An Incremental Uptick In Civility Should Be Welcomed

::Cannibalising this rant from my Quantum of Solace post in order to keep that epic a teeny tiny little bit more focused. Apologies for looking like a lazy bastard by reprinting something as a new post::

As I said yesterday, we saw finally saw Quantum of Solace many days after it opened (which is torture for a Bond fan). While the main reason was sheer lack of the pounds, we also balked at seeing it in the midst of a seething mass of ill-behaved douchebags, which has happened way too often over the years. We went to great trouble to see the movie at our local Vue, which was offering an over-18s only screening, which, according to the jerkoff who wrote that Guardian article, is the kind of behaviour only fun-hating assholes could possibly want. Fine, I'm a fun-hating asshole, but I'm a fun-hating asshole who was absurdly happy last night. Only about forty people attended the screening, but with an employee on hand to keep an eye out for bratty kids (the traditional bad apples that spoil the bunch) sneaking in and causing havoc, for the first time I've ever experienced in a big chain cinema, there was a feeling of happy community as we all got on with watching the goddamn film like we wanted. I've had too many shitty experiences going to the cinema, and it's the main reason I don't go as often as I used to. Quint had a memorable rant on Ain't It Cool News a while back, and I love that the talkbackers were almost 100% united behind him, something that almost never happens.

Paint me as a curmudgeon all you like, hack Guardian loser, but I'm sick of going to the cinema only to have to endure ice cubes thrown at my head (Ocean's Thirteen), kids having a party three rows in front of me (William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), threats of violence (Blade), incessant phone use (The Dark Knight, which was, other than that, a superb experience), or sitting in the middle of what felt like a flash mob gathering designed to create the maximum amount of carnage, misery, noise, and disruption possible (Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, which was exactly like that scene in Gremlins where they all watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, except scarier). I'll pay the extra pound just for some enforced civility which, of course, didn't need to be enforced because the people who bought tickets were eager to watch a movie without distraction and not have a get-together with their mates. It's fucking science. Kudos to Vue for making the experience feel a little more special than it usually would.

Something Of Boris?

Before I begin to discuss the latest Bond movie in a rambling, incoherent, and spoilery manner, some clarification on what the title of this post means:



We saw Quantum of Solace last night and were not nearly as blown away by it as we were with Casino Royale, which, as I've said before, instantly became one of my favourite Bond movies to date. That's not to say I didn't like it; it had punching, explosions, spies, subterfuge, creepy-looking Euro-villains, and someone getting killed with a tiny pair of nail scissors; how could I not love it on some level?

The good parts included Daniel Craig (of course), who continues to be the most exciting Bond since Connery, with his sexy body, excellent voice, and commanding screen presence. Playing Bond as half wounded romantic, half unstoppable force, it's impossible to take your eyes off him as he slams a variety of brawlers through doors and windows or juts his bottom lip out when he's trying not to let his emotions show. His amoral streak shows up regularly, be it killing various leads (which puts him into conflict with M) or impassively driving a boat while ignoring the unconscious woman at his feet.


That said, more than any other Bond so far, he's also incredibly bratty and cheeky, exposing the members of evil terrorist organisation Quantum at a performance of Tosca by jumping in on their communications chatter, an impulsive move that, despite working brilliantly, ends up with him shot at and framed for murder. Since the previous movie, where he loses the one thing he cares about, he has become even bolder, running from one lead to another without pausing for breath, all the while eluding those chasing him with embarrassing ease. One lovely moment shows him effortlessly outmaneuvering M's goons in a hotel, skipping onto ledges and into lifts while they thunder back and forth in futile pursuit. Considering the brute force on display elsewhere, his cocky playfulness shines through.


Also great is Dame Judi Dench as M, but that's no surprise. It was a magnificent casting decision that has paid dividends over the years, and I dread the day she hangs up her pantsuit. Her relationship with Bond in these two movies is far more interesting than her arc with Pierce Brosnan's Bond, which went from politically correct sneering (oh God I sound like Richard Littlejohn) to "Oh James!" after he saved her life during The World Is Not Enough. Now she's almost a reluctant mentor, trying to tame him and his darker impulses, and unable to believe he is not the monster she assumes him to be.

It's not a Bond film without a sleazy European bad guy out to exploit some natural resource or other, and here Mathieu Amalric (so great in Julian Schnabel's glorious The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) does a great job as Dominic Greene, evoking the creepy malevolence of Christopher Walken's Max Zorin and the weaselly physical presence of Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre, manipulating the Bolivian army and the CIA while pretending to be an environmental saviour. He also reminded me of Klaus Maria Brandauer's Maximillian Largo (from the non-EON Bond movie Never Say Never Again), with his nasty air of sexual inferiority and subsequent overcompensation, and I especially like that the plot, which revolves around acquisition of water utility rights, is compared so often to Chinatown, as Amalric's resemblance to Roman Polanski is notable (at least, I see the similarity. Apologies if that's just my brain being weird again).


I doubt he'll be seen as one of the great Bond villains, especially as he doesn't have a suitably evil/silly name, but he's better than almost all of the Brosnan villains (except maybe Electra King and, at a stretch, Alex Trevelyan). However, the Craig Bond movies have so far lacked any fun henchmen. Okay, so at least we're not getting a genetically altered albino Korean with diamonds embedded in his face, but dopey guy with hilarious bowlcut wig is at the opposite end of the ridiculous/boring spectrum of Bondian henchmannery (sorry for bringing up the truly dire Die Another Day. I'll try to ignore it for the rest of this post).


