Toy Story 3 - Pixar hit another home run

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I went to see Toy Story 3 last night, and before I went in, I was torn between outright trepidation and child-like excitement. I remember going to see the first one at the cinema when it first came out, and thinking it was one of the best things I'd ever seen, and when the second one was better, Pixar managed to win me over to the idea of sequels. But a third one? In my opinion, only Back to the Future ever managed to make a third film that was as good as the preceding two.

I've already spoken before about exactly why I love Pixar, but Toy Story 3 just proves my point. Yet again, they have concentrated on making a film with a good plot, plenty of adventures, and characters that you care about. Let me say that last part again - they've created characters that you can really root for, or loathe, depending on whether they're good or bad. Pixar delight in telling a good story, and they put this love of storytelling above everything else. It's good, old-fashioned escapism. They also make damn good short films, and the Day & Night short that accompanies Toy Story 3 really explores the boundaries of animation.

The Toy Story films have always been films that celebrate the power of imagination, and the wonderful worlds you can create with a handful of toys, cardboard boxes and household detritus. As a writer, this is a concept I can back 120% (meaning I could backtrack 20%, and still be completely behind it). But as a 27-year-old who has problems with the concept of 'growing up', it really speaks to me on a different level. I was the kid who didn't have any friends where I lived, and would spend hours playing with different toys by myself. They were mostly my brother's, as I favoured Lego and Micro Machines, but I also had an awesome toy farm that my dad built for me, and more stuffed animals than I knew what to do with (I am the extremely proud owner of a full set of Gummy Bears).

I freely admit that I still have a fierce attachment to a lot of my animals now. Nowadays I just collect them, getting a new one whenever I go somewhere new (and people bring them back as souvenirs for me, so my friend Mark brought me a toy Kiwi from New Zealand), but a lot of those stuffed bears and dogs mean a lot to me. In the aftermath of break-ups, or redundancy, or difficulties in social interactions, my toys were still there. The photo illustrating this post is of Aston, a cuddly dog I got in Hamley's a few years back. So where adults, particularly parents, were upset by Toy Story 3 for the concept of children growing up, and leaving home, I was more upset by the idea that you could outgrow your toys. Sure, I don't play with mine any more, but they're still there. One scene near the end even had me in tears - and I'm such a hard-hearted bitch, the last film that made me cry was probably Bambi. For Pixar to wring such emotion out of an essentially cold person is incredibly impressive, and to do so in such a mature way, using simply facial expressions on animated toys...other filmmakers need to study their methods, they really do.

In essence, I only have two problems with Toy Story 3. The first is that it made me cry - I don't like it when films make me do that, because it reminds me I have emotions and therefore vulnerabilities. The second is that there just wasn't enough Timothy Dalton! Honestly, I could listen to that guy all day. Still, there's plenty of the delightful Michael Keaton to keep me happy, who is so perfectly cast as Ken that all the other studios that make celebrity-stuffed CG suckfests should sit up and pay attention - i.e. do not cast a celebrity for their status, cast them because their voice suits the role.

I realise I haven't discussed the plot or the characters, but to be honest, I'd rather you just went to see it. Please, for my sake. Go and enjoy the stunning visuals, the sparky dialogue, the bonds between the characters, and the genuine heartfelt passion for storytelling. Then come home, fish out a childhood toy, and remember how you felt when you were little, when anything was possible in your imagination. If you think carefully, maybe it still is...

Icy disses The Collector - Vlog 02

Tweet Having enjoyed recording my first vlog entry, I thought I'd do another one. Where I did comics in 01, I'm now doing films - specifically The Collector.

Enjoy!

The Killer Inside Me - A Review, Not A Confession

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I'm not entirely sure why, but I've wanted to see The Killer Inside Me for a few weeks now. I saw it had garnered a few decent reviews, and seeing as how serial killer films are something of a specialty for me (my undergraduate dissertation compared three of Hitchcock's serial killers with that of contemporary cinema), I like to see them when I can. The only problem is, having forced myself to sit through a hundred and nine minutes of dross, all I want to do is hurl more than harsh language at Hollywood.

