This from my friend Clint at work — a reminder that the Land of Smiles isn’t always in a good mood:

“I saw a shootout the other night, scared the fucking shit out of me.  It was right across from Rockwell [ed. — the school where we work].  On Thursday night I finished at 9pm and then hung out in the alley between Rockwell and the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant right there on the corner, drinking beer with the construction workers and shooting the shit, when we heard this big bang.  At first I thought it was a motorcycle wreck around the corner, but it was followed by 20 more bangs, and we realized it was a gun fight.  We ran away into the building, and one of the construction workers pulled out a sword from his bag, I shit you not, and charged outside, thinking it was part of the political upheaval and wanting to take a bite out of some protester’s leg or something.  But it was the motorcycle taxi dudes across the street who take up that whole corner, some dude came by on a motorcycle and started shooting at them, and one of them started shooting back.  The motocrycle assailant took off and got away, and I think one guy was dead (some medics leaned over him and then threw a white sheet down on top of him) and another guy I think wasn’t dead but unconscious and was being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm.  Aren’t you glad you don’t work nights?”

I am glad I don’t work nights, although avoiding gunfights wasn’t the kind of safety I had in mind.

In other news, I have to rave about a movie. It’s called The Fall. This is a picture from it. I suck at writing reviews, so here’s an intelligent one, and another. One great strength of the movie is it’s strange and gorgeous, exotic imagery; another is Catinca Untaru, who plays the young girl, Alexandria, who together with injured 1920s stuntman Roy (Lee Pace) is at the heart of the story. It’s a fantastical movie with a grounding in reality. If Pan’s Labyrinth was your thing, The Fall might well be worth your time. Official site here.

An entirely subjective review. Minor spoilers.

Most movies aren’t made for me. I accept that. I’m a 35 - no, bugger, 36 - year old woman with a childlike taste for fantasy coupled with an adult taste for psychological complexity - real complexity, not what passes for it in Hollywood. The last movie I saw that satisfied both was Pan’s Labyrinth. I didn’t know when I saw it that its director, Guillermo del Toro, was also the director of Hellboy. I found Hellboy enjoyable but forgettable, although Ron Perlman was great as always in the title role as the red son of Satan with a dark destiny and a flippant attitude.

With del Toro in the director’s chair again for Hellboy II, I went along expecting to at least enjoy the film, and I did. Points for hotness to Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), the would-be Che Guevara of the elves, who looks like Elric of Melnibone and fights like Jet Li. But the real stars were the creatures — the goblins, trolls and what have you. The designs were terrifically inventive and the troll market scene offered a look-see into a detailed fantasy world like that of The Neverending Story or Labyrinth. My imagination was turned on.

And then — well, there was a whole lot of fighting. There was a nod in the direction of moral shades of grey, with Nuada’s grievance against humans being portrayed as a legitimate one. There was a sad scene where a nature elemental, a unique creature, was called up by Nuada to fight — and killed (but if he cared so much, why did he use it in that way at all?), and a dark scene where a terrifically odd-looking angel of death saves Hellboy’s life with the reminder that he is destined to bring ruin to the world. But things didn’t get much deeper than that. The two romances, between Hellboy and Liz and Abraham Sapien and Nuada’s sister Nuala, were cardboard. As a reviewer pointed out, the film implies that Hellboy and Liz’s ongoing day to day difficulties were magically solved by a crisis situation where he was injured and she was afraid to lose him — and then really solved by her getting pregnant. Right. I am really sick of films telling whopping lies about the mechanics of relationships. If there isn’t room in the script to deal with the human issues properly, then think up some human issues to fit the script. Why does a female character’s major conflict always have to be a romantic one? Maybe Liz could have had a different kind of problem. Perhaps she could have sympathised with Nuada’s cause. Or something.

Then there was the fighting. I know that’s a large part of what Hellboy is about. You gots to have slugging matches. But I was disappointed that the intricate troll market served chiefly as a backdrop to violent mayhem, including one particularly nasty death that probably would have earned the film a stricter rating if the character had been human. I found myself wishing that the fairy world of Hellboy II had been saved for another movie.