It's also not a Bond movie without ladies of the hott persuasion, and Britain's New Sweetheart, Gemma Arterton, barely registers as anything other than a startlingly glamorous minion of MI6 who gets to die in a manner reminiscent of the iconic murder of Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger. With far more screentime, and an A-plot-mirroring subplot of her own, Olga Kurylenko is adequate without being memorable. After the blinding performance from Eva Green in Casino Royale, it was going to be hard to cast someone to match that, but then, of course, the movie would fail if Bond immediately found someone as alluring and lively as Vesper. Casting someone who spends the entire movie looking very very very pissed off was probably very astute. One thing Kurylenko does well is be as stoic and inhumanly driven as Craig's Bond, and one of my favourite moments in the movie is their long walk through the desert, motivated so totally by revenge and duty that they don't speak to each other.


I was less pleased with the short-shrift Jeffrey Wright got as Felix Leiter. Apparently his role was cut down as there was already too much plot, which I can readily believe. It's a shame as Felix has never been a particularly well-used character, and finally, with an actor of the calibre of Wright in the role, we could have seen some real progression. As it is, he still manages to bring the character to life with little screentime, reacting with barely veiled disgust at the brazenly immoral machinations of his partner, CIA South America section chief Gregg Beam, played with nasty relish by David Harbour. Next time around, please can he get more screentime? Please? What a waste of a terrific actor.


While I was mostly happy with the cast, the film itself is problematic. Millions of column inches have been barfed out commenting on how the Bond franchise has had to reinvent itself in the wake of the successful -- and magnificent -- Bourne series, paring down the craziness, such as those ever-popular orbital lasers and whatnot, and concentrating on character and increased plot momentum, especially as many of the Moore Bonds ambled along for what seemed like hours (though I exempt the hugely underrated Octopussy from that, with its superb mid-film setpiece involving Bond chasing a nuke). For Casino Royale this worked brilliantly. With the majority of the movie revolving around the lengthy poker game, the film felt rooted in something approaching sturdy reality. Except for the first half of the film, Bond wasn't jumping from country to country, which annoyed some but pleased me. We learned more about him, Vesper, and Le Chiffre, all without going overboard with exploding oil tankers or invisible cars. It was all about the game, with its many deceptions. Stripped of all the bullshit, and with the stakes raised, Bond became fascinating again.


Quantum of Solace ditches that entirely. Restlessly jumping from one country to another, it's infinitely more complicated than Casino Royale, and as a result loses a lot of that character-based momentum, despite the frenetic editing and numerous action scenes. The Bourne movies don't feature much action, but they feel exhausting because we care what happens to Bourne. Same with Casino Royale. In Quantum of Solace, we're barely given time to digest even a single bit of information before we're whisked off to another location, be it Haiti, Italy (twice), Bolivia, or Austria. And England. And Russia. I came perilously close to losing track of what was going on a couple of times, though that was probably fatigue (I'd been playing Civilisation Revolution all day; very tiring).

What was touted as a revenge movie (which certainly made me think it would have a simple structure) is labyrinthine, detailing a plan to acquire water resources in South America by convincing the US government and the CIA to sign off on a coup in Bolivia, and that's before we get to Bond's quest to kill the men who made Vesper betray him. On top of that we also have Camille Montes and her plot to kill the man who, yes, killed her parents while she was a child (a disappointingly hoary subplot), as well as evil Greene's plans to kill Camille for some reason or other (I'll admit to missing that one). Beyond even those complications, there is Bond's psychic turmoil, which everyone thinks is making him a murderous crazy person, when in actual fact he has managed to compartmentalise his grief, creating the cold-hearted misogynistic assassin bastard that we all know and love. It's a lot to take in on first viewing, but I guess the best compliment I can give it is that I can't wait to see it again to absorb it properly.


Most frustrating is director Marc Forster's pacing. While the plot is so ambitious and globe-trotting that it literally never rests for a second, it doesn't help that Forster has cut the action scenes down so much that while we might get more fightyboomboom in this movie than in Casino Royale (if measured in minutes), none of the scenes last long enough to make an impression. It's not just a case of the usual overediting; while Canyon was annoyed by it, I thought it was bearable, though the end of the boat chase made little sense. Luckily for Forster, seeing Eagle Eye, with its utterly incomprehensible chases, makes any subsequent car chase look like it was filmed by Peter Hyams and edited by Frank J. Urioste. [/action movie nerd]

No, the real problem is that instead of a few memorable and lengthy scenes, we get numerous tiny moments that are good but ultimately forgettable. Compared to the wondrous free running scene, or the beautifully designed airport sequence (which built momentum as brilliantly as anything in the Bourne movies), there is nothing comparable in Quantum of Solace. The on-foot chase through Siena gets better as it progresses, finishing with an awesome rope-swinging battle, but ultimately just isn't long enough to be truly satisfying. It's the same with the brutal fight with a knife-wielding assassin (which takes far too many cues from the awesome Bourne vs. Desh fight in Bourne Ultimatum), the dogfight (which made very little sense), and the boat chase. The finale could have been longer as well; I have to say that considering the hotel where Bond has his final battle gets totally destroyed in the space of about five explosive minutes, I'm thinking fuel cell technology is definitely not the way to go.