There are a myriad of ways to approach the serial killer film. You've got your slashers (or post-slasher...or even neo-slasher), your exploitation flicks, your psychoanalytical films...amazingly, The Killer Inside Me fails on every count. Even a Eurovision voting card for the UK gets more points than this. Casey Affleck's poor imitation of an upstanding Texas gent grates at every turn, and any film that stars both Kate Hudson AND Jessica Alba should already be on my avoid list. Why? Well they're two actresses who are to serious acting what a cheese grater is to a balloon.

The Killer Inside Me, for those of you who might vaguely care (and I pray you don't), is set in the 1950s, in a small west Texas town. Casey Affleck plays Lou Ford, the unassuming deputy sheriff. Generically Southern and almost instantly forgettable, Ford has no sooner started batting those baby blues of his, than he's visiting the local prostitute, Joyce (Alba) and beating her up. Most women would go, "Er, excuse me, get out of my house, you filthy arsehole" after being violently assaulted, but not Joyce. They embark on an illicit affair, with Joyce (almost painfully predictably) putting pressure on Lou to leave town with her. Elmer, the son of a wealthy local construction tycoon, is in love with Joyce, and when his father offers to pay Joyce off, they initially plan to steal the money and go. Lou decides he'd be better off killing both of them, and just continuing about his business. Why? Because he's "crazy". Cue the eye rolling. Apparently, doing something for no logical reason constitutes madness. If Spock's reaction is anything to go by, then Captain Kirk must be the biggest psychopath in pop culture.

But I digress. Things go slightly awry, and Lou finds himself killing people to cover up the fact that he's killing people. Trouble is, that's actually logical in a freaky kind of way, which just proves that Lou isn't as mad as he thinks he is. With the local DA Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker, better known as TV's The Mentalist) breathing down his neck, Lou starts to unravel. Or does he? Well no, not really. He just gets even more dull. Director Michael Winterbottom seems be aiming for the kind of 'quietly understated' pace that gets described as 'magnetic' or 'powerful', only to have it end up 'dull' and 'unappealing'. The film coasts along to its inevitable conclusion, and by the time they reach the 'dramatic finale', you'll be left wondering who got turned down for the role for Casey Affleck to end up with it. Winterbottom meanders along, punctuating the boredom with tedious scenes of women being beaten up. Given we never see Lou's violence towards males, one can't help wondering if this says more about the director than his main character.

Having the serial killer himself narrate the film is nothing new. I'd argue that the best example is still American Psycho, in the way Mary Harron manages to blend graphic violence with understated menace. You couldn't make the film without Patrick Bateman's narration. His inner monologues about business cards, hair cuts and skincare routines underscore the senseless nature of his savagery, contrasting his superficial obsession with his total lack of human emotion (except, as he admits himself, for 'greed, envy and disgust'). This link between the killer and the audience was originally intended to be a way of forcing us to rethink cinematic boundaries, although now it has become a 'controversial' tactic aimed at putting the viewer inside the serial killer's world, forcing a collusion with him. The problem is, this will never be anywhere near as shocking as the POV shots in Peeping Tom, and that came out in 1959!

As it stands, serial killers may be attractive (Patrick Bateman), charming (Hannibal Lecter), unknowable (Michael Myers) or even funny (Freddie Krueger) but they CANNOT be dull. Unfortunately, Lou Ford is exactly that. I have a feeling Affleck is aiming for 'the boy next door gone bad', but no one will ever be able to nail that quite as well as one of cinema's most iconic serial killers - Norman Bates. We didn't need any narration, or POV shots. We just needed those subtle facial tics, that nervous behaviour around Marion, his calm appearance in the aftermath of the murders - and the final reveal. Nothing fancy, just solid storytelling.

I conclude this rant/review with one very simple thought. If you really want to watch a serial killer movie that is both well-made and quietly understated, you could do no better than seeking out Mr Brooks. Ignore the fact it stars Kevin Costner - it's everything The Killer Inside Me wishes it was, but sorely isn't.

