There's really no excuse for not blogging in the circumstances, is there? On Monday, I'll hopefully be back at the office (that I would ever put "hopefully" in such a sentence), so I'd better get another blog post out there while I still have plenty of time.
The Swedish Film Institute has very sportingly released some films which were recently in cinemas online (though they're not exactly cheap), so I've been able to watch the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma in the comfort of my home. And it was... fine. However, although it did some things better than the 1996 film with Gwyneth Paltrow, I don't think it adds an awful lot to the interpretation of my favourite Austen novel. The actors are good. I enjoyed Josh O'Connor's oily Mr Elton and Bill Nighy's Mr Woodhouse who, though thin enough to creditably think himself an invalid, clearly isn't. It's nice to see Rupert Graves, whose likeable Lestrade is a highlight of the Sherlock series, as an equally likeable Mr Weston, and Johnny Flynn, who was such a good Dobbin, does his best in the thankless role of Mr Knightley. Miranda Hart is an excellent, tender-hearted Miss Bates. But as for the angle from which the novel is approached, it's pretty much the same procedure as in every adaptation.
The film is beautiful to look at, but also stylised, and played as an elegant comedy which doesn't offer much insight into its characters, Emma least of all. From the very first scene, where she "picks" flowers for Miss Taylor at dusk - or rather, a servant picks the flowers she points out while another one holds up a lantern - it's clear that Emma will be portrayed as a spoilt brat. Within these parameters, Anya Taylor-Joy does a good job, and unlike most actresses who have played the role she is actually close to Emma's age. Nevertheless, we have seen this kind of Emma - a conceited little miss who gets her rightful come-uppance - many times before in Emma adaptations. We see little in this film of her more endearing qualities, such as her love for her father. Overall, we are given few "character moments" with Emma or with anyone else. There's a brief scene where Emma practises dancing with Harriet, which shows a glimpse of the real affection between the girls - the film would have benefited by having more moments like that. I also liked the scene where Mrs Goddard's school charges pass Mr Elton in the street, giggling excitedly. It shows some of the context for Elton's belief that he must be the object of any young lady's desire.
As always, the Box Hill incident feels overdone. Taylor-Joy delivers the insulting remark about Miss Bates perfectly - she blurts it out thoughtlessly and is instantly aware that she has said something she shouldn't - but the wording has been changed. Emma's line is less witty and more a case of unabashed rudeness, which makes one wonder why she would be tempted to say it in the first place. The hushed, shocked silence and clear disapproval of everyone present is not believable - the only ones likely to pick up on Emma's faux pas are Emma herself, Miss Bates and the always censorious Mr Knightley. I have to admit, though, that the post-Box Hill scene where Emma tries to make amends to Miss Bates is probably the best I've seen in any adaptation. Emma, here, is dumb-struck, merely handing over a basket of delicacies, but Miss Bates - who realises what she is trying to do - shows that she is forgiven by emphasising the words "but then you are always so very kind". It was the only time during the whole film that I felt truly moved, and shows up the dreadful handling of the Box Hill aftermath in the Paltrow film, where Miss Bates flees Emma's company, as if this good-natured woman were actually capable of holding a grudge.
Perhaps it's because I like the novel so much that I'm so hard to please when it comes to Emma adaptations. I found this one too superficial, but the TV adaptation with Romola Garai, which focused more on the drama and less on the comedy, too gloomy. Plus, I have been known to say that it's ridiculous to wish for a "dark" adaptation of an Austen novel, so what is it that I want?
What I would wish for is an adaptation which sympathises more with Emma. With time, I've come to appreciate the Davies adaptation of Emma more and more, though it's not such a classic as his Pride and Prejudice. The casting was good and the balance between comedy and drama was just about right. But even Davies admitted to hating the main character and playing up her fantasist tendencies in order to make her bearable. Her warmth and wit seem to have passed him by, and in the end Kate Beckinsale's Emma, though engaging, is very much in the spoiled-brat-vein. I despair of ever seeing an Emma adaptation by someone who loves the heroine as much as most of us - adapters included - love Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Emma's faults are as offensive to modern-day moralists as to Regency ones, perhaps even more so, as they often stem from her feelings of social superiority. I must resign myself to never seeing the bossy, warm-hearted, intelligent girl I like so much in the novel rendered on the small or big screen with complete justice. At least it's a comfort that Austen was fond of her too.
Saturday, 28 March 2020
Saturday, 21 March 2020
The English Game - a half-hidden Fellowes-scripted half-gem
These are odd times we live in. On Monday, I had a cough and a slight ache in my lungs, which has resulted in me spending the whole week - barring a walk or two - in my flat, avoiding social contacts and watching TV. So, not that different to my usual routine, then, but with less work.
This means I can't complain about lack of blogging material. Putting aside the Maleficent sequel (bonkers) and the Pierce Brosnan Bond films (I do think he's my favourite Bond) for now, let's have a look at a recent Julian Fellowes-penned series. No, not Belgravia, sadly - though I read the book back when it was still an app, so I'm not too impatient - but The English Game.
I don't know if it's just my Netflix feed, but they don't seem to be promoting this series very hard, do they? My Swedish daily, which let me down when it came to Onward, made good by pointing out that this was on, otherwise I might have missed it. Perhaps it's because I mostly watch nerdy series and rom-coms on Netflix. Or else the algorithm thought, much as I myself did: "nah, this villain-ogling female knows zilch about football and cares less, it's probably not for her".
And to be sure, I wasn't too thrilled to hear Fellowes would be writing a miniseries (does it qualify as that? Six episodes?) about the beginnings of football when he should be spending his time finally finishing The Gilded Age. I have to say, though, I enjoyed this series more than I expected. Fellowes has had two co-writers, and they've all done a good job. However, although I'm guessing the writers have given themselves a great deal of poetic licence, reality does seem to come in the way of a good story once or twice.
The series takes place in 1879 England and focuses on two football virtuosos - Arthur Kinnaird, well-to-do captain of the aptly named team the Old Etonians, and Fergus Suter "the shooter", who along with his mate Jimmy Love has perfected the strategy of passing the ball in a neat fashion rather than charging with it from one part of the playing field to the other. Suter and Love have been hired by Walsh, a Northern mill owner, in order to boost his football team of mill hands, Darwen FC. Problem is, it's against the rules to pay football players, so if the gentlemen amateurs who rule the FA Cup committee want to make trouble, they can.
The first episode had me gripped - and, yes, even I was rooting for the mill workers. The series looked as if it was going to be a mix between North and South (Gaskell version, not Orry, George and the crazy villains) and The Four Minute Mile, with a bit of Chariots of Fire thrown in. I thought the story would be about the Old Etonians and Darwen FC competing for the cup - perhaps throughout a couple of years - while Kinnaird and Suter, at first hostile, come to respect each other more with time. And yes, the last bit happened. But halfway through the series, Suter abandons Darwen for Blackburn, another Northern working-class team that pays more. Yes, he needs to help his mother and sister who are brutalised by his father, so it's understandable, but this wasn't the drama I wanted to watch. What do I care about Blackburn, its envious captain and its somewhat wimpy owner Mr Cartwright, who isn't half as endearingly folksy as Walsh? I was invested in Darwen, hang it! I didn't want to see Suter's former team mates glowering at him for a whole episode or two. That's just painful to watch. Give me some thrilling matches!
But there, they can't tamper with history so much that the wrong teams meet up in the final, so we have to swallow that the Darwen folk come round and cheer on Blackburn anyway, because at least it's a Northern team and would be a victory for the workers etc. Hmmm. Not sure I buy it, but if it stops those glowering-at-Suter scenes, OK. At least the Darwen-Blackburn tensions, leading to a riot in a "friendship" game, set up the final argument, where the FA committee threatens to ban Blackburn from playing owing to unsportsmanlike behaviour and general rule-breaking.