It got to the point where, during the Tosca sequence, the editing of the action was either made as impenetrable and anti-exciting as possible by Forster because he wanted to intercut the usual carnage with operatic excess as some kind of statement, or because he was just bored with putting action in the movie. He also managed to wreck the flow of the Siena chase by intercutting it with the Palio di Siena horse-race, an event he seems to think is worthy of inclusion despite having nothing to do with the plot. While I'm impressed at the epic sweep of these two sequences, and am grateful to him for adding some glamour to Bond's adventures (something that has been lacking for a while) it smacks of pretension, with Forster adding extravagant distractions to the movie where more focus would help.


That's not to say that the action isn't well filmed. Everything looks great and hyper-exciting, with special praise for Craig who really sells the action, which I suspect reflects well on second unit director Dan Bradley, who gets a credit in the opening sequence, a rarity even for the most complicated of movies. Though I don't know how much of the action was handled by Forster or Bradley, I suspect that Bradley is responsible for much of it, seeing as how he has been a stunt coordinator on some of the most exciting movies of the past few years, such as the Bourne films, Spider-Man 2, and Art School Confidential. It's just a shame that the beautifully photographed and staged action got edited into irrelevance.


I will give kudos to Forster for making this the best looking Bond ever. Some scenes are unarguably gorgeous, and the decision to go back to Ken Adams-style excess really pay off in the finale. It's an interesting trade-off, sidelining the action in favour of visual splendour, though maybe not a trade-off I would make. Goldeneye and Casino Royale director Martin Campbell is derided by some as workmanlike or uninspiring; Harry Knowles seems to have a vendetta against him, but perhaps that's because Campbell replaced his buddy Robert Rodriguez on The Mask of Zorro. Fair enough, but seriously, considering the variable quality of Rodriguez' movies, we should be grateful Campbell turned out such an impeccable and thrilling adventure movie. As for his Bond movies, he has done excellent work rebooting the series twice, and doesn't get enough credit for directing actors. No matter how exciting it was, Casino Royale worked because Daniel Craig and Eva Green were a heart-breaking and convincing match, bringing genuine romantic emotion to the franchise for the first time since On Her Majesty's Secret Service (and was significantly more affecting as both actors are better than George Lazenby or even Diana Rigg, who is great nevertheless). Compare that to Pierce Brosnan's barely convincing feelings for Electra King in The World is Not Enough, or Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies. Craig and Green worked wonders with this material, given confidence by Campbell's sure hand and a terrific screenplay.


Still on the subject of Campbell (sorry), he's willing to allow an action scene to breathe, to fill up the screen for however long it takes for the mini-story of that conflict to play itself out. As a result he's created two of my all-time favourite Bond scenes, the St. Petersburg tank chase and the free running chase, both of which last for a significant amount of time. Quantum of Solace is that rarest of Bond films; one without an iconic action sequence or moment that makes you remember the movie even if the contorted plots fall away the minute you leave the screening.

These are off the top of my head: Casino Royale had the free running, Tomorrow Never Dies has the bike/helicopter chase, The World Is Not Enough has the Thames boat chase, The Living Daylights has the Afghanistan plane finale, From Russia With Love has the brutal proto-Bourne fight with Red Grant, Goldfinger has the never-bettered Fort Knox battle, Moonraker has the much-derided gondola chase (and wacky space-station laser battle), and You Only Live Twice has a bunch of ninjas attacking a fricking rocket launchpad hidden inside a volcano, people!!! Hell, even The Man With The Golden Gun has the incredible car stunt. There's only a few Bond movies that lack that one scene that blows your mind. Quantum of Solace has several contenders, but none of them are given a chance to really shine, which would be fine if that meant more focus on the characters, but as there is so much going on (in a shorter running time than Casino Royale), that's not the case, with Camille's sub-plot seeming to be especially hackneyed and underwritten.


Speaking of The Living Daylights (which I adore), by now, with Bond allowed to do more than be a n00b, we see that Craig's interpretation, as a post-romantic stoic killing machine, bears a resemblance to Timothy Dalton's humourless incarnation, especially as Bond goes rogue in this movie just as he did in Dalton's second movie, License to Kill (which I definitely do not adore). Thankfully, Quantum of Solace is infinitely better than that pile of doo-doo, but the lack of humour has stuck in the craw of many critics, who are now pining for a return to the wise-cracking playboy Bond of old. Of course, these same critics had turned their back on the series numerous times in the past, stating that the formula was outdated, so I won't even be treating their whining with the traditional pinch of salt, but though Quantum of Solace seems to be doing well at the box office, I do fear that a backlash might be in the offing, with the same audiences that embraced Casino Royale changing their minds after seeing the new deadly serious installment.

Hopefully the efforts of writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis (not to mention the uncredited Joshua Zetumer) will convince that Bond will continue to grow with each movie, generating an increase in audience empathy that has faded in the past when Bond movies appeared to be generated by some kind of robotic production line. The Bond of Quantum of Solace is almost impenetrable, but M and Camille give us enough of an insight into his thought processes that we feel for him as his grief threatens to consume him. While I'd argue he's not as far along as those characters think, he certainly has difficulty dealing with his emotions, and the final, ambiguous shot doesn't give us a hint as to whether he is unable to get over his sadness over Vesper's death and betrayal, or if he has, but those feelings have been replaced by psychic tumult caused by exposure to extreme levels of death and destruction, not to mention the realisation that the Quantum organisation is an enormous, potentially world-threatening hazard.


