25 Words or Less: Gang members defend a London housing estate from alien attack.

Verdict: A good piece of work and a lot of fun.

Here’s Why: Attack the Block is an excellent example of using what you’ve got to hand, and to great effect. With a budget of $13m this British film was classed by many as one of the better films of 2011. It’s tense, scary, well shot and nicely edited. In places – thanks to lighting and the occasional martial riff in the score – Attack the Block reminded me of Aliens in its own way. It’s tight, has good structural integrity, and manages the impressive feat of taking unsympathetic characters and bringing you onside over the course of 90 minutes. This the moody, poor, 8-screen-release cousin of a film like Super 8, and whereas that film is very much a love letter to Spielberg’s early work Attack the Block is all grown up, a young man of a film who’s had time to form his own opinions about how things like this work but is nonetheless a product of his environment. A bit like the main protagonist, actually.

I came away thinking of Super 8 as that kind of polished-and-studiedly-humble performer who was put through Julliard on Dad’s money, while Attack the Block should have been working in Tesco’s but said ‘fuck it’, spent six months as an understudy in rep theatre before finally getting a break, got noticed and wound up in a horror movie part-funded by the National Lottery. I’ve got more sympathy for the latter.

Stand Outs: I’ll talk about the monsters below, but there’s another similarity to Super 8 here: the kids. They don’t get to show as much range as those in Super 8, but nonetheless the kids are pretty damn solid.

Craft-wise: The monsters. I may be entirely talking out my hat here, but it seems to me the makers of Attack the Block designed a creature that a). Is dead easy to CGI , b). Doesn’t look crap as a result and c). Remains scary as hell despite a) and b). What this means is they’ve got production value as well as scares and monsters that are fun to watch… without a massive SFX blowout. Nice. I mean really, hats off. In some scenes it could literally have been a guy in a gorilla suit and it really didn’t matter the monsters work that well. Personally I think the best work comes from those who still have to keep a weather eye on the budget, making each cent count, and this is a great example of that. Economy of means and all that.

The setting. Night shooting is expensive, granted, but the film ties the entire story to a single housing block and its grounds, and it works. What’s more the cookie-cutter nature of those buildings means the makers may well have redressed the same hall and flat over and over for use as different locations within the block. It’s entirely possible that this film was shot in no more than a half-dozen different physical locations, yet manages to feel twice as large as that. Again, hats off. If you’re just starting out, writing your own material and looking to make something look good within a budget, you could do worse than take a look at this.

Another similarity to Super 8: both movies are all about character relationships between kids operating in a world governed by adult rules, as well as the all-important running and yelling and explosions. With that in mind both Super 8 and Attack the Block teach a lesson about pyrotechnics: if you’ve got kids and you want the characters to believably be able to throw around some ordnance, give them fireworks. For maximum effect have them use them in confined spaces. It gives all the slow-mo tension and machismo of firing a rocket launcher, but somehow groovier because it’s some kid in a hoodie with his back to a wall. Super 8 had their SFX kid/pyromaniac, Attack the Block has a fireworks-obsessed gang kid and sets the whole thing on Guy Fawkes Night. Same effect, believable, fun.

Contains Spoilers (highlight to read): Having the Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) character decide he needed to kill the kids seemed contrived at best, but I guess the makers felt they needed a two-pronged threat to keep things kicking along.

Vaguely niggled by the ending. It seemed unlikely that every last monster would fit in that kitchen, or that all of them would have made it there in time for the finale. But, seriously, minor quibble.

What Stuck: The monsters, definitely. And the kid who played Moses (John Boyega). He doesn’t emote much, but he does a good job. Luke Treadaway as the posh-kid-trying-to-be-street proved really watchable as well, and probably the best performer of the lot . Being ‘ard is one thing (don’t move, don’t blink, don’t modulate), but manifesting inner-turmoil-as-paralysis is a bit more complex.

Came Away Feeling: Entertained. Impressed.

Repeat Viewings? Sure, at some point.

25 Words or Less: Five kids and a small town get caught up in a government conspiracy to cover up the escape of a hostile alien life form.

