film and tv

Earlier (unposted) grousing about Gareth Roberts

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Secrets of the Stars, Part 1

Rather better than I expected, actually. Though I’m starting to question the point of stories like this. What’s it trying to say, exactly? Why write something like this?

Next week, hey, another near-cataclysm that everyone will forget about the week after. More hypnotized people wandering out into the streets, more chaos.

Is Mr. Roberts just doing this because Davies has done it a few times, and he’s seen that it worked before? Or is this all crucial to some profound original thought that he’s trying to get across?

What’s the point in writing fiction if it’s just fiction for the sake of fiction? Isn’t fiction supposed to be metaphorical? Isn’t it supposed to be a framework to illustrate your observations about life?

Maybe I’m just grumpy today.

* *

The only two Roberts-related things that have impressed me are Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? and, somewhat, Invasion of the Bane. One of those was co-written with Davies, and I think Davies basically rewrote the other from scratch.

As I said earlier, I guess I don’t understand why he writes what he writes. He doesn’t seem to have anything of his own to say. The only motivation I can detect is a certain fetishism. Of Doctor Who, of Agatha Cristie, of Shakespeare, of certain pop culture references. It’s like his scripts are a collection of objects, that he points to as if it’s self-evident that they’re wonderful. Because, look! See!

You get that in his Agatha Cristie episode. “Awwwooh, you’re wonderful! You know why you’re the best writer ever? Because you’ve had your heart broken, so you understand people!”

What?

* *

If you were to hire the Comic Book Store Guy from The Simpsons, I imagine his scripts would be pretty much like this.

It’s weird how I feel patronized by his writing, considering it does little but emptily ape Davies’ mannerisms. I guess that’s it — all the froth of Davies without any of the lager?

“Whatever Happened” is the best Sarah Jane to date, and it really does not feel like Roberts’ other work. There was an aside a while ago — I think an excerpt from The Writer’s Tale — where Davies mentioned that he was about to go write those two episodes. So maybe that explains something.

I think the reason they keep him around is that Roberts gets the house tone down pat. If you don’t look too close, he does a very passable imitation of Davies. He would perhaps make a decent editor of some sort.

I should say that neither has he written anything really poor, exactly. It all passes the time genially enough. Sort of.

It just all seems a bit irrelevant.

Secrets of the Stars, Part 2

Aohhhhh, blood control?! I haven’t seen blood control in yeeeeeaaaaars! Weelll, three years to be precise. Well, thirty-four months. Give or take.

Hum.

The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith, Part 1

That was pretty good, though I’ve a few problems with it. Most of the acting was off the mark. Sarah Jane’s parents were played a notch too broadly, for instance. Also, it didn’t do quite enough in tone to distinguish the past from present.

More importantly… um. Okay, they did hang a bunch of lampshades on it, but golly was Sarah Jane written poorly. Her behavior here doesn’t at all fit her character, and the script (and show to date) hasn’t done enough to really justify her boneheaded decisions. If anything, the fact that she and everyone else keeps talking about how dumb she would have to do to do what she did just underlines how bizarre it is that she did it anyway.

This is a classic example of a writer coming up with a plot, then trying to justify the actions the characters need to take for the plot to work. The commentary on those actions just comes off as the author saying “Yeah, I know this doesn’t work — but I’m doing it anyway, because in a battle between plot and character, plot wins. Especially my plot, because it’s brilliant.”

It’s, you know, a better than usual episode. That’s mostly a factor of its ambition, though. Its basic concept is fine. I still remain unconvinced of Gareth Roberts’ skill as a writer. He seems to have little understanding of or interest in the way people work outside of film and TV cliche — which is maybe a problem in a script that depends entirely on character motivation. I’d like to see what would have happened if he’d handed this idea over to Mr. Lidster, for instance. James Moran might have been interesting.

I’ll admit also that I have extreme prejudice against stories that require a character to act like an idiot. So given that, it’s of some credit to the story’s ambition that it carries my attention nonetheless.

Also see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot

The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith, Part 2

So this episode it’s Rani’s turn to randomly act like a dolt, because they need (rather weird) exposition and a false emotional note with her mother to complete the dramatic arithmatic. Ho hum. At least it doesn’t lead to head-slapping consequences; just to tedium.