One of the strengths of this series is that it takes the concerns of the Old Guard seriously. They're not just a bunch of over-privileged snobs seeking to oust honest working men (who are often better players, too) from "their" game. Arthur's friends are genuinely afraid of the consequences of allowing professional players. This is better explained than in The Four Minute Mile or Chariots of Fire, where as a viewer you just thought the obsession with "gentlemanliness" and amateurism barmy. If players are allowed to be paid, Arthur's pals argue, it would be possible for rich team owners to cherry-pick the best talent, leaving other teams with less money at a loss. Moreover, it would generate bad feeling leading to the kind of violence among fans witnessed at the Darwen-Blackburn game. It's hard to deny that much of what these gents feared has come to pass. Suter and co. have the better arguments and are clearly the future of football, but you do see where the toffs are coming from.
A girl in Class sneeringly referred to Downton Abbey as "white people being nice to each other". I sternly dismissed that remark - I mean, has she met Miss O'Brien? - but Fellowes at his best can set up scenarios where you understand both parties of a quarrel, and they can end up understanding each other too by listening to each other. There's also a refreshing feeling of getting right down to it when discussing some important issue, not hedging around for the sake of drama. Martha, Suter's girlfriend who was made pregnant by Cartwright a few years previously (they were in love, apparently, not just screwing around) is paid a visit by Mrs Cartwright (childless), who has just learned the truth. "She looks just like him", she says, gazing at Martha's daughter. "Like who?" Martha tries, but a look from Mrs Cartwright is enough for her to drop the pretence: "Yes, she does". It's not an easy path, and it doesn't happen right away, but the two women do end up "being nice to each other" in the end - and I, for one, am all for it.
Of villains in the Thomas mould there are none. I don't recall there being any particularly tasty villain in Belgravia either - the baddie was of the caddish persuasion, and I'm not too fond of those - so here's hoping The Gilded Age delivers. When it finally comes.
This means I can't complain about lack of blogging material. Putting aside the Maleficent sequel (bonkers) and the Pierce Brosnan Bond films (I do think he's my favourite Bond) for now, let's have a look at a recent Julian Fellowes-penned series. No, not Belgravia, sadly - though I read the book back when it was still an app, so I'm not too impatient - but The English Game.
I don't know if it's just my Netflix feed, but they don't seem to be promoting this series very hard, do they? My Swedish daily, which let me down when it came to Onward, made good by pointing out that this was on, otherwise I might have missed it. Perhaps it's because I mostly watch nerdy series and rom-coms on Netflix. Or else the algorithm thought, much as I myself did: "nah, this villain-ogling female knows zilch about football and cares less, it's probably not for her".
And to be sure, I wasn't too thrilled to hear Fellowes would be writing a miniseries (does it qualify as that? Six episodes?) about the beginnings of football when he should be spending his time finally finishing The Gilded Age. I have to say, though, I enjoyed this series more than I expected. Fellowes has had two co-writers, and they've all done a good job. However, although I'm guessing the writers have given themselves a great deal of poetic licence, reality does seem to come in the way of a good story once or twice.
The series takes place in 1879 England and focuses on two football virtuosos - Arthur Kinnaird, well-to-do captain of the aptly named team the Old Etonians, and Fergus Suter "the shooter", who along with his mate Jimmy Love has perfected the strategy of passing the ball in a neat fashion rather than charging with it from one part of the playing field to the other. Suter and Love have been hired by Walsh, a Northern mill owner, in order to boost his football team of mill hands, Darwen FC. Problem is, it's against the rules to pay football players, so if the gentlemen amateurs who rule the FA Cup committee want to make trouble, they can.
The first episode had me gripped - and, yes, even I was rooting for the mill workers. The series looked as if it was going to be a mix between North and South (Gaskell version, not Orry, George and the crazy villains) and The Four Minute Mile, with a bit of Chariots of Fire thrown in. I thought the story would be about the Old Etonians and Darwen FC competing for the cup - perhaps throughout a couple of years - while Kinnaird and Suter, at first hostile, come to respect each other more with time. And yes, the last bit happened. But halfway through the series, Suter abandons Darwen for Blackburn, another Northern working-class team that pays more. Yes, he needs to help his mother and sister who are brutalised by his father, so it's understandable, but this wasn't the drama I wanted to watch. What do I care about Blackburn, its envious captain and its somewhat wimpy owner Mr Cartwright, who isn't half as endearingly folksy as Walsh? I was invested in Darwen, hang it! I didn't want to see Suter's former team mates glowering at him for a whole episode or two. That's just painful to watch. Give me some thrilling matches!
But there, they can't tamper with history so much that the wrong teams meet up in the final, so we have to swallow that the Darwen folk come round and cheer on Blackburn anyway, because at least it's a Northern team and would be a victory for the workers etc. Hmmm. Not sure I buy it, but if it stops those glowering-at-Suter scenes, OK. At least the Darwen-Blackburn tensions, leading to a riot in a "friendship" game, set up the final argument, where the FA committee threatens to ban Blackburn from playing owing to unsportsmanlike behaviour and general rule-breaking.
One of the strengths of this series is that it takes the concerns of the Old Guard seriously. They're not just a bunch of over-privileged snobs seeking to oust honest working men (who are often better players, too) from "their" game. Arthur's friends are genuinely afraid of the consequences of allowing professional players. This is better explained than in The Four Minute Mile or Chariots of Fire, where as a viewer you just thought the obsession with "gentlemanliness" and amateurism barmy. If players are allowed to be paid, Arthur's pals argue, it would be possible for rich team owners to cherry-pick the best talent, leaving other teams with less money at a loss. Moreover, it would generate bad feeling leading to the kind of violence among fans witnessed at the Darwen-Blackburn game. It's hard to deny that much of what these gents feared has come to pass. Suter and co. have the better arguments and are clearly the future of football, but you do see where the toffs are coming from.
A girl in Class sneeringly referred to Downton Abbey as "white people being nice to each other". I sternly dismissed that remark - I mean, has she met Miss O'Brien? - but Fellowes at his best can set up scenarios where you understand both parties of a quarrel, and they can end up understanding each other too by listening to each other. There's also a refreshing feeling of getting right down to it when discussing some important issue, not hedging around for the sake of drama. Martha, Suter's girlfriend who was made pregnant by Cartwright a few years previously (they were in love, apparently, not just screwing around) is paid a visit by Mrs Cartwright (childless), who has just learned the truth. "She looks just like him", she says, gazing at Martha's daughter. "Like who?" Martha tries, but a look from Mrs Cartwright is enough for her to drop the pretence: "Yes, she does". It's not an easy path, and it doesn't happen right away, but the two women do end up "being nice to each other" in the end - and I, for one, am all for it.
Of villains in the Thomas mould there are none. I don't recall there being any particularly tasty villain in Belgravia either - the baddie was of the caddish persuasion, and I'm not too fond of those - so here's hoping The Gilded Age delivers. When it finally comes.
Wednesday, 11 March 2020
Onward isn't perfect - but it's hard to dislike
Monday evening, feeling worn out and irritable, I nevertheless went to the cinema to see the latest Pixar film Onward. I left it in a far better frame of mind, moved and more kindly disposed towards my fellow men. For me, then, the film was a success. And yet... I understand the general feeling I'm getting from reviews, that Onward is better than one would have expected from the trailers but not quite as good as we all hoped a Pixar film with original content (as opposed to "just another sequel") would be.
I had a lot of time for the central relationship between two brothers, and loved the scene towards the end where Ian - the younger brother who's grown up without his father - realises just how much his older brother Barley has meant to him throughout his life. That was the part that made me tear up, and the reviewers I've seen (mostly on Youtube, to be honest - my daily didn't deign to review the film) liked it too. However, while some of them thought that this strong emotional core of the film was enough to make it good, others didn't. And I can see where they're coming from, which is why it's so hard to come to a clear-cut conclusion about the film. Has Pixar chosen the right path in their quest for a solid future as one of the star brands of animated film, or have they strayed a too far down the Path of Peril - or rather a little too far along the safe, unadventurous freeway?
