At the recent BFI Town Hall meeting, there was an audio-visual presentation about the BFI and its (valuable) contributions to British cinema. Part of this presentation featured what, with apologies to whomever put it together, might be the worst trailer I've ever seen (and I've seen more than a few!): a modern trailer advertising a re-release of this very film, Went the Day Well?
Watching the film again, I am agog that they managed to cock that trailer up quite so badly: I mean, this is a film stuffed full of good scenes, great character performances, some fun lines, and a fantastic central concept - what would a small (and quaint, naturally) English village do if undercover German troops invaded during WW2?
With a hook that strong, the film doesn't disappoint. Although lumbered with a rather clumsy flashback structure, this is harsh, rarely predictable, filmmaking - and I suppose I'd better signal [spoiler warning]... the home guard are massacred in a machine gun ambush, the post-mistress is bayoneted (though not before killing one of the German soldiers with a pepper pot and an axe, and attempting to raise the alarm), the vicar is shot, and the local policeman is stabbed by the vollage's secret fifth columnist. There are a few cliches - the Germans are resolutely evil (although occasionally dim at keeping their secret), there is the requisite plucky young lad who breaks through the enemy lines to the next village - but even here, the film earns itself some narrative latitude by shooting said lad in the leg, half-drowning him in a river, and merrily knocking off his poacher friend and dog.
The film isn't showy, but its crisp black-and-white photography is solid, and the editing creates a strong pace throughout. Some great location work adds to the atmosphere being created, and these elements combine to give the final battlescenes (in the fields and the manor house gardens) a real sense of urgency.
I think what impressed me most, however, was the playful black humour running through the film's drama: the aforementioned pepper pot incident, the German plot almost uncovered through a huge bar of Viennese 'Chokolade' in the commanding officer's kit bag, the hastily scrawled secret message for help being used, unwittingly, to prop open a dodgy car window, the home guard (pre-slaughter) noting innocently (and wrongly) that they can't have heard the church bells ring twice because that would be the code for enemy paratroopers having invaded... these little moments both lighten and add to the growing tension of the film. While it is never in doubt that good (i.e. England) will prevail, the willingness of the film to bump off its supporting cast does keep you guessing longer than you might expect.
I know not all Ealing films will rise to this level, but this was a great start to the Great Ealing Film Challenge...
Sunday, 21 August 2011
The Great Ealing Film Challenge
This last week, the BBC, Channel 4 and other news organisations joined in celebrations for Ealing Studio's 80th anniversary.
Which is all well and good, except Ealing Studios already celebrated a 100 YEAR anniversary back in 2002 - http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/ealingguide/ealingstudios/ealingstudiohistory/ - to commemorate the actual founding of the studio. As Catherine Grant at Film Studies for Free (http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/) pointed out, the rather obscure anniversary that has just been celebrated was 80 years since the establishment of Ealing's sound stages in 1931.
(curious also how this 'anniversary' occurred at the same time as cinema and Blu-Ray DVD releases of several of the famous 'Ealing Comedies' - among them, The Lavender Hill Mob and Whisky Galore!)
Now, this blog has no desire to dampen such celebratory spirit - Ealing is, after all, a stalwart part of British cinema history and deserves renewed attention. So it is in that spirit that ths blog has decided to conduct its own obscure 80th anniversary celebration... and attempt to watch all of the Ealing Studios films.
Of course, there are some provisos - the list of 95 films I am working from comes from Charles Barr's Ealing Studios book, and is therefore focused entirely on the Michael Balcon years (1938-59. Given the difficulty of seeing much of the studio's output (either before 1938 or, in some cases, after), seeing all of those 95 is already something of a challenge (they're not all available on DVD ). I may also decide to throw in an occasional 'new' Ealing film (although they've been a bit quiet of late, apart from the revived St. Trinian's franchise), but the main reviews/comments will be from that initial list of 95.
