The Capricious Thoughts of Peter Crispin

A short review of A Touch of Evil (1958)

2007-09-02T07:56:19Z

More 'Film Opaque' than 'Film Noir', Touch of Evil is an unparrelled cinematic study of corruption, racism and the morality of the Law.

Welles' direction is again light years ahead of anything contemporaneous, the Mexican border town locale being all shadows, smoke, grime and black & white neon, framed by low angles, long tracking shots and car-mounted cameras. Charlton Heston and Vivien Leigh are good foils to Welles' monstrous police chief Quinlan, the do-gooding newly-weds who are enmeshed in the local web of sin and cartelism.

A proto-Chinatown, this thought-provoking yet highly entertaining film is as good as it gets for the noir genre.

A review of Tansformers (2007)

2007-09-01T11:42:38Z

Toy Story. You don't expect The Seventh Seal of a film about a civil war between giant alien robots that turn into cars and planes, but a bit of characterisation would have been nice.

The admittedly mind-blowing special effects go some way in distracting the viewer away from the rather hum-drum, sub-Spielbergian motions of the narrative, and there are some moments of genuine, self-depreciating comic relief amongst the nonsensical b*ll*cks that pass for a plot, but the overall impression one gets is of ennui and formula.

Shia LaBeouf is rather good as the main human focus of the story, but his love interest is so wooden you fear he may get splinters. Jon Voight once again proves that he'll do anything for a pay cheque although John Turturro wonderfully camps it up as a secret service agent that specialises in giant alien robots that turn into cars (as you do).

Of course, over-grown boys of a certain age will get an illicit, nostalgic thrill with the references to the cartoon of their youth (the film gets some kudos for retaining the original voice of main goodie robot Optimus Prime, which is fabulously gravelly and distinctive), but really it all amounts to time-wasting nonsense designed to bankrupt middle class parents by spoilt demands for cheaply-made shape-shifting plastic lumps. The robots, although brilliantly animated, are confusingly designed so one looks pretty much like another, and their motivations appear to be as deep as a kiddie's paddling pool... which has sprung a leak on a hot summer's day.

Kinetic yet traction-less, "Transformers" proves that there's nothing that is 'more than meets the eye' about most Hollywood blockbusters these days.

A review of the first three episodes of Season Three of Doctor Who.

2007-04-16T07:28:38Z

All images in this review are copyrighted material belonging to the BBC, and are reproduced here for critical and non-profit making purposes, and can be removed on request.

To be honest, my expectations were low going into the third year of the resuscitated Doctor Who. An appallingly naff yet cynical Christmas special (The Runaway Bride) on the back of a somewhat lacklustre if not fairly mediocre second year (in terms of scripting, if anything) meant that I approached Season Three with a sense of creeping apathy. It was really a make or break time.

We’re now three episodes into the new series, and the good news is that a sense of genuine vitality has crept back into the whole enterprise. A lot of the artistic errors and irritating creative ticks that proved so irksome last year have not been totally rectified, but the show has regained its sense of confidence and discipline. The direction is inventive and sympathetic, the acting nuanced and sincere, the editing taut and sharp, the scripts… well… the scripts have moments of brilliant genuine wit and don’t lack ambition in terms of spectacle. They do, however, lack narrative cohesiveness, with more holes than a string vest, and still seem hostage to the idea of spectacle over sense. But one great episode, one fairly average attempt and one pretty dire story is a pretty good run, especially as there’s redeeming features in all of the stories so far.

But why is Season Three already better than Season Two, despite still suffering from last year’s failings? Well, Doctor Who now seems a show at peace with itself if not with key sections of its audience. If the Christopher Eccleston era aspired to being top draw fantastical drama, David Tennant’s Doctor Who is taking on Harry Potter in the light entertainment market, unashamed of its more outré ideas, self-indulgently guiding the audiences through an overly bombastic soundtrack, scared to bore, frightened to exclude. Last year’s Who was straddling both the dramatic and the throw away, and succeeded, more often than not, in failing in both fields. Season Three has given up on the serious and meritorious drama of the initial revival, and has successfully repositioned Who into the silly throw away escapades of the late 70s Tom Baker stories.

This is not necessarily a criticism. For me, the first season of new Who will remain a high watermark, the zenith of what you can (and should do) with the wonderful concept that is Doctor Who. But if the makers of the show are now committed to lowering the age (or should that be 'intelligence'?) of the target audience, let Doctor Who be escapist fun of the highest order, a rip-roaring adventure that constantly dazzles, continually striving for new spectacles on what is still a tiny budget, and is entertaining for all who happen to stumble across it whether they are 8 or 80, in Kent or Cairo.

Not that to be entertaining a programme should automatically go for a lobotomy, but if the BBC is now committed to selling so many Sonic Screwdrivers (rights reserved) through Woolworths each year, we have to expect a certain lowering of dramatic ambition. Let’s hope that the programme makers can hit their marks within those self-imposed, regrettably narrow horizons.

So, what about the first three episodes?

Smith and Jones (*SPOILERS*)

An uneven affair that highlights all that is both good and bad about new Doctor Who, and more specifically, the scripts of Executive Producer Russell T Davies.

On one hand, you have the superb integration of the mundane and the familial into a fantastical world of limitless possibilities. The new companion, Martha Jones, superbly played by Freema Agyeman (who within ten minutes steps out of the shadow of Billie Piper), has a wonderfully dysfunctional family background and a demanding job (trainee doctor), longing to escape the humdrum. Davies introduces Martha in a superb ‘conference call’ mobile phone conversation, with all her family on her back (and each others), the audience being drawn into her world effortlessly and with a wry smile. This is Davies at his best, the scene setting and the snap shots of ‘everyday life’.

Horny.
On the other hand, the script suffers from Davies’ usually glib high pitch concepts that cannot sustain themselves for 10 minutes let alone 45. It might be fantastic to go left field and relish such striking images of hospitals on the moon, rhino intergalactic policemen and sinister couriers who turn out to be robots made out of solid leather, but if you are unable to construct a convincing narrative that ties these ideas into a coherent (small ‘d’) dramatic whole, what’s the point and where’s the sustained interest? The end result is fast food fantasy, immediately filling but non-nutritious. You’ll get a sugar rush, but the stomach of the mind will be empty again within the hour.

It wouldn’t be so bad if most of the ideas were original as they purport to be or if there was an over-arching theme or use of iconography – but Smith and Jones lacks both. Fascist anthropomorphic policemen are a staple of the counter-culture comic strips of 2000 AD, which have long since permeated the fantasy mainstream (films such as The Fifth Element, to take one example) and sinister leatherboys/ bikers a staple of thrillers of the 70s and 80s. And the transportation of a everyday building to a fantastical place via a violent storm? The Wizard of Oz, anyone?

So the mish-mash of fantastical ideas are highly enjoyable if one disengages brain before viewing, yet their chaotic and seemingly random inclusion sit at angular odds with the focused, masterful care with which Davies draws and plots his main regular characters.

Better than last year’s dire season opener (New Earth) but lacking the genuine shock of the new that was the first episode of the revival (Rose), although that cannot be helped, Smith and Jones is a fun fairground ride of episode that is best enjoyed without too much detailed examination, greatly aided by a confident, more nuanced performance than we have seen before from David Tennant, who’s beginning to show a mystery and comic mastery that has not been seen in the role since the hey days of the aforementioned Tom Baker.

The Shakespeare Code (*SPOILERS*)

Shamelessly traditional, drawing from premises and traits of both ‘classic’ and new Doctor Who, The Shakespeare Code is one of the most masterful episodes of the show we have seen in a while. Thrilling and witty, with wonderful performances from the leads and guest cast, perilously veering to camp but enjoyably so, this ‘historical’ story is heavily indebted to ‘the one with Charles Dickens’ (The Unquiet Dead) and ‘the one with Queen Victoria and the Werewolf’ (Tooth and Claw). The literate-but-not-overly-so script, by fan writer Gareth Roberts, is superb although not flawless. The dialogue zips along, often producing a wry smile if not a laugh out loud, with the characters having a good grounding in the main plot, which is not always a given in new Doctor Who. The whole enterprise has a satisfying coherency and pace, never boring but never as fidgety as Season Two’s stories.