One problem with the film is that the world it's set in doesn't feel as fresh and original as was perhaps intended. Basically, it's a land full of creatures from folklore and fantasy where technology has replaced magic, so they live lives practically identical to us humans in the modern-day world. Cue the gags from the trailer where mermaids lounge in paddling pools, garden gnomes do actual gardening - including using a lawn-mower - unicorns are down-at-heel critters fighting like raccoons over people's trash and trolls collect the toll for the freeway going over the bridge. Though I did like that last joke, the main conceit is not very engaging. Most humorous use of fantasy tropes relies on contrasting the inherent pomposity of the genre with everyday life, and it has been done in funnier ways than here. That's another of the film's problems - few of its jokes actually land. Though it's light-hearted, it's not one of the funnier Pixar films.
The main story goes as follows: the two elf brothers Ian and Barley grow up with their mother, the father having died early, when Barley was still small and before Ian was born. Ian is the insecure, brainy but slightly whiny high-school kid who wants to fit in but doesn't know how etc. Big brother Barley is obsessed with the old days of magic and with a roleplay game that purports to be based on "historical facts" (those in the know identify it as very similar indeed to Dungeons and Dragons). He is cheerfully chaotic and embarrasses his little brother with his fantasies and gung-ho attitude. On Ian's 16th birthday, it's revealed that their dad left a magic staff and a spell that would bring him back to life for 24 hours. Though Barley is the magic enthusiast, it's Ian who has the magic talent, but he only manages to bring back the dad's legs before the staff breaks. The brothers have to repair it with "the Phoenix stone" before the 24 hours are done so they can meet their dad. The legs have to go along on the ride. As Barley put it in the trailer, "totally a quest".
I can nit-pick other things in the film that didn't quite work for me, along with the fantasy-figures-in-modern-day set-up and the lack of good jokes. The build-up feels too long - I was reminded of Moana/Vaiana, which I've watched three times now, each time drumming my fingers until finally Maui turns up. Also, though having the dad's legs tag along makes for a touching moment or two, one joke where I actually laughed and a way to get out of a trap, for the most part they just feel superfluous and weird. Nevertheless, I was charmed, mostly because I really liked Barley. As a fellow fantasist, I sympathised with him, and what clinched it for me was his unfeigned joy over the fact that his little brother has the magic gift. This lack of envy makes up for a lot, including a few moments where you feel he's not taking their quest quite seriously enough.
Another thing in the film's favour, for my part, was that it didn't ride its messages too hard. I've had problems with Pixar's messages in the past, not least the ones in the Toy Story franchise. Here, the film came perilously close to the "technology is bad" agenda Pixar's been hinting at a few times before. It's funny to see magic, often depicted in fiction as the solution which appears easy but can come with unforeseen costs, hailed as a craft which requires skill and dedication and leads to greater self-knowledge, whereas technology is the quick fix. Nevertheless, in the end, the fantasy creatures don't go back to roving in the wild and relying blindly on mages. They continue their comfortable modern lives - they're just a little bit more true to their pixie/centaur/manticore selves and view magic as a welcome bonus. Which is fair enough.
To sum up, Onward may not be a classic, but as one who has always admired rather than loved Pixar's films, I'm fine with that. It's sweet, extremely family-friendly and, contrary to some rumours, really not excessively "woke" at all. If I'm half as pleased with Pixar's next offering Soul, I'll consider myself lucky. Still no villain, though.
I had a lot of time for the central relationship between two brothers, and loved the scene towards the end where Ian - the younger brother who's grown up without his father - realises just how much his older brother Barley has meant to him throughout his life. That was the part that made me tear up, and the reviewers I've seen (mostly on Youtube, to be honest - my daily didn't deign to review the film) liked it too. However, while some of them thought that this strong emotional core of the film was enough to make it good, others didn't. And I can see where they're coming from, which is why it's so hard to come to a clear-cut conclusion about the film. Has Pixar chosen the right path in their quest for a solid future as one of the star brands of animated film, or have they strayed a too far down the Path of Peril - or rather a little too far along the safe, unadventurous freeway?
One problem with the film is that the world it's set in doesn't feel as fresh and original as was perhaps intended. Basically, it's a land full of creatures from folklore and fantasy where technology has replaced magic, so they live lives practically identical to us humans in the modern-day world. Cue the gags from the trailer where mermaids lounge in paddling pools, garden gnomes do actual gardening - including using a lawn-mower - unicorns are down-at-heel critters fighting like raccoons over people's trash and trolls collect the toll for the freeway going over the bridge. Though I did like that last joke, the main conceit is not very engaging. Most humorous use of fantasy tropes relies on contrasting the inherent pomposity of the genre with everyday life, and it has been done in funnier ways than here. That's another of the film's problems - few of its jokes actually land. Though it's light-hearted, it's not one of the funnier Pixar films.
The main story goes as follows: the two elf brothers Ian and Barley grow up with their mother, the father having died early, when Barley was still small and before Ian was born. Ian is the insecure, brainy but slightly whiny high-school kid who wants to fit in but doesn't know how etc. Big brother Barley is obsessed with the old days of magic and with a roleplay game that purports to be based on "historical facts" (those in the know identify it as very similar indeed to Dungeons and Dragons). He is cheerfully chaotic and embarrasses his little brother with his fantasies and gung-ho attitude. On Ian's 16th birthday, it's revealed that their dad left a magic staff and a spell that would bring him back to life for 24 hours. Though Barley is the magic enthusiast, it's Ian who has the magic talent, but he only manages to bring back the dad's legs before the staff breaks. The brothers have to repair it with "the Phoenix stone" before the 24 hours are done so they can meet their dad. The legs have to go along on the ride. As Barley put it in the trailer, "totally a quest".
I can nit-pick other things in the film that didn't quite work for me, along with the fantasy-figures-in-modern-day set-up and the lack of good jokes. The build-up feels too long - I was reminded of Moana/Vaiana, which I've watched three times now, each time drumming my fingers until finally Maui turns up. Also, though having the dad's legs tag along makes for a touching moment or two, one joke where I actually laughed and a way to get out of a trap, for the most part they just feel superfluous and weird. Nevertheless, I was charmed, mostly because I really liked Barley. As a fellow fantasist, I sympathised with him, and what clinched it for me was his unfeigned joy over the fact that his little brother has the magic gift. This lack of envy makes up for a lot, including a few moments where you feel he's not taking their quest quite seriously enough.
Another thing in the film's favour, for my part, was that it didn't ride its messages too hard. I've had problems with Pixar's messages in the past, not least the ones in the Toy Story franchise. Here, the film came perilously close to the "technology is bad" agenda Pixar's been hinting at a few times before. It's funny to see magic, often depicted in fiction as the solution which appears easy but can come with unforeseen costs, hailed as a craft which requires skill and dedication and leads to greater self-knowledge, whereas technology is the quick fix. Nevertheless, in the end, the fantasy creatures don't go back to roving in the wild and relying blindly on mages. They continue their comfortable modern lives - they're just a little bit more true to their pixie/centaur/manticore selves and view magic as a welcome bonus. Which is fair enough.
To sum up, Onward may not be a classic, but as one who has always admired rather than loved Pixar's films, I'm fine with that. It's sweet, extremely family-friendly and, contrary to some rumours, really not excessively "woke" at all. If I'm half as pleased with Pixar's next offering Soul, I'll consider myself lucky. Still no villain, though.
Thursday, 27 February 2020
Making it past chapter one
I've not had much luck with my reading of late. Books have been laid aside or abandoned altogether after a few pages after failing to engage me. Sometimes I've willed myself to continue: novels where you've read the first chapter without getting hooked are less likely to be picked up again than completely unread novels, and having too many of the first category lying around is depressing. So I did, for instance, manage to finish another book in the fairy-tale-inspired fantasy genre, although it was too slow-moving for me, in spite of goblins being present. One book where perseverance paid off, though, was The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz.
