SuperSunday: Moon

Spoilers Follow. Science Fiction in 2009 was shrouded by the release of 3D epic Avatar, a film now recognised as nothing more than a lazy (albeit very pretty) recant of old Western classic Dances with Wolves. But this review isn't about Avatar. It's about the other major Science Fiction film released in 2009, directed by the son of musical legend David Bowie, Duncan Jones. That film was Moon.
     The film stars Hollywood supporting man Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, a worker nearing the end of his three-year work period as a maintenance worker on the titular satelite. His company, the Korean Lunar Industries, employs him to take care of the automated diggers that harvest the helium 3 needed for Earth's clean fusion energy. Problems with communication satellites mean his only communication with home are videos sent by wife Tess, who was pregnant with daughter Eve when he left.
     Two weeks to go before he returns home, and Sam starts to hallucinate. On his way to fix a harvester he crashes, and when "he" awakens in the base his suspicions are aroused. Sam goes back to the rover, and brings back his body. It turns out that both Sams are clones, built from the DNA and memories of the original Sam Bell, who is now back on Earth. Now the two Sams have only a limited amount of time to try and expose the secrets of the base and hopefully escape before the "rescue team" arrive to clean them up...
      Behind all of its ilicit technobabble, Moon is really a parable about sollitude and deceit. The first Sam we see, Sam 4, has lived for three years in the desperate hope that one day he will return to his wife - who, as we later find out, has been dead for many years. In a way, the discovery of this deceit frees him for the little time he has left (clones die after three years, probably of some form of radiation poisoning), and allows him to eventually make the sacrifice that allows Sam 5 to send himself back to Earth. Who are we meant to see as the villians here? Lunar Industries, for creating the program in the first place? Or the original Sam Bell, who willingly gave his DNA and helped create the hundreds of clones stored in the base?
     The vital variable that makes the film work is the outstanding acting by Sam Rockwell and stand-in Robin Chalk. Rockwell manages to portray two sides of one man - the loose, relaxed Sam 4 versus the paranoid but determined Sam 5. His charting of a man's steady breakdown due to sheer loneliness presents a tragic look at the human condition on the whole, and the film would be nothing without it.

Sam examines the model he works on.

     As supporting characters go, the ship computer GERTY (voiced by, of all people, Kevin Spacey) certainly helps to stir the tension with his HAL-reminiscient overtones, and then turns out to be a subversion as, heartwarmingly, he helps the two Sams to escape. I think that was what Jones was going for; playing on the ever-increasing public mistrust of technology. One could say that it's quite clever; one could say that the whole film is quite clever, in the way it plays on so many science fiction tropes and preconceptions to form its own, semi-realistic warning for society.

     If you want to follow the masses, go to Avatar for your Science Fiction. Or, you could look towards a certain British director and his smaller project, Moon, which is an excellent melding of high-standard acting, direction and storytelling. The decision, ladies and gentlemen, is yours.

Thanks.

Review: Lost 4.1: The Beginning of the End

Note: If you want to understand these reviews, I'd direct you to Lostpedia's Season Four portal. All of the images in my Lost reviews have been taken from Lostpedia, and the plot there goes into greater detail.

The year before, Lost had thrown at its already tired viewers a series that was so divisive in quality it carved a significant dent out of the fanbase. They'd finished this mix with one of their famous end-of-series cliffhangers, one that would prove to be the best one of the series - a glimse at some of our castaways off the island. This "flashforward" device would come to define Season Four and make it in particular my favourite. Lost had crossed its halfway point but was still content to throw out question after question on its unsuspecting audience...
     Jack has made contact with the team on the freighter that send now-injured parachuter Naomi, and he and the rest of the survivors around him are elated at the prospect of being rescued. However, the freighter is having troubles with the locating signal and ask for Naomi to be put on the phone - something made difficult by her injured escape into the woods. Eventually she is tracked and fixes the phone, leaving a coded message for her colleagues before dying.

Desmond tells of Charlie's demise.