Tennant is again superb as the Doctor (two hits in a row) as is Dean Lennox Kelly as Shakespeare, played as a louche proto-celebrity (but not over doing it). The production values are of mainstream, big blockbuster quality, and I doubt you will see anything as so polished in terms of the overall look in a fantasy show this year (unless the Who production office trump themselves later this season).The direction by Charles Palmer is some of the best the series has had, and the editing enhances both the budget, pace and look by sympathetically complimenting the special effects (again, not always a given in new Who) and bringing out the best in the performances.

Martha Jones and the Doctor.
There remains, alas, niggles. The witches were too Little Britain and stereotypical, and failed to scare or convince (not fatal, given the overall tone of the episode), and Roberts’ traditionalist approach unfortunately rendered Martha a typical Doctor Who companion of old, a device to ask seemingly obvious questions for the benefit of younger members of the audience. This made Martha somewhat idiotic on occasion, and unintentionally reduced this alleged trainee doctor to 1970s “Doctor, what’s gravity?” Dolly Bird status. This regrettable dip in otherwise solid comic characterisation is fleeting however, and it does Roberts a disservice to blow it out of proportion – not so much misogyny, but more brief, badly handled exposition.

These annoyances and dire Dan Brown aping title aside, The Shakespeare Code is solid, exuberant Doctor Who that will be revisited many times while Season Two DVDs gather dust on the shelf.

Gridlock (*SPOILERS*)

Russell T Davies resumes scripting duty for this futuristic tale of traffic jams without end, killer giant crabs, cat nuns and Irish cat pilots, heavy-handed social moralising and fan-pleasing continuity.

Into the Davies idea blender goes J. G. Ballard, Blade Runner, Terry Gilliam, 2000 AD (again), Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and The Fifth Element (again), which let’s face it, is a pretty appetising cocktail – if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best. Visually, the episode takes its cues from these sources as well, and more often than not meets these ambitions admirably (albeit with one or two duff shots/ effects – not bad though for 45 minutes that are pretty much set in a virtual environment).

However, when it comes to this cocktail, Davies is not much of a barman. All the ingredients have been thrown together, neither stirred or shaken, leaving a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth. Maybe Davies should have gone easy on the alcohol in this mouth-watering concoction… am I drunk, or is the Irish Space Cat singing “The Old Rugged Cross”? And is that David Tennant doing bad ‘angry’ acting again? I thought that was so last year! Is that a crude “Kids, don’t do drugs!” message stuck at the back of my throat...?

Furry from the deep...
Yes, somehow, Gridlock manages to negate itself, all that’s good about it tarnished by the Davies' leitmotif of having a non sequitur for a narrative, which can be taken apart by most intelligent thirteen year olds within a matter of minutes. What’s the point of poignant characterisation and social allegory if the plot does not credit any of the participants with the slightest bit of intelligence? Not wishing to labour what is in fact a tedious although valid point, if everyone on the ‘surface’ world has been wiped out by 'drug AIDS' (or something equally anti-permissive society – it’s not the first time new Doctor Who has revealed a pro-establishment, socially conservative sensibility), why is no-one in the subterranean motorway system bothered by the lack of contact or communication? Also would people really set out on a 12 year car journey consisting of perpetual log jam for an elusive paradise of ‘work’, unless they were all part of some kind of 1960s arts absurdist movement big on allegory? Er… no.

Subtle Gridlock ain't, and as if to distract faithful viewers from the somewhat cack-handedness of the whole enterprise, Davies throws in LOTS of continuity porn for fans, both old and new…

“Look! It’s the Face of Boe! You must remember him from last year… and the year before? And he’s got a secret… oh yes, a secret… oh… what’s that? A fan of an older vintage…. Well, listen… listen, I tell you… It’s the Doctor talking about the Timelords… oh yes, you remember them, don’t you? Yes, that’s right… from about the time when people stopped watching Doctor Who in the first place… still thinking of turning over? I know I cocked up such a wonderful premise, but we’ve been friends for a long time now… and I have a treat… oh, yes… you remember those giant crabs Patrick Troughton fought back in 1967?… you know, from that story that’s been completely destroyed and hasn’t been seen for 40 years?... Well here they are… LOOK! Please Look! It’s the Macra! Yes, The Macra!!! Don’t think about it (please, God, don’t think about it)… just look at the 1967 space crabs… in CGI!!!!! Don’t worry about Irish Space Cats singing 20th Century Evangelical hymns… don’t…. Face of Boe! Timelords! Macra! Nonsensical plot! What more do you whinging ninnies want, for Christ’s sake?… not that I believe in Christ… although I can’t shut up about God… but MACRA! TIMELORDS! BOE!”

And that unfortunately is the sum of it… again, great if Mr. Brain decides that he’s checking out on Saturday evening, but if you really want a programme that has something intelligible to say about its pretensions, or meaningful about its author’s social concerns, I’m sure Sky’ll be showing an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica on one of their channels.

Tennant, though, has morphed into something of a saviour of the show, and both Ageyman and him keep the programme on the road with some superb acting that moderates the unnecessary, demystifying, almost Spielbergian Doctor's reminiscences about his home planet into something emotional and meaningful amidst the reefer-madness, J.G. Ballard-via-Balamory social commentary that threatens to drag the episode to Sylvester McCoy-era depths.

So, one great episode, one average episode and one dire episode…. Season Three’s field is still wide open as to whether or not the viewer is backing a winner or an old nag that’s about to collapse at the last hurdle, but already they have been presented with a more exuberant model of Doctor Who than the 2006 brand, and rather fittingly, given the loose positivism that underpins the new series’ ethos, hope springs eternal for the future of Doctor Who.

Past Peter Crispin Doctor Who Reviews:
A review of Doctor Who: The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee
Doctor Who - The Runaway Bride
Doctor Who - New Earth

Official Site:
Doctor Who (BBC Site)

Unofficial Fan Site:
Outpost Gallifrey

"Ja! Das Hokey Kokey"

2007-04-12T14:48:04Z

A review of The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd

2007-01-23T17:07:24Z

One hears a lot these days about a “Clash of Civilisations”, allegedly diametrically opposed religions and ideologies facing an irreconcilable conflict over the way their adherents and other citizens should lead their lives and by what values they will be judged by, whether in this life or the next.

This creeping de-secularisation of our and other societies has come as a shock to those who grew up in an irreligious era, where God (or Gods) sat on the sideline as the world discretely scrapped in the Third World over whether monetarism or Marx was the great leap forward.

Reading The Life of Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd’s 1998 biography of the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr, one is struck how deeply pious and religious British society used to be, with Christianity permeating every facet of daily life much in the manner that people view Islam today. Thomas More represents the tensions within such a society, the allure of humanism and rediscovered classical text set against the rigidity and solace of deeply rooted Catholicism.

True faith? Thomas More by Holbein
More’s age saw the conception of the ideas that would eventually give birth to the renaissance and modernity, the primacy of the individual edging forward over that of the Pope. More’s mind was not closed to the developments and changes his society were going through, and in his early life was seen to champion to the reintroduction of classical learning into rhetorical teaching, albeit in a Christian context. It is the writings of Martin Luther that set More off on a more trenchant, reactionary path. As far as More was concerned, Luther was literally the antichrist, a portent for the collapse of the then world order.

More did have a point, for our world would be unrecognisable if it were not for the protestant reformation. Not that Luther is a historical figure that should be held with any particular veneration; a vitriolic anti-Semite, driven by an emotional psychosis brought about by his own disillusionment with the Catholic Church. His nailing of his theses on the church door in Wittenberg was motivated just as much by his own inner conflict and despair rather than the cold, analytical rationality that his writings would, in due course, inspire. If it weren’t for Luther, you would not necessarily have philosophers such as Hegel and Heidegger. It really is that simple.

Martin Luther
So was More right to be so resistant to the advent of Protestantism? Well, as has been mentioned and which Ackroyd goes on to describe, Luther did not help his own case. Even More’s fellow humanists who at first were intellectually curious about what Luther had to say about individual enlightenment, turned against the former German monk. However, one of these humanists, Desiderius Erasmus, who was a great friend and champion of More, also became alarmed with the Lord Chancellor’s increasingly draconian and militant stance. One thing that does come out of Ackroyd’s account is how much of a bellwether Erasmus was for the shape of the early Reformation, especially in England. His insights into the pomposity and hubristic arrogance of Henry VIII’s court are something that More seems somewhat oblivious to, whether through piety, natural reserve or political cunning.

