Into The Wild (movie)

***Contains spoilers***

148-minute indie road movie which partly recounts and partly theorises the final two years of twenty-something Christopher McCandless' life.

I think that's always a tricky one to balance when adapting a true-life story, but in McCandless' case it's even harder, because those final 24 months were spent in such anonymous isolation.

Good job he kept a diary then!

Weary of conventional life at 22, Chris rejects materialism by hitting the road, giving away all his money, and changing his name to the openly false Alexander Supertramp.

Along the way he encounters an assortment of people who are also at various distances away from conventional society. Generally, these meetings tend to be beneficial for either or both parties. All the same, ultimately he strikes out into the Alaskan wilderness, hoping to pit himself alone against the environment, a battle which he sadly loses.

Well, it's usually a true story when that happens.

The film's heart lies with his increasingly worried sister, who initially empathises with Chris' need to get away from their stressful family and work things out. Presently however, she slowly realises that that the increasing length of his absence, even from her, just isn't adding up.

Against a backdrop of such lovely scenery, the tone of the film is a breath of fresh air, presenting Chris' experiences with both realism and beauty. Emile Hirsch interprets the role so faultlessly that he even improvises and breaks the fourth wall at one point. This is just one of director Sean Penn's catalogue of tricks to keep such a long slow narrative interesting, particularly needed when it's just the one unfamiliar lead character at the beginning.

As is often the way with true stories, the film's big slip-up is in its editing, telling the story in such a complex non-chronological order, that even the compensatory subtitles can't save it. I found myself honestly wondering whether we had cut back (forward) to his time in the bus again yet or not. This would have been much easier to follow, and I think more enthralling, had we had the chance to live Chris' odyssey with him. The loneliness of his final days is really lost when broken up like this.

There's a lot to identify with in this incarnation of Christopher McCandless, his frustration with the shallowness of modern culture and his desire for freedom being two obvious ones.

Some moments of his journey certainly struck a chord with my own memories of leaving home to go travelling five years ago, particularly the freedom of a life uncontrolled by money. I too found it difficult to walk away from that lifestyle.

Definitely a film that requires some investment from the viewer (it is 148 minutes long!), yet still one that, like Chris' life, seemed to end all too early.

Available here.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Nightmare Man

The Sarah Jane Adventures opens its fourth series by making life easy for itself - our heroes get trapped in their own nightmares.

Most dreams don't tend to make much sense, which is great news for SJA's regular staple of plot-holes, however here they help the narrative out in another way.

They slow everything down.

With so many pauses for weird fantasy-sequences in the tale, there's little time left for much actual story to develop, giving less opportunity for all the usual contradictions to emerge. The result is one of the most watchable SJAs yet, as we get a chance to delve a bit deeper into the main players' individual psyches. All this is augmented by the real banter that some of the actors now have with each other.

The focal point for all this is a nice subplot about Luke leaving home to go to college, and how the three people closest to him are dealing with this. Which is fair enough, given that none of his other friends from earlier episodes even come to his leaving party. As such, this is unfortunately where I have to segue into the story's shortcomings, and I'm afraid they're nothing new.

There is still far, far, far too much music.

Take that really peaceful moment when Sarah has given Luke her old car, and they're just sitting inside it in the garage, just talking. While someone bangs away on a piano throughout. Surely everyone knows that incidental music is supposed to bring us closer to the characters, not come between us?

There is the occasional moment of blissful silence in this, but it's when a character wakes up, to emphasise realism as opposed to fantasy. This would be a good piece of storytelling shorthand, if only the everyday situations in this show actually were this quiet.


The Dream Lord sorry I mean Nightmare Man of the title, looks possibly inspired by Heath Ledger's Joker and is played excellently by Julian Bleach. He's also defeated very very easily indeed, by the characters simply deciding that they can defeat him. I get the metaphor that you can overcome your fears by standing up to them, but that really is all that they do here.

What was that ending? The Nightmare Man gets trapped in Clyde's dream? What on Earth sustains that? I'll skip the awkward inclusion of Sarah's nightmare self in someone else's imagination!

Eventually, after the defeat of the Nightmare Man, Luke and K-9 do undertake the enormous journey from Ealing to Oxford, even though it will separate them from the others right up until Christmas.

Unfortunately, according to the AA, Oxford is only a mere 79 minutes away from Ealing by road. Even less by train. What's the big deal, especially considering the huge amount of charging around the country that they routinely do by car in this show? I guess that sort of thing happens when you produce a London-set series in Cardiff, where maybe they are sadly still waiting for connection to the internet.

All the same, I enjoyed this, if only for seeing Doon Mackichan seeming to reprise her role as Collaterlie Sisters from The Day Today.

Now she is the stuff of nightmares…

The Goodies: In Conversation

Graeme Garden answering a question in Bristol recently (7th November) regarding The Goodies’ low-tech visual effects in the 1970s…


Questioner: ”Would you like to have had the CGI technology that’s available today for special effects at the time of making The Goodies?”