     On the other side of the island, Desmond swims ashore from where he and Charlie were trying to shut down the station responsible for blocking the phone signal. There, he reveals to Hurley, Sawyer et. al. what we already know; Charlie died in the station, but not before revealing to Desmond his discovery that the freighter people were unsafe. Hurley is stressed and saddened by his best friend's death, and as the group head back towards Jack he goes off on a mad tangent. On his travels, he meets with Locke, who killed Naomi. Locke manages to convince Hurley that Charlie was right, and the people on the freighter should be treated with extreme caution. Both groups eventually meet up and Locke calls for the survivors to pick sides - come with Locke to the Others' secure barracks, or goe with Jack and risk the freighter. After this has happened, the freighter's helicopter sends down another parachuter, and we get out cliffhanger.
    In the flashforward, we see Hurley driving recklessly and eventually getting put into a mental instition, where he gets a vision of Charlie asking him to go back to the Island. Jack later comes to see him, worrying about whether he's revealed their secret. It turns out that Jack, Hurley and Kate are part of a famous group known as the Oceanic Six, and presumebly the public assume everyone else is dead. Hurley asks Jack to go back to the island but he point blank refuses.

Hurley refuses to aknowledge Charlie

    Like all good Lost episodes, "The Beginning of the End" mixes the traumas of its central character - Hurley in this case - with the main plot surrounding everyone else. Some shows would be too hasty to clean up after cliffhangers, and wouldn't bother to, as Lost has here, issue important developments like Charlie's death and Locke's actions against Naomi. Often the show is accused of being too isolating, too locked out to new viewers, and quite a bit of the dialogue here supports tht, but most of the time it stood up on its own.
     Is it wrong to say that my favourite part of this story was the music? Michael Giacchino has composed a wonderfully potent and beutiful score for the show over the years, and indeed won an Oscar for his work on Disney Pixar film Up in 2009. One of the things that I love about the lengthyness of American shows is that they have the ability to spend more time on quiet moments like this (not that many use that ability...).
     The Beginning of the End (an adequate title, as we cross the halfway point) is an episode which mixes the outstand and the understated, one with no qualms about jumping from exciting action scenes to deep emotional sequences filled with stirring music. As season starts on Lost go, it tickles the mysteries while not exciting them - a perfect way of easing the viewer into the season.

Thanks.

Review: Misfits 1.1

The "Misfits" get their powers.

Channel Four, as a company, always held a strange position around the TV dinner table - BBC the responsible mother figure, ITV the precocious teenager and Channel 5 the little brat in the armchair. C4 and its various spinoff channels hold the role of "quirky uncle", sitting on the sidelines and firing off obscure, under-the-table jokes and ideas. In essence, Four was the eptiome of the "alternative," and couldn't escape its mixture of reality shows like Big Brother and its weird comedies.
     Then, in 2007, E4 premiered Skins, an innovative and gritty teen drama. Suddenly, "innovative and gritty" became E4's thing, the channel nearly typecast as showing either American reruns or "innovative and gritty" dramas, and parodied as such. Oh well, they said. Howard Overman (a mainly BBC writer, know for Hotel Babylon, New Tricks, Hustle and Merlin) was brought in to write a show of his own creation. That show was a Skins-reminiscient superhero drama called Misfits. It was, indeed, "innovative and gritty". With that in mind, how does the premier of this new show fare? Let's just say it didn't do badly.
     Misfits 1.1 is quite strong in terms of storytelling because it holds the show's characteristic energy and determination, firmly setting down strong characterisations while pushing forward an amusing and mildy intriguing plot. Of note is the way that the show manages to dodge many of the main tropes plaguing the superhero genre, keeping it firmly about character instead of spectacle.
     As you should know (if you've read any of my Misfits reviews so far), the episode focusses around a group of  five six delinquents working on their community service - cocky irishman Nathan, chav Kelly, sexy Alisha*, shy Simon, runner Curtis and thug Gary. The episode starts with the six being adressed on their first day by frustrated probation worker Tony, each being very strongly characterised from the off. We get our Mass Super Powering Event - a storm, which imbues all of the characters with their abilities.