Still, I'm grateful that moment was left to the viewer to decode. Though I think Paul Haggis has done some of his best work on these two Bond films, he still manages to overegg the pudding with depressing regularity. After his miserable and unsubtle work on Crash (aka "AUDIENCES! RACISM IS TEH BADD!!!") and Flags of Our Fathers ("AUDIENCES! HEROISM IS KIND OF A NEBULOUS CONCEPT AND HEROES MIGHT NOT BE SO HEROIC AFTER ALL BUT HEY IT'S THE LABEL THAT COUNTS!!!"), he has tainted both Craig Bond movies with obvious statements about what he considers to be the theme of each film.

With Casino Royale there were the continual references to Bond's arrogance, and Quantum of Solace is marred by a particularly egregious speech from Giancarlo Giannini, who says the word "forgive" about 65 times in the space of a minute. M barks the word out a few times as well, just in case we missed the point. Apparently Bond has to "forgive" Vesper, and himself, before he can move on. For all the explosions and violence and sexual tension, Haggis tries his hardest to turn the film into an installment of some godawful, pedestrian TV show, with some dime-store psychology threatening to overwhelm the proceedings. The excellent actors make that shit work, but someone has to find Haggis and tell him that his signature style is tired and weak and please can he trust the audience a bit more, instead of pointing at his themes with a neon-green foam finger and screaming, "THEEEEEEEEEME!!!" Poor Giancarlo Giannini. Brutalised in the first movie, and then forced to beat Bond over the head with embarrassingly anvillicious dialogue.


It sounds like I hated it, but I really didn't. Though it didn't match up to Casino Royale (I didn't expect it to), the drop in quality was much smaller than the drop between Timothy Dalton's two films (i.e. precipitous) or Brosnan's first two (almost as bad, but saved by the inclusion of the reliably awesome Michelle Yeoh). The franchise still has massive potential, and if this installment didn't rock my world, it still managed to keep me hooked and hopeful for the next one. Fingers crossed they'll find a director who is willing to let the film breathe a little bit.

That was a lot to write. If you've made it this far, congratulations. Take it away, Jack White and Alicia Keys!



That's how you do it, Chris Cornell / Madonna / Garbage / Sheryl Crow / Tina Turner and Bono / Patti LaBelle / A-Ha. (Wow, the last good Bond theme was A View to a Kill?)

How We Waited Out The Election

Only now, as the smoke clears and the euphoria dies down, do I realise how much the wait for November the fourth had turned my mind into a stagnant pond, a Moebius strip of re-thought thoughts, cognition turned into a chore thanks to the insane worry over something I literally had no control over (at least Canyon could vote, an act that made her justifiably happy). Two days later, and look at me! I'm all florid and shit, like what I was previous, like.

During that interminable wait, we tried to keep ourselves occupied and not just keep reading the same four websites (though we enjoyed it all) and getting even more obsessed than usual with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Our efforts bore some pleasant fruit (the cherries and strawberries of the week) and some disappointing fruit too (mangoes, sharon fruit and unripe bananas, metaphorically speaking).

Burn After Reading

I had high hopes for this after the excellence of No Country For Old Men had erased disappointed memories of the previous four Coen Brothers movies (yes, I'm not crazy about O Brother, Where Art Thou? or The Man Who Wasn't There), but it was frustratingly slight. Being more of a fan of their hyper-weird comedies than their dramas, with The Big Lebowski at the top of my faves list and Raising Arizona close on its tail, I was hoping this would be similarly unhinged and frenetic, but instead it was like Fargo with more jokes, which is a problem considering I don't really like Fargo that much. At least, not as much as many seem to.


Of course, mid-level Coen Brothers movies still have a lot to recommend. Almost all of the performances were great (though weirdly Malkovich did my head in with. His. Stilted. Fucking. Line. Readings. And. Laboured. Fucking. Profanity.), with special kudos to the ever-wonderful Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins (who broke my heart). That said, why did they bother casting Tilda "Goddess" Swinton for a part that had about twelve lines? Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy to see her on screen in any capacity, but she seemed ill-served. Here's hoping she becomes a Coen repertory player and turns up again, except with something to do other than be annoyed with the men in her life.


Even with that cast, the film never seemed to come alive, though the central point, that of lampooning the arrogance and solipsism of a bunch of self-regarding twerps who think their pitiful lives have some greater meaning, when in fact all they are little more than a bunch of horny morons, was beautifully done, perhaps even more so than the previous times they have tried to make that point (No Country, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc.). I've had more fun thinking about the film than I did watching it. That said, Brad Pitt is a better comedic actor than I thought possible.


I'm grateful to the Coens for proving that.

Quantum of Solace

Casino Royale is possibly my favourite Bond movie since On Her Majesty's Secret Service, leapfrogging over The Living Daylights, The Spy Who Loved Me and Goldeneye, but poverty has delayed us going to see the latest movie. Instead I've been rewatching this over and over again.



We might still see it this week, once I've sold a kidney, following the wonderful news that Vue Cinemas have instituted over-18's only performances for people who don't want to put up with hordes of little shits treating cinemas like the local bus depot. A black man is elected President of the United States and a cinema chain (in our home town, no less) finally realises moviegoers have been staying away because of the behaviour of a bunch of oiks, all in the same week? This truly is the golden age of civilisation. Speaking of which...