The order in which I watch the films is largely going to be decided at whim, steered by the DVDs already in my collection and the vagaries of Lovefilm - the initial batch will include some of the well-known titles (commentary on Went the Day Well? and The Man in the White Suit will likely appear in the first week) and those lesser known titles that I realise I've never seen (the likes of The Love Lottery (1954), Nine Men (1943), The Feminine Touch (1954) and Train of Events (1950).
Normal blog service will continue as normal - i.e. when I see a film/TV/media related story I want to comment on, I'll still write something - but this is an experiment that is (a) related to other (off-line) Ealing work I'm doing and (b) designed to see if I can keep a more regular schedule for blog posts.
Look for the first commentary - on Went the Day Well? - later today...
Which is all well and good, except Ealing Studios already celebrated a 100 YEAR anniversary back in 2002 - http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/ealingguide/ealingstudios/ealingstudiohistory/ - to commemorate the actual founding of the studio. As Catherine Grant at Film Studies for Free (http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/) pointed out, the rather obscure anniversary that has just been celebrated was 80 years since the establishment of Ealing's sound stages in 1931.
(curious also how this 'anniversary' occurred at the same time as cinema and Blu-Ray DVD releases of several of the famous 'Ealing Comedies' - among them, The Lavender Hill Mob and Whisky Galore!)
Now, this blog has no desire to dampen such celebratory spirit - Ealing is, after all, a stalwart part of British cinema history and deserves renewed attention. So it is in that spirit that ths blog has decided to conduct its own obscure 80th anniversary celebration... and attempt to watch all of the Ealing Studios films.
Of course, there are some provisos - the list of 95 films I am working from comes from Charles Barr's Ealing Studios book, and is therefore focused entirely on the Michael Balcon years (1938-59. Given the difficulty of seeing much of the studio's output (either before 1938 or, in some cases, after), seeing all of those 95 is already something of a challenge (they're not all available on DVD ). I may also decide to throw in an occasional 'new' Ealing film (although they've been a bit quiet of late, apart from the revived St. Trinian's franchise), but the main reviews/comments will be from that initial list of 95.
The order in which I watch the films is largely going to be decided at whim, steered by the DVDs already in my collection and the vagaries of Lovefilm - the initial batch will include some of the well-known titles (commentary on Went the Day Well? and The Man in the White Suit will likely appear in the first week) and those lesser known titles that I realise I've never seen (the likes of The Love Lottery (1954), Nine Men (1943), The Feminine Touch (1954) and Train of Events (1950).
Normal blog service will continue as normal - i.e. when I see a film/TV/media related story I want to comment on, I'll still write something - but this is an experiment that is (a) related to other (off-line) Ealing work I'm doing and (b) designed to see if I can keep a more regular schedule for blog posts.
Look for the first commentary - on Went the Day Well? - later today...
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Shhh.... contains [spoilers]
Spoilers are in the news a lot at the moment...
Earlier this week, I saw a piece by Daniel Bettridge in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/aug/15/licence-to-spoil-film-spoilers). It's a rather glib piece about a research survey that suggests that book readers (the medium seems to et lost in most commentaries, but could be important) get more pleasure from the reading experience if they know where the story is going.
Or, as everyone who has jumped on the bandwagon has reframed it, audiences love spoilers.
Now, just to be clear (although if you're online and reading this blog, it seems unlikely you won't know this), a spoiler is a piece of information about a major twist, plot development, or character appearance in a forthcoming TV show, film, comic book, book... any mass media narrative piece, really.
So, this week, critics have also been posting "spoiler free" reviews of next week's Doctor Who episode 'Let's Kill Hitler' - yet, despite this spoiler-lite approach, I already seem to know [spoiler] that the Daleks will be back this season after all because, lest anyone forget, Steven Moffat is both a great writer and a big fat liar. Like Russell T. Davies before him, Moffat enjoys peppering interviews with spoilers, fake spoilers, and bits of information that look like spoilers but could, frankly, just be the ravings of a talented Scotsman...