The collective name for those around More was, in the fifteenth century, ‘a threat of courtiers’. One contemporary described the court as ‘quesy’ and ‘unstable’. ‘It is hard trusting this wylle worlde,’ he continued, in which ‘every man is here ffor himsylff’. Erasmus had attacked court follies in Moraie encominium where are to be found ‘nothing more indebted, more servile, more witless, more contemptible’ than the courtiers themselves. It was a world of faction and patronage, ‘affinity’ and worship, where competing groups intrigued in order to gain access to the king and where offices could be bought and sold.

The Reformation may have changed our society, but on this evidence it did not change human nature, as I am sure the Metropolitan Police could currently testify as they investigate to what lengths people today will go to ’gain access to the king’.

If More and Luther are to the two opposing ideological forces in this story (thereby creating the first true dialectic of the modern era?), the other central relationship is that of More and Henry VIII. Historians are still divided as to whether Henry’s eventual break with Rome was a cynical move to allow him to marry Anne Boleyn or an action of a man who genuinely believed his first marriage to be unlawful and cursed (Ackroyd is in the former camp), but the transformation of Henry VIII from the great new hope for peace and learning into a bloated, warmongering bully is one that pains More greatly. If one to use a crude modern analogy, More was Tony Blair to Henry VIII’s George W. Bush, someone who saw himself as a restraining influence on his monarch’s impulsion and excesses.

Henry VIII by Holbein
And Henry VIII did listen… for a while. More’s eventual martyrdom was incomprehensible and painful to Henry as the monarch’s bellicose and provocative stance were to Humanists such as Erasmus and More. When More became a (debatably) passive figurehead for those who were resisting Henry VIII’s clerical reforms, he had to be got rid of, and Ackroyd is particularly strong in his book on More’s final act.

The nature of genuine martyrdom is now somewhat misunderstood in an age when desperate, alienated young men all too willingly blow themselves and others up in our multicultural metropolises cities. A genuine martyr has too really sacrifice all he holds truly dear, too the point of painful disavowal of a higher cause. The act of martyrdom is not one undertaken by eager volunteers – it is an act of almost unwilling self-harm and an act which has to be that last available course to the martyr-to-be. And in his last years, we see the tremendous self-discipline and conviction of More, always hoping his Monarch and his court would come to his senses, and avoid the folly of separation. But More could not break his own believes and did not damn those of less resolve – it was an intensely personal matter, one solely between God and himself, a matter of adhering to the teachings he espoused for the whole of his life. Of course, there is a slight irony that Luther was the advocate of the personal contract with God, and that this was all that More was left with as he was beheaded, his own Church withering on the vine in the land in which he was born. However, this More death was the seedling, the last barrier to be overcome on our society’s onward march towards the primacy of the individual and his/ her beliefs.

Ackroyd evocatively depicts the period, putting the modern reader successfully into what is now an alien mindset. His attention to detail is impeccable, and he always has an eye for the telling fact or detail that rounds out events, individuals or beliefs. He also manages to debunk existing preconceptions of More as a proto-liberal (a la Robert Bolt’s Man for All Seasons) in a gentle sardonic style that is amusing without going for the Rottweiler hostility of a David Starkey. The Life of Thomas More, as so much of Ackroyd’s work, is simply superb and highly insightful for those who cannot fathom those who go to their deaths for their beliefs.

The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd was published in hardback by Chatto & Windus in 1998.

Past Peter Crispin book reviews:
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir by Gore Vidal

In Praise of Marvel Comics’ Civil War

2007-01-14T16:03:04Z

All images in this review are copyrighted material belonging to Marvel Comics, and are reproduced here for strictly non-profit making and critical purposes and can be removed on request. There are also some minor spoilers in this article. Please visit the Marvel website: www.marvel.com

Captain America's been torn apart
Now he's a court jester
With a broken heart
He said turn me around
And take me back to the start
I must be losing my mind
"Are you blind?!"
I've seen it all a million times.
Paradise City by Guns N Roses

So sang Axel Rose at the end of the 1980s, and what was once metal’s tortured allegory for the death of the American dream is now the plot of what has to be the most exciting development in mainstream American comic books of the last twenty years.

Marvel Comics is the publisher of titles such as The Amazing Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Avengers, The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and The Punisher. Presently, Marvel’s cultural currency has never been so high, with successful Hollywood adaptations of its books (the Spiderman films, the X-Men films, Fantastic Four) breaking box office records and rehabilitating the superhero genre after the dire and frankly embarrassing Batman films of the 1990s. Marvel, as a publisher, has capitalised on this, placing strict editorial controls and standards on its entire stable of titles, attracting renowned writers from other media to write regularly for its books. In recent years, Joss Whedon (the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer amongst others) has had a run on The Astonishing X-Men, J. Michael Straczynski (the creator of Babylon 5) has tackled The Amazing Spiderman and The Fantastic Four while Kevin Smith (the film director behind Clerks, Mallrats and Dogma) has written for Daredevil. Not only has it brought a new adult audience to these books (much in the same way that the 1980s phenomenon the ‘graphic novel’ did for a while with such fare as The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: The Killing Joke), but it is has noticeably raised the quality of the titles and, in turn, the game of the other writers.

What casual viewers of the movies or the intermittent readers of these titles may not be aware of is that they all inhabit the same fictional universe and stories and characters overlap, sometimes with witty and incisive aplomb or at others for cynical reasons to boost the falling sales of a failing title (a very popular character turns up in the book for no good reason; in Marvel’s case, this is usually the X-Men’s Wolverine). This is a blessing and a curse for the comic fan, as sometimes it’s great to see how the events in another part of the ‘Marvel Universe’ impacts on the narrative of your favourite character while it can also be a forced, illogical intrusion that makes little sense if you don’t follow certain other books, and is to the detriment of the titles that you do read.

Aside from Marvel, there is DC Comics, which is home to the slightly older and more established characters such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, The Flash and The Green Arrow. These DC characters never interact with the Marvel characters apart from the odd (in all senses of the word) publishing gimmick one-offs, which are never artistically satisfying. The DC characters too share their own fictional universe, although this is somewhat more fragmented and bogged down with a highly complex continuity that takes in hundreds of parallel worlds and differing creative intentions, if only due to the fact that DC has been continually publishing since the mid-1930s whereas Marvel has only really been in business since the mid-60s (although it did acquire the rights to one or two character of the 1940s, such as Captain America, who they have since interwoven into the fabric of Marvel continuity).

The official Civil War trailer from www.marvel.com.
Every couple of years, both Marvel and DC run a ‘crossover event’ in each of their own respective universes, an over-arching plot that runs throughout all their major titles. These, more often than not, are cynical marketing pushes at times of the year when sales are down (the summer months) and are of a variable quality. Both publishers also use these events as a house-clearing exercise, whether it is tidying up that annoying bit of continuity, killing of an artistically expired character or using it as platform to reintroduce, reinvent or create an old character or brand new hero or villain. Last year, both Marvel and DC ran their own crossover series, DC’s being called Infinite Crisis while Marvel’s was titled Civil War. Both were publishing events within the industry and both were meant to restructure the publishers’ universes to appeal to a new generation of comic books readers as well as attract back those who may have drifted off. Out of the two, only Marvel’s emerged as the unqualified artistic and commercial success (the failures of DC’s Infinite Crisis will be touched upon later), andunderlines all that is good, innovative and engaging at ‘the House of Ideas’ (as Marvel’s affectionately know as by its fans).

Marvel’s Civil War at its heart has a brilliant conceit that allows writers to bring in contemporary social and political concerns into this fantastical universe. A group of inexperienced US superheroes known as the New Warriors disastrously botch a raid on a supervillain hideout, resulting in a huge explosion that takes out a nearby school with hundreds deaths, mainly children. All of this is captured on tape by a reality TV crew, and the nation reacts violently against all costumed vigilantes, forcing the superhero community to examine its own actions and its very existence. A split emerges, with those who now decide that all superhumans must be registered and trained by the US Government, while others see this as an infringement of their freedoms and are suspicious that they will become mere pawns, super-soldiers to be deployed at whim by a bellicose administration. Two factions emerge, relations deteriorate, further deaths ensue, and one group of heroes become sanctioned by the government to forcibly track down, prosecute and (if needs be) imprison the others who resist registration.