Civilisation Revolution


If anything stops me blogging, it will be this game. In its previous manifestations it was already the greatest game ever made (yeah chess, thass right. What have you done for me lately?), but now it's less fussy, faster paced, and filled with endearing silliness. Canyon has been forced to put up with my wasting hours on the hellishly addictive thing, so much so that I'm now responding to her conversational gambits with a reflexive "Follum follum!" If you've played it, you know what that means.

Tropic Thunder

It's taken us way longer than we would have liked to see Ben Stiller's attack on Hollywood, and it was not even worth the wait. Despite the odd great moment, the whole ambitious exercise falls flat with upsetting regularity. Though Robert Downey Jr.'s performance is just as amazing as we had heard, he didn't actually seem have anything funny to say, and we ended up laughing at Jack Black's cold turkey shenanigans instead. Stiller's original concept for the film is hugely appealing, but the execution of it just didn't seem to click at all, with the plot drifting along from one lengthy and ultimately unfunny scene to another, seemingly without direction or purpose. It made Zoolander look like a tightly plotted Preston Sturges movie (I say that as a fan of Zoolander who thinks it sometimes ambles when it should be sprinting). While Adam McKay's movies mostly come alive in the editing room, this never takes shape, and no amount of amusing scenes with Tom Cruise dancing and swearing can save it. Dispiriting stuff, though I'm hoping to see a longer cut soon that might justify that brilliant idea, and maybe even give Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson something to do other than be straight men. Zoolander got funnier with each viewing, so maybe something similar will happen here, though I doubt it.


Compare that to Pineapple Express, which we watched again, and is now, definitely, my favourite comedy of the year. Considering it's a stoner comedy it's built with the same care that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg lavished on Superbad, progressing with logical beauty from scene to scene with only a couple of moments at the end of the second act that show they love their McKee a bit too much. It's not a deal breaker at all, though, and the Hot Fuzz-style genre mash-up of the final act is even more satisfying second time around, with kudos going to Rogen's repeated declarations of, "Nice!" whenever anything goes his way (such as the hilarious respawning machine guns in the underground lair).


In comparison, Tropic Thunder looks like a first cut mess, something you would show to a studio head to reassure them that the money is on the screen. How talented individuals like Stiller, Etan Cohen (partly responsible for the magnificent Idiocracy) and Justin Theroux could botch this is beyond me. The latter name is especially troubling. My previous excitement at his participation in Iron Man 2 has withered completely. Let's hope he's better off without the improvisational scenes between the leads that appear to have derailed the film so badly.

Justice Society of America by Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham

Is this the best comic on the market right now? In terms of superheroism, perhaps it is, though of course it has been great since Geoff Johns jumped onto the title early in the previous incarnation. Johns is always great value (especially lately; he's on fire), but JSA is better than ever, making me retroactively like Kingdom Come more than I originally did. However, the main reason is...





...OMG Hawkman is a TOTAL BADASS. Trust Goody-Two Shoes Jay to get in his way though.

Hunger

Turner Prize-winning director Steve McQueen's meditation on Bobby Sands' hunger strike has been damned by some of the UK press for daring to portray the Republican struggle in a noble light, which is hilariously inappropriate as that is absolutely not what the film is about at all. While, yes, it is set in The Maze and follows Sands' strike from conception to death, and while it shows in horrific detail the back-and-forth mental and physical combat between the imprisoned IRA soldiers/terrorists/politicians (delete as applicable) and the guards, it's pretty much an abstract exploration of what art is. Prisoners daub the walls of the cells with shit, flood the corridors of the prison with urine, and, eventually, stage a protest that turns their bodies, as depicted by McQueen, into a time-lapse photo of living, breathing decay. Even the poster shows one of the "paintings" by a prisoner (a nod to previous Turner Prize winner Chris Ofili?).


This is, as far as I can tell, the one reading of the movie that explains the peculiar structure. The first third of the film concerns a new prisoner (Davey, played by Brian Milligan) learning the ropes of prison life and the protests therein via his cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), the middle third is the much-debated conversation between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and his priest (Liam Cunningham) about mortality and politics, and the final third is an impassive, minimalist depiction of Sands' lengthy death with Davey and Gerry disappearing from the movie altogether. Bear in mind, except for the middle section, there is almost no dialogue, with only a minimal amount of verbally communicated information giving background on what is happening. There is barely any character development, but then that's not what the film is about. It's about their acts, their attempts to say something with little more than their bodies as the conduit of their emotion and rage. Much of what they do has little effect. The shit paintings are blasted away and the urine is washed up in a shot of audience-patience-defying length. Only the deaths of the hunger strikers seem to have any effect, though that is relegated to a few title cards at the end of the movie giving a few nuggets of information about the subsequent years.


Getting angry about the movie for glamourising the strike (shurely shome mishtake; it's nigh-unwatchable) or having a pro-IRA agenda seems wrong-headed, though I understand many people are never going to allow themselves to move on from those horrible years during the struggle. However, in the terms of the film, that struggle is less important than McQueen's interest in the way the prisoners and hunger strikers express themselves, with the only scene that debates the details of the Republican battles and the morality of politicised suicide being the notorious static art/anti-art shot of a drab room and Sands and his priest smoking and talking for twenty minutes, which, while hypnotic and superbly played, stands in contrast with the bleak, almost silent beauty of the rest of the movie. McQueen seems to be staring into his soul and wondering why he is an artist, and how his art compares to something as drastic as turning the place you live into a hellhole using only the waste products of your body, or allowing yourself to be brutalised just to make a statement and to psychologically affect those who torture you. Isn't art meant to affect the people who experience it? Isn't making a person beat you to a bloody pulp the most extreme way to do that? Where does that leave McQueen and the rest of the YBAs?


