Robin Brown

Fittingly Avatar seems to have become more of a phenomenon than a film, with a surrounding media clusterfuck/shitstorm depending on where you get your news.

I say fittingly because, as a film, there’s not a huge amount to Avatar. Its narrative and script are a hodge-podge of more influences than I could initially nail down, but there are bits of Aliens, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, The Emerald Forest, Ferngully and Pocahontos in there.

I don’t think this matters though, the plot is a fairly loose framework that the greatest movie spectacle of all time sits on, and inevitably this overshadows everything else.

I think Avatar is more an experience than a film as such, and the mind-boggling FX combined with 3D make it an experience unlike any other. As such, it’s more immersive than any other film I can think of, and it blurs the boundaries between movie media and gaming more successfully than any video game port.

Its set-up of introducing a human into an alien species via, well, an avatar that looks exactly like the blue animal people of Pandora smacks of a number of gaming set-ups, and the extended section where protagonist Jake learns how to control his avatar and learn the ways of the Na’vi people straight out of a gaming tutorial. Nothing really happens for about 45 minutes, it’s almost sandbox-y. When he’s sufficiently well-versed in the physical and mental demands of his new life, the adventure proper begins.

I suspect this is why Avatar seems to have had such a strange effect on people. There are stories in the press about people feeling suicidal having seen the film, when confronted with the mundanity of their own existence. And there’s an effort to set up a community based on the ways of the Na’vi tribe. People who have seen the film seem to displaying some sort of separation anxiety from the film, its alien people and their beguiling world.

Is this because of the immersive nature of the film and its 3D world? Or is it more about the disconnect between people’s aspirations and their real lives – a form of Marxist alienation made explicit by the themes and style of the film. It’s also tempting to ponder whether Avatar speaks to people on a much more insidious level concerning nature, instinct and id.

Inevitably, Avatar has been labelled variously as patronising, racist and dangerously subversive. It’s easy to understand why, there’s a hefty anti-colonialism anti-capitalist theme running through the film, and though it generally shies away from making associations with specific situations or races explicit there are some clunking lines that make the War on Terror its most obvious target.

Frankly I think most of the criticism of the film is borne of the inherent ideological threat, or stems from the modern bane of movie reviewers – the wannabe-iconoclast (Will Heaven’s witless articles actually display both) as all of the criticism I’ve read fails to land any meaningful blows on these scores.

Beyond that, sure it’s thin on plot and its politics hardly subtle, but as a cinema experience it’s in a league of its own.

I’ve always been a Cameron mark, barring a couple of travesties, because of his ability to transcend genres and redefine them. Aliens and the Terminator films all showed what could be done with a fine nose for pacing, timing and a sense of how to manipulate an audience.

And after what he’s done with Avatar – no film of a similar stripe can ever really be the same again, no Transformers or Terminator rehash can stand up to something like Avatar. The typical Cameron tropes of what makes a successful action film and cutting-edge SFX are present and correct in such a way that Avatar is affecting film-goes in a way never before seen, married to a relevant and pretty subversive message.

So, is Avatar a good film? I’m not sure yet, but it’s an unforgettable and entirely novel experience. Cameron has again reinvented a genre, and perhaps created another one.

It’s probably not unfair to suggest that Terry Gilliam’s latest film – The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – has benefited from the premature death of Heath Ledger in the same way that The Dark Knight did.

Which isn’t to say that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus wouldn’t have been keenly anticipated had it not featured the combined talents of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell filling in for Ledger.

Terry Gilliam films are always events worth savouring, though he’ been out of form for some time by my reckoning. Ledger’s involvement had apparently meant a sizeable budget for Doctor Parnassus, and there’s an eclectic and talented cast.

So, is Doctor Parnassus a return to form? Nope, but then again it’s hard to say what Terry Gilliam on form is all about. Even Brazil, Baron Munchausen and Fear and Loathing are rambling, confusing and slightly unsatisfying.