It’s becoming all the more clear to me how much of “Whatever Happened” Davies must have written.

Sort of interesting that the Graske is becoming a character now, rather than a random monster-thing.

You can tell that the Trickster is played by the head Futurekind fellow — such distinctive body language. I like the job he does, though he doesn’t have much to work with. Mostly growling and doom declaration. Lots of talking about doing.

Actually, this story is a lot of talking about doing. Talking about plot. Flatly directed, at that. Lots of medium shots.

The theme they’ve given Sarah Jane in high-drama moments — it’s very similar to a Danny Elfman cue, that’s on the tip of my mind. Is it from Edward Scissorhands?

Mind, it’s nice in principle to have stories that explore Sarah Jane’s backstory.

I assume the idea behind the police box is that the new TARDIS has been established as not looking exactly like a real police box? Except neither does this one.

That jogging UNIT fellow in the trailer — have we seen him before?

* *

it seems Gareth Roberts’ perspective as a writer rarely verges outside the experience of a fan. In his Tennant episodes (Shakespeare, Wasp) the Doctor becomes a dribbling fanboy of some public figure and spends the whole episode bursting with quotes and references to prove his affections for that person’s work. Story structure and thematic content hew to genre conventions, inasmuch as events happen because they tend to happen in shows and stories like this rather than because of a higher necessary function like character or conceptual development. Roberts just doesn’t have much to say as a writer except “I enjoy pop culture; here is what I enjoy”.

All that nonsense about the witches and the recitation of words being a science; it’s only there as a self-conscious reference to Logopolis. At no point does he use the notion to illustrate an actual theory or observation about life. It’s a throwaway reference to an old episode of a TV show, that didn’t really make sense then beyond a metaphorical reading of Buddhism, to explain why something that you’d expect to see in a Shakespeare play is happening then and there — as convention dictates that it must in a show like this, because this episode deals with Shakespeare.

And then it’s gone; he never explores it further, unless you count Tennant’s froth about Shakespeare’s brilliance with words. Even that is insisted in a reverent manner, rather than shown. When it comes time for Shakespeare to prove his brilliance, instead Roberts just quotes from Harry fucking Potter. And then the Doctor dribbles about J.K. Rowling’s genius, for the second time in 45 minutes.

Easter Desert

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Yes, that was about as sophisticated and original as anything Gareth Roberts has written.

Hum.

What was the point of the psychic woman? Even as an exposition projector, she seemed a bit superfluous.

Well, okay, so we’ve got prophecy again. In series two and three, it was the Face of Boe, in the year Five Billion (also in series one!), talking about the Master.

In series four and four-and-a-half, it’s the Ood, mostly in the forty-second century, talking about… well, the Master. Presumably. Again. With the woman channeling the Ood, who have a part yet to play.

Prophecy Planets. (Or time zones. Not as catchy, though.) This is a new kind of continuity. I’ve not seen this in other shows.

Other thoughts.

Shame about the fly people. Why kill them both? You’re just spoiling the potential for interesting scenes later. I’d have liked to see them join up with UNIT as mechanics.

Regarding the bus, how does that work, exactly? There’s no obvious means of propulsion or steering; it’s just got floaty things on its wheels. By what means is it moving around? I could maybe understand if the Doctor were adjusting the lift on the different hover pod things, to use gravity as a driving force — gliding, basically. That’s not what’s happening, though.

As some Internet people have noted in passing, on top of the dead end of the psychic woman — maybe more of a problem than the other forgotten passengers, or the pointlessly-killed fly men, as the mere existence of a psychic would seem to suggest some significant story purpose — is all the business about the dead people, the civilization that used to be here. They go into a mess of detail, and dwell on the subject for many grim and portentous beats. All to set up, what, that these monsters can destroy a world? Thanks for that.

This story is full of so many random details that go nowhere — and then the details that they do carry through don’t make much sense.

In the end, we don’t even hear much about these metal sting ray things except a few sterile facts. They’re nothing except a time limit to ensure that our heroes hurry in getting the bus back. Which they do only as slopplily as I’ve noted.

Just… what’s the point of this episode? That’s the problem I have with most things Gareth Roberts writes. They seem to exist just to take up space, throwing around random narrative objects and pointing at them as if they’re inherently meaningful.