As I said, despite my gripes, I did enjoy it. There was enough in it for me, and it wasn’t as if I went in expecting another Pan’s Labyrinth. Still, I hope Guillermo del Toro will find more complex and more grownup vehicles — or heck, even more childlike ones — for his imagination.  I don’t know whether it’s age or just surfeit, but violence doesn’t entertain me much anymore. I tend to find it either boring or distressing. Or perhaps it’s the way Hollywood does its violence nowadays.  There used to be a sense of pacing and buildup (didn’t there? Am I imagining things?) to catharsis. Now there seems a tendency to keep the level of violence high all the way through and make the final “cathartic” scene so long that one’s eyes glaze over and there is not a sense of tension being released so much as a towel being wrung out.

Most Hollywood films I don’t enjoy enough to bother reviewing. They don’t engage my imagination at all. They fill in time. I enjoyed Hellboy II enough that I would watch it again; I think I’m just kvetching so much because I know the standard del Toro is capable of and I want him to make more films of that quality. And I really do worry about the overload of violence on the big screen. It’s crass, and the time spent on it means that more interesting matters are given short shrift.

After sitting through yet another goes-to-11-on-the-emotometer episode of Dr Who (The Doctor’s Daughter — spoilers below), I find myself asking why I still watch a show that almost never fails to make me squirm at least once per episode, not from sheer, clean terror as I used to as a kid, but from embarrassment at some piece of incontinently squirting emo-ness. The answer is, of course, that both Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant were and are respectively charismatic enough to make even a badly scripted show watchable, and the aliens are usually pretty cool (I say usually; we were not well served by seeing the Sontarans, once sinister and as scary as potatoes in spacesuits can be, dancing a retarded imitation of a Haka).

Not that the new Dr Who is all badly scripted. But there is a godawful tendency for the writers to make the characters voice everything in their minds and hearts. One of the facts about film and television is that everything doesn’t have to be said, and in the case of strong feelings, a little script tends to go a long way. Moreover, with a long-running show like Dr Who, I think the writers must keep in mind the fact that hearts disclosed can’t be undisclosed. You can’t drop the same bomb twice. Viewers do remember what took place in previous episodes. New companions don’t have to be told, on camera, what we already know. We know the Doctor fought in the Time War. We know all the other Time Lords died. We know he carries terrible emotional scars from the experience. We also know that since the beginning of the series he has not been in the habit of talking about his personal problems. This is part of what makes him mysterious and cool. In the old series there was ongoing, never-released tension in our not knowing much about his past other than that there was some trouble in it. The Time War is an extra Big Bad, but as with most Big Bads in a character’s past that are not a subject of current investigation, the shadowier the details, the better. In this respect the Doctor is like the Man With No Name (yeah, I had to mention him…). You know the guy’s been through hard times. There’s dignity, and some pathos, in his preference for not talking about those times. The Doctor’s Daughter gave us an almost-but-not-quite Time Lord girl made from the Doctor’s DNA. With a restrained script, we viewers would have been able to imagine the Doctor’s feelings quite well. Instead, the Doctor is prodded into coming out of his shell for a few moments in which we get a reiteration of how he fought and killed and lost everyone; and to top it all off, the girl gets shot dead, seemingly just to provide a scene full of angst, which turns out to be disposable angst, since she gets better, Monty Python style, after the Doctor and Donna depart.

Part of the problem is, ironically, that in the one hour format there isn’t much time for chit chat, so that emotional explorations are always quickies–there’s no time for us to build up to the moment. Discussions of a personal nature get squeezed into gaps between action, ruining the tension. How worried can the characters be if they’re playing therapist between one firefight and the next? We get the worst of both worlds. And another gripe — what’s with the in-show squeeing? Why is Donna being made to fangirl over the Doctor, especially as she’s given to nagging him quite a bit about his faults? I hope it’s because he’s going to do something that will screw severely with her idea of him…
Christopher Eccleston said he wanted to add an emotional weight to the role, saying that a modern audience “turn on the television to look into people’s souls”.  That was a worthy aim, but one which the writers have thus far not done much to abet — or rather, they’ve added emotional weight, but mainly in the form of wobbly fat, not firm muscle. (I’m not the only one who thinks the new Who is a bit quivery.) This isn’t to say that characters should never disclose their feelings, but to have them do so every episode drags the show down to the level of soap opera. A long-running show requires some thought to the timing of the buildup and release of tension, even when each episode is self-contained. Where the writers do pay attention to this — as they did with the Rose Tyler arc — it works. And they didn’t over-script the emotionally heavy moments, either.