According to the research survey, however, (and presuming it applies to audio-visual media as well as it does short stories - that is outside the scope of the survey) most of us would prefer to know. We don't necessarily want the suspense, shock, or surprise, we'd rather know if it all ends well, who survives, and then settle back to enjoy the journey.
This interests me - particularly because of my work on film trailers. The cliched complaint about trailers (and, when you've had as many conversations as I've had about trailers, you don't need a spoiler warning to tell this point is going to come up) is that they reveal too much information. Now, that's always seemed like a pointless and stupid thing to say - because (as an audience) we can't know whether a trailer has spoiled the film being advertised unless we subsequently see the film, go back to the trailer, and go "Ohhh, that really was a spoiler." Or unless we've read the book/TV show/comic that the film was based on - in which case, that's not the trailer's fault, it's your fault for already knowing the story. You've spoilt yourself - suto-spoiling? - rather than the trailer doing anything.
Since the 1930s, surveys on movie audiences and movie advertising tend to come back saying the audiences are interested in stories and stars. So, not surprisingly, trailers have focused on story and star images. The best trailers, yes, tend to be those that keep us guessing a little bit - most trailers focus on Acts 1 and 2 of the movie and, if they give us any glimpse of Act 3, it tends to be brief and elusive (often as part of one of those glorious end-of-trailer 'throw everything at the screen in one big loud montage moments). The Independence Day teaser trailer, for example, concludes with the White House blowing up. Now, that comes at the end of Act 1 in the film, and was featured in almost all the advertising - so that's hardly a spoiler. But, even if it had shown more images of the final dogfight - or even of the alien spaceship blowing up - would that have reduced its audience? Or are we so immersed in blockbuster narrative convention and generic plotting that we already know the good guys are going to win, and that the aliens are going to blow up. A lot. At that point, surely the trailer is promising us expected pleasures, rather than spoiling anything?
Of course, the reason why everyone is jumping on this particular research is because it's only a short jump from it to blaming everything on our modern, Internet-enabled age. But, lest we forget, spoilers have always been a part of the media business: when I was a kid, there was a novelisation and a comic book adaptation of Star Wars out months before the film debuted; I knew [spoiler warning] Spock died at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan because I had a photo-book version of it (anyone remember those? They told the whole story in stills from the film, with dialogue etc. added in. Kind of a faux comic book?) Anyway, the point is: spoilers aren't new. They're just easier to access.
Yes, we live in a world where Jane Espenson can 'live tweet' during episodes of Torchwood: Miracle Day (but at least she politely waits until the UK broadcast, which comes 6 days after the US one). You can read a seemingly innocent website article about one film, and have a completely different one spoiled for you. And in this Sky+ and iPlayer catch-up age, we have to accept that some conversations are going to be punctuated by people clamping their hands over their ears, chanting "Don't tell me, I haven't seen it yet..."
But, does any of this spoil our enjoyment of the actual movie / TV show / book / whatever?
I'm not sure - but I think I agree with the survey results. Maybe it's about enjoying the whole journey rather than just one (often rather predictable) twist at the end...
Earlier this week, I saw a piece by Daniel Bettridge in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/aug/15/licence-to-spoil-film-spoilers). It's a rather glib piece about a research survey that suggests that book readers (the medium seems to et lost in most commentaries, but could be important) get more pleasure from the reading experience if they know where the story is going.
Or, as everyone who has jumped on the bandwagon has reframed it, audiences love spoilers.
Now, just to be clear (although if you're online and reading this blog, it seems unlikely you won't know this), a spoiler is a piece of information about a major twist, plot development, or character appearance in a forthcoming TV show, film, comic book, book... any mass media narrative piece, really.