But you don’t go to the cinema to see a Terry Gilliam film expecting a tightly-plotted self-contained small-scale story, and I wouldn’t want to.

Gilliam is one of the true remaining auteurs still making mainstream films, the creator of a unique and instantly recognisable canon.

And Parnassus is perhaps the ultimate example of his unique storytelling. It’s a film that’s typically disjointed and badly-paced. It’s confusing and it’s less than the sum of its parts.

However, all of the little aspects that make up the film are wonderful: perfect performances from Ledger, Tom Waits and Christopher Plummer; London recast as a modern fairly-tale wonderland; the brilliant absurdity of the main antagonist played by four different leading men; and the typically bonkers visuals.

It’s all classic Gilliam, even down the unlikely British character actors and the Pythonesque animation.

Ultimately the film doesn’t really make any sense at all. It’s part classic fairy tale, part modern moral parable – with all the attendant problems that suggests. Its stop-start pacing is annoying and some of the performances don’t work.

But I loved it. It’s as flawed, if not more so, than most Terry Gilliam films. But it’s such a joy to see movies like Parnassus on the big screen in a world drowning in the diminishing returns of shit action films, rom coms and ironic remakes.

I also felt that the film served as a much better epitaph to Ledger, who was never afraid to take risks on weird films, than the almost nihilistic Dark Knight.

The ‘From Heath Ledger and Friends’ strapline at the end of the film was touching and appropriate, and I though Parnassus did him proud.

District 9 has been on my list of films to see for quite a while, and the clever-clever viral campaign and trailer that made it look like Halo whet my appetite even more for what promised to be an intelligent and stunning sci-fi film.

And it is, but it’s rather problematic in the same way – raising a lot of issues that kind of drift away later in the film. This doesn’t detract from a quite amazing and bizarre movie experience that veers in tone and style repeatedly.

District 9 kicks off in the docu-style employed regularly in modern sci-fi, most recently seen in Cloverfield. We follow Wikus van der Merwe, a low-ranking civil servant in charge of evicting the alien settlement in D9.

How or why the aliens arrived in a huge mothership siting stationary above Johannesburg is never really explained, but we fast forward 20 years to see the alien ‘Prawns’ living in a Soweto-like slum patrolled by mercenaries.

Wikus is a superb creation by debutant Sharlto Copley, an irritating man slightly out of his depth and seemingly unaware in situations both social and mortally dangerous. The fact that he’s not immediately likeable or heroic in any way also adds to the verite style.

As Wikus’ day gets more complicated, circumstances ensure that he’ll never look at the Prawns the same way ever again and conspire to force him together with some of the more intelligent aliens who have plans of their own.

Director Neill Blomkamp scores a huge direct hit with its cast of relative unknowns, and its rejection of blockbuster mentalities makes for a refreshing change from the big-buck fodder that’s been on display this summer.

Where the film doesn’t eschew big screen details is in its creation of a believable sci-fi cityscape of the near-future Johannesburg. The SFX never seems intrusive or obviously digital, and the gritty, grimy look of D9 combines with the epic special effects to create something quite brilliant and unique.

Indeed, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Producer Peter Jackson did a lot of groundwork on what a Halo move would look like and decided not to waste it, with an alien-infested Jo’burg covered by a giant spaceship reminiscent of the futuristic Covenant-infested Mombasa of Halo

The realisation of the alien ‘Prawns’ is quite astonishing in its success. Despite the fact that nearly all of them are 100 per cent CGI, they never look unnatural and the actor behind the motion-capture suit is able to imbue them with a pathos uncommon to digital creations.

The third act is an all-guns blazing Transformers with gore, South African mercenaries and lots of ‘vukkeen prawn!’ shouts.

It sat a bit awkwardly with me, after the previous heavy-handed allegorising, to see Wikus merrily blowing people into smithereens left, right and centre and it detracted from the film’s moral authority.