This is embodied in all the fan-worship in his scripts — whether it’s the Doctor dripping nonsense over Agatha Cristie (“You know why you’re the greatest writer ever? Because you’ve been hurt, so you know how people feel!”) or the gratuitous Doctor Who Love Patrol, strung all through this episode.

In place of the most rudimentary thematic or plot or character development, Gareth Roberts’ scripts seem to consist almost entirely of people outright telling the viewer that things are important, hoping to catch the viewer up in naked faux enthusiasm. And then it’s that rapturous glee at particular things existing that saves the day. Every time! Good old JK Rowling! Good old Shakespeare and his words!

Ugh.

I’m assuming Moffat won’t hire this guy?

Before transmat, there was Travel-Mat (R)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

The Seeds of Death is the only Ice Warrior story that does much for me. It’s not like it’s amazing; it’s cordial, full of your lovely moments with the regular cast, and graced with a mix of halfway interesting ideas and uncommonly good acting and direction.

There is, for instance, the fellow up on the station — the spineless one, whose name I forget. The actor is handed a fairly one-dimensional role, yet he manages to inject an extraordinary amount of psychology into it. One tends to feel sympathy for him, until the plot demands he do or say something irredeemable. The result is nearly a Baltar-like character — you want to understand him, and his weakness, yet despite his guilt and fear it seems he really isn’t a good person. It’s a shame the script isn’t as smart about the character as the actor is.

Generally, that’s the kind of objection I have with this story. The world painted in this story is thoughtful, imaginative, and well-realized; there’s just a bit much of it, and for the time they’re given, the ideas and characters never really develop or go to much end besides driving the plot. It’s not a big deal, but there it is.

So it’s fine. Inconsequential yet cozy. The cleaned-up picture is also gorgeous. The most negative reply I can come up with is a shrug.

Eleven

  • Reading time:2 mins read

So Matt Smith is not at all what I was expecting — and this is good! In terms of his personality and mannerisms and appearance, he seems to have beamed in from his own universe. Combine that with the practical thematic aspects of going so young, and it really does feel like the character’s portrayal is getting rebooted. Or brought in a completely new direction, anyway.

Combine this with Moffat’s comments that he intends to focus on the logistics and consequences of time travel, and series five is starting to sound pretty fascinating. I don’t know what to make of it! I can only imagine.

Young, mercurial (as Mr. Hellman puts it) man who calls himself “the Doctor” (uh-huh…) and claims to be hundreds of years old. And who keeps getting involved in time paradoxes…

David Hellman thinks an older, more intellectual woman would make a good companion. I’m inclined to agree!

For a first episode, I’m thinking maybe of An Unearthly Child II, set in a university. A fortysomething college professor becomes fascinated by one of her students, and… oh dear, this is turning into a bad fantasy, isn’t it.

Thing is, for all the bravado he projects and all his knowledge, the Doctor is emotionally underdeveloped. And needy. In a way, shaping him as a very young man — which he is, in spirit — who has seen far too much, and is far too clever for his own good, is a good way to address the character’s demons. To allow him to mature somewhat, and move on.

Moffat, more than any other Who writer so far, seems interested in exploring what makes the Doctor tick. And this is a great opportunity for that. Giving him an older female companion who can take care of him as well as she can fend off his intellectual spurts and tantrums — well, it’s kind of a natural evolution of a theme, isn’t it?

Donna was very good for the Tenth Doctor, in part because of the standards that she held him to; similar deal with season-one Rose, and Ian and Barbara.

That would be so interesting: basically exchange Susan for the Doctor himself, and pair him with a new Barbara, and send them off to figure out what it actually means to be a Time Lord. Logistically and emotionally.

Pippenjane

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Time and the Rani doesn’t particularly try to be realistic. To start with, it’s clearly written as a farce. Beyond that, several times it deliberately breaks the reality of the situation to (not to make it sound more sophisticated than it is) make some kind of meta-commentary about the show and the way it’s perceived. There’s the business about the Doctor being horrified at a vision of Mel’s face, and whatnot. If that’s not the 1987 equivalent of “the windows are the wrong size”, I’ll eat my left shoe.