Verdict: I liked it, but felt it stumbled at the end.

Repeat Viewings? Sure, I guess.  If it happens.  Actually yeah, it probably will.

25 Words or Less: Plastic-sword-wielding barbarian from California spends 12 setpieces trying to shiv a man in a squid helmet.

Verdict: Just… no.

Here’s Why: The setup was solid enough: Conan’s character is established quickly and well in an escalating action scene that sees him single-handedly take out four rival tribesmen, alone, in the snow, at the age of ten.  So we’re set up and good to go.  Which is when the script seems to have changed hands.  It’s almost as if the first 15-20 minutes were written by an intern studying the basics of screenwriting, and then the remainder was given to a gang of LARPers. Even that’s being kind. I saw it to the end, but I had to do it in stages.

It quickly becomes a chain of disconnected setpieces without any sense of tension or escalation to tie them together.  Even as it maladroitly attempts faithfulness to the tone of the source material, it’s got some unforgivable lines.  Momoa should be applauded for lowballing his delivery of the worst of them (“I live, I love, I slay… and I am content.”) rather than playing to it.  Even so Momoa’s Conan would be more at home on the Venice Beach boardwalk than Hyboria. His accent, inflections and delivery are straight 21st century twentysomething Californian.  Bestial tension and monosyllabic restraint served him well playing Khal Drogo, but there’s none of that here.  If anything he comes across as a kind of beefcake Casanova, raised by a cuddly and understanding Ron Perlman (“When a Cimmerian thirsts, it is the thirst for blood. When a Cimmerian feels cold, it is the cold edge of steel…” and “I love you, son.”) 

Momoa’s competent, and he’s charismatic: a perfect fit to play Achilles, for example.  The brash, headstrong young man thing – that works.  With a little voice coaching he’d be bang on for that.  But not Conan.  Conan’s a blunt object, with rat cunning and a low genius.  Momoa, by contrast, plays someone surrounded by people who do what he says, while he does what he wants.  It’s not the same thing.  I daresay that’s probably his actual life.

On the upside some of the action scenes are nicely put together, with actual physical talent rather than CGI.  Which was odd, because they CGId pretty much everything else: waterwheels, windmills, geography…

Speaking of geography, most new scenes starts off in some completely different locale – a city of thieves, a ship, a slave trading port, a crumbling citadel of Necromancers, a peaceful monkish idyll, Conan’s village – all accessible on an unladen horse with a single change of clothes, presumably within a day.  Within forty minutes I was left wondering how this world functioned at all if this race of disparate, clashing weirdos live in each other’s pockets.  Or why when one raids the other the victims are always taken by complete surprise.  I mean the fuckers are right there. Apparently.

It doesn’t hang together, is what I’m saying.  It suffers from something you see in Cowboys and Aliens: the lead character is held up as being a born leader, competent and respected.  Not because of what he does, but because the writers script supporting characters to treat him as such.  I mean, Conan, right here, this is the guy who decided to raid a slave port and free dozens of chained, topless women… by rolling a shitload of boulders down a mountain at them.  Conveniently the only people to be crushed and killed were the able-bodied slavers… and not any of the two dozen women held immobile in bamboo cages or chained to the goddamned spot.  In my head the scene ends with a lot more screaming, while Conan scratches his nuts and tries to figure out how he’s gonna get laid now.

This could have been solid, with a little care.  And care’s there: in the first 20 minutes, in an action scene or two.  It wouldn’t have taken much to reach for a little respectability with this.  It needs a fuller script in a Lovecraftian vein, a far grimmer tone, and the touch of a director like Guillermo del Toro: a little of that distinctive cosmic darkness. 

Stand-Outs: Momoa’s flashes of charisma, and the occasional physical flourish to his action scenes. 

Craft-wise: The importance of having a good script.  This was so badly assembled I’m not sure I got much out of it other than an object lesson in not being crap.  It’s a lazy answer, but it’s also all I’ve got.  This will probably be the last truly bad film I review. 

Contains Spoilers (highlight to read): I got nuthin. 