So, this week, critics have also been posting "spoiler free" reviews of next week's Doctor Who episode 'Let's Kill Hitler' - yet, despite this spoiler-lite approach, I already seem to know [spoiler] that the Daleks will be back this season after all because, lest anyone forget, Steven Moffat is both a great writer and a big fat liar. Like Russell T. Davies before him, Moffat enjoys peppering interviews with spoilers, fake spoilers, and bits of information that look like spoilers but could, frankly, just be the ravings of a talented Scotsman...
According to the research survey, however, (and presuming it applies to audio-visual media as well as it does short stories - that is outside the scope of the survey) most of us would prefer to know. We don't necessarily want the suspense, shock, or surprise, we'd rather know if it all ends well, who survives, and then settle back to enjoy the journey.
This interests me - particularly because of my work on film trailers. The cliched complaint about trailers (and, when you've had as many conversations as I've had about trailers, you don't need a spoiler warning to tell this point is going to come up) is that they reveal too much information. Now, that's always seemed like a pointless and stupid thing to say - because (as an audience) we can't know whether a trailer has spoiled the film being advertised unless we subsequently see the film, go back to the trailer, and go "Ohhh, that really was a spoiler." Or unless we've read the book/TV show/comic that the film was based on - in which case, that's not the trailer's fault, it's your fault for already knowing the story. You've spoilt yourself - suto-spoiling? - rather than the trailer doing anything.
Since the 1930s, surveys on movie audiences and movie advertising tend to come back saying the audiences are interested in stories and stars. So, not surprisingly, trailers have focused on story and star images. The best trailers, yes, tend to be those that keep us guessing a little bit - most trailers focus on Acts 1 and 2 of the movie and, if they give us any glimpse of Act 3, it tends to be brief and elusive (often as part of one of those glorious end-of-trailer 'throw everything at the screen in one big loud montage moments). The Independence Day teaser trailer, for example, concludes with the White House blowing up. Now, that comes at the end of Act 1 in the film, and was featured in almost all the advertising - so that's hardly a spoiler. But, even if it had shown more images of the final dogfight - or even of the alien spaceship blowing up - would that have reduced its audience? Or are we so immersed in blockbuster narrative convention and generic plotting that we already know the good guys are going to win, and that the aliens are going to blow up. A lot. At that point, surely the trailer is promising us expected pleasures, rather than spoiling anything?
Of course, the reason why everyone is jumping on this particular research is because it's only a short jump from it to blaming everything on our modern, Internet-enabled age. But, lest we forget, spoilers have always been a part of the media business: when I was a kid, there was a novelisation and a comic book adaptation of Star Wars out months before the film debuted; I knew [spoiler warning] Spock died at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan because I had a photo-book version of it (anyone remember those? They told the whole story in stills from the film, with dialogue etc. added in. Kind of a faux comic book?) Anyway, the point is: spoilers aren't new. They're just easier to access.
Yes, we live in a world where Jane Espenson can 'live tweet' during episodes of Torchwood: Miracle Day (but at least she politely waits until the UK broadcast, which comes 6 days after the US one). You can read a seemingly innocent website article about one film, and have a completely different one spoiled for you. And in this Sky+ and iPlayer catch-up age, we have to accept that some conversations are going to be punctuated by people clamping their hands over their ears, chanting "Don't tell me, I haven't seen it yet..."
But, does any of this spoil our enjoyment of the actual movie / TV show / book / whatever?
I'm not sure - but I think I agree with the survey results. Maybe it's about enjoying the whole journey rather than just one (often rather predictable) twist at the end...
Thursday, 2 June 2011
The rise and fall (and rise?) of 3-D
Current writing on 3-D tends towards the 'why won't it die?' camp, as if 3-D is some kind of horror / sci-fi monster that never dies, just lies dormant until someone finds the money to fund the inevitable sequel.
The normal riposte to such claims is that audiences are still going to see 3-D, so it must still have some level of popularity among cinemagoers.
Well, if you're anti-3-D (and agree with the likes of Mark Kermode, Roger Ebert, David Mitchell and, more recently, Edgar Wright), then this week the New York Times had some welcome stereoscopic relief for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/media/30panda.html?_r=2&ref=movies.