Graeme: ”At the time of making it, we probably would, ‘cause nobody else would’ve had it.”

Available here.

A Bug's Life

This film seems determined to get watched by me, as often as possible.

In 2000 I first caught about ten minutes of it at a UK ciné convention, where some bright spark had synced-up the pictures from the Super 8 release with the 5-channel surround sound of the DVD one. Alas, the acoustics of the hall didn't really do it justice.

Then in 2004 it was showing on one of my UK/NZ flights, following which I saw it on the telly in Britain. I've also since seen it just starting on TV in NZ.

So this morning I sat down to enjoy the whole thing all over again, which must surely be a good sign.

As usual with Pixar, the story and characters are quite fun and easy to follow, and the cast seem to have been a big part of that. Jonathan Harris absolutely relishes his role as Manny the praying mantis.

I do think the plot is a bit confusing as, even having seen it before, I actually found myself rewinding the tape a couple of times to get what was happening. Flik's (Dave Foley) reason for thinking that the circus insects are warriors was initially lost on me, as was their counter-belief that they were being booked to perform a show. This misunderstanding is the story's funniest gag, upon which so much of the subsequent comedy hinges, so in retrospect I think it's a good job that I never watched this in the cinema.

Not sure if this is a plus or a minus, but it's also a rare Pixar film in which the villain is implied to die at the end. (ignoring either sequence of out-takes)

The animation hasn't aged well, ironically making everything look like a Dreamworks production, but it is still perfectly serviceable. When Flik returns to the colony, apparently having completed his mission to find some big tough warriors to save everyone, the look on Princess Atta's (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) face is absolutely priceless:


Just how many conflicting feelings have they got this single expression convey?

There was a gag in the closing credits of Toy Story 2 regarding a possible Bug's Life sequel, and it's a shame this never came to pass.

Available here.

Doctor Who - Pyramids Of Mars - Classic Music From The Tom Baker Era by Dudley Simpson and Heathcliff Blair

Q. When is an original soundtrack album not an original soundtrack album?

A. When the original soundtrack has been wiped.

In the mid-1970s, the TV series Doctor Who was happily enjoying its golden era. Tom Baker (above) was playing the title role definitively, and the UK ratings were hitting crazy figures like 14 million. (more than 1 in 5 of the population)

You might have thought that the master tapes of the show’s incidental music, composed by the prolific Dudley Simpson for a five to six piece orchestra, would be something worth hanging onto, at least to release on an LP or cassette or some such technology. However, as was often the way with classic Doctor Who, the BBC dispatched them to that great sound archive in the sky, and so that was that.

The sheet music, on the other hand, was safely put into storage.

Twenty years later in the 1990s, after Simpson had returned home to his native Australia, fan Heathcliff Blair was attempting nothing less than to resurrect these recordings from the dead, using cloning.

By listening carefully to the finished episodes, and filtering out in his head such impurities as Tom Baker’s booming voice, Blair found that he was able to meticulously reperform each of the component parts of some of Simpson’s compositions, note for painstaking note. Well, obviously he pressed the record button on his computer, and began to multi-track with himself, reconstructing whole cues.

Teaming up with Silva Screen Records, he was granted access to the surviving written scores, and gradually recaptured the pieces in their entirety.

The closest possible thing to the original recordings began to grow.

This CD then represents an incredible endeavour to release a 70-minute soundtrack album despite the tiny detail of the soundtrack in question not actually existing.

In my opinion, it’s 90% successful. As I listened to it through once again last Sunday night, I certainly found it to evoke the mood of that era.

For me, the most evocative tracks were 6-13, which are taken from the classic tale Genesis Of The Daleks. Back in the day, the BBC had released a heavily edited version of this story on record and tape, which I had listened to repeatedly. Upon hearing these identical music cues twenty-five years on, in the very same living room, I really felt transported back to those days, and at several points I caught myself involuntarily mouthing the appropriate lines of dialogue. Clearly Blair was doing something right.

Afterwards I inevitably tried to test the disc by comparing the opening music from Pyramids Of Mars with my VHS tape of it, and was pleasantly surprised to find many extra notes on the CD than in the actual programme. This sort of irregularity is partly because the instrumentals were trimmed and faded-down in the final TV edit. It‘s also because Heathcliff has composed the odd bridging section himself, in order to segue between otherwise unconnected cues, which I think is fair enough.

There is sadly just one inherent shortcoming to this collection, which is that several of the instruments have been realised here on a mere synthesiser. Consequently, the result is a CD that only really evokes the episodes, without ever quite managing to sound authentic.

Well, if you know your Doctor Who that is. Ten years on, in the 1980s, all the show’s music was being originated electronically, making tracks like that Pyramids one sound an awful lot like a Peter Davison adventure.