What Stuck: The dialogue. 

Came Away Feeling: Kinda cranky.

Repeat Viewings? No.

Transcript of text exchange between CR and UNKNOWN FEMALE. 20th December, 2011. 5:46pm.

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UF: It strikes me as somewhat surreal that Paul Simon is seemingly always played when I go to the dentist.

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CR: It’s probably the only way he can get an erection.

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- TRANSCRIPT ENDS -

Exchange between COYOTE (CR) and MANGO, over Steam. 2047m – 2051 hours, 13th December 2011.

Mango: lost my horse fuck
Coyote: Get used to it. Happens all the time.  Lost, or got it killed?
Mango: how do  i know
Coyote: If lost, just fast travel to the nearest point and it’ll be there.
Mango: he…is ,,,,not here
Mango: gonna miss that guy
Coyote: Perhaps the land has claimed him.
Coyote: It’s what he would have wanted.
Mango: apart from beatin the shit out of the blacksmith again how do i get a horse?
Coyote: Buy it from a horse dealer.
Coyote: Or… get Shadowmere.
Mango: what is shadowmere
Coyote: Shadowmere is a night-black demon horse with glowing red eyes who may actually be impossible to kill.
Mango: i am sure we will get on fine where does he hang out
Coyote: Legend has it that for as long as there has been a Dark Brotherhood there has been… Shadowmere.
Mango: gimme a break
Coyote: (I am wearing a cape.)
Mango: $#@

- TRANSCRIPT ENDS –

25 Words Or Less: Amnesiac gunslinger walks through saving the world.

Verdict: I didn’t not enjoy it.

Here’s Why: This is a movie that telegraphs itself – hardcore – almost from the very beginning. 

Stand-Outs: The first scene for high-signal character establishment – such as it is.  Maybe the street scene with Dolarhyde’s son, for being the one scene in the whole film that actually feels like it’s part of a proper movie and does something a little different with the trouble-in-the-Western-street-dance-boah cliché.

Craft-Wise: This movie drives home how important it is to have characters who are more than thin casings containing one character point.  Seriously, they’re like pass-outs.  “Hello sir, welcome to the Movie.  Today you’re the guy who hates Indians.  On the way out if you could demonstrate a newfound respect for our savage brothers the usher will show you to your car.” To top it off their sole character point (with one or two exceptions) is never even shown – it’s told. “Oh yeah, that guy, he was a Colonel in the Indian War.  He hates Indians.  It’s because of the War.”  Just… what?  Gimme that.

The movie never breathes, never becomes its own thing.  It’s one melodramatic, posturing set piece pressed cheek-by-jowl with another, full of people we don’t care about.  It’s never explained why Craig’s character has the hand-to-hand ability of a Navy SEAL, or why anyone holds him in such high regard.  For the most part the script settles for making him seem competent by surrounding him with people who aren’t.

From what I’ve heard this is a script that’s been surfacing for a few years in Hollywood, and it was one that people tended to speak about quite excitedly.  The disconnect between the promise of the idea – aliens invade the Wild West – and what we got is pretty profound.  Jon  Favreau’s work on Iron Man (one of the best Hollywood movies in years, in my opinion) suggested we’d get something with the same kick, dialogue and humour… the trailer had something almost heyday Indiana Jones about it (and not because Ford’s in it)…but instead we got none of that.  Which is a shame as the two writers responsible for Iron Man also worked on this, as well as Damon Lindelof who did good work on the Star Trek reboot.

It put me in mind of another script that had the same build-up.  It was a screenplay called (at the time) Tonight, He Comes.  It had been drifting around Hollywood for years, spoken of with reverence and excitement, passed around like a secret between friends. Tonight, He Comes was a superhero movie, but a superhero movie that took a very different approach: the superhero wasn’t likeable, he was a drunk, a bum, and the movie was pretty dark.  It didn’t pull too many punches.  At the time nothing like this had been thought of, or proposed.  Watchmen predates it (Tonight was written in 1996 and bought in 2002 I think), and it sounds like Garth Ennis’ The Boys is cruising in a similar vein, but at the time this was fresh and blowing minds.