In one sense, it is like every article on 3-D: there is a reference to 3-D as a novelty attraction (3-D is 'gimmicky'), there is a subtle reference to the technology's (limited) links to specific blockbusters and genres (3-D is sci-fi / horror / juvenilia), and there is a reliance on U.S. box office statistics to 'prove' that 3-D is no longer a success. Specfically, here, that Pirates of the Caribbean 4 did made 47% of its money in 3-D ticket sales, while Kung Fu Panda 2 made only 45%).
Yet, if we pause and think about those numbers, they also reveal that almost 50% of cinema audiences are still watching new movies in 3-D in their first weekends on release (which is what the figures are actually counting, not full release stats). And that in itself is quite impressive because, although the ratio of 3-D ticket money is less than, say, Avatar levels, Avatar had no competition for those 3-D screens. With Pirates 4, Thor, Jung Fu Panda 2 and others all competing for a limited number of 3-D screens (3-D cinema screens still only account for a 1/3rd of screens worldwide), then the % of 3-D admissions for 1st week box office is likely to fall, film on film. (as more films enter the marketplace)
So, it may be a bit too soon to be using this as conclusive evidence that we should all jump on the '3-D is over' bandwagon.
This is particularly true as the article also reveals that the overseas market for 3-D is significantly stronger than the U.S. one - Screen Digest reported earlier this year that 3-D's continued success is likely to be fuelled by non-U.S. markets. Which is something you would hope the New York Times would remember, seeing as they published another article on 3-D a few days earlier that discussed some of those ideas: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/the-circle-of-life-3-d-movies-rated-g-through-xxx/.
Now, admittedly that's also a piece about the growth of 3-D pornography - specifically the impressive box office success of Hong Kong period drama 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstacy - but it does point to the problems of using box office statistics to prove or disprove anything useful.
(3-D, pornography and representations of women is a whole other blog post that I'll try and get round to later this month)
So, it remains too early to call time on 3-D film. The figures do show a dip, and some suggest a progressive downward trajectory film-by-film - and that could be more worrying, although their cumulative take would also need to be taken into account. But most figures are only the U.S. box office. International returns (at the moment) seem to tell a different story.
And, lest we forget, this isn't a cinema-only process anymore - and (as I've said before) the expansion of 3-D TV, Blu-Ray and the 3DS may end up being the real game-changers for stereoscopic acceptance, not cinema...
(with thanks to Daithi and Michael for pointing those links out to me)
Sunday, 13 March 2011
BBC's Outcasts cast out?
A couple of weeks ago, the new BBC science-fiction series Outcasts, was moved from its prime-time Monday 9pm slot to a post-10 O'Clock News slot on Sunday nights. This scheduling demotion suggests (once again) the problems of trying to launch a new SF show on British television (or, at least, one - unlike Doctor Who and Primeval - that doesn't rely on a family demographic). The assumption seemed to be that the show, an expensive co-production, just wasn't bringing in high enough audiences, and had been put out to pasture, to live out the last three weeks of its existence in the hinterlands of the schedule.
And, at one level, I can see why that decision was made. From the outset, Outcasts has been a hard show to love. In some instances, a hard show to watch, with risible dialogue, plotting, pace and scope. Yet, I find myself tuning in, week after week, and I remain unsure why that is.
I'd like to say it's simply because I'm a fan of SF, but the show seems unsure whether to embrace its generic roots. For all that this is a show about the future colonisation of the planet Carpathia (christened thus by the settlers - a reference to the RMS Carpathia, which rescued survivors from the Titanic, but also presumably to the Carpathian mountains, near Dracula's home) very little of the show seems science fiction-y. This is a future where Earth may have been destroyed, where interstellar travel, anti-matter drives, human cloning and 'quantum computers' are in existence, but DJs still play vinyl, guns fire metal projectiles known as bullets, and everyone seems to get their storage units from IKEA.