The five six characters paint some benches

     While not wearing now, the episode uses Misfits' commonly seen "freak of the week" plot, where the group are stalked by a super-powered murderer. Here, Gary is offed by a power-induced-rage filled Tony, after which he attempts to assault the group while they hide from the storm in the Community centre. Simon is the first to mention his abilities (turning invisible when people ignore him), followed by Kelly (who'd been hearing people's thoughts.) After a few conveniences, Alisha and Curtis' powers are also revealed (a sex-inducing touch and time reversal, respectively) and Kelly manages to dispatch Tony with a whack from a fire-extinguisher. They, frightened at being blamed for the two murders, drag the bodies away and buy them under the motorway.
     As an introductory episode, 1.1. does a very good job of painting the pattern that the series will follow. The most refreshing thing is of course the more-or-less realistic dialogue - the powers aren't the core focus of the series, and there isn't any melodrama beyond Nathan's usual madness. A sign of good things to come, perhaps?

Thanks.

*Spelt differently in subtitles, promotional material and other sources, as well as in these reviews. For the remainder of my Misfits reviews, she shall be refered to using one i - "Alisha".

New Year News

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm sure you're all looking forward to 2011 as I am, and here at Audenshaw Reviews I've shaken up some of the schedules. You can see the January schedule here.

I'm also looking for Guest Staff, so if you're interested please leave a note in the comments. Please remember that if you want to write for the blog, you will need to set up a Blogger account. Also remember that I get no money to do this and neither will you.

Thanks. Happy New Year.

Review: Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

The Doctor takes Kazran and Abigail on a sleigh-ride.

The basic plot of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is the one of the most used plot in fiction, equalled only by "It's A Wonderful Life" in terms of frequency. Three ghosts, of Christmases past, present and future, with an old miser and a city of the poor around him. Some will cock it up, others will tell a more or less consistant rendition and then there are those like Steven Moffat's interpretation, a quirky and warm sci-fi adventure that feels like a "companion-lite" episode (like "The Lodger", etc.). Christmas specials under Russell T Davies often felt like over-the-top bonanzas, with Christmas symbols but none of the usual themes or ideas. While you might argue that this episode is too "subdued", that's not necessarily a bad thing in the intended Christmas atmosphere.
     Our story looks at Scrooge-like Kazran Sardick (Sir Michael Gambon), miserly controller of a human colony called Sardicktown, founded by his abusive father. He keeps control over the colony through use of a machine invented by his father - one that controls the icey storm clouds around his world. This world has a few curious inhabitants - fish that can live in the world's fog. Including, of course, sharks. Flying sharks.

Abigail sings to a flying shark.

     A spaceship containing 4003 people (including the "honeymooning" Amy and Rory) is out of control, having headed into the storm clouds around the planet. The Doctor can't materialise the TARDIS on the hship but does manage to land on the planet, and tries to convince Sardick to let them go. He isn't impressed. So, in a truly spectacularly manipulative act, The Doctor uses time-travel to make a young Sardick into a better person, making him a better person and accidentally making him fall in love with beautiful opera singer Abigail Pettigrew (real-life beautiful opera singer Katherine Jenkins), who was one of the people frozen in suspended animation by her father as "insurance". Unfortunately, they use up her allowed time and she ends up with one day left to live. Along the way, they have many adventures with the TARDIS, including one in which The Doctor marries Marylin Monroe and one in which one half of the Sonic Screwdriver ends up inside a flying shark.
     Steven Moffat is exceptionally good when it comes to complex time-travel affairs, having said in the past that he did things like it "when in a hurry". The expertise on display here is what really seperates it from other interpretations of the tale, a characteristically Doctor-Who-like take on a classical idea. I don't even need to say that this script is incredibly well-written and that's what make this otherwise tangled plot into a really potent and watchable hour.
     One of the biggest things this story has going for it, as far as the press is concerned, are its celebrity guest stars, especially major Hollywood actor Sir Gambon. Both actors fitted seamlessly into the main story and felt as if they'd been in the cast forever. Jenkins was a big surprise, in her first major acting role, and brought a fresh realism to her role.