Eventually certain people got their act together and made the movie.  One of those people was Will Smith, and unfortunately the movie was retitled and became what we know today as Hancock.  Which wasn’t anything like dark and challenging.

Between that feeling of deep, deep compromise, the straight up kit-work of the opening scene, and the one-trait-per-character approach (redeemable upon exit), I can’t help but think that Cowboys and Aliens was once a very different beast, now boiled down to the most familiar of bullet points and released globally.  As such it fails to do what an action movie promises to do when you fork over your cash: it doesn’t excite or engage because it very efficiently tells you what it’s going to do five moves in advance.  “Hey, you heard that great joke about the frog on the Rabbi’s shoulder who said he found him in Brooklyn?  It’s great!  It goes like this: a Rabbi walks into a bar with a frog on his shoulder, and the barman asks…”

If you’re interested in reading what seems to be the ‘original’ script for Tonight, He Comes you can download it here. 

Contains Spoilers (highlight to read): These one-line character descriptions constitute spoilers.

Gunman Who Holds Himself Responsible For Wife’s Death.

Ex-Colonel Who Sees Indians As Savages.

The Indian Chief Who Sees The Colonel As Being Less Than A Warrior.

Indian Sidekick Treated As Incompetent By Colonel.

Bartender Who Can’t Shoot Straight And Feels Like A Liability Because He Can’t Shoot Straight.

That One Alien To Whom The Hero Gave A Massive Facial Scar.

The Scared Kid Who Was Given A Knife In That One Scene About Him Being Given A Knife As A Metaphor For Growing Up.  And Because He Was Scared.

What Stuck: The older he gets the more Harrison Ford looks like a taller version of my Dad.

Came Away Feeling: Not ripped off.  I had the ninety minutes spare and was glad to sit in the dark with the cat.  It worked for that.

Repeat Viewings? No.  It wouldn’t kill me if I had to sit through it on a plane, but no.

Verdict: I liked it.

Here’s Why: A Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a wheelman has a hit put out on him after a heist goes wrong.  As much of the film is about him attempting to protect those he cares about as it about attempting to save his own life.

I can’t talk about this film without talking about silence. A piece of acting advice I never forgot was to value silence.  Sound and fury diffuse power while silence and restraint contain and focus it.  Onstage, in a key scene, in the midst of a silence, it’s possible to extend your hand and actually feel the weight of the audience in your palm; to feel them lean into you, sometimes almost groaning with a desire for release – a release that can only be provided by what they expect, be it an action, reaction, or a line.  But if they get it, the tension deflates.  If they get something else it endures and transfers down the  line, through the rest of the piece – provided you, again, never betray that tension by giving the audience what they so desperately expect.  (That’s fundamental to why I find non sequitur dialogue so valuable.)

Drive trades on and is supported by silences – it just might be one of the thinner 100-minute scripts ever written – and it’s an enigma as quietly fascinating as its protagonist.

It has a great first scene, and what I think is excellent signal-to-noise when it comes to dialogue and structure.

I don’t dig violence in films – especially the kind of self-absorbed cruelty that Tarantino works with – but I have to admit the violence in Drive worked.  When it came it felt like a kick in the chest.  It wasn’t cruel or lingering, but more a shocking consequence.  I think a lot of the credit for that comes down to the sound design.  Again with the silences. 

Drive lets inference do a lot of the talking, saying more than posturing and dialogue could.  Some criticised it for this, feeling the character of Driver was too much of a cipher: he doesn’t have a name and barely has a voice.  But I found there was a kind of actual poetry to the silences – the kind you only tend to find in actual poetry. The framing and quiet established his distance, and a kind of otherworldly aspect.  As a result you could argue Gosling doesn’t act in this movie so much  as turn up and wait – but he’s thinking through all of this.  The guy is as immobile as a block of wood for most of it, but the film is put together so well (it’s practically a series of portraits and light paintings) that it’s no effort at all to infer his dialogue and character from the context created by setting, situation and the other players.  Easier still when that inference is borne out by what he does next – so it’s not a lazy technique. This is a very directed, very calculated exercise in the kind of restraint I was talking about above.