I often wonder if the show is ashamed of its SF roots. The first few episodes had the requisite visual effects of a spaceship, escape pods and things burning up on entry into the atmosphere, but its emphasis remained very much on the day-to-day soap opera stories of the humans who are already on the planet, with their Gap jeans and home-made hooch. Eliding SF might have been a deliberate aim, to attract a wider audience who are unsure about anything with the tag 'SF,' but it serves to brand the show as uncertain about its own identity. Casting Jamie Bamber ('Apollo' from the new Battlestar Galactica) for a 1-episode role seemed to be a knowing nod towards SF fans, but the rest of the cast are more known for non-genre fare in shows such as Spooks (Hermione Norris) and Ashes to Ashes (Daniel Mays). (okay Ashes to Ashes was kind of SF, but ultimately more nostalgia and fantasy-led)
(visually, the show owes a lot to both of those predecessors and to Survivors - all 3 Kudos-produced - with a fast-paced but ultimately bland mise-en-scene occasionally enlivened by the vistas afforded by its South African locations)
As the show has progressed, it has continued to avoid the visual 'trappings' of SF - but has found ways to introduce more thematic elements. Debates over science/religion have been key since episode 1, alien doppelgangers have loitered on the fringes of the story (before becoming central in episode 6), technology is both unreliable (clones went 'bad', ships burn up when entering the atmosphere) and predictably everyday (although Hermione Norris's memory scoop device has strangely vanished from the show), and there has been a continued uncertainty over identity (both around body-snatcher aliens and people with secret backgrounds - such as Cass) and trust.
Even with this, however, I'm uncertain why I continue to watch. Seven episodes in, each has been dominated by cliched and predictable storytelling - which, I'll admit, the genre has been guilty of in the past - and, at times, has felt more like a crime show than a SF one (the focus on cops Cass and Fleur - perhaps the most appealing of the recurring cast - has helped with that). Questions remain unanswered (and will likely remain that way):
1. If there are 7000 people on Carpathia, why do we only ever see about 10 or so milling around in the streets? (yes, budget is an issue, but for a story with the kind of scope this is going for, seeing the same 8 people isn't enough - it needs background characters)
2. The inhabitants have really forgotten about losing their children to a disease, and about the ACs who apparently caused it?
3. Everything on the planet happens within a half hour stroll of the city?
Yet there are hints each week that keep me coming back:
- I love the look of the colony, made up of huge metal cargo containers that have become people's homes, places of work - the spaceship squatting in the middle of the colony is also interesting, but underused - another way the show tries to ignore generic elements
- I like the relationship of Cass and Fleur, even if the dialogue is tortuous at times (the writer previously wrote for Spooks - a show I enjoy and happily defend - but the melodramatic and camp tone that works there doesn't transfer over well to this show)
- Episode 5, with the original astronaut, toyed with my ideas of what the show could do (moving beyond Fort Haven, largely ditching the clone storyline - by far the most tired elements - ignoring Hermione Norris and her annoying daughter) and seemed to be introducing a time travel element a la Lost... (although it has moved away from this in eps 6 and 7 - so maybe Fleur and Cass go back in time, have a kid, and then die on the beach in the past... except why the references to them as Adam and Eve....)
In fact, Lost might be the show that this best reminds me of. Frustrating, annoying, seemingly made up on the fly (yet with hints of an overarching narrative), about a bunch of castaways who don't get on (but are part of something bigger), with their own version of 'the Others' in the ACs, and which, despite having a whole planet/island to play with, never seems to move more than a mile from the fort/beach.
There is something here. I don't love Outcasts, but I do care for it a lot. Unfortunately, despite all this potential, the move to Sunday nights would suggest that, no matter what I think, tonight's final episode will be just that. Final.
And, at one level, I can see why that decision was made. From the outset, Outcasts has been a hard show to love. In some instances, a hard show to watch, with risible dialogue, plotting, pace and scope. Yet, I find myself tuning in, week after week, and I remain unsure why that is.