I usually enjoy Horowitz's writing, whether in crime novel or TV screenplay form. I really liked the TV series Foyle's War, and the crime novels The House of Silk, Moriarty and Magpie Murders all proved good reads. Thus, I bought The Word is Murder, regarding it as a sure thing. The first chapter failed to spark my interest, however. With hindsight, I can see why it was laid out the way it was, but at the time it only looked like an overlong scene-setting for one of the key elements of the murder mystery: a woman arranges the details surrounding her own funeral, and is killed later the same day.
Things brighten up, however, when we're introduced to our crime-solving duo: ex-policeman turned freelance Daniel Hawthorne, and... the author himself. The novel's conceit is that it's supposed to describe an investigation that really happened: Anthony Horowitz agrees to follow Hawthorne around and then write about his solving of a murder case, and then they split the profits. At first very much against the idea, Anthony (as I will call the character, as opposed to Horowitz the author) finally agrees to this plan for various reasons and becomes the Watson to Hawthorne's Holmes - not that Hawthorne has much in common with Holmes apart from an uncanny power of observation.
It's usually tricky for authors to insert themselves in their own work, and other examples from the world of crime fiction are not encouraging. Sweden's own 20th-century Queen of Crime, Maria Lang, created an author character called Almi Graan (an anagram of her pen name), who first started to appear in Lang's popular whodunnits in the Sixties. The problem is that Almi Graan's first appearances coincide with the decline of quality in Lang's books, and she is not as easy to like as was perhaps the intention. Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver, though good fun, isn't an unqualified success either: she adds little to the plots and is something of a self-indulgence on the author's part.
I thought Anthony Horowitz the character works well, though, as he is treated pretty mercilessly by Anthony Horowitz the author. The whole "this is a true crime" conceit can be a bit grating, with coquettish asides from the author bemoaning the fact that he doesn't have control of his material and would have written the whole thing up differently if it was all fiction. But it is all fiction, and the murder has enough fantastical elements - like the dramatic conclusion of the case - not to resemble "true crime" in the least. However, it's worth going along with it all for the sake of having Anthony as a Watson figure: not a complete clown, but pretty clueless compared to Hawthorne, whom he doesn't much like. For my part, I enjoyed the uningratiating Hawthorne and his dynamic with his author assistant. Anthony thinks that he needs to include colourful details about Hawthorne's character and private life in order for the book to sell, and tries to pump him, but Hawthorne is having none of it: the murder's the thing. On the other hand, one gets the feeling that Hawthorne likes Anthony rather better than the other way around. This looks like a crime novel series worth sticking with. Incidentally, another thing that warms me towards Hawthorne is that he didn't like the first chapter of Anthony's book.
Another crime novel where I had problems with the beginning chapter was Booked for Murder by Val McDermid, or V.L. McDermid as she signed herself for this book. It starts ostensibly from the point of view of a female hit-man (hit-woman?), but you can see there's a twist coming. I was glad when the story proper started, but all in all I got on considerably less well with this crime story compared to The Word is Murder. To be fair, this is an old novel of McDermid's, published in the Nineties, and is probably not one of her more ambitious works. Still, my goal was to try out McDermid, and as I wasn't that impressed, I'll probably be giving her Tony Hill books etc. a miss. The crime solver in Booked for Murder is Lindsay Gordon, a Scottish lesbian ex-journalist with a working-class background. Which doesn't have to mean she's chippy, but... she is. Or perhaps opinionated would be a better word. I didn't really warm to her, and the fact that her all-female circle of friends all share her views didn't make things better. The murder victim is killed in a flat in Islington, and I don't think it's wrong to say that the book's outlook overall is very Islington. Although the murder motive was pretty much impossible for the reader to figure out beforehand, I had no problem guessing who the murderer would turn out to be.
I'll say this much for Booked for Murder, though: it's an easy read, and what with all the reasonably sparky dialogue, it's a good distraction on the bus or if, like me at the moment, one is nursing an aching jaw. If Islington is your spiritual home, you may very well enjoy it.
I usually enjoy Horowitz's writing, whether in crime novel or TV screenplay form. I really liked the TV series Foyle's War, and the crime novels The House of Silk, Moriarty and Magpie Murders all proved good reads. Thus, I bought The Word is Murder, regarding it as a sure thing. The first chapter failed to spark my interest, however. With hindsight, I can see why it was laid out the way it was, but at the time it only looked like an overlong scene-setting for one of the key elements of the murder mystery: a woman arranges the details surrounding her own funeral, and is killed later the same day.
Things brighten up, however, when we're introduced to our crime-solving duo: ex-policeman turned freelance Daniel Hawthorne, and... the author himself. The novel's conceit is that it's supposed to describe an investigation that really happened: Anthony Horowitz agrees to follow Hawthorne around and then write about his solving of a murder case, and then they split the profits. At first very much against the idea, Anthony (as I will call the character, as opposed to Horowitz the author) finally agrees to this plan for various reasons and becomes the Watson to Hawthorne's Holmes - not that Hawthorne has much in common with Holmes apart from an uncanny power of observation.
It's usually tricky for authors to insert themselves in their own work, and other examples from the world of crime fiction are not encouraging. Sweden's own 20th-century Queen of Crime, Maria Lang, created an author character called Almi Graan (an anagram of her pen name), who first started to appear in Lang's popular whodunnits in the Sixties. The problem is that Almi Graan's first appearances coincide with the decline of quality in Lang's books, and she is not as easy to like as was perhaps the intention. Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver, though good fun, isn't an unqualified success either: she adds little to the plots and is something of a self-indulgence on the author's part.
I thought Anthony Horowitz the character works well, though, as he is treated pretty mercilessly by Anthony Horowitz the author. The whole "this is a true crime" conceit can be a bit grating, with coquettish asides from the author bemoaning the fact that he doesn't have control of his material and would have written the whole thing up differently if it was all fiction. But it is all fiction, and the murder has enough fantastical elements - like the dramatic conclusion of the case - not to resemble "true crime" in the least. However, it's worth going along with it all for the sake of having Anthony as a Watson figure: not a complete clown, but pretty clueless compared to Hawthorne, whom he doesn't much like. For my part, I enjoyed the uningratiating Hawthorne and his dynamic with his author assistant. Anthony thinks that he needs to include colourful details about Hawthorne's character and private life in order for the book to sell, and tries to pump him, but Hawthorne is having none of it: the murder's the thing. On the other hand, one gets the feeling that Hawthorne likes Anthony rather better than the other way around. This looks like a crime novel series worth sticking with. Incidentally, another thing that warms me towards Hawthorne is that he didn't like the first chapter of Anthony's book.
Another crime novel where I had problems with the beginning chapter was Booked for Murder by Val McDermid, or V.L. McDermid as she signed herself for this book. It starts ostensibly from the point of view of a female hit-man (hit-woman?), but you can see there's a twist coming. I was glad when the story proper started, but all in all I got on considerably less well with this crime story compared to The Word is Murder. To be fair, this is an old novel of McDermid's, published in the Nineties, and is probably not one of her more ambitious works. Still, my goal was to try out McDermid, and as I wasn't that impressed, I'll probably be giving her Tony Hill books etc. a miss. The crime solver in Booked for Murder is Lindsay Gordon, a Scottish lesbian ex-journalist with a working-class background. Which doesn't have to mean she's chippy, but... she is. Or perhaps opinionated would be a better word. I didn't really warm to her, and the fact that her all-female circle of friends all share her views didn't make things better. The murder victim is killed in a flat in Islington, and I don't think it's wrong to say that the book's outlook overall is very Islington. Although the murder motive was pretty much impossible for the reader to figure out beforehand, I had no problem guessing who the murderer would turn out to be.