Two characters in a car.  Light changes to red up ahead. Passenger delivers bad news in one sentence.  Car slows.  Stops.  Silence.  Light turns green. Car moves forward.  The journey continues.  Scene ends.  An entire conversation between two characters and the actual world – with but one sentence in it.

Drive is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (pronounced “Winding Rain” I believe), born in Denmark in 1970.  I mention his age because Drive was clearly made by someone who grew up through the 1980s and has a lot of room in his heart for that period.  I love Drive for its lack of irony in that respect.  The soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is a great fit (Martinez also wrote the music for the Clooney version of Solaris - a soundtrack I write to quite a bit.)

Stand-outs: The director, and the writer.

Craft-wise: The opening scene establishes the main character via action brilliantly well.  Before anything has even started we’re tense.  How?  He pulls up, straps a wristwatch to the wheel, and begins to wait for the agreed-upon 5 minutes while two men raid a warehouse.  Turns on police scanner.  Then turns the radio onto a ballgame.  Turns down the scanner, turns up the game.  First it established the character as containing an ocean of calm, but also as being familiar with this sort of situation and exceptionally competent.  Secondly I almost leaned forward to hear the reports coming in over the scanner, wishing he’d turn the f**king game down.  If I’d been in the car I would have been a liability – the amateur in the scenario.  Nice device.  It only made him seem more competent still.

Contains Spoilers (highlight to read): There are two scenes where Driver shows emotion: the first in which he sweats and shudders with restraint… the second standard acting.  The first scene really means something, seeing his exterior threaten to volcanically collapse – but doesn’t.  Strong stuff.  The second scene involves him yelling at someone… and it’s weak.  Breaking the silence – giving us what we expect as standard – bled the character of his power. 

What Stuck: The value and power of choosing your words.

Came Away Feeling: Calm.  Satisfied.

Repeat Viewings? Sure.  Maybe once every couple of years.  It’s a good film.

Transcript of Facebook conversation between CR, ARDY and JAMES. May 1st, 2011. 3:38pm.

CR: Horrible(?) realisation: I think I could write brilliant action novels.  Or movies.  You should see the stuff I’ve done by chapter 2.

ARDY: Needs! More! Exclamation! Points!

CR: This is why my first action novel will be entitled ‘Explosion!’

ARDY: By CAM! ROGERS!

ARDY: A Rollercoaster Ride From The Steaming Jungles Of Peru To The Glittering Towers of Dubai Featuring Thrilling Machete Fights And Extreme BASE Jumping.

CR: Hang on, I’m writing this down.

ARDY: You steal my machete fights idea I’ma fucking cut you.

CR: I’m so scared, here in my diamond house on Fuck You Mountain.

ARDY: BARELY SPELLED CORRECTLY RAGE

JAMES: RAGE QUIT: THE STORY OF ONE MANS WAR AGAINST A UNJUST STACKED SERVER : 300 PAGES ALL IN CAPS TO SHOW THE DEPTH OF HIS RAGEE (this ones for free)

CR: This is why I will not be your Xbox friend.

-TRANSCRIPT ENDS –

I got an earful of QANTAS hold music and two days later I’m still waking up to the sound of children spellsinging me their desire to get home.  I am going out of my f**king mind. 

For those of you raised outside Australia that particular tune is called I Still Call Australia Home, and was penned by Peter Allen – best known, perhaps, for being the campest of Liza Minelli’s husbands and looking nothing whatsoever like Hugh  Jackman.

The ads are always the same: pre-teen children dressed in white scattered across improbable landscapes – cliff faces, rice paddies, snowfields, crashing beaches – and crooning to some unseen power their desire to go home.

I see those ads and wonder what the Japanese make of them, for in their country white is the colour of death.  As if to drive that association home, even to the non-Japanese, the ads are full of lingering long-shots and slow pull-backs.  The kids are often unmoving, standing rigid, as they do, staring in a fixed direction, imploring… singing a melancholy desire to be reunited with the soil of their birth. 