The main story is self-contained in a special seven issue limited series actually called Civil War, while the story is expanded upon in all the characters’ regular titles and another series called Front Line, which follows a pair of investigative reporters at The Daily Bugle (the paper for which Peter Parker/ Spiderman works as a photographer) looking at a possible political conspiracy behind the Superhuman Registration Act.

Marvel claim that the actual Civil War title is self-contained, and that the reader will not need to buy all the other spin-offs to follow the main plot, and for the most part this seems to be bourn out. However, there are occasions where ‘off-panel’ events are casually dropped in and jars the casual reader.

The main Civil War title is therefore, and correctly, the main motor for this crossover event, and is masterfully scripted by Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar and brilliantly drawn by Steve McNiven, who virtually animates the panels to convey the kinetic, cinematic action. Millar is an astute writer who cleverly decides to accentuate the ambiguity of the situation, imposing a ‘what if?’ realism to the far-fetched Marvel world. While instinctively one feels that the plot and the characters would rebel against the notion of government-run superagents, Millar (quite rightly) underlines the point that where people expect police, firemen and medics to be properly trained and licensed, would not the non-powered denizens of the Marvel world be aghast at vigilantes repeatedly taking the law into their own hands, regardless of the collateral cost? This point is underlined all the more when these vigilantes are wearing garish costumes, can walk up or through walls, turn themselves invisible, fly or put themselves on fire without harm.

A fictional, fantasy world at war with itself over civil liberties.
This is not entirely new territory for comic books; Millar’s own post-modern re-imagining of Marvel’s premier superhero team The Avengers into Iraq-invading, George W. Bush bootboys in the highly successful The Ultimates series shares many elements with Civil War, and The Ultimates has its own antecedent in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen series (in which a still in power Richard Nixon uses registered heroes to bring about the end of the Vietnam and Cold Wars). However, this is the first time that a writer has been allowed to play around with the fundamental basics of some of the most profitable popular culture icons of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Marvel promises that the resolution of Civil War will stick and that the characters’ world will remain forever changed, a world that will bear more of a resemblance to our own mores, values and political climate.

Miller is writing for the jugular in Civil War. Iron Man, a millionaire technological wizard who fights crime in his own specialized body armour, is made out to be a war profiteer, someone who will gain huge riches on all the technology needed to carry out and then enforce registration. His alter ego, Tony Stark, is the most visible and vocal superhero to campaign for registration, drawing parallels with the way some in the Bush Administration manipulated the case for invading Iraq to suit their own oil interests just as much as those of national security.

Going up against Stark/ Iron Man is the aforementioned Captain America, a super-soldier from the Second World War who is still fighting due to a convoluted history involving super serums and cryogenic suspension. Millar has the most fun with this character, as ‘Cap’ was actually a comic book hero from the 1940s, published during the war for propaganda purposes. Millar wrong foots us, with the readership thinking that such a patriotic character would automatically come out in favour of the government, justice and the American way. However, Millar rightly interprets that such a character who epitomises liberty, and has throughout his entire fictional career fought nasty totalitarian regimes (whether they be Nazi or Communist), would automatically bridle against the introduction of compulsory identity cards, state super armies and violations to the US Constitution. Captain America goes rogue as the US cracks down on civil liberties, becoming a figurehead for a resistance movement he cannot necessarily choose, making strange, ethically compromised bedfellows.

Tony Stark, The Invincible Iron Man, promises a Bush-a-like US President that he'll bring in the rogue Captain America.
Millar deliberately plays his own cards close to his chest as to where his own sympathies lie, and both sides and arguments are portrayed to have their valid and invalid points. Tony Stark may be a war profiteer but has he also got the flawless argument? Captain America may be an incorruptible war veteran, but isn’t there a touch of the redneck militia in his tirade against big government? The story imbues a complex dialectic that seems to be totally missing in most North American art or news coverage, so it is heartening that Marvel is ensuring that the kids are not going to be starved of ethical roughage in their ravenous consumption of the entertainment ‘industry’.

Aside from his intelligent handling of Captain America, Millar brilliantly handles that other great pop icon, Spiderman. As anyone who has seen a Spiderman movie or read the comic book will know, Spiderman is the gawky kid who is always torn over what the right course of action is for him… should he fight crime with the gifts of his superpowers or should he ‘selfishly’ live a normal life? As, famously, the character reasoned with himself "with great power comes great responsibility", and, as one can imagine, the events of Civil War cause Spiderman no end of angst, torn between the two sides, initially culminating in him publically declaring his true identity so the public could have faith once more in its own heroes. Millar being Millar, this does not herald in a new age of Aquarius, as all the villains Spiderman has fought come out of hiding, retirement and prison to hunt down and persecute his family. Spiderman has always been the comic book’s Everyman, and Millar uses him as the readers' guide through the moral complexities of the story.

Peter Parker 'comes out' as Spiderman in Civil War issue 2.
Elsewhere in the Marvel Universe, ramifications are felt everywhere. The Incredible Hulk is exiled into deep space, superhero marriages break up, heroes become villains, villains become heroes, and even the apple pie Fantastic Four split up. To get incredibly pretentious about it, Civil War is the Marvel Universe’s Dreyfus Affair.

What gives the story its edge is that you are aware that the writers have almost been given total free rein to do whatever they feel necessary. We are talking about Marvel's chief financial assets being totally taken apart, and the cosy, predictable mainstream narratives and norms have been shattered in a way that has not happened since the radical social commentary of Chris Claremont’s X-Men run of the 1980s. All bets are off, and one expects iconic characters to be rubbed out (pardon the pun) before the story’s over (there is one issue left to go). It’s heartening that sales of Marvel books have gone through the roof in response to this devil-may-care approach to Marvel’s crown jewels and it will hopefully encourage other creators and entertainment companies not to be so bloody precious with their assets. The recent James Bond reboot would a complementary comparison to show that everyone’s a winner when producers or editors take well-thought out risks.

One keynote sequence that characterises the daring of Millar and co is a face off between Captain America and The Punisher, a non-powered Vietnam vet vigilante who wages a perpetual war against the Mob. Cap has reluctantly taken The Punisher on his side, only to find him gunning down two villains in cold blood. Cap attacks the Punisher, only for the Punisher to refuse to fight back. Others observe that the reason why is that the Punisher probably went to ’Nam due to the patriotic inspiration of Cap (Millar wryly commentating on the character’s original propaganda origins) and that they are in effect the “same guy, but different wars”, to which Cap blows his top, claiming that the Punisher is insane, where he is not. Not only is Millar drawing a valid comparison between two characters who have never been compared before, he is also highlighting Marvel’s somewhat morally dubious decision to make a children’s hero (and a lot of money) out of character that distributes instant, fascistic justice by machine gunning down those he deems guilty. And this is all in a mainstream comic, not farmed off in a specialist edition or a graphic novel aimed at adults, but at the general readership which ranges from people in their pre/early teens right through to people in their 30s/ 40s and beyond. Millar and Marvel deserve plaudits for this approach, which is uncharacteristically daring for an industry that has more often than not engaged in cynical marketing than valid character development.

Just compare Civil War to what DC Comics are currently doing. Aside from the Batman and Superman titles that are literally as well as figuratively bulletproof, DC is flailing wildly in quality and content after its own recent reboot of its universe. DC seems content to revisit past glories, xeroxing old plot lines and characters so much so that one wonders why they don’t take its logical conclusion and just reprint old classics. In ten years’ time, DC Comics will be extinct and irrelevant due to its own editorial mismanagement whereas Marvel has guaranteed that its popular cultural assets will remain valid, relevant and enjoyable in our rapidly changing world.

As Stan Lee, legendary founder of Marvel Comics, used to say “Make Mine Marvel”.

Marvel Comics’ Civil War concludes with issue 7, published on 17th February 2007 and will be available from all good comic shops. Back issues are still available, and the series will be collected as a tradepaperback by Marvel at a later date.