I'll say this much for Booked for Murder, though: it's an easy read, and what with all the reasonably sparky dialogue, it's a good distraction on the bus or if, like me at the moment, one is nursing an aching jaw. If Islington is your spiritual home, you may very well enjoy it.
Wednesday, 12 February 2020
Pleasant audiobook distractions
Ugh - while I had a run of benevolent posts at the end of 2019, I suspect 2020 will be the year when I complain a lot and will actually have to move into contentious territory, though I really don't wanna. Not yet, though. Let's have a nice, unprovocative theme for this week's post. Like, erm, audiobooks?
I've never really been into audiobooks until the last months, because I always preferred actually reading the books, and I still do. Belatedly, though, I've discovered the perfect use for an audiobook: as a means of taking your mind off the fact that you're doing something mind-numbingly boring. Earlier, I've tried music as a boredom-reliever, and in some situations - like simple working tasks that still require some attention - it's still the best remedy. But when it comes to, say, domestic chores, music leaves too much room in my brain to reflect on how dull the chore in question is and how much I would rather be doing something else. If I'm very lucky and find an audiobook I really enjoy, on the other hand, the opportunity to listen to it partly makes up for the dreariness of doing the washing, packing my lunch, unpacking supermarket bags or cleaning the kitchen. The first audiobook I tried - River Road - helped me get through a four-hour train journey when the novel I'd brought failed to thrill.
The service I use is Audible, which has its advantages and disadvantages. The selection of books on offer is outstanding, but it's pretty pricey. I thought that the monthly subscription would give me access to the audiobooks on offer for free, but no such luck. You get a couple of free ones at the start, then one free book per month, but that's it: the rest you have to buy, and they're not cheap. I'll think I'll stick with it, though: I can work the app now, and it's nice to have so much to choose from. Here are some of the audios I've found so far:
River Road by Carol Goodman: Carol Goodman is the perfect autumn read, and most enjoyable in traditional book form. The settings, which are often academic and/or connected to creative writing, like a school teaching the Fine Arts or a writers' colony, have a high cosiness factor, and Goodman's use of myths and folklore appeals greatly to my inner librarian. On the down side, her heroines - often pretty opinionated - can annoy me, and the payoff of a nicely set up story is not always satisfying. The earliest books - The Lake Of Dead Languages and The Seduction Of Water - had wonderful atmosphere, and I loved the fairy-tale theme in The Seduction Of Water. But there are really no prizes for guessing who the main villain is in either of these novels. Later novels like The Other Mother and The Night Visitors are less easily guessable, but also less cosy and less full of "gosh, I know this myth/fairy-tale - aren't I learned" moments.
River Road was a novel I didn't get hold of in book form, so I was glad to find the audio version. It's in between the early, bookish but a bit predictable Goodman novels and the grittier later ones. Though not Goodman's best, it still has an enjoyable atmosphere - the protagonist Nan teaches creative writing at a college, which is the kind of job you have if you're a Goodman heroine - and as she has had some hard knocks in her life, like losing her small daughter in a car accident (why are writers so obsessed with kids who die or go missing?), I may actually have appreciated this story more as an easily digestible audiobook than if I'd pored over the pages of the actual novel.
Blythewood, also by Carol Goodman: This teen fantasy story was a disappointment. I'd have thought someone well-read like Goodman would be able to come up with a fantasy world enriched by classic myths and fairy-tales, but this was pretty generic stuff. The teenage heroine's love interest is a beautiful boy with wings, and the main villain is a creature of smoke and shadows - nothing particularly new there, and the magic school setup feels pretty done by now. I don't think I'll bother with the sequel; swooning over winged, misunderstood male beauties just isn't my thing.
Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie: One way to make sure you don't lose the thread of an audiobook's narrative is to listen to a book you've already read. This was read with relish by David Suchet, who did all the voices, not just Poirot's. If you stick with it through the somewhat slow start - Mrs Gardiner's monologues can be a bit much in this format - this is good fun, ideal for sorting and archiving documents to.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie: What, again? Well, this was one of the freebies on offer at the start of my subscription, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the play as opposed to the book. It wasn't made clear, though, how close this adaptation actually was to the play, and apart from some obvious liberties taken with the source material - the Darling household scenes are set during the Blitz; Tiger Lily leads a gang of "Lost Girls", so not for the first time in the history of Peter Pan adaptations her poor tribe is shafted and written out of the story altogether; Hook flirts outrageously with the devoted Smee - the story follows the one in Peter and Wendy very closely indeed. I'm not sure I'm much the wiser. It was a nice, light-hearted listen, though. Rupert Everett's Hook is the campest pirate who ever yo-ho-hoed on the seven seas, which is something of a pity - even the Disney version is a wonder of dignity and menace in comparison - but he draws the odd chuckle. Adeel Akhtar is sweet as Smee (the polar opposite of his Thénardier) and the kids are convincing.
The Two Destinies by Wilkie Collins: OK, I'm not going to lie: about one hour in, this story is still rather soporific, even if it is read by the admirable Sam West. I'm a huge fan of Collins, but he can be long-winded in his explanations, and perhaps he's not ideal audiobook material. Anyway, I couldn't resist getting nine hours listening time as my free book of the month (a Christie would only have offered six hours). It remains to be seen if my greed has deceived me - nine hours are no good if I'm to give up after three. But sometimes Collins is a late starter, so there's still hope.
I've never really been into audiobooks until the last months, because I always preferred actually reading the books, and I still do. Belatedly, though, I've discovered the perfect use for an audiobook: as a means of taking your mind off the fact that you're doing something mind-numbingly boring. Earlier, I've tried music as a boredom-reliever, and in some situations - like simple working tasks that still require some attention - it's still the best remedy. But when it comes to, say, domestic chores, music leaves too much room in my brain to reflect on how dull the chore in question is and how much I would rather be doing something else. If I'm very lucky and find an audiobook I really enjoy, on the other hand, the opportunity to listen to it partly makes up for the dreariness of doing the washing, packing my lunch, unpacking supermarket bags or cleaning the kitchen. The first audiobook I tried - River Road - helped me get through a four-hour train journey when the novel I'd brought failed to thrill.
The service I use is Audible, which has its advantages and disadvantages. The selection of books on offer is outstanding, but it's pretty pricey. I thought that the monthly subscription would give me access to the audiobooks on offer for free, but no such luck. You get a couple of free ones at the start, then one free book per month, but that's it: the rest you have to buy, and they're not cheap. I'll think I'll stick with it, though: I can work the app now, and it's nice to have so much to choose from. Here are some of the audios I've found so far:
River Road by Carol Goodman: Carol Goodman is the perfect autumn read, and most enjoyable in traditional book form. The settings, which are often academic and/or connected to creative writing, like a school teaching the Fine Arts or a writers' colony, have a high cosiness factor, and Goodman's use of myths and folklore appeals greatly to my inner librarian. On the down side, her heroines - often pretty opinionated - can annoy me, and the payoff of a nicely set up story is not always satisfying. The earliest books - The Lake Of Dead Languages and The Seduction Of Water - had wonderful atmosphere, and I loved the fairy-tale theme in The Seduction Of Water. But there are really no prizes for guessing who the main villain is in either of these novels. Later novels like The Other Mother and The Night Visitors are less easily guessable, but also less cosy and less full of "gosh, I know this myth/fairy-tale - aren't I learned" moments.
River Road was a novel I didn't get hold of in book form, so I was glad to find the audio version. It's in between the early, bookish but a bit predictable Goodman novels and the grittier later ones. Though not Goodman's best, it still has an enjoyable atmosphere - the protagonist Nan teaches creative writing at a college, which is the kind of job you have if you're a Goodman heroine - and as she has had some hard knocks in her life, like losing her small daughter in a car accident (why are writers so obsessed with kids who die or go missing?), I may actually have appreciated this story more as an easily digestible audiobook than if I'd pored over the pages of the actual novel.