Can you tell that I thought it was amazing? There's a lot to digest (really, no pun intended), especially as it is attracting some fascinating debate, as in this excellent piece from Frieze magazine. It's definitely on my end of year best film list, and strongly recommended for anyone who can handle the body horror.

I'm unsure as to whether admitting that I spent the last couple of weeks doing all of that in addition to habitually checking on Obama's progress makes me look more or less sad. I could lie and say I also went sailing, if that helps. Of course, now we're waiting for his press conferences as if they were episodes of Friday Night Lights, as we tuned into CNN last night to see him talk about getting a shelter dog (which made Canyon almost swoon) and expressing condolences over a journalist's damaged arm (which almost finished me off). Compared to that slavish devotion to the President-Elect, acting like a couple of lovestruck groupies, six hour marathons of CivRev almost look cool.

Lost - The Other Woman

Ever feel like you're totally out of step with everyone else? That while you maintain the sky is blue everyone else thinks it's not only red, but on fire and falling? That's pretty much how I felt after finishing The Other Woman and going online for my traditional post-viewing internet trawl to find much wailing, teeth-gnashing, and egregious bitching. I felt like Juliet in this picture.


Jeff Jensen called it ”the first truly subpar episode of the season”, and Noel Murray said it was “a little remedial”, while talkbackers rained derision on it. “Bad bad bad bad episode.” “Boring.” “Poor writing.” “Worst. Episode. Ever.” “Young and the Restless love triangle bullshit.” I seem to be in the middle of a bickering argument with an AV Club commenter who hates episode writer Drew Goddard. It’s a shame because I thought this guy was alright in the past, but that’s going too damn far! I guess I’m just going to have to weather this alone, because this episode rocked my socks off, and saying it’s the worst episode of Lost when Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moth (and this season’s Eggtown) are still in our memories just baffles me. To each their own, of course, but still.


This week Juliet was manipulated by Ben in the past and the future, with the help of a new character, Harper, and what might have been Smokey pretending to be Harper. We won’t know for sure for a while, but Andrea Roth was playing Harper in a weird, monotone way as she appeared to Juliet in the jungle, in much the same way that Yemi and Walt and Ben’s mom did when they appeared to the islanders.


As usual, it was a nice touch to have Harper be the one to twice try to make Juliet jump through hoops, each time supposedly for the benefit of Ben, but the first time she does this, during the confrontation with Juliet in the middle of a therapy session, she’s more worried about Ben’s feelings than her own. Is this a sign that the Others are scared of Ben? Or do some of them idolize him? It makes sense; Tom’s behaviour during Ben’s surgery was more than just the usual panicky actions you would expect of someone watching an operation go wrong.


Ah yes, Tom. One of the many things I loved about this episode is that we got a chance to see Tom again. Of all the brave and/or stupid things Sawyer has done, killing Tom is the only one I’ve ever been really really pissed off about. I mean, I understand why he did it, but I thought Tom was great, genial and deadly in equal measure, just like in Con Air where M.C. Gainey played Swamp Thing. It’s one of the reasons why I like Frank Lapidus so much, that they give off this air of working class normality, that they're guys who would usually be sitting on a lawnmower drinking a Bud but are now dealing with a smoke-monster-infested island hidden inside a tesseract or whatever the hell is going on.

The title of the episode relates to Juliet, who is (as explained by Lostpedia) the other woman in Harper and Goodwin’s marriage, the other woman in the Jack-Kate relationship, the other woman in Ben and Annie’s relationship (who knows what’s going on there), and a woman who was once an Other. That said, the visual template of this show seemed to have fun with the idea of people standing behind other characters, being the "other woman" in the shot. It happened way too often to be just a coincidence. Harper stood behind Goodwin when he was being sent off on a deadly mission by the duplicitous Ben.


CS Lewis liked to creep up on people and when behind them, smack them over the head. First Kate...


…then Juliet.


There then ensued a big fight that destroyed the Tempest station while Faraday ineffectually pleaded with them to stop even as he typed crazy code into a computer like the big computer nerd he is. While he did that, Juliet stood behind him with a gun trained on him, CS Lewis pretty much incapacitated on the ground.


In each case we have a triangle of characters with the dominant character in the background, and there was one other moment where this happened, with Juliet running towards Goodwin’s corpse, Ben standing on the top of the hill behind her.


We could say Ben is the other “woman” in Juliet’s relationships, posing a threat to all of them with his creepy delusions. OMG is that a big twist coming up? Ben is a woman? If he’s as omnipresent as Harper hinted, perhaps he is everywhere and everything simultaneously. Is he God? Or the Devil? Or am I just running off at the mouth and the "Other Woman" can be considered just a phrase referring to the third person in a relationship?

Of course, at the end of the episode Juliet seems to get over Goodwin's death and after revealing her feelings for Jack (in an open setting that is the exact opposite of the gloomy interior of the therapy scenes), which prompts him to go kiss crazy with her, which has annoyed several commenters as being out of character for Jack. I say thee nay. Earlier in the episode Kate reminds Jack that she is a murderous fugitive, and though he presses Juliet on the details of her past, she says that she cannot talk about it. We know she has already killed one person (Danny Pickett), and maybe she feels she is responsible for Goodwin’s death.