Kazran (Sir Michael Gambon)

     I think its a sign of just how big the change in era this has been that the first Christmas special not written by RTD has, in my opinion at least, exelled all those previous. It's just written and shot with a much more emotive theme in mind, giving Christmas a focus in the story instead of having it as just a background. The use of the Dickensian structure hasn't done any wrong to the story, and if the terms associated with the story weren't present, I probably wouldn't have noticed the comparison. Overall, very good. Well Done, Moff.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays, everybody.

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Review: The Fool

The Fool, Warpaint (2010)

Set up in 2004, Warpaint have by this point made their name on the indie scene. They came to my attention due to their inclusion in this year's BBC Sound of... Competition, and I immediately fell in love with their hypnotic style and potent lyrics. The Fool isn't exactly revolutionary; it's too subdued for that, too layed back. A silent revolution, then, because this is like almost nothing that has come before.
     The band's main hallmarks, immediately noticable in their first single, "Set Your Arms Down", are a complex bassline, 70s-style psychedelic guitars and strong, floating vocals. The first single throws us into this world from the word go, drenching us with its calm but driven attitude. This is followed by the self-titled "Warpaint", which has a more distinctly Eastern feel to it and picks up on those military connotations using marching-drums and a faster tempo. 
     I've got a soft spot for the next track on the album, "Undertow", which you'll remember from the BBC Sound of... review. While the dreamy, rustic bassline is interesting, the lyrics here are the main attraction - memorable and catchy without losing any of their meaning. I also simply adore the vocals.
     "Bees," as one would expect from the title, is a little more busy, with over-layed basses and a dreamy vocal. This is also the first song on the album to use rather obvious synth. I don't like this as much as the others, because there's too much going on and it feels a little shoddy. Decent guitar work though.
    The next single is the quiter "Shadows", siren-like vocals floating over a simple, rustic bassline on guitar. I notice at this point that each song has a lot of emotive character to it. "Shadows" is dissapointed, tired. Worn down. After that, "Composure" displays some faintly African influences with a light chanting that soon becomes irritating, after which it develops into a slow 80s ballad. Too repetitive for my liking, unfortunately.
     "Baby" feels more like a traditional ballad, with a slow guitar in the back and vocals slightly more akin to Dido (and in my book, that's not a negative.) Penultimate single "Majesty" is more of the same. Final mention goes to "Lissie's Heart Murmur", a nice piece with a piano and a very hushed vocal.
     My problem with slo-core is that the song manages to get its points across in a relatively short space of time and can only repeat that later on. It may just be my attention span, but for some reason the slow, melancholic drawls don't manage to entertain me for the amount of time I feel forced to listen.
    So, to sum up, The Fool is an enthusiastic excercise of the slo-core concept with quite a few decent ideas and songs, but it suffers from the issues inherant within the genre. A couple of songs also just amplified these issues with their repetitive lyrics and basslines. So; buy nor not? I personally wouldn't buy this album, but I would take a quick look at some of their music on Youtube because it is at least notable and interesting.

Thanks.

A Few Words: "All I Want For Christmas Is New Year's Day", by Hurts

Hurts - All I Want For Christmas is New Years Day (Official)

A big part of Christmas is the music, especially for taking a look at years' past. Christmas music, for me, has exposed me to greats like John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Slade from an early age, helping me to at first understand the great music of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Noughties attitudes mean that Christmas music is rarely written. Hurts, however, disagree with this sentiment.
     And, to be honest, the song is standard Hurts fare - a melancholic drawl with optimistic lyrics that sort of flies by without much notice. The song has a lot of warmth and definitely fits the seasonal theme, but it blends in too well with the rest of the songs in their ouvre. So; worth a listening - if you like Hurts.

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Review: GHTTB: LoM 1.7 and 1.8

To finish off Series One of the Bonanza, two very strong episodes.

