FILM REVIEWS: TOTAL RECALL (2012)

Warning: strong language from the very beginning (of the review not the film).

This is the most fucking blindingly stupid SF film I've seen in ages. It is so unbelievably fucking stupid that I thought it was going to be a complete con and reveal itself as something clever albeit derivative.  

The scenario. About a hundred years from now, the almost the entire world has suffered an environmental collapse except for a British dominated western Europe. And Australia known as The Territories. Is there some invisible barrier which prevents the environmental collapse from moving into these regions? And what we see of Australia (The Territories) is a massively overcrowded city along the the lines of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner only much much worse. And -you really are not going to believe this- there is massive tunnel right through the earth -including the molten core!- that connects (I'm assuming) London with an unnamed Australian city. And people travel between the two in a giant lift which takes -wait for it, wait for it!- about 15 minutes to complete the journey which means an average speed of around 32,000 mph. I may be wrong but I think this is faster than escape velocity -the speed needed to get a spaceship into orbit. Apart from that, given the sheer amount of resources it would take to create such a thing it would surely be easier to create Earth-orbit habitats. And people commute every day as a matter of course. The energy this involves must be enormous -and all on an environmentally damaged Earth.

God help me and I haven't even got on to the story yet. If you've seen Arnie's vastly superior original then you've probably got a good idea of what happens next. Working class bloke visits a place that implants memories and wants to be a secret agent only something goes wrong. The police conveniently arrive within seconds, kill the staff (why? they didn't do anything wrong) and are killed in turn by Colin Farrell discovering fighting skills he didn't know he had. He goes on the run hunted by his secret agent 'wife' and discovers he's really a top government agent gone over to the rebels. The rebels, incidentally, haven't been letting off bombs. That's been organised by the head of the government who wants an excuse to kill everybody in Australia -or at least the city we've seen- because, according to him, they support the rebels but really they want the territory for their expanding population. Why? The place is a fucking tip! 

There is lots of mindless sfx/cgi-filled action before it's announced that a few (like maybe three) thousand android soldiers are going down in the elevator to kill everybody at the other end. All millions of them. Wouldn't this take quite a while? Meanwhile everybody down under is told to go to the environmental collapse zone which probably isn't the healthiest place in the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Colin and rebel girlfriend are trying to plant bombs on the elevator. I couldn't understand why the down-unders didn't destroy the arrival station and have the elevator crash destroying everyone on board but what do I know?

At this point I should inform you that very much earlier in the film I decided that the scenario was so stupid that it would all be an induced memory and that Colin Farrell really was just a working class bloke. A little later, not much later, I decided that even that part was induced and Farrell really lives in a utopian society and felt the need to escape into a hideous dystopia in order to appreciate what he really had (this idea is stolen from a short story).

Spoiler Warning!

No it wasn't. Everything is face value. As a film this is one of the biggest piles of shit that I have ever seen. It's so shitty it's an insult to the word shit. Did no-one reading the script, or treatment, realise what an illogical inane piece of crap this was? Clearly not which leads me to conclude that people in Hollywood are the most ignorant thickheads on the face of the earth (except for religious fundamentalists).

This film is so bad that I almost think self-harming is preferable to watching it. 

And to add insult to injury, in the UK it was given a very lenient 12 certificate (triple breasted nudity, attempted genocide, violence, strong language) which means impressionable kids who don't know any better have to suffer it.

If there is any reason to watch this putrefying corpse of a film it's to see how bad a big budget film can be. But, for your own sanity, just take my word for it and don't bother. This really is one of the worst films I've seen in years.

DVD REVIEW: MAN OF STEEL (BLU-RAY, 2013)

This movie has had a mixed reception so I'll get to the point.

I liked it. A lot.

Much of the criticism springs from the fact the writer and director attempted to d something a little different. Not a lot, but enough to upset some people. Me, I like different. I particularly like recent tv series which have taken something traditional and made it new again. Examples: Elementary -ex-substance abuser Sherlock Holmes in modern New York with Dr Joan Watson, Dracula -see recent post, Sleepy Hollow- ditto.

Man of Steel isn't as remotely daring which is hardly surprising as there are certain basics regarding the Superman mythos that you do not fuck with. And they haven't. Just tweaked it a little.

Krypton is very much front and centre here. Just as Jor-El (an excellent Russell Crowe, and rather than repeat an adjective from this point on every time I mention an actor's name imagine it prefaced with excellent) is telling the wrinklies of the council that Krypton is about to blow up, General Zod (Michael Shannon who is even better than excellent) announces he's taking over the government from these wrinklies who've let a great society decline. They get cross with each other. Jor-El hurries home to launch baby Kal to Earth and gets killed by Zod. Krypton blows up. This takes about 20 minutes and is very exciting.

You know what happens next. Kindly couple etc. Then lots of flashbacks. Young Clark has problems controlling and hiding his powers. Young adult Clark leaves home to explore the world, takes on a variety of labouring/menial jobs and is well on his to becoming an urban legend as a result of helping people in unexpected ways. He's 33 by the time he meets Lois Lane up in Canada's Arctic Circle where an alien craft has been found buried in 18,000 year old ice. It's a Kryptonian deep space probe. Clark accesses it by means of a Kryptonian key which contains a copy of his father and all is revealed about his origin. Lois...

Okay, okay, enough spoilers. Let's just say that after fully accessing his powers, Zod and his cohorts arrive in search of Kal-El and wanting to terraform Earth into Krypton. Too bad about the original inhabitants (us). Lots of fighting happens. Spectacular fighting. Really really amazingly spectacular fighting. Your eyeballs will explode.

I think you get the idea.