Official sites:
Marvel Comics
Millar World (Official Mark Millar website)

Unofficial sites:
Newsarama (Comic Book News site)
The Marvel Database
Comic Book Resources (Comic Book News site)

A review of Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir by Gore Vidal

2007-01-14T12:15:00Z

All images in this review are copyrighted material belonging to the copyright holders, and are reproduced here for strictly non-profit making and critical purposes and can be removed on request.

Although it may be somewhat predictable to cite F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line that "there are no second acts in American lives" when reviewing an American autobiography, Gore Vidal vividly proves there are occasions where there’s enough for a second volume, let alone a second chapter. Palimpest, Vidal’s first set of recollections, ended in 1963, covering the writer’s initial success, his forays into Hollywood script writing, and his first attempt to get into Congress. This second volume ostensibly covers his life and career from ’64 to the present, when Vidal returned to novel writing, became an established political commentator and all-round divisive US intellectual, revered and reviled in equal measure. Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir is far more than that, however, as Vidal for the most part reins in his (admittedly entertaining) excesses, to write what is an effect an elegy for liberal America, currently culturally occupied by Neo-conservatives, the Religious Right and an asinine and spineless media.

Gore Vidal
This dominating taste for nostalgia does not mean that Vidal the radical has become some kind of embittered ‘Leftie’, as he has always championed progress and recognises its benefits. The decline of the popular novel and the cultural placement of the household novelist is met by Vidal with ambivalence if not apathy, as he boldly states the key and central role the Hollywood movies of his youth had in firing his imagination and his intellectual appetite – quite an admission for such an avaricious autodidact (Vidal, surprisingly, never attended a university). His novels set in the classical world were fuelled just as much by a youthful exposure to Boris Karloff in The Mummy as they were from reading Cicero. Rightly he pours disdain on those who cynically straddle the two disciplines of scriptwriting and novel-writing (step forward Dan Brown), as one would expect from Vidal despite his background in both fields. But it is refreshing to have a mind such as Vidal's move with grace and general appreciation from low brow to high brow without condescension. But Vidal clearly identifies us living in a ‘post-Gutenberg’ age:

Recently I observed to a passing tape recorder that I was once a famous novelist. When assured, that I was still when known and read, I explained myself. I was speaking, I said, not of me personally but of a category to which I once belonged that has now ceased to exist. I am still here but the category is not. To speak of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun. How can a novelist be famous – no matter how well known he may be personally to the press? – if the novel itself is of litte consequence to the civilised, much less to the generality? The novel as teaching aid is something else, but hardly famous.

For Vidal, it’s not so much the means of communication but what is being communicated. Throughout these memoirs, the US media is taken to task, especially the print media with particular venom reserved for The New York Times, who blacklisted his books from its reviews section throughout the 1950s and early 1960s due the homosexual angle to his first novel, The City and The Pillar. However, Vidal clearly fears the loss of the individual and critical voice in the mass media:

Today, where literature was movies are. Whether or not the Tenth Muse does her act on a theatre screen or within the cathode tube, there can be no other reality for us since reality does not begin to mean until it has been made art of. For the Agora, Art is now sight and sound; and the books are shut. In fact, reading of any kind is on the decline. Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president – the same half?

Vidal though is happy for himself to straddle media. In Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, he ruefully recalls how he inadvertently invented the press junket in the early 60s as he ends up talking about his novel Julian on a chatshow while trying to advance his poltical career (a tale told with such insouciance, you believe him), and devotes a whole chapter on reflecting on a thesis called How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV. It's telling that the subtitle of the thesis is The Lessons of Gore Vidal.

Vidal in Fellini's Roma, the recording of which is described in Point to Point Navigation.
Whether or not you consider Vidal a real intellectual, what is truly remarkable about him is how much he lived the American Twentieth Century, his real education having been there as and when it happens, whether at the epicentre or on its fringes. Point to Point Navigation reflects on his sideman role in Kennedy’s Camelot (he was related to the soon-to-be Jacqueline Onassis), his friendships with Tennessee Williams, Saul Below, Federico Fellini, Princess Margaret, Sam Spiegal, Rudolf Nureyev, Orson Welles, Tom Driberg, Grace Kelly and Graham Greene, and his childhood that was dominated by his Senatorial grandfather and his aviator pioneer of a father who had a key role in FDR’s 30s administration.

Even before puberty, Vidal was casually coming across people such as Clark Gable and Amelia Earhart. He merely carried on as he begun, and Vidal (for the most part) namedrops with a purpose, revealing telling vignettes of these well-know faces, either accentuating popular perception or debunking myth in the process. He is charitable with his enemies as he is vicious of his friends, and there are well-rounded portraits of people such as Barry Goldwater, which comes as a genuine surprise although his demolition of Barbara Cartland is a true joy to behold and one that wont be ruined here. As with all his writings, Vidal captures the flavour and the mores of the time he describes.

Gore Vidal today
Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir is just as meandering as Palimpest, eschewing chronology for thematic reminiscence. While just as acerbic and gossipy as its predecessor, Point to Point Navigation is more pointed and elegiac. Despite the perception of his critics as remorseless self-promoter and mischievous-but-aimless provocateur, Vidal comes across here as a rounded, cogent individual, tempering remorse for his partner and for time gone by with his critical faculties alone. As would be appropriate for someone who has chronicled so much of America history either through his fiction or political commentary, Vidal strikes you as a true patriot aghast at the liberties being taken against Liberty by the current US Administration.

All memoirs are self-serving, so it comes as no surprise, although a disappointment, that Vidal does not address some of the more recent and controversial causes that he has been involved with, such the correspondence he struck up with Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh or his more choice comments on 9/11. Also, a sour note is stuck by the repeated pilloring of his biographer, Fred Kaplan, whose inaccuracies seem relatively trivial and of more interest to Vidal than the reader of this memoir. These faults do not detract from Vidal the man or this entertaining, revealing book that is essential reading for those interested in Vidal’s work or the higher echelons of the American establishment in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir is published in hardback in the UK by Little Brown, priced £17.99.

In Praise of Battlestar Galactica

2007-01-10T11:31:37Z

All images in this review are copyrighted material belonging to the Sci-Fi Channel (US) and Sky One, and are reproduced here for strictly non-profit making and critical purposes, and can be removed on request. There are also some minor spoilers in this article.

No, no, no… come back. You don’t understand. You really don’t. We are not talking about robot dogs. We are not talking about some lazy Star Wars rip off with Face from The A-Team. We are not even talking about the usual formulaic and hackneyed episodic America TV Sci-Fi this reviewer has spent too many wasted hours slumped in front of.

No… we are talking about the new Battlestar Galactica, a TV drama that can hold its own against any prestige production HBO or the BBC can produce. At its best, the new Galactica is the perfect marriage of human drama, social commentary, political allegory, taut action, blockbuster production values and soap opera. At its best, it is perfect and, so far, it has seldom been off-form.

Trailer for the original 2003 mini-series of Battlestar Galactica.
For those who are not familiar with either series, the plot effectively takes its cue from the Book of Exodus – a persecuted people are in flight from an oppressive military force, looking for sanctuary in a fabled holy land. The original series used this premise in quite a simple fashion, a fusing of late 70s trends – Buck Rogers, disco and Star Wars, so much so that George Lucas threatened legal action (Gloria Gaynor’s response is not recorded). It looked increasingly cheap as the series went on, it was cheery, and is best viewed as a ten year old after Grandstand on Saturday with the weekly treat of Fish and Chips.

Given that the first episode of the new series culminated in a suicide bomb attack in a scenario that was meant to clearly evoke the current situation in Iraq, it is safe to say that BBC 1’s prime time schedules will not be bothered by this latest, and best, in 70s nostalgia driven resurrections. Obviously, this could lead the show to accusations of sensationalism or pretentiousness, but such is the calibre of the script and the performances, the show carries off its narrative with conviction and without embarrassment (unlike so many of its Sci Fi compatriots).

The cast of the new Battlestar Galactica

Galactica succeeds in having a well developed set of characters to draw on, and is not afraid to wrong foot the audience, with major characters being offed if the plot requires it, without hesitation or concern for fickle audience recognition of characters. Meanwhile, characters glimpsed in the background occasionally come to the forefront, becoming major players in their own right. Galactica is truly an organic show – it grows according to the needs of the narrative or the whims of the scriptwriters, not according to actors' salaries or egos.