The unreality of the thing has always struck me as rather the point. All the awful things in it aren’t so much awful in their own right as they are, on some level, a commentary on the lazy way the show is often put together. And in that, I think it’s mostly pretty on-target and hilarious.

I realize that the script was already sitting there and that Cartmel was less than thrilled with it, but the subversive, postmodern sense of humor strikes me as all him — rebelling against a by-the-numbers script that served no purpose and had nothing to say by turning those qualities on their heads. It calls to mind the “fanboy” in Greatest Show and the philosophical guard in Dragonfire, if a bit broader and less informed. More of an outsider’s perspective — which he was, at the time.

Davies does this all the time now — Love & Monsters, for instance. Which I realize isn’t everyone’s thing, but… well. Major difference is, he does it better.

The Humanism of Verfremdungseffect

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Objectively, most Doctor Who is pretty crap. So it seems silly to get particular about what’s more crap than what, when you can just be watching and enjoying it for what it is, and reading in what you want to read in.

It’s the spirit and the ideas behind any given serial that grab me. The execution is never even close to adequate in the best cases, so who cares if it’s a shade shabbier or shinier. You just have to be affectionate. It’s the only sane way to go.

Personally, I find the McCoy era warmer than any era since Troughton and more rich with ideas than just about any period since Hartnell. So it’s a winner in that regard.

Thing is, in the end objectivity is an absurd thing to take into account.

Rarely is Doctor Who directed well. Rarely is it acted particularly well. Rarely are the costumes or sets or effects close to convincing. When they are, the lighting gets in the way or the staging makes a mockery of any sense of verisimilitude. Only occasionally is it written with more than passable skill and the faintest inspiration to color outside the lines. Rarely does any story actually take advantage of the format.

Yet the show has heart, and sometimes it’s got some real ambition. Usually it’s in those moments that the practical elements all conspire to ensure failure. But so what?

You just have to watch the show as if you’re watching your local theater troupe. You know these people. You believe in them. You know the odds they’re up against, in portraying what they want to portray. So what if the lighting was a smidge more professional last week; it’ll never be Kubrick, and you’re only making an ass of yourself by expecting it. What you should be paying attention to is the humanity behind it all. And that’s where this show excels.

That’s also why I tend to find any flaws more hilarious than distracting. I’m not working under the bizarre notion that this show needs to meet any kind of objective standard to be worthwhile. All it has to do is engage my humanity — and there’s nothing more human than failure, or more funny than failure at something as unimportant as showmanship. Hell, Kurt Weill would be thrilled. Not all the praise for B-movies is ironic. See the affection in Burton’s Ed Wood.

The show’s abject failure at convincing showmanship is almost universal. It’s a bit more prominent in the late ’80s, but draw your own silly metaphor about degrees of gray. Again, I also find the same period warmer and more inspired than most. However poorly executed it is, it’s patently obvious that the show is being made with sincerity. And that’s the most important thing ever. That, there, is what life is all about.

Criticism by numbers

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Three things to consider, when regarding an expressive work:

1) How well it says what it’s trying to say
2) Whether what it’s trying to say is worth hearing
3) Whether there’s worth to what it actually does say

When you’ve found all your answers, the order in which to weight them is: 3, 1, 2.

Janus Thorn

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I’m really into film and TV restoration. I don’t know if this comes out of my childhood love of archaeology. It would be hard to overstate the influence of Tintin and Uncle Scrooge… Yet I’m maybe a bit spoiled. I pay attention to massive projects like Rear Window and My Fair Lady, to revolutionary ones like the Murnau Foundation Metropolis job, and to compulsive, continually-improving efforts from guys like the Doctor Who Restoration Team. I’m used both to employing every available tool to repair material and present it in the best possible light, and extensive features geared to contextualize the work both contemporarily and retrospectively, examine its production, and illustrate its place in any relevant oeuvre. The point is to put a work back on its feet again, and send it back into mainsteam culture.

The Universal and Warner Hitchcock discs, though relatively unhailed, do a decent job at all of this. Kino is a mixed bag — even their meticulously restored Nosferatu has some amazing undergraduate blunders — yet they clearly try hard under a limited budget to present something significant.