Blythewood, also by Carol Goodman: This teen fantasy story was a disappointment. I'd have thought someone well-read like Goodman would be able to come up with a fantasy world enriched by classic myths and fairy-tales, but this was pretty generic stuff. The teenage heroine's love interest is a beautiful boy with wings, and the main villain is a creature of smoke and shadows - nothing particularly new there, and the magic school setup feels pretty done by now. I don't think I'll bother with the sequel; swooning over winged, misunderstood male beauties just isn't my thing.
Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie: One way to make sure you don't lose the thread of an audiobook's narrative is to listen to a book you've already read. This was read with relish by David Suchet, who did all the voices, not just Poirot's. If you stick with it through the somewhat slow start - Mrs Gardiner's monologues can be a bit much in this format - this is good fun, ideal for sorting and archiving documents to.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie: What, again? Well, this was one of the freebies on offer at the start of my subscription, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the play as opposed to the book. It wasn't made clear, though, how close this adaptation actually was to the play, and apart from some obvious liberties taken with the source material - the Darling household scenes are set during the Blitz; Tiger Lily leads a gang of "Lost Girls", so not for the first time in the history of Peter Pan adaptations her poor tribe is shafted and written out of the story altogether; Hook flirts outrageously with the devoted Smee - the story follows the one in Peter and Wendy very closely indeed. I'm not sure I'm much the wiser. It was a nice, light-hearted listen, though. Rupert Everett's Hook is the campest pirate who ever yo-ho-hoed on the seven seas, which is something of a pity - even the Disney version is a wonder of dignity and menace in comparison - but he draws the odd chuckle. Adeel Akhtar is sweet as Smee (the polar opposite of his Thénardier) and the kids are convincing.
The Two Destinies by Wilkie Collins: OK, I'm not going to lie: about one hour in, this story is still rather soporific, even if it is read by the admirable Sam West. I'm a huge fan of Collins, but he can be long-winded in his explanations, and perhaps he's not ideal audiobook material. Anyway, I couldn't resist getting nine hours listening time as my free book of the month (a Christie would only have offered six hours). It remains to be seen if my greed has deceived me - nine hours are no good if I'm to give up after three. But sometimes Collins is a late starter, so there's still hope.
Wednesday, 29 January 2020
The dullness of His Dark Materials
So I did say a few blog posts back that I was longing to rubbish something and was hoping His Dark Materials (as adapted by the BBC) would be it. When it comes down to it, though, I've not been looking forward to writing about this series, even though it makes a pretty good subject for rubbishing. The problem is that it wasn't bad in a way that's entertaining to pick apart - it was just very, very boring.
The fantasy world wasn't original enough to be interesting. The dialogue was leaden and slow-moving. Most of the characters were so paper thin they were hardly there. Consequently, the actors didn't have much to work with, and it felt like most of them didn't even try. The plot was a pretty standard "brave child goes on an adventure in order to save her world" story, and wouldn't you know it - Lyra, the child, is a Chosen One. To be fair, I believe His Dark Materials predates Harry Potter and a few other instances where this plot has been used, but even so - a story where the protagonist stumbles into an adventure and becomes a hero or heroine based on their own actions is a lot more satisfying than one where the hero/heroine is somehow preordained to be great. And still, the Chosen One plot is everywhere, not least in a fantasy context. What often connects these stories is that the side characters are far more fascinating than the main one, because they don't have a prophecy or what have you backing up a claim to be special: they have to earn the readers'/audience's interest. The mulish Lyra isn't the worst Chosen One protagonist on offer - she has too much character to be bland - but she's not the best either. The overall impression is of a run-of-the-mill fantasy plot rather poorly executed, and interwoven with scenes from "our world" which - far from having that eerie, "what's wrong with this picture" feel when reality meets the fantastical which you ideally get from a meet-the-companion episode in Doctor Who - are the most mind-numbingly dull in the whole series.
The one consistently excellent thing about this series is Ruth Wilson's magnetic performance as Mrs Coulter. She can make you engaged in even the most cumbersome lines and lifts every scene she is in. Apparently, she's supposed to be blonde in the novels, which does make me wonder whether it would have killed them to put a blonde wig on her to please book fans, but apart from that there is nothing to criticise here. Lin-Manuel Miranda as the aeronaut Lee and his long-suffering daemon, the hare Hester, are fun but not in any way central to the plot. The boy who played Lyra's best friend Roger did a pretty good job of not being annoying, I thought. The daemons (described as the souls of the characters which follow them around in the shape of an animal, and from which the humans in this world cannot be separated without dire consequences) are cute. But as positives go, that is pretty much it.
Now, I admit I didn't want to like this series. From what I've heard of Philip Pullman, he is a man with whom I would have little in common by way of opinions and beliefs, and far from keeping his private, he seems fond of professing them both in his fiction and outside of it. However, the ideas expressed in the BBC series are too confusing to be very provoking. I was expecting to want to shout at the screen, not to yawn my way through episode after episode.
Let's look at, for instance, the much-talked-about anti-Christianity which is supposedly all over the book series of His Dark Materials. So the bad guys in charge of Lyra's world are called the Magisterium, which is obviously some sort of church. Within the framework of the TV series, though, they're no different from any other sort of Fantasy Dictatorship. They might as well be called the Government (and be evil politicians), the Corporation (and be evil businessmen), the People's Representatives (and be evil revolutionaries), the Nobility (self-explanatory)... take your pick. Aside from being called "Father" and "Cardinal", what do they do that is specifically churchy? Well, I mentioned the cute soul animal creatures called daemons, right? Now, the Magisterium is running a terrifying experiment where they kidnap children in order to remove them from their daemons, which is supposed to make the children better beings eventually but has so far only made them catatonic. Oh, I see, because removing people from their souls is definitely something Christianity is about. No, wait...
Mrs Coulter later explains to Lyra what exactly the Magisterium has against the daemons. It appears that they are considered to be excellent playmates when kids are young, but once the children hit puberty their daemons - in the eyes of the Magisterium - start to lead them astray and towards sinfulness. Right... so not that soulful then, are they? Or are we ditching the soul-body split altogether, and is Pullman's point that for example sex drive is as much a thing of the soul as of the body and should not be frowned upon? That's pretty interesting, but if your argument is that the body and soul are one, why introduce a soul concept in the shape of cute daemons in the first place?
It gets more confusing when taking into account the discussions on Dust. Dust is an invisible substance that settles on the people of Lyra's world, but only the adults. The children are free of it. The Magisterium sees it as a harbinger of original sin. Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, sees it as something good and wants to use it to move between different worlds. He talks lyrically of a world without the shame and guilt induced by the ideas of the Magisterium. OK. I can see where he's coming from. Except: 1) Inducing shame and guilt isn't something specifically tied to religion. Sadly, it seems to be part of human nature to want to castigate oneself for being unworthy, while also pointing a finger at others for being even more unworthy so you can feel virtuous by comparison. I could mention some very secular shaming campaigns of late. 2) Needless shame and guilt is a bitch. I couldn't agree more. But there is such a thing as warranted feelings of guilt, which are a result of having a conscience. You know, the thing that tells us that abducting kids and performing experiments on them is A Bad Thing. The series ends with Asriel performing a daemon-child split of his own for his greater good, which sort of proves the point that his morality is no better than the Magisterium's. 3) Weren't the daemons the ones who were supposed to bring on adolescence and the naughty shenanigans the Magisterium wants to get rid of? So which is it, Dust, or daemons?
Maybe Pullman's ideas are better explained in the novels, and maybe they will be made clearer in subsequent series of His Dark Materials. I don't think I'll be watching any more, however. I can be grateful for the BBC His Dark Materials for one thing: I no longer feel guilty for not giving the novels a try. No needless shame and guilt, then.