But what a cast… Edward James Olmas plays Admiral Adama, the most senior military figure left after the humans' planet is wiped out in a brilliantly realised nuclear apocalypse in the revival’s original mini-series (first shown in 2003). Possessing a pock-marked Easter Island face and the voice of Clint Eastwood, Olmas makes Adama a more fully-rounded character than the usual ‘military=fascist’ caricature that these programmes normally resort to. Adama has to lead the last vestiges of humanity in Dunkirk fashion towards a fabled planet called Earth. The fleet is an ill-sorted, ill-equiped mish-mash of ships, protected solely by the eponymous Battlestar Galactica, and Olmas is superb in conveying the tensions and dilemmas he faces by masterful command of minimalist gesture or a subtle emphasis on a line. Traditionally, sci-fi tends to resort to a clichéd grandstanding speech to signpost the plot or the allegory to a bovine audience a la Captain Kirk.

Olmas: Easter Island face, Clint Eastwood voice

Off-setting the solid-yet-conflicted authority of Adama, a whole host of characters revolve, putting different pressures and perceptions on humanity’s plight. We have Colonel Tigh, the flakey, alcoholic bosom buddy of Adama, played to fatally flawed perfection by Iain Duncan Smith look-a-likey Michael Hogan. Once the fleet is off and out of immediate danger, humanity demands democracy, and there is soon an elected president, former school teacher Laura Roslin, played by Oscar-winner Mary McDonnell. Roslin is effectively Nancy Pelosi before Nancy Pelosi, so liberal she makes Gore Vidal look like Peter Hitchens. This leads, somewhat inevitably, to tension between Adama and her, which forms the crux of the first two seasons (although Galactica wrong foots the audience as Roslin goes Billy Graham, causing all kinds of havoc and quandaries for the fleet).

Away from the higher elchelons, we have the military grunts; Apollo, the idealistic son of Adama; Starbuck (a woman in the new series) who’s the rebel of the series with baggage and attitude to boot; the compromised Chief Tyrol, who is the moral conscious of the fleet while also (in some ways) its Achilles' Heel.

So who are they running away from? Well, viewers of the original series will remember the iconic Cylons, who looked like the bastard lovechildren of Darth Vader and the car from Knight Rider. Well, they are still present and correct, but given an aerodynamic make over. To add to the series’ underlying feeling of threat, paranoia and persecution, some Cylons now also look like, and are virtually indistinguishable from, humans. Giving a Mephistophelian backdrop to the humans plight, is the stunning ‘Number 6’, played with coquettish sophistication by former model Tricia Helfer. She’s the malign Harvey in the life of dodgy scientist, Gaius Baltar, who is inadvertently responsible for leaking the defence secrets that resulted in the holocaust, which happens at the start of the series. Baltar is played by Brit actor James Callis, whose portrayal gets increasingly reminiscent of Tony Blair at his most oleaginous as he rises up the ladder in the new post-genocide order. The series toys with the idea that Baltar may be in fact mad, and that Number Six exists only in his head, a guilt driven psychological manifestation, which is played out in some genuinely funny and witty scenes, that offsets the general unrelenting seriousness of the show while still advancing the ongoing story.

Callis as the Blair-esque Baltar along with the Mephistophelian 6

Galactica has the good grace to credit its audience with a modicum of intelligence… the writers know we have seen this kind of thing before, and is also aware of all the other prime time quality dramas that captivate an audience, and they rightly take the line that just because you’re writing in a science fiction medium does not necessitate a slacking off of standards or an automatic contempt for the audience (which was the natural default position for the makers of the various Star Trek shows for the last five years of that franchise, as it slowly ground to an inglorious halt).

And it's not all Ingmar Bergman on the USS Enterprise. The action sequences are physical and gritty in the style of the Jason Bourne flims and 24, while space battles are wonderfully rendered, with mock ‘handycam’ direction, as if Tarantino were directing the last 20 minutes of The Return of the Jedi. This show really does have it all.

If one were to level a criticism at the show, it would be that it only fully rewards the loyal viewer. It’s a serial not a series, and to truly enjoy it you have to watch it right through. The quality is sufficiently high to immediately arrest the casual viewers, and the editing deftly weaves in past backstories and flashbacks to signpost some of the more obscure narrative for the less committed, but ultimately it is not enough to get the most out of this beautifully crafted programme. If you want to really enjoy the show, start at the beginning: the 2003 miniseries (which can be picked up on DVD for £5 at most HMVs and Virgin Megastores these days).

Trailer for Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica - minor spoilers.
The third season of the show has only just started broadcasting in the UK at 9pm on Tuesday evenings on Sky One. The first two episodes show no sign of the series losing its edge, its guts or its way, but reports from the US indicate that the series gets increasingly grim and bleak as it goes on, losing some of the aforementioned humour. This is a real shame and a risk if true, as any programme that takes itself relentlessly seriously runs the risk of ridicule – let’s hope that the show can, like its protagonists, hold onto its humanity as it truly boldy goes where no science fiction series has gone before.

Official sites:
Sky One's Official Battlestar Galactica microsite.
Sci- Fi Channel's (US) Battlestar Galactica page.

Unofficial sites:
www.battlestargalactica.com
Battlestar Wiki

Doctor Who - The Runaway Bride (Christmas Special), BBC1, 25 December 2006

2006-12-31T10:15:05Z

All images in this review are copyrighted material belonging to the BBC, and are reproduced here for critical and non-profit making purposes, and can be removed on request.

The Doctor and The Bride
It’s amazing how complacent and conservative people can quickly become, especially your radical creative types. When Doctor Who was brought back by the BBC in 2005, it was entrusted to TV tyro Russell T Davies, who, publicly at least, was more renowned for dramatising premature ejaculation than premeditated extermination.

And although the new Who was sexed up, it remained within the norms of pre-watershed television, but with a new found emotional core that was deeply submerged if not completely repressed in the original series. It was, on the whole, disciplined, well-scripted, with a committed central performance from Christopher Eccleston as a war-weary, if not damaged, refugee seeking humane meaning and order in a chaotic, vicious universe. Episodes such as Dalek, Boom Town and Parting of the Ways reimagined Doctor Who for a modern audience, while staying true to the fundamentals of the series’ basis and a gentle, but not overbearing, affection for 30 odd years of continuity that preceded the revival.

New Doctor Who was a complete and unmitigated success, reaching levels of popularity unimagined by the old series even at its early 60s and later 70s peaks. On occasion it even overshadowed the cornerstone of all BBC1 programming, Eastenders. But when is huge commercial success ever artistically liberating? Maybe for the successful, garroulous author, who is happy to chuck commercial reward on a bonfire for gauche literary immortality (which is never assured). But for a television series, that has a production crew of hundreds and is expected to remain a popular draw for a Broadcasting Corporation that is always trying to justify its existence to a hostile government? Never.

The Runaway Bride is a case in point. Within two years of its miraculous rehabilitation from having been a national cultural laughing stock, Doctor Who is solidifying once more into a mild formulaic embarrassment, transforming from a subtle, subversive family drama (that no other mainstream broadcaster in the world would make) into a rehash of former glories, laden with clichéd Hollywood tropes delivered with a leaden predictability.

For this reviewer, the true litmus test for a Doctor Who episode is whether one can watch it in polite company (those who remain resolutely neutral to the show), and The Runaway Bride fails miserably in this regard. Having convinced a family member that there is nothing wrong with his 30 year old son following such a series by showing him some of the highlights of the previous two years (including last year’s Christmas special and the aforementioned Dalek), this reviewer experienced a sudden rush of blood to the cheeks several times during the episode’s exceedingly long 60 minutes.

So what was precisely wrong? Well…

It was a complete rehash of the previous year’s Christmas special, hitting the same narrative beats to the same pace and to the same resolution, but with less originality and genuine flair. Last year's special was stylish and self-assured, where as 2006's Christmas episode was neurotic and narratively timid.

Doctor Who, like all good science fiction, works best when it is layered – you can enjoy it on many levels. The Runaway Bride was monothematic and mono-toned, a madcap childish mishmash of loud, brash, confusing CGI strung together by tenuous plotting with the odd attempt to inject a sense of poignancy about a character who left in the previous series, and who would be a total mystery to any potential new viewer.