Having raised a lot of awkward and interesting questions, District 9 just veers into an action-film cul-de-sac, albeit one that looks admittedly incredible.

For a film that doesn’t exactly treat the apartheid issues written through the script with a light touch, it should come as little surprise that the Nigerian gangsters in the film are treated as gun-toting, superstitious, duplicitous and barbarous.

I’m sure Nigerian gangsters aren’t particularly pleasant people, but I’m dubious about their reliance on James Bond-like witch doctors to form their plans.

Where District 9 gets it bang on is in its portrayal of the use of petty bureaucracy and image control to deflect from hefty realpolitik, vested interests and brutality of modern-day mercenary outfits like MNU in the film.

Where’s there’s muck there’s brass, and District 9 is filthy. With Iraq and Afghanistan still quietly smouldering away and multinationals getting their hands dirty for a slice of the oil revenues, District 9 is an important reminder that behind the paperwork and the smiles are dangerous confluences of military and business interests.

As a metamorphosing weapon of incalculable value, Wikus’ potential saviour is a Prawn with the given-name of Christopher Johnson, another subtle parallel with real life, and an amusing and pointed one.

It’s all to easy to imagine the humans’ reaction to the Prawns playing out as it does in the film. The sham of humanitarianism administered by mercenaries and factotums and overseen by people with an eye on the bigger rewards.

In some ways District 9′s ending is a bittersweet climax and its message of humans as a pretty bloody awful race of creatures is not a new trope in allegorical science-fiction, but it’s a tough conclusion to avoid after District 9 has shown the ugly side of people so convincingly.

Despite its flaws, District 9 is a triumph and like a bucket of water in the face after the stodgy diminishing returns of Hollywood fare. There won’t be a more entertaining or original film this year, I just wish District 9 had the courage of the convictions it hints at from the start.

• Image by Lucius Kwok

Although he never managed to make the Twitter Trending Topic of Doom, it appears that British scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin has merged with the infinite.

It seems possible that Kennedy Martin’s death may go rather unnoticed given the recent deaths of Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd, so I wanted to commemorate his passing. To throw a few titles at those of you not familiar with the name: Kelly’s Heroes, The Italian Job and Edge of Darkness.

The latter is unquestionably one of my favourite TV serials of all time, and I urge any readers (there are readers, right?) who are interested in such things to check it out.

The late-80s serial mixes nuclear paranoia, militant environmentalism, cold war politics, coal, Irish provos, James Lovelock, grief, loss, Willie Nelson, an iconic theme and score from Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen and age-old feudal battle. In the original draft the script’s protagonist, Craven, turns into a tree at the climax.

Out of all of that Martin, along with director Martin Campbell and producer Michael Wearing, fashioned a cohesive, intelligent and hard-edged thriller, with the mystical and ethereal overtones still integral but muted.

A spectacular cast also helps, with the sadly-departed Bob Peck perfect as lonely, unglamourous and rather dour Yorkshire detective Ronnie Craven.

Ian McNiece and Charles Kay are also particularly good as mysterious government suits Harcourt and Pendleton, while there’s solid back-up from John Woodvine, Jack Watson, Joanne Whalley, Zoe Wanamaker, Tim McInnery and, pleasingly, Blake’s 7 stalwarts David Jackson and Brian Croucher.

Stealing the show, though, is Joe Don Baker as Darius Jedburgh, a fun-loving, vaguely unhinged CIA agent gone rogue – a great, if slightly hyper-real creation, made believable by Baker.

Pretty much everyone involved went on to bigger things, including Kennedy Martin, who spent time on various underwhelming action scripts for Hollywood.

Speaking of, a Hollywood movie of Edge is planned which, although directed by Campbell, threatens to be awful.

The touches that made Edge of Darkness so superb in the first place – Jedburgh’s love of Come Dancing, the grimy London settings, the coal board corruption, the black flowers and the duality between the real world and the mystical – are likely to be missing. Small but important details whose significance is likely to be lost on US producers.