The Power of Books

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Being as I am a fan of both Gary Oldman and Denzel Washington, I went to see The Book of Eli on Wednesday. Before going in, I knew nothing about the film, and had few expectations, but I wasn't quite expecting what I saw. For those who have yet to see the film, the basic synopsis is that Denzel Washington plays Eli, a man possessed with the conviction that he must carry a book across the wasteland that was once the United States. On the way, he encounters a small town (think 'Wild West' meets Mad Max) struggling under the dictatorship of Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman. Carnegie is searching for a Bible, convinced that if he controls faith, he can control his townspeople. Lo and behold, Eli's book is a Bible, and so begins the struggle for Carnegie to get hold of it.

It's a peculiar film, in a lot of ways. On one hand, it's a film that teeters dangerously closely to the edge of sentimentality in its depiction of religious conviction, with Eli so convinced that he's doing the work of the Lord that he keeps going when most would give up. Yet on the other hand, it yanks back the comforting blanket of personal faith to expose the control and manipulation of people by religion that lies underneath. Eli tells Solara, his female travelling companion, that "after the war", Bibles were burned because many believed them to be the cause of the war. As far as social commentary goes, it's a little ham-fisted, but in a clumsy way, the film has highlighted the importance of books.

Religious books, encyclopaedias, text books and even novels all tell us something about the world in which we live. A heavy tome about chemistry and a dog-eared copy of a hard-boiled detective novel are alike in their ability to grant power to the reader. Throughout the ages, dictators have recognised both the power, and the threat, of the knowledge contained in books, which is why the pages of history are dotted with scorch marks and burnt edges. Of course, the much higher level of global literacy makes the availability of information so much more dangerous. If people can read, then nothing is stopping them learning about economics, philosophy, history, mathematics or, inevitably, religion.

This, in a way, is another of The Book of Eli's veiled warnings. Few people can read in this post-apocalyptic world, leaving men like Carnegie and Eli as the sole interpreters of the written word. Interpretations are often coloured by bias, and where Eli appreciates the spirituality of the Bible, Carnegie sees only a route to power, at the expense of the spirituality of those he seeks to oppress. It's essentially a microcosm of religion as a whole. Some people view the teachings of their chosen religion as guidelines on how to live a fulfilled, and happy, life. The rest use the teachings to instill fear and obedience into their followers. This is why I say that books contain information and knowledge, but not truth. Truth is far too subjective, and open to interpretation. There is nothing inherently wrong with the information - it is the way in which it is used which casts a ruddy glow or gloomy shadow across it.

I won't sport with your intelligence by discussing the "twist" ending, but sufficeth to say, the book is not all that it appears. I would have imagined that you guessed that already. In a lot of ways, Eli is a truly admirable character, devoted to his cause and possessed by the sort of inner fire that you often dream about finding within yourself, when you're clinging to a pole in an overcrowded train carriage on a wet Monday morning. My biggest problem is that I simply can't put enough faith into the teachings of the book he is trying to hard to protect.

Still, in this digital age, it's quite nice to see a film centered upon a book. After all, I can't quite picture a film in which one man would happily shoot another over a Kindle, can you?

We're on The Road to nowhere...

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Let me get this out of the way before I get to the meatiest part of my post. The Road is a very beautifully-shot, gorgeous film, and I can't fault its cinematography. However, it feels to me like it's related to one of those vapid bimbos that you come across from time to time - an aesthetically pleasing collection of molecules, but with every little going on beneath the surface. Yes, The Road is incredibly depressing, and yes, The Road is a "hi-brow" and "literary" film...but it's also entirely pointless.

Before anyone who actually enjoyed the film starts to sputter and head for the 'Comment' form, let me explain my thinking. Most films, at least those produced by Western cinema, contain a plot, or narrative. Yes? I can think of very few successes from the past few years that have managed to dispense with this key ingredient and still have a hit. The film industry is exactly that - an industry. Many individuals who work within it might do so in order to produce art, but they still have to consider whether or not that art will make any money.