It was not really self-contained. Any TV series should be accessible in terms of plot and dialogue in a self-contained episode. Plot arcs can be built and continued, characters can evolve and be developed, but at its heart an episode should be able to explain to the new viewer what is going on and be thematically interesting in itself. Did we care about any of the characters? No. Were we engaged with their plight? No. Was there any genuine tension? No. Was there any point to the whole proceedings apart from simplistic thrills and bangs? No.

The episode was too in love with its own special effects. Having spent three decades trying to portray the vast expanses of all time and space with a ball of string, some bubblewrap and a quarry, the BBC are overjoyed with the possibilities of affordable CGI. However, accomplished as they are (and they are not always good as the production team think they are), the need for spectacle is beginning to dictate plot in precisely the same way the constraints in effects limited the original series. Just because you can replicate a car chase from The Matrix Reloaded doesn’t mean that you have to do so, especially when it is ineptly crowbared into the plot. Dramatic tension combined with sympathetic, stylish production values retain audiences far more effectively and affectionately than a Primark version of a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

Nice effects, but where's the script?
Fan wankery. It preached to the converted. Russell T Davies and his team of writers are fans of the original series in rather a big way, having written numerous spin off novels between them during the 1990s when the series was off air and unloved. When the series returned, one got a sense that they were maintaining a tremendous self-discipline to keep the show to the basics, and not literally turn off new viewers with a convoluted continuity that only appeals to those who get an Asperger’s-esque thrill from obscure and ultimately meaningless references to what has gone on before.

There were nods in the first season that were painful, but the whole enterprise was trying to put the “Who?” back into Doctor Who. In The Runaway Bride (and in the last full series of the show) the mask slipped, and pointless namechecking of the Doctor’s planet Gallifrey and the rather tedious cross-platform promoting of the spin off show Torchwood meant that the programme was solely talking to the converted, playing off old riffs, like a jaded 60s rockstar touring soulless stadiums with no new material of worth.

THE MUSIC WAS TOO LOUD. The BBC Symphony Orchestra of Wales now records the soundtrack for each episode, and one imagines that this is not cheap. This does not mean that they have to be playing the entire time, crudely signposting what the audience is meant to be feeling at every single moment, like Steven Spielberg/ John Williams collaborations at their worst. The sound mix was all wrong, drowning out the admittedly witty dialogue (from what I could hear of it) and smothering any attempt at subtlety. Murray Gold, the composer, is capable of writing and arranging some lovely scores (last series’ Doomsday being a case at point), but he, like the production team are trying too hard to mimic the worst of Hollywood blockbusters rather than retaining the series’ own quirky charm, which they have done so well on the whole over the last two years.

The villain was a rather naff giant spider played with camp, panto relish that recalled the series' late 1980s nadir. One supposes, given that young children could be watching the show, that the makers had to allieviate the horrific elements of such a character, but every time the character was on screen a certain sense of shame washed over me as if I really was too old to be watching such nonsense – the villain offered no interest to the adult viewer, whereas, when the show is at its best, the makers can develop the threat so it works on different levels for different age groups. Instead, we got OTT acting thrown together with a somewhat confusing and nonsensical motive and plot (which will not get taken apart here).

Catherine Tate - saving the show as well as the day
In its defence, the thing I was most dreading turned out to be the episode’s saving grace: Catherine Tate. Although not particularly familiar with her own comedy sketch show, this reviewer initially thought that the casting was a touch too populist and odd as the temporary replacement companion to the surprisingly good Billie Piper. However, Tate played the role well, injecting comedy touches at the right places while not making her character a caricature. If anything kept me watching, it was Donna’s (Tate’s character) plight and reaction to this new universe but this element (which surely was intended as a way in for new viewers) was drowned out by the overblown production and set pieces.

David Tennant turned in his usual performance as the Doctor, which is animated but ultimately bland, although there were one or two moments that allowed him to shine. Rumours are that Robert Carlyle will be taking over in the role in 2008, and this may inject some new life into the show if the forthcoming Season 3 (to be shown in March 2007) turns out to be as much as a turkey as this year’s Christmas special.

Formerly Christopher Eccleston, soon to be Robert Carlyle?
Although important, it is never just the actor in the role that defines Doctor Who – it’s the intention of the production team. This review could be seen as over critical, but it is so because the intelligent audience is aware that the current producers and writers are capable of so much more, and this Christmas they were caught going through some overly simplistic motions. Let’s hope they can raise their game with the new series in March, as otherwise 25th December 2007 will be one doctor’s appointment I wont be keeping.

Past Peter Crispin Doctor Who Reviews:
Doctor Who - New Earth

Official Site:
Doctor Who (BBC Site)

Unofficial Fan Site:
Outpost Gallifrey

Rent - Pet Shop Boys

2006-12-14T16:50:03Z

The third single from the 1987 Pet Shop Boys album Actually and with a dark, cynical and typically opulent video from Derek Jarman (who always, in fact, shot on a shoe string), Rent stood out from the 80s Stock Aitken & Waterman Hi-Nrg pop that dominated the pop music charts at the time.

While U2 were busy being profound by hanging around deserts, the Pet Shop Boys actually got on with commentating on what was going on in most Western societies, namely the commercialisation of relationships and personal values, all the while doing so in an entertaining and accessible manner.

Official websites:
Pet Shop Boys
Derek Jarman

Relevant Wikipedia links:
Profile of the Pet Shop Boys
Profile of Derek Jarman
Information on the Pet Shop Boys' album Actually

Saving Private Lion (The Adam & Joe Show)

2006-12-04T20:26:31Z

From the brilliant yet defunct The Adam & Joe Show, which was first shown on Channel 4.

Official websites:
The Adam & Joe Show
Adam Buxton

Relevant Wikipedia links:
Information on The Adam & Joe Show

Jacky - Marc Almond

2006-12-04T18:11:10Z

A superb rendition of an old Jacques Brel song, which Almond originally recorded for his Tenement Symphony album.

The OTT arrangement was by Trevor Horn, who was, arguably, solely responsible for Frankie Goes To Hollywoood's success, and then later on when to sprinkle his fairy dust over Grace Jones and the Pet Shop Boys.

Jacky - Marc Almond

Official websites:
Marc Almond
Trevor Horn

Relevant Wikipedia links:
Profile of Marc Almond
Profile of Jacques Brel
Profile of Trevor Horn

Bob Geldof's Concert for the Cure for Death (Time Trumpet)

2006-12-02T17:49:01Z

Another brilliant clip from Time Trumpet. This sketch says all there is to say about Live 8.

As befits a satire on Geldof, this clip has lots of swearing so it is not necessarily office friendly.

Official site:
www.timetrumpet.co.uk

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager (Episode II)

2006-12-02T17:37:00Z

Peter Crispin's My Space

2006-12-02T17:31:47Z

I have set up a My Space account that can be viewed at http://www.myspace.com/petercrispin.

The clips will change daily when I access to a terminal, and all the interests listed are hyperlinks that once clicked will either take you to a relevant clip or article.

Enjoy!

Monkey Donkey Question Time (Time Trumpet)

2006-11-21T19:56:59Z

Here’s a clip from Armando Iannucci’s BBC2 show Time Trumpet. The series is a spoof of the recent fad for television programmes that look back at a particular decade (i.e. I Love the 80s), but this time around this is from the perspective of an imaginery 2031 looking back to our near future.

Displaying the sharp and prescient satirical edge that held him in good stead with programmes such as The Day Today and Brasseye, Iannucci uses montage and other clever televisual production techniques to bring a dumbed down future all that much nearer…

“Monkey’s tiiiiired….”

Cameron faces a grilling from David Dimble Donkey

Official site:
www.timetrumpet.co.uk

The Man Who Sold The World – David Bowie

2006-11-20T18:09:13Z

Originally recorded by David Bowie for the album of the same name in 1970, the song was really made famous by Nirvana’s cover version during their MTV Unplugged session.

This absolutely brilliant performance is taken from a 1979 appearance Bowie made on the US show Saturday Night Live. The two strange characters in the background are performance artists Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, both of whom later found fame by doing electro-covers of Opera arias – only in New York and in the early 1980s...

By the way, Bowie’s backing band here are Blondie sans Deborah Harry but with Bowie's regular rhythm section. Bowie, Blondie, Nomi and Arias put in two other, equally eccentric performances on this edition of Saturday Night Live, one being an outing for TVC 15 (with Bowie dressed as an airline hostess) and the other involving Bowie’s head being superimposed on a dancing stick puppet as he sings Boys Keep Swinging.