I'd like to say it's simply because I'm a fan of SF, but the show seems unsure whether to embrace its generic roots. For all that this is a show about the future colonisation of the planet Carpathia (christened thus by the settlers - a reference to the RMS Carpathia, which rescued survivors from the Titanic, but also presumably to the Carpathian mountains, near Dracula's home) very little of the show seems science fiction-y. This is a future where Earth may have been destroyed, where interstellar travel, anti-matter drives, human cloning and 'quantum computers' are in existence, but DJs still play vinyl, guns fire metal projectiles known as bullets, and everyone seems to get their storage units from IKEA.
I often wonder if the show is ashamed of its SF roots. The first few episodes had the requisite visual effects of a spaceship, escape pods and things burning up on entry into the atmosphere, but its emphasis remained very much on the day-to-day soap opera stories of the humans who are already on the planet, with their Gap jeans and home-made hooch. Eliding SF might have been a deliberate aim, to attract a wider audience who are unsure about anything with the tag 'SF,' but it serves to brand the show as uncertain about its own identity. Casting Jamie Bamber ('Apollo' from the new Battlestar Galactica) for a 1-episode role seemed to be a knowing nod towards SF fans, but the rest of the cast are more known for non-genre fare in shows such as Spooks (Hermione Norris) and Ashes to Ashes (Daniel Mays). (okay Ashes to Ashes was kind of SF, but ultimately more nostalgia and fantasy-led)
(visually, the show owes a lot to both of those predecessors and to Survivors - all 3 Kudos-produced - with a fast-paced but ultimately bland mise-en-scene occasionally enlivened by the vistas afforded by its South African locations)
As the show has progressed, it has continued to avoid the visual 'trappings' of SF - but has found ways to introduce more thematic elements. Debates over science/religion have been key since episode 1, alien doppelgangers have loitered on the fringes of the story (before becoming central in episode 6), technology is both unreliable (clones went 'bad', ships burn up when entering the atmosphere) and predictably everyday (although Hermione Norris's memory scoop device has strangely vanished from the show), and there has been a continued uncertainty over identity (both around body-snatcher aliens and people with secret backgrounds - such as Cass) and trust.
Even with this, however, I'm uncertain why I continue to watch. Seven episodes in, each has been dominated by cliched and predictable storytelling - which, I'll admit, the genre has been guilty of in the past - and, at times, has felt more like a crime show than a SF one (the focus on cops Cass and Fleur - perhaps the most appealing of the recurring cast - has helped with that). Questions remain unanswered (and will likely remain that way):
1. If there are 7000 people on Carpathia, why do we only ever see about 10 or so milling around in the streets? (yes, budget is an issue, but for a story with the kind of scope this is going for, seeing the same 8 people isn't enough - it needs background characters)
2. The inhabitants have really forgotten about losing their children to a disease, and about the ACs who apparently caused it?
3. Everything on the planet happens within a half hour stroll of the city?
Yet there are hints each week that keep me coming back:
- I love the look of the colony, made up of huge metal cargo containers that have become people's homes, places of work - the spaceship squatting in the middle of the colony is also interesting, but underused - another way the show tries to ignore generic elements
- I like the relationship of Cass and Fleur, even if the dialogue is tortuous at times (the writer previously wrote for Spooks - a show I enjoy and happily defend - but the melodramatic and camp tone that works there doesn't transfer over well to this show)
- Episode 5, with the original astronaut, toyed with my ideas of what the show could do (moving beyond Fort Haven, largely ditching the clone storyline - by far the most tired elements - ignoring Hermione Norris and her annoying daughter) and seemed to be introducing a time travel element a la Lost... (although it has moved away from this in eps 6 and 7 - so maybe Fleur and Cass go back in time, have a kid, and then die on the beach in the past... except why the references to them as Adam and Eve....)
