketing that relies on flexible female teenagers (who aren't really teenagers) doesn’t usually score highly in my book. And while I’m on the subject, the cover art for the DVD of Tremors [don't click the link if you haven't seeen Tremors - instead, stop reading this blog immediately and go and find a copy of the greatest film ever made!] is equally deplorable, surrendering most of the tension of the first 30 minutes of the film by revealing in silly picture form the nature of the mysterious threat that attacks the inhabitants of Perfection!

Back to the point…

Serenity is excellent. It has one of the highest budget-final quality ratios of any recent film and is seriously enjoyable. The script is witty and passionate, the characters are engaging, the plot compelling and the set pieces mesmerizing. It plays with action film conventions and gently mocks all kinds of sci-fi and Western cliches. There is a strong anti-totalitarian anti-interventionist flavour, which adds some spice and social critique.

The music is perfect – like American folk overlaid with medieval – or is it medieval ballads played by bluegrass types? I am suitably bemused and impressed. If you haven’t seen it, then do!

On the DVD version the extras are also good value. “The Making of…” and related features are fun(ny), and not too luvvie. Most of the cast did most of their own stunts, which prompts much amusement on set. All in all a great night in, and Mrs L liked it as much as I did.

Firefly is the short-lived TV series on which Serenity is founded. Although it is very good – as funny and engaging as the film, sharing the cast, setting and mood – I can see why some in a conservative culture might have found its open discussion of prostitution rather too much for heart-warming small screen entertainment. Still worth a look.

Icelandic crime

I'm not talking about profligate banking. Over Christmas I caught up on the books I won in the competition last year. Icelandic crime novels...

The film Jar City was quite decent. The book it was based on (Tainted Blood by Arnaldur Indridason) had, surprisingly, a less interesting plot, largely because the tension wasn’t built or maintained properly. Unfortunately books 2-4 in the series are not really any better. Indriadson seems to be following a formula for the architecture – take one old mystery, interweave it with the detectives chatting to people about it, dovetail the plots, bathetic finale. No detection seems to take place, people confess at random, and realism is really strained at times.

That said, learning a little about Iceland is interesting, and the 4th book, about Cold War shenanigans up north, is particularly poignant. The 5th book in the series is an improvement. Again, little by way of detection – perhaps that simply reflects reality – but a more satisfying story and a truly “Icelandic murder”, which according to Indriadason involve no planning or sophistication, plenty of impulse and stupidity, some brutality and some mess.

W

I won, I won, I won!

Hanging around the Arts Picturehouse a few months ago I entered a noddy competition ("how many letters are there in the word 'Jar'?", that sort of thing) to win the books behind the film Jar City. Which was quite a decent film - certainly the best film I've seen featuring sheep's heads being eaten by people as fast food.

On Saturday, without fanfare, a large parcel arrived, much to my delight - all the whodunnits of Icelandic penman, Arnaldur Indridason. Hurrah. I am a true winner.

As a massive crime fiction fan in my earlier years I shall relish the chance to get back to that battle between tarnished good and grey or enigmatic evil, the social complexity, the compromised yet heroic cops, the various fascinating lives and milieus...

Doomsday

Watching this film left me feeling a bit funny.

On the plus side tension, decent performances, an intriguing concept, value-for-money special effects, critique of the overweening state, realism about the darkness in man's heart, Bob Hoskins and Alexander Siddig in minor roles...

On the minus side gratuitous nudity, gruesome violence, a silly ending and an even sillier cannibal feast sequence.

I also thought it was surprising that no other film has been called Doomsday, though, in the century of cinema that we've had.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

At last! Having seen CTHD 8 years ago in a tiny, peeling cinema on the edge of Hong Kong, in Mandarin with complex character subtitles, the mystery is over. Well, as much as it will ever be.

Last night we watched it on the widescreen laptop (still feeling virtuous without TV?) and rather enjoyed ourselves. Watching it without any language aids, I had managed to get the plot's outline... sort of! But it was helpful to have a little more understanding second time round. I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was, the humour took the edge off the po faces, and we both found ourselves moved by the yearning and tragedy of the middle-aged people's plot.

The young people were a bit more annoying ;-)

Hmm... the dialogue was not always wonderful, it has to be said. Possibly because of the translation, possibly because of the conventions of the genre, possibly because of the different dramatic expectations of Chin ese dramatic culture. Anyhow, I'm sad to say that sometimes it reminded me of the dialogue in another recent film, Until Death (2007), a Van Damme attempt at 'drama-with-action', rather than 'action film'. Despite his reasonable efforts, the script was awful and the turning points of the plot entirely implausible, and even the action scenes were disastrous. I can't understand how it got a 6.1 average on IMDB! ...enough griping.

CTHD also raised some interesting themes. Western Ch ina, where the noble family of Zhang Ziyi moved when she was a young child is portrayed as beautiful, but no one lives there but noble criminals just begging to be sinified, if only they knew it. Hmm. Meanwhile, the Han-Manchurian difference, which I only properly learned about (exciteable child that I am, I'm still full of the discovery and more to be discovered) a month ago watching The Last Emperor (1987) [I get all my knowledge from films, like everyone else], reading Patricia Buckley Ebrey's Cambridge History of the place and a visit to the Lama Temples (with its 18th century four-language signs) in the capital at Easter. It pops up as Lo persistently mistakes Jen for a Han in the extended Gobi flashback, until she proudly disabuses him of that; not to mention in the slap foreheads and fake pigtails  ;-)

On the DVD extras, Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat come across very well indeed - extremely likeable. And as I type this I'm listening to the director and producer's commentary on the first few minutes of the film. Very witty.

Shatranj and Chess

What a great film, Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977), 'The Chess Players'. In the colourful heat of Awadh, the last 'independent' Indian kingdom, two noblemen play chess obsessively while the British plot and execute the takeover of their land. There is plenty of political tension, clash of cultures and nicely-observed life. And lots of humour - the two men are so devoted to their game that they sacrifice good marital relations, any responsibility for living in a mature way, and almost their own friendship.

That kind of obsession is pretty true to life. If I get a head of steam up on the chessboard then it's hard for anyone to drag me away! But metred out carefully, it's fine - so when Charles came over last week before he vamooses to Yorkshire we had about 20 speedy games (some of which I actually won) which were great fun. Long live skittles shatranj!

Lord of War

Yet another film to raise the question of realism and extra-artistic significance. This is almost getting tedious (were it not for the seriousness of the subject of this one) - no more 'entertainment' seems to be permitted!

How realistic is Lord of War? Does that matter? Can we enjoy it? (Let alone all the unnecessary sex, I'm talking about the cynical, bleak take on arms and government string-pulling to sell more of them)