Thing about Criterion — they strike me as sort of a lowest common denominator of film preservation. They’re not into preservation, really; into keeping works healthy and relevant and in circulation. They pander to film fetishists and collectors. They kind of do a half-assed job at both restoration and extras. For reasons I cannot understand, they don’t stabilize film weave. They don’t paint out dust and scratches, or even socket holes. They rarely clean up the sound. Most of their extras, though certainly well-researched, are off-the-shelf and dry as hell. Their DVDs strike me as academic, snooty, overpriced, and not particularly ambitious in the very areas where they claim superiority.

They do good presentation, though. And they do a good job of raising awareness of less obvious films (at least, to a point). And then they put them out in limited editions, and number them so their fans can buy ’em all (at prices around double of other publishers). They’re like the Working Designs of film preservation. (According to that article, Vic Ireland is starting a company called Gaijinworks. Oh my dear Lord Numpty…)

Criterion’s relationship with Janus also weirds me out a little. I realize that it’s basically the commercial arm of Janus, and I understand that Janus is to be credited with a certain amount of US exposure of independent and foreign films, before the boom of indie cinema. In retrospect I always find it a little weird to see their logo plastered in front of so many important movies that they didn’t have anything directly to do with. It’s almost like a corporate collector-fetishism, if maybe for the ultimate cultural good, sort of? This isn’t something I’ve put a lot of thought into; it’s just been scampering around my subconscious. It may be based on nothing but my own prejudices.

Anyway. People keep asking me what I think of Criterion. My answer: phooey!

Though the packaging to their Yojimbo/Sanjuro set is just devine.

(Full disclosure: I have about half a dozen Criterion DVDs, from Hitchcock to Wong Kar-Wai. I’m more impressed with their “new” movies than their classic library. Mostly because they don’t require restoration or much context; all they need is nice packaging and presentation. And yes, In the Mood for Love is classy as hell.)

Annie Which Way

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I’m thinking that it’s the shortcuts an artist takes that tend to date a work. I’ve had Smooth Criminal in my head for a litlte while. And it’s an excellent song, for what it is. It’s well-written — but the entirety of that album is cheap synthesizers, with MJ singing on top.

That song could have been properly orchestrated and performed. And you could trace what decade it came from, stylistically, but it wouldn’t sound “dated”, in the sense that it’s somehow… no longer as relevant? The synth is so cheap and tinny that it’s distracting. And again, the entire album is kind of like that. It was a way for Jackson to have complete control over what he was doing. Which is fine, but then he didn’t go back and flesh it out. The synth was “good enough”. So twenty years later, it sounds like a bit of a cop-out.

And I’m just projecting here, but it strikes me that many of the things that seem laughable or outdated in film or music or videogames are similarly cheap compromises. Some kind of a contemporary easy solution. Whereas the things that still seem relevant today, however you might trace them to a particular era stylistically, tend to find all their own custom solutions to their problems: The Maltese Falcon; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; a lot of the later-on Beatles stuff.

There are phases that a medium goes through, artistically. Pop trends in simple solutions. Videogames go through a lot of them. “Oh, here’s the proper way to deal with this.” Which is one of the things that bugs the hell out of me with that Ludology business.

Ludology is the academic study of videogames. Which is, you know… it generally tries to be very objective, in studying what videogames are, and how they work right now, and what has been done before, and how to hone that model. It’s proscriptive by implication of description. So what it tends to do is it objectifies videogames as an end unto themselves. As opposed to, you know, exploring how this tool set might be used to say something new or interesting. And it’s got that whole academic sniffiness about it, just to make it the more obnoxious.

An analytical breakdown is useful, but in context. In service to a greater goal. Videogames are about communication, as is all art. Though to a certain extent more overtly than most. Any analysis should be about exploring the mechancis and ramifications of that discussion. Rather than focused on What Videogames Are.

Anyway. I guess this kind of ties into the shortcut thing — the objective treatment of a work, using the standards of the day, tends to in the long run turn the work into a bit of an artifact. So. Basically, there’s something complex going on when you throw a band-aid on and say “yeah, this’ll work.” In a few years, the patchwork will become opaque, and it will begin to define your work.