Across these remote landscapes they are scattered, oftentimes randomly, as though these kids are in fact the souls of those children who died when their airliner exploded – and are now forever doomed to haunt the alien terrain across which their broken bodies were scattered when their A380 catastrophically decompressed. 

Really, the only thing missing from this is a pilot in a burnt uniform staggering amongst them, begging forgiveness. 

For all eternity.

Do not listen, lest their griefsong never end.

At the 26 second mark you can see the native owners of the land laughing at the folly of those who would conquer the skies, and the mournful, downcast expression of their elder who wonders if humanity will ever cease paying for its hubris with the lives of its children.

At 0:28 A society of dead children perform the myths of their own fading history.  These earthbound spirits – their once-lives a fading memory – re-enact their final moments in an attempt to retain something of who they once were.  Soon they, like each of the waves breaking upon that beach, will exist as little more than a memory of a memory.  A whisper, destroyed upon the shores of Time.

At 0:30 they spirits of the dead encircle the chapel in which the parent who loved one of them best keens her grief to an uncaring God.

At 0:38 the restless dead are banished from a village.

At 0:46 some – like those wraiths upon the beach – enact the moment they plunged forever into the crushing, consuming depths of the sea.

At 0:50 Death – both horseman and ferryman – gallops past heedless.  These children are lost to him, and he must meet some urgent appointment elsewhere.

At 0:53, as is so often the case, it is the very young who see truly. 

At 0:59 – carousels are just creepy.

At 1:02 a young man, ignoring the advice of an elder who knows well the cursed nature of these things, looks behind.  He will regret that for the remainder of his own short life.

At 1:10 a solitary wraith remembers sledding with her father – a father who has since replaced her with another daughter.

At 1:15 the best memory these two ever had was of James Cameron’s Titanic.  Ironic, if you think about it.

At 1:23 these ghostlings – moments before extinguishment – envy those for whom purgatory is eternal.  In those last, precious seconds, before knowing the taloned grip of the King in the Corn.

He comes for them all, in time… but that is another story.

Christ but I hate that song.

I’ve been busy.  Pages come back tomorrow for the series we’re cryptically calling ‘The Babylon Project’.  Since handing it over to the editor I’ve been in a sort of exhausted shock, or something, while making a little extra cash during the day, looking into university, finishing a short film script, prepping an actor’s CV for a casting agency and – with reference to the latter – getting my first proper haircut in years. 

Irons in fires, irons in fires.

Let me point you to some good readin’ if’n you likes you some writin’ (or, more accurately, if you’ve any interest in writing):

Patrick O’Duffy on Theme’s place in Narrative. (Part 1 – Premise – is here.) An insightful crash course in some of the basics by one of the most meticulous writers and editors I know.

Foz Meadows on the pros and cons of book piracy. Another take on a topic that, personally, makes me want to chew my own arm off.  Things were so much simpler when I were a girl.  I’ve considered placing a title or two online under the ol’ “pay what you will” scheme, but I’ve never been able to commit.  I’m still not sure if a range of opinions helps clarify things, or just kick up silt.

Louise Cusack  – the hidden value of critiquing. She’s bang-on with this little piece of advice: if you’re stuck on your own manuscript, critique someone else’s.  There’s more to it than that, however, and well worth the read.

Jay Kristoff has two great articles: ‘The Importance of Suck’ and its companion ‘Avoiding Suck’.  Jay’s a fun read, and he makes some good, albeit counterintuitive, points about the value of thinking your work blows.

Michael Pryor on ‘Powerless Heroes’.  Why it’s important your protagonist be proactive. 

Alan Baxter: ‘NaNoWriMo and Why I Don’t’ and ‘The story of a story, or how I was flensed’  I entered NaNo once, years ago, and it was a fun experience, but I question the practical worth of it to a writer.  So does Baxter.  The second article is all about developing a healthy layer of rhinoskin, being grateful for both-barrels criticism of your work, and putting the work before your own ego.