But while it's an enormous spectacle of a movie, it's also a very human one. Jor-El is a more compassionate and humane figure than he's been portrayed in the past. Zod is not a psychopath but someone who is unable to transcend the role he was genetically created to occupy. Kal is the first natural (and secret) birth on Krypton in centuries, all other babies are created in exo-wombs and designed to fit into a particular niche. So Zod is not a villain in the sense that Terrence Stamp's Zod was but someone who can only see one way. Michael Shannon, an actor I'm unfamiliar with, is terrific in the role, imbuing it with an intensity which makes the word "intensity" seem completely inadequate. 

And in Henry Cavill we have a Superman for the new century -dignified, charismatic, compassionate- who has the physique to make the character believable. In this first film, there is no difference between Clark Kent and Superman, the latter not appearing until some time into the film. And at this point I really ought to mention the laudable performances of Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Clark's true parents who are responsible for him becoming the man he ends up as. And Amy Adams is a good Lois Lane.

Next up is Superman/Batman with Ben Affleck as you know who. Can't wait.

BOOK REVIEW: ADVENTURES OF A WATERBOY by MIKE SCOTT (JAWBONE PRESS, 2012), PLUS REVIEW OF FISHERMAN'S BOX A 6-CD SET BY THE WATERBOYS (CHRYSALIS RECORDS, 2013) and AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS (PROPER RECORDS, 2011)

At some point I realised that extended 2-CD edition of Fisherman's Blues had joined the list of My All-Time Favourite Albums. It crept there unnoticed until I read the announcement about the imminent release of Fisherman's Box, being the complete FB sessions 1986-88 and realised I had to have it. So I got it and it proved a mixed blessing.

Admittedly I've only played it once but then it is over 7 hours of music which is a lot to get through. While there is a lot of good stuff, the overall feeling I came away with was that Scott got it right on the 2-CD edition. The accompanying booklet is interesting, particularly for Scott's track by track comments and, as you can see above, there's a lot of them. For all intents and purposes The Waterboys are Mike Scott and a varying bunch of musicians some who stay with him for years, other for about five minutes. Which is why I was tempted by his autobiography.

I'm not in the habit of buying books about, but especially by, musicians (though there are always exceptions) because they usually aren't very well written and most so-called autobiographies are ghost-written. Scott, however, is an exception because he happens to be very literate and an good writer. He's also, I believe, quite honest about himself (mostly).

Here's another example of why Scott is one of the most interesting of contemporary musicians. The last Waterboys album An Appointment With Mr Yeats came out in 2011 and is a collection of songs with lyrics taken from poems by William Butler Yeats the famous Irish poet and playwright. To do something like this and do it artistically successfully is not easy. At the very least the singer has to sing with absolute clarity so that every word is heard by the listener, and not only that but it has to convey the rhythm of the poem as created by its author. The music then has to mirror the poem's tone and tempo. Lastly it has to appear seamlessly as an organic unit as if it was always a whole piece, not just a poem set to music.

Amazingly, Scott has done just this. I won't pretend it's an immediately accessible album, it isn't. Like, say Joni Mitchell's masterpiece Hejira, it takes several listenings to reveal its secrets. But it's worth it. The first track The Hosting of the Shee opens softly but rapidly changes into a barrage of multi-instrumental sound as Scott almost yells out the Wild Ride of faery warriors. The lovely and all too brief Sweet Dancer, with singer Katie Kim, could almost be a modern song. That said, Scott has not always lifted the poems intact. Although all the words are by Yeats, sometimes they can be pieced together from up to three sources, often to add a chorus.  When you read his autobiography, which ends a decade before this was recorded, you realise that this is something he's been building up to for years. 

Scott is, of course, a Scot who was given an acoustic guitar and a Rolling Stones album for his tenth birthday by his father who didn't see him again for over thirty years. From a young age, Scott has been making music in his head and this book really is all about him trying to get it out of there and into the world. He became a punk, started a fanzine and wrote a letter to Patti Smith asking for an interview. Smith invited him to London, paid for his hotel room (in her hotel), gave him the interview, and, either in person or with another band member, looked after him there and at the theatre, an act of completely unexpected kindess from her to a 19 year old kid.  

Time passed, Scott formed the Waterboys and what happened next takes up the bulk of the book from thunderous rock to rootsy Celtic folk style and out again. He's generally honest about himself, telling stories which don't show him in too good a light, and also about other people. He's also the first to give praise to the musicians and other people he's met and worked with where it's due and criticism where it isn't. 

Perhaps he may be a little coy about his relationships with various girlfriends but then this isn't a kiss and tell story. He does go into detail about his traumatic relationship with a needy decade-older alpha New York woman, but is more tactful about his first wife. The story of how he met his second wife is rather sweet and it happened when he retreated to the humanist mystical community of Findhorn which he portrays as a fascinating and open place. To me, Findhorn sounds like a place for those, too intelligent to be suckered in by traditional religions, but who seek varying paths to uncovered some form of transcendent truth though I have to say that what Scott discovers is rather appealing even while the cynical side of me thinks it's mystical bullshit for intellectuals. Be nice if they were right though. Anyway, he finds himself attracted to a young dance teacher and after some deep thinking decides she is the love of his life and invites her out. She accepts but doesn't realise it was for a date, confesses she hadn't really thought of him in that way. A little while later, she asks to go out with him again and confesses that she'd been doing some deep thinking and has decided that she does like him in that way and over twenty years later it looks as if the deep thinking was right.

Scott is a good writer, he's an interesting person, and I really enjoyed reading this book. My only grumble is that it stops around the time of the millennium thereby omitting the next ten years of his life.

NELSON MANDELA 1918 - 2013

Nelson Mandela, the most noble politician of the 20th century, has left us.

There are so many words that could be spoken about this man and they would never be enough, so I'll say only this:

He was an inspiration to the world.