Edge of Darkness was a product of its time, a rare example of every element combining to make something even greater than the sum of its parts. Troy Kennedy Martin’s masterpiece.

• In the clip below, Craven discovers his murdered daughter’s double life as an environmental activist.

I finally got to see Moon at FACT, the last night it was showing. I’ve got an impressive track record in missing films I particularly wanted to see at the cinema, so I was quite please with myself for making it.

The last time I went to FACT I turned up about five minutes after the stated start time, confident in the knowledge that there’s be a comfortable 15-minute buffer of adverts and trailers. How wrong I was, walking into Drag Me To Hell five minutes into the prologue and on the receiving end of a snarky usherette’s temper.

So, there I was today at 8.40 on the dot, only to be force fed fully 15 minutes of adverts, followed by 10 minutes of trailers. To me, the idea of paying a fiver for the privilege of almost half an hour of fucking adverts take the biscuit, but I digress. Just don’t do it again, FACT.

Anyway, Moon – a lovely, eerie, sad and wonderfully understated little film that wears its influences on its sleeve but turns out something rather more than the sum of its parts.

There’s a lot of Silent Running, Dark Star and a spot of Solaris in there, but it’s the evocation of the 70s films that is most apparent, even running to the sets and model work, which is a pleasing counterpoint to the CGI-swamped messes sci-fi films indulge in these days.

Sam Rockwell is great in the, ahem, leading role, there’s a nice use of Kevin Spacey’s deadpan tones and some good incidental music work from PWEI’s Clint Mansell, no longer on Beaver Patrol. The attention to detail is satisfying, even down to the film’s poster and the fonts used in the titles.

I wish there were more films on general release like Moon, but then again I suppose I’d only miss them.

• Neil MacDonald bagged himself an interview with Duncan Don’t-Call-Him-Zowie Jones before Moon went on release. Read it.

Probably a bit like this.

Although I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to zombies – I prefer them to shuffle, moan and be vaguely pitiful like Romero’s – the truth is they’re much more frightening when they’re running at you screaming.

Anyway, this zombie make-up is by Helen Quinn of Liverpool Community College, and allowed me to menace some chihuahuas belonging to someone from Hollyoaks while dressed as a zombie.

I’ve just finished reading Bret Hart’s autobiography, Hitman, a book that examines Hart’s life in wrestling from the early days in Calgary, through his WWF heydays, Montreal screwjob and beyond.

Although it’s a book that’s framed by wrestling, and its many tragedies and delights, it’s primarily about Hart’s quite incredible life and the characters that populate it. I’d recommend it to anyone.

A multi-time WWF champ and widely considered one of the best of all time, Hart lives a successful and generally happy life until the late 90s. From that point on it seems to be one bona fide tragedy after another.

Bret’s suffering is almost Promethean, with a litany of deaths or cripplings of close families and friends, the failure of his marriage, his stroke and the destruction of his sporting legacy hitting him in rapid succession.

It’s hard not to put most of them down to the life of a wrestler, forever pained, lonely and exploited.

On top of the vagaries of the wrestling business are his unhappy home life, his treacherous and jealous siblings – 11 in total – and complicated relationship with his father.

Bret does his best to look after everyone, allowing numerous members of his family to ride his coat-tails, but is repaid with knives in the back and a grimly mounting body count.

Hart strikes a genuinely tragic figure, but a likeable and admirable one, and the insight into the minds of the vicious and ill-fated Tom ‘Dynamite Kid’ Billington (whose own book is painfully and unpleasantly honest), slippery Vince McMahon, and just about every big- and little-name wrestler over the last 30 years is fascinating.

If there’s one conceivable criticism, it’s that Hart can have a tendency to see things in black and white – something that becomes evident in Wrestling With Shadows, and something that makes him incompatible with the Attitude era WWF – but it’s hard to be tough on the man.