The fantasy world wasn't original enough to be interesting. The dialogue was leaden and slow-moving. Most of the characters were so paper thin they were hardly there. Consequently, the actors didn't have much to work with, and it felt like most of them didn't even try. The plot was a pretty standard "brave child goes on an adventure in order to save her world" story, and wouldn't you know it - Lyra, the child, is a Chosen One. To be fair, I believe His Dark Materials predates Harry Potter and a few other instances where this plot has been used, but even so - a story where the protagonist stumbles into an adventure and becomes a hero or heroine based on their own actions is a lot more satisfying than one where the hero/heroine is somehow preordained to be great. And still, the Chosen One plot is everywhere, not least in a fantasy context. What often connects these stories is that the side characters are far more fascinating than the main one, because they don't have a prophecy or what have you backing up a claim to be special: they have to earn the readers'/audience's interest. The mulish Lyra isn't the worst Chosen One protagonist on offer - she has too much character to be bland - but she's not the best either. The overall impression is of a run-of-the-mill fantasy plot rather poorly executed, and interwoven with scenes from "our world" which - far from having that eerie, "what's wrong with this picture" feel when reality meets the fantastical which you ideally get from a meet-the-companion episode in Doctor Who - are the most mind-numbingly dull in the whole series.
The one consistently excellent thing about this series is Ruth Wilson's magnetic performance as Mrs Coulter. She can make you engaged in even the most cumbersome lines and lifts every scene she is in. Apparently, she's supposed to be blonde in the novels, which does make me wonder whether it would have killed them to put a blonde wig on her to please book fans, but apart from that there is nothing to criticise here. Lin-Manuel Miranda as the aeronaut Lee and his long-suffering daemon, the hare Hester, are fun but not in any way central to the plot. The boy who played Lyra's best friend Roger did a pretty good job of not being annoying, I thought. The daemons (described as the souls of the characters which follow them around in the shape of an animal, and from which the humans in this world cannot be separated without dire consequences) are cute. But as positives go, that is pretty much it.
Now, I admit I didn't want to like this series. From what I've heard of Philip Pullman, he is a man with whom I would have little in common by way of opinions and beliefs, and far from keeping his private, he seems fond of professing them both in his fiction and outside of it. However, the ideas expressed in the BBC series are too confusing to be very provoking. I was expecting to want to shout at the screen, not to yawn my way through episode after episode.
Let's look at, for instance, the much-talked-about anti-Christianity which is supposedly all over the book series of His Dark Materials. So the bad guys in charge of Lyra's world are called the Magisterium, which is obviously some sort of church. Within the framework of the TV series, though, they're no different from any other sort of Fantasy Dictatorship. They might as well be called the Government (and be evil politicians), the Corporation (and be evil businessmen), the People's Representatives (and be evil revolutionaries), the Nobility (self-explanatory)... take your pick. Aside from being called "Father" and "Cardinal", what do they do that is specifically churchy? Well, I mentioned the cute soul animal creatures called daemons, right? Now, the Magisterium is running a terrifying experiment where they kidnap children in order to remove them from their daemons, which is supposed to make the children better beings eventually but has so far only made them catatonic. Oh, I see, because removing people from their souls is definitely something Christianity is about. No, wait...
Mrs Coulter later explains to Lyra what exactly the Magisterium has against the daemons. It appears that they are considered to be excellent playmates when kids are young, but once the children hit puberty their daemons - in the eyes of the Magisterium - start to lead them astray and towards sinfulness. Right... so not that soulful then, are they? Or are we ditching the soul-body split altogether, and is Pullman's point that for example sex drive is as much a thing of the soul as of the body and should not be frowned upon? That's pretty interesting, but if your argument is that the body and soul are one, why introduce a soul concept in the shape of cute daemons in the first place?
It gets more confusing when taking into account the discussions on Dust. Dust is an invisible substance that settles on the people of Lyra's world, but only the adults. The children are free of it. The Magisterium sees it as a harbinger of original sin. Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, sees it as something good and wants to use it to move between different worlds. He talks lyrically of a world without the shame and guilt induced by the ideas of the Magisterium. OK. I can see where he's coming from. Except: 1) Inducing shame and guilt isn't something specifically tied to religion. Sadly, it seems to be part of human nature to want to castigate oneself for being unworthy, while also pointing a finger at others for being even more unworthy so you can feel virtuous by comparison. I could mention some very secular shaming campaigns of late. 2) Needless shame and guilt is a bitch. I couldn't agree more. But there is such a thing as warranted feelings of guilt, which are a result of having a conscience. You know, the thing that tells us that abducting kids and performing experiments on them is A Bad Thing. The series ends with Asriel performing a daemon-child split of his own for his greater good, which sort of proves the point that his morality is no better than the Magisterium's. 3) Weren't the daemons the ones who were supposed to bring on adolescence and the naughty shenanigans the Magisterium wants to get rid of? So which is it, Dust, or daemons?
Maybe Pullman's ideas are better explained in the novels, and maybe they will be made clearer in subsequent series of His Dark Materials. I don't think I'll be watching any more, however. I can be grateful for the BBC His Dark Materials for one thing: I no longer feel guilty for not giving the novels a try. No needless shame and guilt, then.
Wednesday, 15 January 2020
Frozen 2 and the lack of new Disney villains
The start of the year has been busy, which means I'm late with my blogging. At least I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to subject matter, having watched both Frozen 2 and The Rise Of Skywalker at the cinema. I'll stick mainly with Frozen 2 for this post, though touching briefly on Rise Of Skywalker towards the end.
I realise that Frozen 2 could have been a great deal worse, and it didn't annoy me the way Wreck It Ralph 2 did. It was visually stunning, the songs were good and the characters still likeable. However, the story was a mess. Story elements were thrown in and then not expanded upon or made intelligible, new characters were introduced who then had very little to do, and the end of the film - though happy - is somehow unsatisfying. To be more precise, I'll have to go into spoilers, though there is precious little to spoil, as there are no big twists in the story.
So, firstly, the whole idea of magic in this universe being tied to the four elements and Elsa being the "fifth element" which ties the other four together is very confusing. Elsa's powers include creating snow and ice. That should make her magic part of the water element, no? Why on earth should her undefined fifth element status require her to take up residence in an enchanted forest (not the Enchanted Forest, regrettably) while Anna is made Queen? Who thought separating these devoted sisters (though it's made clear that they meet often) was a good idea? Frozen was partly about Elsa being able to connect with the world around her by coming to terms with her magic powers. At the end of Frozen 2, she is on her own again, though she does have the company of the pretty anonymous Northuldra tribe and a fire salamander. She might almost as well have stayed in her "ice palace for one".
When it comes to the characters, I was pretty relieved we didn't see more of the leader of the Northuldra tribe, as she seemed to be the kind of "nature good, civilisation bad" character that tends to irritate me. But Lieutenant Mattias had wasted potential - his reactions when hearing the girls' history as retold by Olaf, mirroring as they did the audience's reactions when first seeing Frozen (Olaf as Hans: "You're not worth it! Guess what, I'm the bad guy" Mattias: "What?!") were sweet and funny, and I liked his exchange with Anna about his old flame back in Arendelle. When told that she never married, he sighs "Now, why doesn't that make me feel happier?". But his impact on the story? Practically zero. And what happened to the Northuldra guy who talks to reindeer in the same way as Kristoff does? You think that this is the start of a beautiful friendship, but it's never followed through. Not to mention Honeymaren, a Northuldra girl who's introduced by name but not given any character or anything to do at all. Some of the regular characters are marking time as well: Kristoff's story arc is about trying to propose to Anna, while events keep getting in the way. But this is years after the first Frozen: surely Kristoff and Anna should have been married ages ago!
