Hedwig and the Angry Itch (2001) John Cameron Mitchell

Hedwig is a German transexual and singer songwriter, her ex-lover has achieved superstar status, but refuses to acknowledge her penmanship in the songs he sings, so she follows his tour with her own, singing in dinners filled with peeps who really aren’t the best audience for Hedwig’s confrontational drag queen performance.

Thankfully there’s no mawkish sentimentality here, despite Hedwig’s unenviable life, and neither does it hang on to stereotypes, Hedwig is angry and throws herself into every violent confrontation she can rustle up. More than most films that dub themselves with punk rock, this one actually gives us a protagonist as angry and broken as the lyrics and stomping tunes suggest.

Moving from track to track, filling in the biography between, the film spares no punches, including botched operations, suggestions of incest, jerking off boys, picking up sugar daddies only to be left by them… it’s quite the life. At times slack, but also filled with great energy, including the central performance from John Cameron Mitchell in the lead role, and those songs… covered elsewhere by Meat Loaf, Spoon, Sleater-Kinney, and here recorded with the aid of Bob Mould (Husker Du, Suger) they carry the film through to a surprisingly upbeat conclusion. A kind of great film.

Milk (2008) Gus Van Sant

A lot of reviews to get up, so I’ll keep this short. It’s an okay film, it doesn’t present homosexuality as one long parade, which is good, but it’s terribly light when it comes to debating the issue at hand, gay rights.

I’m very fond of gay characters in film; Takeshi Kitano in Boiling Point, Ian McShane in Sexy Beast, Hakuryu in Violent Cop, The Dane in Miller’s Crossing, at a pinch, Jason Patric in Your Friends & Neighbors. I like violence, so if the violent chap happens to like fellows of the same sex, who am I to stand in his way. This does mean, though, that I have no time for a film trying to convince me that gay love is beautiful, sure it is, whatever. Luckily, Milk doesn’t try this tactic, and instead treats love with all the dirt and grime that accompanies it. This is good.

However, it soon becomes clear that, rather than having love as the centre of the film, we’re given a fairly straightforward biography of Harvey Milk, an openly gay candidate for office, and his trials and tribulations. This is a big “however” because it seems that Milk hasn’t really been through much, the ups and downs have generally been steam rolled into a fairly slow up. This robs the film of any real drama. This isn’t too much of a problem, as Harvey’s life is still pretty interesting, but a more pressing concern is that this steamroller has also rolled any debate flat. If we take away gay rights, we’re like jackbooted Nazi’s, argues the film, which is fine to a certain extent, but it really ducks the central message of Milk’s opponents; that God does not like gays, and they want to live in a world where God’s law is the law of man. Now it may be asking far too much to get a populist film to look at this issue, but it’s a bit of a fudge to get these protagonists together without really letting them debate the issue.

So it’s a nice film, it doesn’t try to present homosexuality as anything it’s not, but just as great and depressing as heterosexuality, however it lacks a bit of drama, and avoids any meaty debate about gays and their relationship to God, which seems to be the cause of all the hoo-haa.

The Changeling (1979) Peter Medak

George C. Scott moves into a haunted house that, as a prelude to a number of later films (What Lies Beneath, Sixth Sense), wants him to solve the killing that occurred within it’s walls.

Unfortunately, the very fact that Scott seems convinced that the house has no murderous intent towards himself rather undermines a lot of the tension. If the house isn’t going to kill him then for all it’s banging and slamming of doors, it isn’t exactly scary. The tension is further undermined because the film seems to think that, if the house can throw a ball down the stairs once, doing it twice is even scarier, which just isn’t the case.

In addition, both the script and the acting are pretty poor. At one stage an old lady explains, “No-one’s been able to live in it. It doesn’t want people”, and Scott’s reply is a Roger Moore eyebrow raise. Scott was incredible in Patton, but here he just seems to be going through the motions. The story, meanwhile, relies on huge reams  of exposition to explain the motives behind the killing, which in a way is good, because the viewer has no chance of figuring it out themselves.