Also successful was, I think, the Doctor’s unexpected and brief reunion with Sarah Jane Smith. And I think it worked because the tension was already pre-built, at least for viewers of the old series (and Elisabeth Sladen played it perfectly, too). But too often the arrows are being made to fly without the bow being properly drawn. I think much could be improved if the series were taken back to a four hour format. The one hour format is conducive to rush and muddle of all kinds.

I will now go sit on the porch and glare lumpishly at the young folk.

Thanks to Laurie for pointing this review out to me. I’m very happy that someone can like the book because of its flaws rather than despite them, because I think to a large extent it’s made of its flaws.

Concerning an important point raised in the review: Gwynn would definitely like to have his hair washed by an admirer; not sure about being tied up by it, since that would hurt, and might damage his hair too (and we couldn’t have that); but given his enthusiasm for dominant women, I imagine he would agree to some sort of more or less comfortable and dignified bondage. Think velvet handcuffs and the vision of creamy–or golden, or ebony–breasts mounting the horizon of a soft leather corset like two young headmistresses coming over a hill. (He said that, not me…)

Oh, and Des Esseintes as a chair at a party? LOL. That gives me an itchy drawing hand.

N.B. — If there’s one thing all the stupid accusations of copying CM have done, it’s to keep me turned off writing another book in the same vein. Which might be a good thing, in the long run. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, and all that. Which reminds me, I think I might have traced Ashamoil back to its beginning: “It’s safe in the city / To love in a doorway…” And of course, “My set is amazing, it even smells like a street…”

Edit: It disappeared twice from one bookshop I know. Maybe there are shy copies that don’t want to be read.

I watched Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst, for the costumes, and was not disappointed on that score. The movie is quite a feast of frock coats, ruffles, printed fabrics and improbable wigs. There are also many yummy images of confectionery, which was a bonus, and obviously some shots of Versailles, though I didn’t think the setting was exploited to its full potential. The movie has been criticised for its shallowness, and my impression throughout most of it was that this criticism was well deserved. We see a lot of Marie Antoinette getting dressed and undressed, buying shoes, gossiping, gambling, going to the opera, and playing at being a shepherdess. The revolution comes at the end but the film finishes with the royal family fleeing Versailles; it dosn’t follow them to the execution block. By that stage I half had the feeling that I was watching an alternate version of history in which they escaped - perhaps to Austria, perhaps to a faerie Cythera where the matter of life is made of love and shoes and cake and playing cards, not bread shortages, national debt and angry mobs. Somewhere before then, perhaps when Marie was showing her friends around her “village” in the grounds of Versailles, or maybe when she awaited a lover in coquettish costume, I got the feeling that I was not watching a shallow engagement with history but a plunge into a young girl’s dream. I certainly recognised the fantasies (let’s not forget that Marie Antoinette was only 14 when she was married to the Dauphin).

The film could be viewed as an allegory about growing up and leaving one’s fantasies behind; even, at a stretch, a story about the female imagination at odds with the demands of the world (much emphasis is given to the pressure on the young queen to produce a male heir, when she would rather be playing with lambs and a harmless, dashing suitor). Maybe it really is just a film about wigs and shoes and cake, but I’d like to think there’s more to it than that, and that the tendency of society at large to dismiss the female imagination as frivolous, while indulging no end the male imagination’s dreams of war and heroics, will cause us to miss what we could actually get out of this film - namely, the possibility of a world that works a very different way to the world we’re familiar with: a world where people work less and fight less, and budgets are spent not on bullets but bonbons and bows - and bread, for that matter. A couple of short scenes are given to the matter of French finances. France must support the American revolution, a minister urges, “to show our strength”. At first glance we think the minister is talking about something important. Then we realise that “to show our strength” may be as inane and decadent a reason for spending money as Marie’s desire for a beautiful, showy life - nothing but the peacock displaying his tail.

The film could also be read as a caution against the consumerist decadence of our own times, of course - but that would be less interesting. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of Sophia Coppola’s other films, so I don’t have a background against which to place this one. And, heck, it may just be a fun piece about clothes and candies and lambs. Which, for my money, is more entertaining frivolity than yet another movie about men killing each other and stuff blowing up.