Somewhat perversely, seeing as I didn't much approve of the Frozen arc in Once Upon a Time, I was bummed that Once's version of what happened after (and before) Frozen was not only ignored but actively negated in Frozen 2. My beef with the Frozen arc in Once is that it was poorly integrated in the main story, and Anna and Elsa were strangely one-dimensional in their interactions with the Storybrooke/Enchanted Forest crowd. The story itself actually functioned well if seen merely as a sequel to Frozen, and contained cool elements such as a villainous Snow Queen more in keeping with H C Andersen's than Elsa and a magic mirror (similar to the one mentioned in Andersen's story) which makes people turn against their nearest and dearest. I know Once isn't Disney canon, but that's because it usually takes great liberties with its source material. In the case of Frozen, it primly toed the line and didn't go against anything described in the film, which had a curtailing effect on the script-writers' creative freedom - and it all turns out to have been for nothing. Ah well.
What's a great deal worse is that yet again, Disney fails to deliver on the villain front. Elsa sees what you could call ice flashbacks of her grandfather, King Runeard, behaving badly, which sparks a conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra and isolates the Northuldra's forest in a magic mist for thirty odd years (whatever the point of that was - care to explain, magic elements?). However, as well as coming as no surprise whatsoever - what, you didn't think the oh-so-wise-and-close-to-nature Northuldra started the quarrel, did you? - these brief flashbacks give us no insight into Runeard's reasons or character. We can only assume that it was the Northuldra's use of magic that spooked him, as he must otherwise have been a pretty tolerant king with a generous immigration policy (Mattias is from immigrant stock). An ice statue grandfather does not count as a villain, and so, after Wreck It Ralph 2 and Toy Story 4, we have another Disney/Pixar villain no-show.
It may be that Disney is trying to be "mature" and show that life can be complicated enough without colourful antagonists. But who wants an animated Disney film to be true to life to the detriment of the story? It's as if the Disney people have twigged that people have grown tired of the twist villains but don't have a clue what to replace them with. It's been so long since they had an upfront baddie in the Jafar mould that they've somehow lost the knack of creating them. There are several trends when it comes to Disney's output that leave me concerned, but this is perhaps the most worrying. Can it be that the company's unending quest for worthiness has made them forget just how satisfying a really good villain can be?
The Rise Of Skywalker seems to point in the direction of a company struggling to come up with something new villain-wise. Snoke having been unceremoniously killed off in The Last Jedi, the powers that be felt obliged to reintroduce Emperor Palpatine as the Big Bad, in spite of him being very, very dead at the end of The Return Of The Jedi. Now, I don't object to a spot of Palps - I admit I'm one of the fans who squeed delightedly when hearing his trademark cackle in the trailer, instead of going: "Oh no! Doesn't this make the heroes' victory in The Return Of The Jedi worthless?" (though I understand that argument). But reintroducing a tried-and-tested baddie in this way doesn't exactly show a lot of imagination.
As it happens, they wouldn't even have had to come up with anything new for Frozen 2. I can't be the only one who hoped for the reintroduction of and a redemption arc for Hans, can I?
I realise that Frozen 2 could have been a great deal worse, and it didn't annoy me the way Wreck It Ralph 2 did. It was visually stunning, the songs were good and the characters still likeable. However, the story was a mess. Story elements were thrown in and then not expanded upon or made intelligible, new characters were introduced who then had very little to do, and the end of the film - though happy - is somehow unsatisfying. To be more precise, I'll have to go into spoilers, though there is precious little to spoil, as there are no big twists in the story.
So, firstly, the whole idea of magic in this universe being tied to the four elements and Elsa being the "fifth element" which ties the other four together is very confusing. Elsa's powers include creating snow and ice. That should make her magic part of the water element, no? Why on earth should her undefined fifth element status require her to take up residence in an enchanted forest (not the Enchanted Forest, regrettably) while Anna is made Queen? Who thought separating these devoted sisters (though it's made clear that they meet often) was a good idea? Frozen was partly about Elsa being able to connect with the world around her by coming to terms with her magic powers. At the end of Frozen 2, she is on her own again, though she does have the company of the pretty anonymous Northuldra tribe and a fire salamander. She might almost as well have stayed in her "ice palace for one".
When it comes to the characters, I was pretty relieved we didn't see more of the leader of the Northuldra tribe, as she seemed to be the kind of "nature good, civilisation bad" character that tends to irritate me. But Lieutenant Mattias had wasted potential - his reactions when hearing the girls' history as retold by Olaf, mirroring as they did the audience's reactions when first seeing Frozen (Olaf as Hans: "You're not worth it! Guess what, I'm the bad guy" Mattias: "What?!") were sweet and funny, and I liked his exchange with Anna about his old flame back in Arendelle. When told that she never married, he sighs "Now, why doesn't that make me feel happier?". But his impact on the story? Practically zero. And what happened to the Northuldra guy who talks to reindeer in the same way as Kristoff does? You think that this is the start of a beautiful friendship, but it's never followed through. Not to mention Honeymaren, a Northuldra girl who's introduced by name but not given any character or anything to do at all. Some of the regular characters are marking time as well: Kristoff's story arc is about trying to propose to Anna, while events keep getting in the way. But this is years after the first Frozen: surely Kristoff and Anna should have been married ages ago!
Somewhat perversely, seeing as I didn't much approve of the Frozen arc in Once Upon a Time, I was bummed that Once's version of what happened after (and before) Frozen was not only ignored but actively negated in Frozen 2. My beef with the Frozen arc in Once is that it was poorly integrated in the main story, and Anna and Elsa were strangely one-dimensional in their interactions with the Storybrooke/Enchanted Forest crowd. The story itself actually functioned well if seen merely as a sequel to Frozen, and contained cool elements such as a villainous Snow Queen more in keeping with H C Andersen's than Elsa and a magic mirror (similar to the one mentioned in Andersen's story) which makes people turn against their nearest and dearest. I know Once isn't Disney canon, but that's because it usually takes great liberties with its source material. In the case of Frozen, it primly toed the line and didn't go against anything described in the film, which had a curtailing effect on the script-writers' creative freedom - and it all turns out to have been for nothing. Ah well.
What's a great deal worse is that yet again, Disney fails to deliver on the villain front. Elsa sees what you could call ice flashbacks of her grandfather, King Runeard, behaving badly, which sparks a conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra and isolates the Northuldra's forest in a magic mist for thirty odd years (whatever the point of that was - care to explain, magic elements?). However, as well as coming as no surprise whatsoever - what, you didn't think the oh-so-wise-and-close-to-nature Northuldra started the quarrel, did you? - these brief flashbacks give us no insight into Runeard's reasons or character. We can only assume that it was the Northuldra's use of magic that spooked him, as he must otherwise have been a pretty tolerant king with a generous immigration policy (Mattias is from immigrant stock). An ice statue grandfather does not count as a villain, and so, after Wreck It Ralph 2 and Toy Story 4, we have another Disney/Pixar villain no-show.
It may be that Disney is trying to be "mature" and show that life can be complicated enough without colourful antagonists. But who wants an animated Disney film to be true to life to the detriment of the story? It's as if the Disney people have twigged that people have grown tired of the twist villains but don't have a clue what to replace them with. It's been so long since they had an upfront baddie in the Jafar mould that they've somehow lost the knack of creating them. There are several trends when it comes to Disney's output that leave me concerned, but this is perhaps the most worrying. Can it be that the company's unending quest for worthiness has made them forget just how satisfying a really good villain can be?
The Rise Of Skywalker seems to point in the direction of a company struggling to come up with something new villain-wise. Snoke having been unceremoniously killed off in The Last Jedi, the powers that be felt obliged to reintroduce Emperor Palpatine as the Big Bad, in spite of him being very, very dead at the end of The Return Of The Jedi. Now, I don't object to a spot of Palps - I admit I'm one of the fans who squeed delightedly when hearing his trademark cackle in the trailer, instead of going: "Oh no! Doesn't this make the heroes' victory in The Return Of The Jedi worthless?" (though I understand that argument). But reintroducing a tried-and-tested baddie in this way doesn't exactly show a lot of imagination.
As it happens, they wouldn't even have had to come up with anything new for Frozen 2. I can't be the only one who hoped for the reintroduction of and a redemption arc for Hans, can I?
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