And that’s also how genres get dumb, when people say “Oh, I like that — I’m going to do something just like it!” That’s the same thing. You’re taking someone else’s solution and applying it out of context. You’re taking a subjective goal and treating it objectively. Until the solutions begin to define what things are, rather than what they’re trying to solve.

What’s amazing about something like The Maltese Falcon — the Huston version — is that there are virtually no shortcuts. There’s pretty much never a sense that anyone involved just pulled something off the shelf and said “okay, this takes care of that. No one will notice.” Even though it’s the third version of the same movie to be made by the same studio, in under ten years. So you come at it now, and everything feels like they’re figuring it out for the first time, on their feet. Everything is custom-tailored to the situation. And it’s gripping and relevant and alive, every time you see it. And this is what makes a work timeless.

Alan Wake

  • Reading time:3 mins read

So, Sarah Jane is back in town. And Sladen is a bit less awkward in her acting.

I like the way (new showrunner) Phil Ford accounted for a rather tough list of ingredients — writing out Maria, giving a big role to all the Jacksons, reusing props and effects from Who, setting up some recurring story threads, following up on recent and ancient continuity without relying on it — and churned out a rather solid, pacey adventure at the same time.

Maria’s departure could have been handled so many ways, all trite, yet it felt organic, truthful, and not at all cloying. And I love the way it folds into the A plot, effectively giving her whole family a big farewell.

It’s all rather… snuggly. A shame to lose Maria and (especially) her dad. Ah well.

I quite like, also, that the story isn’t predicated on “big reveals”. Both the Sontaran thing and the America thing are unveiled halfway through the first episode (not that either was a secret coming in), leaving the rest of the story for the development of the characters’ reactions to these facts, and for the Sontaran’s own story. (The flashbacks are pretty great, too — especially the injury.) And those reactions (to start with, SJ’s coolness to Maria; the boys’ nervous yet restrained reaction to the Sontaran) were both pleasantly atypical and, again, true.

Chrissie is another example — how she gets roped into the story. Again sidestepping the tedious, she just squints at Alan and says she believed him, because his mouth didn’t twitch. Which was a bit pat, yes, but it both fit her character’s line of thinking and for the first time illustrated a good side to the way she processes things.

The story’s full of subtle little things like that, making grace of moments that should have been annoying. It was as if the story elements were there to explore how the characters might react, rather than the characters behaving in a particular way so as to allow Things to Happen.

Even the corridor-running has a nice lateral energy to it.

The only criticism I have, really, is that whoever did the production design for the inside of the radio telescope, and the computer graphics, really… sucks.

That’s something that always bothers me, the bizarre TV/cinema notion of how computers and computer displays work. It’s kind of amazing, considering that everyone working on this show and nearly everyone in the audience must use a computer constantly. What’s the point of the wacky-flashy graphics?

You have to shrug off some things, of course — the dad’s “hypnotized” acting, “totally creeped-out to the max”, constant potato jokes. Kind of the price of admission.

. . .

So consider this. The next full series of Who isn’t airing until 2010, leading people to label 2009 the “gap year”. Between December and then, there will be just five specials, a half-series of Torchwood, and probably a third series of SJA.

At twelve half-hour episodes, a season of SJA is nearly the length of a McCoy season of Who. This is more or less what aired each year, between 1986 and 1989.

At five hours, so, actually, is the rest of Davies’ Who run, through 2009.

At five hour-long specials, so is the length of Torchwood 3.

Altogether, that’s about 900 minutes (or fifteen hours) of Whoniverse programming in 2009. That’s compared with ~1000 minutes per season in the ’60s, 650 minutes in the ’70s to mid-’80s, and 350 in the late ’80s. And, of course, a total of 90 minutes between 1989 and 2005.

Some gap year.

Mirrormask review (***)

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

For all the grumbling from the peanut gallery, Mirrormask is one of the better children’s movies to come around in the last couple of decades. Something that I can imagine annoying some is a certain deliberate lack of urgency to the tale. Fair enough, one might assume, since the opening scenes establish that all which follows is a dream. Logically enough, then, at some point the heroine will wake and everything will be more or less okay. What happens in between is important on on the basis of peril but in terms of character development — a bit of Lewis Carroll allegory crossed with your Peter Pan or Narnia-flavored psychological metaphor. The issue at stake is our heroine’s emotional state and whether and how she makes sense of the problems in her real life through the tools provided by her subconscious.