Life On Mars, Series One, Episode Seven

Regular readers may be aware that I'm not Chris Chibnall's biggest fan, particularly of the work that he's done for Doctor Who. Chibnall, however, made his name as a writer on Life on Mars, and this was his first contribution. How, then, does it stack up?
     Well, to my enormous relief, it is perhaps the strongest episode of the series so far, managing to meld tense drama and an enviable formula shakeup. It felt so refreshing not to have the usual state of affairs, something the Bonanza rarely does. It also provided everyone with excellent character moments and depth that they just haven't had up to now. Chibnall, not exactly an expert when it comes to character development, managed to in a single hour out-do six hours worth of material.
     The lineup manage to bust a flasher-turned-drug-dealer Billy Kembel, who Sam doesn't believe is a large-scale dealer - he wants to find the source of the drugs, and so requests that Kembel be held in overnight. Gene, tired and anxious to get a result, locks him in the same cell as a psychopath, entrusting Ray to get a result while he and Sam go to an Indian restaurant (it makes sense in context.) When the two return, they discover that Kembel is dead, and the team isn't talking.
     Sam takes this oppurtunity to try and escape the dreamworld, by running a personal enquiry into the death - hoping to "bring the walls crashing down". Along the way, Gene exploits his curiosity and gets Sam to really flush out the details, going so far as to ban him from the station just to make Sam rebel. Sam eventually discovers the truth - Ray, to get results from Kembel, gave him the overdose of Cocaine that led to his heart attack. He has firm evidence - a tape - and while Gene publically demotes Ray, he still isn't happy. When he goes to see the Superintendant, he simply laughs in Sam's face.
     Chibnall's masterpiece both exites and disappoints me. If only he could have produced something of this quality for Doctor Who, instead of writing such mush... . This was the most tense and, while not lighthearted, enjoyable episode so far this series. Well done.

Life on Mars, Series One, Episode Eight (Final)
 
Our first finale comes courtesy of long-time series co-producer and writer Matthew Graham, who I find is particularly good at writing for Sam - often at the expense of the other characters. This episode gave us a very interesting role change, with Gene sticking to the book while Sam felt forced to rely on his natural instincts, or, in this case, family values. It delivered on everything that the series promised and is perhaps the most memorable episode of the series simply in the way it wraps everything up.
     The team are chasing a pair of gangsters called the Norton Brothers, who are spreading crime throughout the city in an attempt to fill the power vacuum left by Steven Warren. Evidence leads them to find and arrest Vic Tyler, Sam's father who abandoned him that very year. Understandably awed, Sam goes out of his way to try and find Vic innocent and, in an attempt to get home, persuade him to stay home. Slowly the evidence mounts up, until it is revealed that Vic is the Norton Brothers - they were his charade, his cover. Despite Sam's attempts, Vic runs away, and Sam doesn't wake up.
     An aspect often used in the Bonanza are near-psychedelic dream sequences that drop subtle hints about characters and plot. In LoM Series One, the recurring element was of a girl in a red dress, blurredly running through a wood, and is fulfilled in this episode. While it works here, the sequences tend to get vaguer as time goes on.
     As an episode of Life On Mars, the finale was perfect in its structure and emotive punch. As a finale, it only very loosely tied up the ends from this series, leaving it wide open for a sequel. I suppose at this point the writers didn't expect to be renewed, and so had to make a compromise between tying everything up and leaving it on a cliffhanger.

That's it for Life On Mars Series One. Rejoin me in the New Year, when I take a look at the more developed Series Two.

Thanks.

End of Term Roundup

It's that time again, folks - Audenshaw Reviews is going on a holiday break. This doesn't of course mean that there will be no new updates, but don't expect anything daily.
     Coming up during the holiday period we can look forward to the final review of Life On Mars Series One (Episodes 1.7 and 1.8) which I'm sure I'll get round to before the new year. We can also look forward to reviews of Doctor Who (Classic and New) as well as Warpaint - The Fool. The next two Super Sundays (actually written this time) will be Love, Actually and Catch Me If You Can.
     In the New Year, I'll be starting review of Misfits Series One to fill in the gaps, and hopefully (although I make no promises) continuing Life on Mars and Lost Season Four. Hopefully I'll manage to fit in some Spotify music reviews along the way, most probably of Muse - Black Holes and Revelations and Foals - Total Life Forever.

Thanks.