And some people think the Scissor Sisters are weird...

The Man Who Sold The Word - David Bowie (1979 Saturday Night Live performance)

Official websites:
www.davidbowie.com
Saturday Night Live

Relevant Wikipedia links:
Profile of David Bowie
Profile of Klaus Nomi
Information on the song The Man Who Sold The World
Information on the TV show Saturday Night Live

A review of Casino Royale (2006)

2006-11-18T05:47:34Z

Over the course of 21 films and 40 years, each new cinematic visitation of secret agent 007 has been heralded with the proclamation that “Bond is Back’. Casino Royale, the latest film in the series, begs the question as to whether previously he was ever there at all, for Daniel Craig, the latest actor in the role, has made the part his own, even overshadowing the nonchalant, iconic brutality of Sean Connery’s 60s portrayal.

Casino Royale is shorn of all the cinematic devices that have made such an unpalatable character the established family Boxing Day hero of yore. No overelaborate secret bases staffed by lackeys in hardhats and colour-co-ordinated boiler suits, no submersible sports cars, no campy exchanges or Carry On double entendres. Craig’s Bond has been hardboiled, all impurities burnt away, the audience captivated by his cold, merciless basilisk stare, injecting a genuine sense of drama into what had increasingly become a self-parodic, self-indulgent routine of ritual.

This is not to say the film is unrecognisable from what has gone before. The disapproving boss, Bond’s disregard for authority while remaining resolutely of the Establishment, the consumerist fetishism, the fast cars, the easy women, the exotic locales, the physically disfigured villains are all present and correct, but then again, they were in Ian Fleming’s original novels. Casino Royale transposes with surprising ease Fleming’s tropes of a Club-land infused 1950s to a post 9/11 environment of international terrorism, and the back to basics approach of the film makes this transition easier. It is easier to imagine Bond being set upon with a machete than being cut in half in an over-elaborate setup involving lasers that can punch holes in the moon or being fed to sharks in the secretarial pool underneath the villain’s lavish offices (transported there by trapdoor, naturally).

In an era where we have all now become James Bond ourselves with our GPS tracking systems, iPods, minute digital cameras and laser-marker pens, the audience has now reached a parity with Bond in terms of his gadgets. Whereas in more recent entries in the franchise had led the filmmakers to stretch the techno-fetishism to breaking point (invisible car, anyone?), 007’s toys in the new film are believable to the extent that you would expect them to be in most middle-aged man’s Christmas stocking by 2008. This allows the filmmakers to focus solely on the look, narrative and performances of the film, with one or two indulgent action scenes being dispensed with quite earlier on in the film (although deftly executed) so they can get on with telling what is, at its heart, a genuinely gripping thriller.

Trailer for Casino Royale (2006)
Martin Campbell, the director of Casino Royale who was also responsible for the post-Cold War riposte of the series Goldeneye, has accomplished what he has set out to do – make James Bond a credible twenty first century character who can hold his own against the faux ultra-realism of Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan.

Ably supported by a great supporting cast (Eva Green is especially good as the best Bond girl since Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service over 30 years ago), Daniel Craig makes the film his own, with an intense performance coupled with a physicality that even Connery lacked. The action sequences recall the bare knuckle clashes of Raiders of the Lost Ark or more adult fare, and this helps the drama no end by making you believe that not only can Bond inflict serious physical damage on an opponent but that he too is vulnerable, easily wounded and at high risk of being snubbed out at any moment.

The defining moment of Casino Royale is a quiet scene involving just Craig. Bond has just killed two men with his bare hands, he is literally drenched in blood, his face is lacerated, and he has returned to his luxurious hotel room, propping himself up against the sink in the bathroom, downing shots of whisky as he just stares at himself in sheer disbelief and barely contained horror at the realisation of what he is capable of. Previous Bond films would have tried to denude the brutality of a killing by having it done by gadget or by a mordant post-kill quip (“I think he got the point”). Casino Royale, however, like Bond, forces the audience to stare the film’s consequences in the face, and is more gripping and shocking as a result. Casino Royale, like its protagonist, is a killer.

Official Site:
www.casinoroyalemovie.com

So Sorry, I Said - Liza Minelli

2006-11-17T10:21:39Z

A song written by the Pet Shop Boys for Liza Minelli’s album Results. Here it is being performed on The Arsenio Hall Show.

The Lyrics

If this is a ghetto
I'm in it with you
If it's just a prison
I'm locked in it too
I tried to leave you
but after all that you had said
I went to pieces
when I should have shouted and screamed
instead
So sorry, I said

Your powers of persuasion
those quizzical eyes
have tired and tied me
with innocent guile
I meant to walk out
after all the tears we'd shed
I should have stalked out
gone and painted the town bright red
but instead
So sorry, I said

How tough it gets
Don't talk to me about it
To pay off your debts
I worked on overtime
and you say you've never believed in luck

If you need a reason
consider me mad
An old retainer
loyal and sad
I bought my freedom
after all that we have shared
I couldn't leave you
Think of the skins I'd have to shed
instead
So sorry, I said
So sorry, I said
So sorry, I said

It's Liza with a 'Z' in 1974.

Useful Wikipedia Links on Liza Minelli:

- Profile.
- Information about the album Results.

Official website:
www.officiallizaminnelli.com/

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager (Episode I)

2006-11-17T09:00:18Z

Faster – Manic Street Preachers

2006-11-16T21:41:22Z

A brilliant bit of agit-pop from the early 1990s. It can be found on the darker-than-dark The Holy Bible album, which flopped on its initial release.

Following the disappearance of the Manic’s lyricist, Richey Edwards, the band would abandon this sound for something far more tempered and melodious, with the occasional bite creeping back into their lyrics if not their sound.

This, however, remains their finest hour.

The Lyrics: (in case you can’t make them out!)

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
holding you but I only miss these things when they leave
I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn
life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
self-disgust is self-obsession honey and I do as I please
a morality obedient only to the cleansed repented

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
a truth that washes that learnt how to spell
the first time you see yourself naked you cry
soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
he loves me truly this mute solitude I'm draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

sleep can't hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
shadows aren't clean, false mirrors, too many people awake
if you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else
I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
a truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell

so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything.

'Hello Comrades!' The Manic Street Preachers in 1994
Addendum

Around this time, the Manic’s lead singer tended to perform songs wearing a balaclava with his name stenciled over the brow. Needless to say, disgruntled from Tunbridge Wellls deluged Top of the Pops to complain about IRA propaganda being shown on the BBC, somewhat intentionally missing the point so they had something to be angry about.

However, in this modern day and age, would a modern band (assuming they had the chutzpah to go ahead with it) be prosecuted under new anti-terror laws? Although one woul think the Manics would be able to argue the toss about whether or not they would be ‘glorifying terrorism’ if they were to repeat the stunt in 2006, people have been stopped by Police for far less, and prosecuted for far more peaceful means of protest and expression.

Take the court case of Milan Rai, an author, activist and founder of the Justice Not Vengeance antiwar group, who ended up pleading guilty to breaking the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which outlaws unauthorised demonstrations within a kilometre of parliament.

His crime? To read out at the Cenotaph the names of Iraqi civilians and British Soldiers who have been killed since the US invasion. Apparently, the Metropolitan Police require seven days notice of such a protest, and also have a veto over the imagery used.

Obviously, we are in murky territory here. Many would agree that society needs to know that our authorities can temper protest which could be seen to incite violence and induce hatred. However, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and the suppression of expression and debate do not diminish underlying feelings and anti-terror and ‘public control’ orders can be abused in cases such as the innocuous demonstration of Mr. Rai. It is a law that is open to abuse and could be seen as the ultimate convenience by future governments who wish to suppress legitimate dissent and opposition.

You can read more about Mr. Rai’s case on the Liberty website by clicking here.

One thing is probably for sure is that a branch of HMV would not stock a new album by a new band called Generation Terrorist, which was the title of the first Manic’s album.

Useful Wikipedia Links on the Manic Street Preachers:
- Band profile.
- Information about the album The Holy Bible.
- Information about the single Faster.

Official band website:
www.manics.co.uk