Another potential problem is the magpie-like way that Gaiman evokes snippets and tropes from his favorite fantasy and children’s stories then rearranges them to color his own work. In some of his work, like Coraline, the appropriation is overbearing and feels like a stand-in for actual development.

Here, though, the story treads carefully to avoid feeling like it’s simply borrowing pop-Gothic furniture. It’s knowing, though not smug. There’s a sincerity in the story’s execution, particularly in the way it’s shot, and in the acting.

If you’re not paying attention, you could accuse Stephanie Leonidas of seeming a bit wooden. Clearly most of the movie is shot against greenscreen, and you do get some of that glorious “where am I?” acting that comes with the territory. Yet otherwise she’s a bit of a revelation — quirky, sensitive, yet rational and well-adjusted. She’s written like a developing adult, and played like one. It’s rare that children are written as smart and individual characters to the extent that we see in Helena, making her a lovely role model for the intended audience.

Curiously, for all its clear artifice the movie rarely gets caught up in whimsy just for the sake of whimsy. Though it often seems in danger of vanishing in a puff of affectation, I don’t recall feeling like it got carried away. In the end I was impressed by the movie’s restraint. For all its glam sensibility, it has a head on its shoulders.

I won’t call this a great movie. It’s a very good one, though, especially for the genre. I like to think of it as empowered. It’s a film about learning empathy and responsibility, and distinguishing one’s own wants and needs from the expectations of others. And it manages to avoid being overbearing about any of that. It’s very light movie, all around. As I said, from the start it’s clear that there’s never any real danger. It’s just an hour and forty minutes of self-exploration and musing.

These are the sorts of topics that I think distinguish “young adult” fiction from children’s stories. Whereas the children’s fiction might just dwell in the fantasy and metaphor for its own sake, a growing mind feeds on this kind of film; on the exploration and gradual understanding of one’s own self, and through that the surrounding world. Often using very clumsy metaphor. Which is also true here.

Cybermen

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Mm. Tomb is really the only time I think they’ve been used well — as objects of creeping fear and mystery. There’s a sense they’re this contained force; they’re the snakes in this box that you absolutely must keep closed. And they just keep charging forward, blank, expressionless, incomprehensible. They’ll charm you, try the back door, use every crack to their advantage. (Much like Captain Jack?)

Mostly they’re just used as generic shuffle-monsters. Or, in the ’80s, alien race. Or as a droll bit of wank, as above.

Actually, I thought that Cyberwoman did a good job at capturing their threat. They’re like a plague, is what they are. A schlocky B-movie plague. The kind of thing you should be making up arbitrary rules to protect yourself from. Don’t dangle your feet over the bed. Don’t step on the red squares.

I’d like to see Moffat write for them.

Where is Zar? Zar is gone.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Classic screenwriting (both film and TV) does take on something of a middle school essay structure, doesn’t it. Tell the audience what you’re going to do, do it, tell the audience what you just did. I guess with a new medium it’s seen as necessary. Then when people get more comfortable with the grammar, you can stop patronizing them and get down to business.

What’s weird about videogames is that mainstream games at least have kind of gone the other way. Now you buy a top-shelf console game, you won’t even be allowed to play it properly for the first half hour. Unless it’s Zelda. Then you might have to wait three or four hours before you get started. Whereas in 1987… plop. There you are. Make sense of it the best you can.

Is there a good reason in there to assume the audience has, on average, grown less sophisticated over the last twenty years? And Wii Fit aside (which is kind of a different issue), is there much evidence that patronizing the audience leads to greater sales? Generally the only people who buy videogames are people who buy videogames (which is where Iwata comes into the discussion, and then leaves by the back door). And generally they only get to play them after they’ve made a purchase.

It’s one thing to make a game accessible. Not to overburden the player with complications right from the start. That’s just good design.
The hand-holding that’s been going on, the last ten years though — that’s something else. Something insidiously banal. It’s not just that the art hasn’t been progressing since 1998; it’s been moving backward.

The definition of a great movie

  • Reading time:1 mins read

One where every scene makes you think, okay, this is the turning point. It’s all been building up to this. Now everything’s really getting started.

Including the final one.