In fact, Lost might be the show that this best reminds me of. Frustrating, annoying, seemingly made up on the fly (yet with hints of an overarching narrative), about a bunch of castaways who don't get on (but are part of something bigger), with their own version of 'the Others' in the ACs, and which, despite having a whole planet/island to play with, never seems to move more than a mile from the fort/beach.
There is something here. I don't love Outcasts, but I do care for it a lot. Unfortunately, despite all this potential, the move to Sunday nights would suggest that, no matter what I think, tonight's final episode will be just that. Final.
Friday, 18 February 2011
3-D and censorship (sorry, classification)
Just wanted to recommend a blog written by my fellow UEA colleague Daithà Mac SÃthigh about the BBFC's problems with classifying 2-D and 3-D versions of the same film (you can find the original blog here: http://www.lexferenda.com/17012011/3d-or-not-3d/)
It reminded me of a similar problem in the 1950s, when the Breen Office in America (and the BBFC in Britain) held meetings about the new technology, because what was apparently acceptable in 2-D might be 'highly revealing when seen in depth.' Their main issue appeared to be the representation of female figures and monstrous creatures in the 3-D films... and some of the same arguments appear to be coming round again now...
It reminded me of a similar problem in the 1950s, when the Breen Office in America (and the BBFC in Britain) held meetings about the new technology, because what was apparently acceptable in 2-D might be 'highly revealing when seen in depth.' Their main issue appeared to be the representation of female figures and monstrous creatures in the 3-D films... and some of the same arguments appear to be coming round again now...
No 3-D for the Royal Wedding
The recent announcement that there would be no Sky 3-D cameras in Westminster Abbey for the royal wedding was met with absolutely no gnashing or wailing of teeth. Perhaps Sky had hoped the nation would rise up with one voice and demand to see the wedding bouquet thrown in full stereoscopic effect... but it didn't happen. There was barely a ripple of discontent, even from the most royal-loving of newspapers.
In one sense, however, it is a bit of a shame. Buckingham Palace should have reflected on their history of stereoscopic achievements:
1. Queen Victoria was one of the first stars of stereoscopic photographs (demonstrated at the Great Exhibition of 1851; Victoria was also one of the best-selling stereoscopic images through the 1860s and beyond);
2. Queen Elizabeth (the current one, so I or II, depending on whether you are Scottish or not) had her coronation filmed in 3-D, as well as a variety of 1953 visits (to the Derby for a flutter, to Edinburgh, and to the City of London) - released as Royal Review in 1953.
3. Princess Margaret had her own special 3-D glasses made for her ('American-style with gold frames, adjustable plastic nose-pads, and decorative slender ear-pieces' according to the Daily Mirror) when she went to see Kiss Me Kate in February 1954
4. The Queen's private cinema on board the royal yacht Britannia, was specially built so it could be converted to show 3-D films.
Sky may have been hoping for a similar embracing of 3-D technology in 2011, but it wasn't to be...
In one sense, however, it is a bit of a shame. Buckingham Palace should have reflected on their history of stereoscopic achievements:
1. Queen Victoria was one of the first stars of stereoscopic photographs (demonstrated at the Great Exhibition of 1851; Victoria was also one of the best-selling stereoscopic images through the 1860s and beyond);
2. Queen Elizabeth (the current one, so I or II, depending on whether you are Scottish or not) had her coronation filmed in 3-D, as well as a variety of 1953 visits (to the Derby for a flutter, to Edinburgh, and to the City of London) - released as Royal Review in 1953.
3. Princess Margaret had her own special 3-D glasses made for her ('American-style with gold frames, adjustable plastic nose-pads, and decorative slender ear-pieces' according to the Daily Mirror) when she went to see Kiss Me Kate in February 1954
4. The Queen's private cinema on board the royal yacht Britannia, was specially built so it could be converted to show 3-D films.
Sky may have been hoping for a similar embracing of 3-D technology in 2011, but it wasn't to be...
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