However, as projects to go back in time and rescue an artifact from the past go, only Doctor Who himself could have done better.

Available here.

Black Sheep (2007)

Comedy-horror from New Zealand, which takes its one gag and, uh, milks it.

In many ways it's quite refreshing to watch a movie that seems so unbothered what the international market will make of it. Set over one day, none of the characters display the usual preoccupation with ingratiating themselves to the viewer, and the result is a bunch of misfits who are quite likable.

When one character is threatened by another with a gun, only to subsequently walk somewhere with them as mates, it's actually quite easy to accept, because the tone of this world is so mundane.

I am surprised that the world famous Weta Workshop allowed their name on this though. Some of their effects, it must be said, are terrible, and don't have the defence of being either intentional or an obvious symptom of the budget. Despite that, this is hopefully the grossest movie that I will ever watch, making shortcomings in this area somewhat welcome.

Black Sheep? Red Sheep surely.

Available here.

Spider-Man 3

***Contains spoilers***

I'd heard bad things about Spider-Man 3, so I'm sorry to report back to those people that I loved it.

In fact, I'd say it's right up there with 1.

It's worth bearing in mind though, that the real reason why I like the first movie so much, is simply because the second one was so great.

Same notation here then.

Spider-Man 3 retains almost all of the fantastic elements of the first two films. The same excitement, the same characterisation, the same world. It's no wonder that the same actors were so willing to stay on board, even including those who'd played characters who'd died.

Even the minor players in the Daily Bugle office are joyously permitted to continue their own ongoing sitcom. Elsewhere Bruce Campbell is utterly hilarious, while just for once Stan Lee isn't hidden away in the background:


The new castmembers are excellent too. Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) really resembles Sandman, even before we find out who he is.

The personal learning curve for Spider-Man himself is another good one too. Having previously faced so much hassle for his high-profile superheroing, now his challenge is the polar opposite. These days the public loves Spidey, and he just doesn't know how to handle that.

His relationship with Mary Jane is suffering a similar insurmountable fate. When she needs comfort and reassurance, Pete the geek offers her logic. The problem is no longer his Spider-Man persona, but his Peter Parker one. How the heck can he overcome his own inherent character flaws? How can any of us?

Some criticise the film's overlong running time of 143 minutes, however for me this was a Godsend. It really enabled me to settle into the fantasy of Peter Parker's sprawling everyday life, without generic acts constantly reminding me of how far through the film we now were.

I do think the writers had an uphill struggle fitting so many plot elements into just one narrative though. Pete's acceptance of his being engulfed by an alien black substance which renders him unconscious, moves his location and redesigns his costume is so quick that it's impossible to accept.

There's also an odd series of three scenes when MJ finds herself getting back together with her ex-boyfriend Harry, following which Harry brutally threatens her to break up with Peter, and then she does. Just what was that middle scene doing there? It looks like it's been left in by accident. I don't think the three friends ever even refer to it again.

Speaking of Harry, he appears to die three times in this. As a result, I didn't believe the last time either. Oh he's okay - we just haven't had the scene in which he gets up yet.

I basically felt the script needed just one more rewrite to smooth these motivations out.

However I find shortcomings like these acceptable because the first two films also had their moments of fuzzy reasoning and convenient coincidence too, so my expectations here were realistic.

Again like the first two, the whole thing's success hangs upon the realisation of the title role, still played astonishingly well by Toby Maguire. He's not the same incarnation of Peter Parker as in the comicbooks - that guy was much quicker-witted and more mature - but Maguire brings both old and new things to the character, keeping him both familiar and interesting.

Having him turn bad was a good move too. I always think that it's the comics in which Parker loses his cool that portray him as the most human, so to see him succumbing to the temptations of his uninhibited potential is a really intriguing direction to go in.

Top marks must therefore go to the writers for taking the brave step of reframing Spider-Man's origin from the first film. The coincidence of Sandman having been the guy to actually murder Uncle Ben does rob the tragedy of its appalling realism, but this uncomfortable gut feeling conveys just how senselessly ruined Pete's present has suddenly become. He doesn't want that old wound, which he'd come to terms with, reopened in a new and incomprehensible way either.

All in all, I found Spider-Man 3 to be a thoroughly enjoyable film. It is long, but it is also a threequel that happily builds upon just about everything from the first two movies. There's really nothing wrong with indulging those things when nearly all of your audience has seen those instalments and liked them enough to come back for more.

And there clearly is still more to come. Dr Connors has been in three whole films now, and he still hasn't become the Lizard yet!

Yeah, I know they scrapped the planned fourth film, and the planned fifth film, and the planned sixth film. Despite enough popularity to prepare so far ahead, Sony Pictures unfathomably reckon that the public will prefer a brand new version, cast and world instead.

This is just not the way in which Marvel became great.

Available here.