Now, The Road does at least have a vague plot. I'll admit that much. The plot is extremely basic (Father and son head across post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of a warmer climate) but that's no problem - lots of films can be summed up in a single sentence. "Four children enter a magical world via a wardrobe and have to save it from an evil witch" would be one example, while "A hobbit traipses across Middle Earth to dispose of a ring" is another. The problem is that there's very little room for growth within the plot. On one hand, you'd expect such a loose plot to give plenty of room for scope, but ironically, it does the opposite. The Road is more about the relationship between the father and son than what happens to them, and both characters wander through the film until its inevitable conclusion. Neither of them really appear to learn from their experiences, caught as they are within the rigid confines of the idea of the film, as opposed to its plot.

This, my friends, brings me to the "literary vs commercial" debate. The Road drops off the fence and lands so heavily on the literary side that it's cracked the paving. Beautiful cinematography and meandering philosophy replaces character development and a forward-moving plot because the experience of the film is more important than its story. Sure, there are instances in the film where plot is suddenly injected, and things get interesting, but then the conflict is resolved and everyone goes back to trudging along. Dull. Call me a Philistine if you want, but I'm unafraid to nail my colours to the commercial mast. I want to watch a film, or read a book, because I want to be entertained. I want escapism. I don't get that from literary films or fiction.

Right now I'm reading China Mieville's Iron Council, and sure, it deals with lofty themes and political ideals, but it also lets me wander the crooked streets of New Crobuzon when I should probably put the book aside and do my washing up. The Road might let me vicariously look at a post-apocalyptic landscape that I pray I never have to visit, but that's all it does. It parades its world in front of me like a John Constable or a J. W. M. Turner, but it never lets me engage with it. It offers no escape.

Lord knows there's enough in this life to escape from.

Just why I love Pixar

Tweet I may have a fascination for zombies, a lifelong passion for Die Hard, and undying respect for Ripley, but in my heart of hearts, I simply adore Pixar. I've seen all of their films at the cinema, with the exception of The Incredibles, and the release of a new Pixar film fills me with the kind of childish glee normally associated with Christmas Day morning.

So it was with a lot of excitement that I saw Up last week. It's not their best film ever, and I couldn't put it in the same category as Cars or Monsters, Inc., but it's still a cracking good yarn, and just proves that Pixar are slowly moving into slightly more grown-up territory, managing to tackle such themes as miscarriage and being widowed in a short introductory session that manages to communicate such themes without being preachy, or spelling anything out.

Why can other filmmakers not manage this? So often I watch a film, or read a book, and feel like I'm being spoon-fed the plot, as if the director or writer feels I'm too moronic to get what's going on. Dan Brown is guilty of this on an epic scale with The Da Vinci Code, and Chris Colombus over-egged the pudding to such a stupid degree in Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone that it almost ruined an otherwise enjoyable film. Yet Pixar avoid this trap. Personally, I think it's because they simply enjoy telling stories, and they trust that their viewers can detect and understand the visual clues that tell the story, without having to brow-beat anyone into epiphany.

The trend towards CG films has exploded ever since Toy Story came out in 1995, with varying degrees of success. The first two Shrek films were interesting and enjoyable ventures from Dreamworks, but then they also foisted the godawful Shark Tale upon us. Such a preachy, horrible film carried the core message that you should always be happy with your station in life, and never strive to better yourself because if you do, you'll fail. What kind of ideal is that to be pushing onto people? Yet among all the dross, Pixar have always shone as an example of decent filmmaking. Some of their efforts haven't quite connected as well as others (e.g. A Bug's Life, Ratatouille), but even their 'poor' films are strides ahead of the best films released by their competitors.