Billed as the 6th scariest movie of all time by Martin Scorsese.

A Perfect Getaway (2009) David Twohy

“Here I come, baby”

Timothy Olyphant is the unstoppable killing machine, Steve Zahn the quiet screenwriter, both holidaying with their partners in the Hawaiian outback when news breaks that a pair of killers are on the lose. Is it the self-proclaimed American Jedi, or the bespectacled screen writer? Or how about the pair of tattooed hitch-hikers, or the campers following them through the woods?

David Twohy creates a nice taunt thriller on the same level as his earlier Pitch Black, with a small competent cast, a good premise and a beautiful backdrop. The finale is absurd, but by then the movie has earnt enough good will to allow it to go off the rails and carry the audience along with it.

Blood Feast (1963) Herschell Gordon Lewis

A madman with a machete is killing girls, and after two weeks the police are getting worried. Luckily one of them has a keen interest in Egyptian history and  realises that someone is putting together a blood feast, a dinner party with human body parts… It’s the first splatter film, made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore! It’s also crap.

The madman is Ramses a queer looking fellow with a limp, who appears to run both a large store, and a catering service. If anyone in the film looks like he’d be a psychopathic killer, Ramses would be the chap, all bug eyes, and weird bwa-ha-ha vocals. Ramses promises one client a feast the likes of which hasn’t been seen for “five thoooooouuuuuusand years”, at which point his lady client doesn’t run for the hills, but instead makes some noise about how interesting that would be.

At a tiny 67 minutes in length, Blood Feast still manages to feel overlong.  I’m pretty sure I missed a chunk of the film through the choking horror of boredom, and my attention was only aroused when the combination of screams and heavy blows of a whip forces my eyes back to the film to see a woman getting flayed by Ramses in his lair. That was probably the highlight, as the rest of film has terrible sound, all echoey far away voices from people at the back of the set, and rubbish special effects. At one point a priestess is clearly stabbed by a knife with a retractable blade, while elsewhere a big mound of gore by a dead girl is obviously a pigs head covered in red paint.

A big mess, but with a certain comic appeal for those who like bad films.

Friday Night Lights “A Sort of Homecoming” s04e04

Just superb. If you walked away during series 2, and who can blame you if you did, you’re now missing out on some of the best television, week in, week out.  It actually reminds me a lot of Deadwood and The Wire, two shows willing to take everything slow, avoid melodrama and take a long clear look at the day to day life of the players.

Back in series 2, a hunting trip with Saracen and Riggins would have turned into a murder rampage, but now Saracen shoots at “the wind, I guess” and sends Riggins fleeing into the bushes. Observe also how slowly they take all the love stories. We don’t know what will happen with Landry and Jess or Riggins and Becky, but the show is giving them time to grow into their relationships, rather than rushing things and thrusting them together as fast as they can.

So far, after four episodes, we’ve barely seen any action on the field, but with all the quiet drama happening off the field, I don’t really mind. Clear eyes, full hearts…

House “Teamwork” s06e08

An adult film star collapses on set, a mischievous doctor decides to investigate? There are very few shows that could ruin such a good setup, but House at it’s worst can do exactly that, and last night’s House was purely terrible.

Instead of bringing the good doctor and the porn stars into close contact, House wonders off to find his ex-team mates while Cameron rides around on her moral high horse braying at the sex machine for his choice of profession. Now, I’m quite aware that a lot of fans enjoy this back and forth investigation into peoples motives and morals, and that they may have therefore enjoyed the episode, but it must also be clear that without House getting involved, any analysis of the stud will be limited since Cameron and co., for all their surgical skill, have barely a brain cell to rub together. So we get some dopey eye-rolling exchanges that climaxes with the guy gruffly moaning “She wants me to have a religious conversion, she’s practically salivating over it!”

Meanwhile House amuses himself by looking up his old team mates, none of whom have anything exciting to add to the proceedings, but decide to do some more psycho-analysis. And so we get the same kind of tedious sixth form musings that are taking all the fun out of having a porn star on the show. A porn star! And House doesn’t lock Wilson in a closet with one of the actresses, or make Cuddy examine the manhood of one of the actors. It’d be cheap fun, but fun all the same, something entirely absent from this incredibly dry episode.