Hart is too sensitive a soul for the knockabout world of professional wrestling that developed in the WWF in the late 90′s, and his bafflement at what he sees places him squarely as a good man out of time, adrift in vulgarity, ultraviolence, moral relativism and dishonour.

• The National Film Board of Canada has made Wrestling With Shadows available for free online and embeddable too, so you can watch it below.

A modern-day moral parable, the film is shot by a crew that follows Bret around for several months prior to his departure from the WWF to WCW.

Luckily for them, they happen to catch the blow-by-blow backstage account of the Montreal Screwjob including, happily, the aftermath of Hart knocking Vince out cold.

• Watch Wrestling With Shadows below

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I fully expected the new Star Trek film to be drawn in the all the modern tropes we’ve come to expect from science-fiction.

Rebooted version of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica have taken the routes of soapy, high-emotion spectacle or high allegorical paranoiac thriller respectively.

I’d guessed that Star Trek would adapt for the former, since Russell T Davies’ series has taken Buffy as a template, as have most sci-fi/fantasy shows since the 90s.

That given I expected an unlikely romance, some rather melodramatic character interactions, high emotion, some iconoclastic rule-changing, a spot of kookiness and a visual-friendly plot that didn’t make a lot of sense.

I suppose I got some of that right. On face value the plot is straight-forward and geared towards a crash-bang-wallop narrative, with a couple of detours for some exposition from Nimoy.

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice these scenes, which occur about two-thirds into the film, patiently and clearly explain that any Star Trek preceding this film: classic, Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, the entire film series – yes, even the animated series – are wiped away in a few lines. In the Star Trek universe, they no longer happened, or will happen.

This may infuriate fans, though it serves the purpose of essentially rebooting the franchise, allowing JJ Abrams to do pretty much anything he wants without insane Trekkies pointing out that it’s explicitly stated in I, Mudd that Vulcans have no genitalia, or some other ridiculous continuity.

Indeed, the film does feel like a reboot – it’s a real kick up the arse that was badly required following the cosiness of the last two Next Generation-based movies.

Having said that the film gives some nods to the campery and sense of fun of the classic series, while some of the performances near pastiche and, in the case of Zachary Quinto, near pitch-perfect imitation.

Chris Pine as Kirk and Karl Urban as McCoy get it just right, with enough nods to Shatner and Kelley to make their performances work in the shadow of their originators, while making it their own.

Anton Yelchin as Chekov and a particularly odd Simon Pegg as Scotty are there purely as comic relief. While Yelchin does a good job taking off Walter Koenig’s absurd ‘Russian’ accent, Pegg’s performance is basically Simon Pegg doing Billy Connolly. Scotty has also gained a cute pet.

Despite some token efforts at making something out of Uhura and Sulu, they bear little resemblance to their original counterparts in character or appearance.

Meanwhile, in other geeky news, Start Trek will do nothing to dampen the Spock/Kirk slash fiction fantasy of them as lovers, given the manly fights, lingering looks and homo-erotic dialogue.

There’s also some predictable emoting, in this instance an unlikely romance between Uhura and Spock that never feels less than crowbarred, and the sight of Young Kirk driving a convertible off a cliff to the sound of the Beastie Boys and some really horrible Nokia product placement is likely to make viewers retch.

Still, as a film for the generic audience, Star Trek can’t fail to be a hit. It is fun, exciting and occasionally funny and it’s fascinating to see the characters recreated, albeit to varying levels of success.

Is it a good Star Trek film? That’s for others, for whom these sort of things are much more important, to judge. But although it was nice to see Nimoy back, and the film treat the source material with respect, it struck me as a fairly generic space opera film.

The bastardised version of the original theme tune – an absurdly over-the-top piece of campery – didn’t sit right with me. It was something rather unique and of its time that couldn’t stand the translation to something new.

It’d be tempting to draw the wider comparison, but your girlfriend, wife, friends or kids simply won’t care less. It’s simply good, clean fun – Star Trek has moved on.