I think their success is due in part to their attention to detail. Fur moves like fur, water behaves like water, objects appear to have true weight - all a testament to their partnership with Disney. Old Walt used to send his artists to draw from life, so even if the animals or birds were cartoons, they still had a level of verisimilitude that is unmatched today. Beyond that, they're happy to cast an actor based on how well they fit the role, not on their box office draw at the time of casting. If an A-lister happens to win the role, it's because they're the best person for the job. The characters thus become believeable, and not simply star vehicles.

Pixar love their craft, and it shines through in the finished film. They tell a story for the pure joy of telling a story - they leave the money-making aspect of the business to Disney. You can go into the cinema feeling burdened by the weight of the world, and come out feeling lighter, as though maybe this crazy lil thing called life isn't so bad after all. And in this day and age, that's no bad thing.

Imagination

Tweet I finally saw The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus at the weekend, and as much as I'd like to discuss the film as a fantastical swansong for the much-missed (by me, at any rate) Heath Ledger, I'd much rather discuss the film in slightly more highbrow terms. Terry Gilliam presents the film as a meditation on the inherent benefits and downfalls of immortality, particularly the peculiar form of immortality presented by a life captured on celluloid (see the rather ham-fisted attempt during the Johnny Depp segment to prove that those that die young, e.g. James Dean, Princess Diana, will always live on). However, scratch the surface of this visually impressive, though occasionally slightly gaudy, piece, and you'll find that at its heart, the film would much rather discuss the dichotomy of Imagination vs Temptation.

Christopher Plummer's Dr Parnassus represents Imagination, a fertile inner land particular to every individual. In this mental expanse, stories are born, and these stories offer the path to Immortality. Indeed, he firmly believes that the universe is sustained because someone somewhere is always telling a story. The film itself tells a story, and thus maintains this belief in the mind of the viewer.

However, his nemesis is film's old friend, the Devil, played here to excellent effect by Tom Waits, and he, as ever, represents Temptation. It's not such a stretch to boil these two opposing forces down to the Mind (or Soul) vs the Body. It has long been held by many schools of thought that the Body is somehow dirty, and sinful, and purity can only exist within the Mind, and by extension the Soul. Clearly, if we pursue this particular theory, Dr Parnassus represents Good, while the Devil represents Evil. So far, so typical.

Yet this eternal struggle between Imagination and Temptation goes back further than Terry Gilliam's concept for this film. Indeed, the poetic genius that was John Keats continually tussled with the two throughout his career, perhaps reaching its apogee in his epic, Lamia. In it, Lycius must choose between the pure world of Apollonius (the Imagination) and the senuous world of Lamia (Temptation). Apollonius exposes the cruel reality of Lamia, and the deprivation of one option proves too much for the young chap and he dies. Keats believed that only a balance between the two could sustain man, and that by living by one or the other, he was only living half of a life.

What does this then mean for Dr Parnassus? In forcing humans to make a choice between Imagination or Temptation, these people are surely doomed to living their lives to only half of their potential. Or is there in fact a deeper paradox within the entire situation, since in order to choose the path of the Imagination, one must first be tempted by it?


Top image: Lamia, by John William Waterhouse

Dorian Gray

Tweet I went to see the turgid, unmitigated disaster of a movie that was Dorian Gray on Sunday, and it's taken until now for me to feel sufficiently in possession of my credulity to compose an entry about it. I know, you may be (logically) wondering why I keep discussing films in a blog supposedly devoted to my writing career. Firstly, I have two degrees in film and it's a great passion of mine, and secondly, I believe that film faces the same technical problems as writing, in terms of pacing, structure, dialogue etc.

Now, Dorian Gray is somewhat unsurprisingly based on the genius work by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The original novel is an absolute delight, whereas the movie is a lacklustre blight on the face of the film industry. I'm often somewhat skeptical of adaptations, as few of them manage to retain the subtle subtexts and wide-reaching nuances of the original source, and I should have guessed by the trailer that the makers of this limp movie would have managed to strip everything out bar the basic plot, and refuse to replace it with anything that might go over the heads of the target teenage audience.