Jack probably doesn’t know any of this, and if his feelings for Kate were not already compromised by her apparent siding with Sawyer (which we know is not going the way Sawyer was hoping), they are further complicated by the belief that Juliet is a morally safe option. Add to that the whole “protector” element of his personality, and his newfound confrontational attitude when it comes to Ben, and his decision to kiss her seems much more believable. He seems conflicted after doing it, but then his act is more about being defiant in the face of Ben’s apparent omnipresence than it is about feelings. At least it appears that way. Nevertheless, we get one final shot of a triangle; Jack and Juliet embracing, but they appear tiny in the entrance to the Tempest station, the weapon with which Ben (maybe) planned to kill everyone. Jack may think he stands a chance against Ben, but he is just a tiny player in Ben’s huge invisible plan.


This is not the only foreshadowing in the episode. For the second time we’ve seen Locke preparing food, his hands covered with blood. There is an argument that this refers to his murder of Naomi, but I have a very strong feeling that he will soon be responsible for much loss of life on the island. How this will happen I don’t know, but I’m very worried about it. There’s a strong possibility this cast cull will include Claire, as she is framed in the shot with his bloodied hands in the foreground.


Another visual touch occurred to me while going through the episode again. In the therapy scenes between Harper and Juliet, the curtains are partially drawn and the lighting is somewhat gloomy, suggesting they are hiding from the rest of the camp (which would be normal procedure for a therapy session, but Tom coming in in the middle of it, as well as Harper’s antagonistic relationship with Juliet tends to suggest the Others have a conflicted attitude to psychiatry).


Later in the episode, when Ben takes Locke to the safe in the wall, the curtains are half-closed in the same way, and both characters are shot in a sort of half-shadow, as if underlit.


Therapy is meant to be about finding answers, revealing parts of yourself, and this visual connection between the two scenes might suggest that we’re meant to think of Ben’s revelations to Locke as something similar to an act of openness, but the therapy session is a twisted version of the actual process. This makes me wonder if Ben is still lying to Locke knowing that with the information he provides he will then be set free in order to arrange the payment to Miles, thus getting him off the hook with Widmore. Don’t forget, he says to Locke that he kept the identity of his nemesis a secret as it was “The only bargaining chip I had left.” By now I think it’s safe to say there is no way we can trust Ben on this point. More on that in a moment. Though we did definitively find out that Ben has some really dull taste in art, African masks notwithstanding.


One of the criticisms leveled at The Other Woman is that it didn’t offer any new information, but merely gave us stuff we could already figure out ourselves, and I guess you could say that, but there were little things that were deeply satisfying to see revealed or addressed. Ben thanking Juliet for looking after Zach and Emma, the two kids taken from the Tailies, was a nice touch, as they very rarely get mentioned. Actually, neither does their other babysitter, Cindy the flight attendant, who should be bemoaning the death of her boyfriend Gary Troup, but seems to have been Room 23’d into submission. This conversation made me wonder if the list is a lie concocted by Ben to justify his actions. Ben needs kids to fill out his shrinking band of acolytes? Kidnap some kids! Jacob says so! If this isn't the case and there really is a list, then Jacob is just as omniscient as Ben is now appearing to be.

I also loved that we found out that it was not just canisters of deadly gas that killed the Dharma Initiative, but venting of gas from the Tempest power station. On the commentary for The Man Behind The Curtain Darlton revealed that Ben’s father Roger was meant to die as a result of gas that covered the island, but it seemed unclear what was happening, so inserted a shot of Ben using a deadly smoke grenade. Now this seems totally superfluous following CS Lewis’ revelation (one of many moments during the episode that took me by surprise).


Another criticism of the episode is that there was no suspense during the big fight at the end, where Faraday is trying desperately to render a deadly gas inert, but the siuspense wasn’t whether he would be able to do it (it’s obvious he will, otherwise the series is over), but whether Ben was lying again or not. The showrunners have managed to keep his motives so unclear for so long that any time he says something, or something is attributed to him, the show becomes all about whether it is a lie or not. The moment in Through the Looking Glass where Ben’s comments about the freighter were dismissed by Jack and his fists is one of my favourite moments in the show because it made perfect sense that someone exposed to his games would just snap at some point. I mean, look at how smug he looks while eating fries. Punch his face in, survivors of Oceanic 815!


He is a total conundrum, and I bow to the showrunners for making him such a confusing character. We’re all still debating whether or not he really is one of the good guys. His actions are murderous and shady, but for all we know he really could be trying to save if not the island then the world. Until we know what Widmore is after, Ben’s actions will remain indecipherable.


Further to that confusion on the part of the viewer, it was deeply odd to be watching the show and rooting for Goodwin, who just a couple of seasons ago was a murderous child-stealing son of a bitch, but then Ben's not the only contradictory character on the show. The flirting between Juliet and Goodwin was soooo adorable that it was hard not to root for them, even knowing what we know about Goodwin. He's lucky. I doubt Ethan Rom will ever get a flashback appearance that casts him in a positive light.


The showrunners have been playing a game with our perception of the Others for a while now, and this is part of the moral confusion about Ben. That confusion was almost eradicated in this episode as we realised that although Ben is certainly the smartest person on the island, if not the planet, and is plotting moves so far in advance of everyone else that we can never count him out, there is another side to him that's only been hinted at. The batshit crazy megalomaniacal side.