After the awesome start to the season, it looks like House is doing is following it’s usual route of being incredibly boring until some late season gems pop up. We’ll keep you informed of any developments.

Glee “Ballad” s01e10

Have you been watching Glee? Fans may remember how the pilot started off so sweetly but then how, apart from a few blips here and there, it’s been downhill ever since. How we have wept.

So what did the latest episode bring? More of the downhill roll. It was actually quite a surprising episode, in that almost everything that started out bad then had a brief resurgence before hitting rock bottom again. One example, Mr Shue is lined up to sing a duet with Rachel (I can’t be the only one thinking Mr Shue is the worst teacher ever given how much time he spends hogging the microphone, so to speak, instead of allowing the kids to rock out), but then suddenly it takes the delightful turn of Rachel getting crazy eye and chasing Shue around the piano as she’s overcome with love. Delightful. Not so delightful is the aftermath as, once again, a character falls in and out of love in a single episode (see Mercedes and Kurt, and to a much lesser extent Rachel and Puck). I really hate clean dramas that tie everything in a knot at the end of the episode, and Glee is certainly one of the worse offenders, often bringing to a close storylines that would surely have lasting repercussions (Terri, as the school nurse, gives drugs to the kids, but somehow avoids jail time, for instance).

Similarly Kurt suggests Finn sings “I’ll Stand By You” and I start thinking “How MOR of you!” and then there’s the second blow of Kurt approaching the grand piano with the off-cuff remark “Thank God I never missed a piano lesson” and I’m almost weeping for the shame of liking such a banal show. Then, in swooping, crushing style, Finn sings his heart out to his child and, surprisingly, it actually works, the lyrics seemingly perfectly formed for the feelings he wants to express.

Yet, the lasting impression is this prior one of banality, as the show rounds things off with a trite rendition of Lean On Me that seems bereft of any deeper feeling and comes across as a simple sing-a-long. That I’m still watching the show, and still intend to watch the show, is a mark of how good the pilot was, and how good I know this show can be, but I just wish the writers would cut out all the more outlandish story arcs and concentrate on the simple but genuine feelings of high school life.

New Year Resolutions

Finish Ulysses and The Iliad.

Anno!!

The New World, terrific, I’ll just settle here and, oh, wait, okay, you want me to do this, and then this? Can I do that? Oh, not yet, you’ll tell me when? But I’d really like to do it now! Bother you, man!! – was how I first approached Anno 1701, squirming against the enforced tutorial, a terrible hinderance to all joy, both here and in all games it appears in. Granted, I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do without it, but still, such things should be optional, and so say we all.

However, I was gently persuaded to go back, and crickey, it gets better, a lot better. So this is Anno 1701 and the Queen has sent you to conquer the New World, however, other fiends are doing the same and your job is to beat them to it. You find an island, settle on it, build a city, look for more islands to inhabit, and then, well, indulge in some weakly straightforward combat which involves very little beyond moving a ship full of soldiers to the enemy island, then moving them from one building to another, capturing as you go. 

Yet the whole thing is daftly fun, especially when you’re busy fighting pirates here, enemy factions there, with earthquakes ruining your cities and citizens demanding tea, and there you are spinning from one situation to the next while cooing at the cute little farmers as they go about their pixilated business. It’s all very warm and fuzzy and while it’s never simple, you find a rhythm in the game where you ensure your citizens are fed and get some wood and cloth, before upgrading their amenities, which makes them pay more tax, but makes them demand new goods, to which you go about supplying for them.

It’s probably as close to looking after a small child as I’m going to get this year, but a delightful child who just wants you to build a church over there so it can throw money in your coffers. It’s probably the only game where you find yourself warmly chuckling as your advisor’s head explodes when a volcano goes off. A lovely little strategy sim for the Nintendo DS that’s not especially deep, but worthy of some love.