The novel is a meditation on the nature of immortality, of truth versus beauty, of the strength of morality and conscience when faced with the temptations of debauchery, but the film chooses to dispense with these to promote the message, "Wouldn't it be fun if you could do what you want?" Responsibility and principles are jettisoned for a selfish gratification of the ego. It's hardly unsurprising in our youth-obsessed times, when people inject botulism into themselves in an attempt to stave off the ageing process, that the film places heavy emphasis on the value and virtue of youth. It ties in nicely with that other cinematic debacle, Twilight, in which vampires stay forever young and beautiful.

It's simply a bad, bad film. The costumes seem somewhat wrong, and I cannot quite understand why the stylist decided to give Sibyl long red hair, when such an appearance in Victorian art would denote the woman as a prostitute, or 'fallen woman'. Victorian art was extremely preoccupied with the idea of the 'angel of the hearth', of the quiet, obedient wife who would run the household for her husband without complaint. Naturally this image appealed to the highly repressed Victorian consciousness, yet man was still drawn to her sinful sister, the harlot. This scarlet-haired temptress allowed men to be experienced before marriage, and represented those who had fallen from grace and would usually end up falling off a bridge into the murky waters of the Thames. Indeed, this is the same fate that befalls Sibyl, despite the fact that she is intended to be a shining beacon of virtue and innocence in Dorian's increasingly dark world.

Part of me wonders that Sibyl's hair is inspired by the fact that when Dorian first sees her, she is playing Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, although her appearance owes more to Ophelia in John Everett Millais' painting of the same name. Ophelia drowns herself, and Shakespeare hints that she does so as she is pregnant, and it's an eerie echo of the situation in which young Sibyl finds herself. I can understand the inclusion on the part of Mr Wilde, as he was clearly a genius, but I can't help feeling that any similarities featured by the filmmakers are completely accidental.

It is almost upsetting how easily the filmmakers tore the witty heart out of the novel, to replace it with a glossy absence of substance. Dorian's supposed debauchery seems tame compared to the goings on of most soap characters, and when we finally see the painting of Dorian in the final act, it looks more like Vigo from Ghostbusters II than a damning indictment of the havoc wrought upon a misguided man's soul. Where the book revealed the price to be paid for man's folly, the movie turns Dorian into a reckless pretty boy seemingly devoid of personality or charisma. Maybe if the filmmakers had taken a leaf from the diabolically bad League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and cast Stuart Townsend as Dorian (the only good thing about LOEG), then the film might have been saved. Otherwise, it's just a poor adaptation of an amazing book.

Buy the novel; ignore the movie.

The Final Destination

Tweet So I'm back from the cinema again. A friend and I originally intended to see Dorian Gray (despite the fact that The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favourite book and it shall no doubt have been utterly butchered in its translation to the big screen) but it wasn't on at either of the Cineworlds in the West End so we went to see Final Destination 3D instead.

Now, for those unfamiliar with the franchise, each film essentially begins with a big disaster sequence, which is in fact a premonition had by one of the characters. Their subsequent freak out leads several people who should have expired in said disaster to avoid their impending doom, although Death then stalks throughout the rest of the plot, offing them in the order they should have died in increasingly implausible and ridiculous ways. Its fundamental message is that you just can't cheat Death...though one would wonder why on earth one of them would have the premonition, and then the subsequent visions which hold clues to how each of the survivors will die, if they were just going to die anyway. Does the Grim Reaper get a bit bored with his/her endlessly mundane task, and seek ways to spice things up a bit? I'm surprised - humans can usually think of enough inventive and creative ways to kill each other, without Death having to step in and start squashing people with plate glass or garotting them with a shower cord.

Anyway. The film wasn't entirely bad, even if it was entirely formulaic, but it did feel a tad too much like an extended health & safety video. The moral of the story is...always store your tools safely, don't leave containers of flammable liquid open and near anything which could cause them to topple, look both ways before you cross the street, and basically watch what you're doing. There. Now you don't need to see it, and I've probably ruined business for all of those godawful companies that get you compensation when you've done something idiotic at work.