Even if I were to think that this episode was poorly written or boring or a waste of time (which I don't), it is justified by the moment where Ben brings Juliet to Goodwin's corpse just show what he is willing to do to keep her. His reading of this line was heartstopping.

You're asking me why? After everything I did to get you here? After everything I've done to keep you here? How can you possibly not understand that you're mine!

Screw it, I'll just go right out and say it. It's one of the great moments of the entire show, and possibly his Emmy/Golden Globe nomination scene. We'll see what happens later this year.


As I said before, Ben is fascinating because his motives are so mysterious and so confused by his layers of obfuscation that his could conceivably end up being justified in our eyes. This moment, however, shows that he is capable of evil for personal reasons. With that fantastic moment, as his pissy superior mask dropped for a moment, he became terrifying. He also hinted at far worse actions than we have thought possible.


What he did to get her to the island? I don't think that was just manipulating evidence to make her think her sister was dying. I think he somehow made the bus kill her shitty husband (Edmund Burke, played by Zeljko Ivanek). As for what he's done to keep her on the island, other than lying to her, the only thing he could have really done is arrange for all of her patients to die. That's the most chilling thing I can think of. Ignore the cutesy Ben here. The man is a genius with the personality of an aggrieved teenager, like the omnipotent kid in Joe Dante's section of Twilight Zone The Movie.


The best scene in the episode came with Locke's momentary triumph over Ben as he reveals he knows about the deal with Miles. Though a second viewing made me wonder just how surprised Ben really is, first time around it was fun. While I might have started to worry about Locke's erratic behaviour over recent weeks, his frustrating but in-character inability to just shut the goddamn door and walk away as Ben toyed with him simultaneously delighted and annoyed me.


Of course, Ben is either outplotted by Locke (unlikely) or pretending to be (far more likely), but this shot...


...was only half as good as this one...


...and this moment, with Locke smugly handing over a dollar, was the ace in the hole.


I cannot begin to tell you how much I enjoyed that. We need to see Locke seem to regain his footing, because I'm sure that when Ben's new plan clicks together, Locke's confidence will be wrecked. Ben has the time to plot something truly cunning to take down his new nemesis, far better than his kneejerk shooting of last season. I dread it (because I love Locke) at the same time that I look forward to it (because I love Ben).

Other things that occurred to me this week: I'm always glad to see Brett Cullen on a show, though he never seems to be around for long. Fingers crossed there will be more flashbacks on the island. Ben and Rousseau definitely need them.


I get the feeling it's hard to whip around in falling rain with a gun and a torch in your hand. Foxy looked like he was trying not to burn his face off.


Though I rail against the internet hatred aimed at this episode, it wasn’t all great. My new Lost bugbear, the thinning of the extras cast, continues to irk. When Jack enlists Jin, Juliet and Sun to look for CS and Faraday, we see the beach camp is empty except for them. And hey, why is Jack getting the pregnant Sun to run through the jungle anyway? Dick.


We also see the Barracks seemingly empty except for the main actors. Why is everyone hiding? In the flashback we see Others everywhere, but at the moment Locke’s followers appear to be hiding in their cabins. Perhaps it’s for budgetary reasons, but it wrecks my enjoyment of these scenes.


Another complaint about the episode was that it tried too hard to fit everyone in even while hiding the extras, and certainly Claire's appearance seemed out of place (since when has she cared about island maintenance?), but it was still good to see Sawyer and Hurley playing yet another time-wasting game, even though yet again Sawyer forgets to put his glasses on and therefore fails terribly.


Plus, Sun and Jin and Vincent, getting a big belly-rub whooosa good doggie yesh you are! Funny that Jin has seemingly adopted Vincent, considering how he and Michael hated each other for so long.


I'm torn as to which character I disliked more in this episode. Was it Haughty Harper, with her perpetually angry face?


Or was it CS Lewis, with her equally catty expressions and duplicity?


It's worrying that of the new characters this season it's the two women that annoy me, but I'm hoping the imminent appearance of Regina, played by the awesome Zoe Bell, will set that straight. At least Kate was fun this week, getting all vengeful with a gun in a mirror of the previous scene where CS Lewis clonked her on the noggin.


Who looked worse this week? Jack with his bizarre eyebags? (The actors on this show are all beginning to look pretty tired and old at this point, which, you know, fair enough.)


Or was it Juliet in her bizarre big hair / crazy make-up phase?


That's harsh, actually. I mean, seriously, how cute were Juliet and Goodwin? This shot of her reacting to Goodwin's arrival in her lab broke my heart, knowing the pain she would go through later, made worse when you realise that it wasn't fate that caused it, but some machination of Ben's.


Besides, she got to impersonate Daniel Craig, so yay for her.


Consider this my efforts to balance out the shot of Sawyer's balls that I had to post previously. Of course, this might be considered a pic too far, so I'll screw the balance up more with a shot of Daniel Dae Kim's absurdly handsome face.


In the next episode of Lost to be screened very soon after the posting of this post! Sun and Jin and probably Michael I mean seriously it's been obvious for a while now he's on the boat! Who will be among the Oceanic Six? I'll wager it's Sun, but I doubt it will be Jin. In which case, enjoy the pic above. He will very probably not be on the show for much longer. ::sniff:: There goes Canyon's dream of a Hurley / Sawyer / Jin spin off show.