Saturday 13 March 2010

Alice in Wonderland in 3-D!

Bit of background required, methinks.

(1) I love Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Read them many times when I was wee and still enjoyed them on a recent re-reading.
(2) I like Tim Burton's films. I'm pretty well-disposed to the man. Accusing him of making films that are style over substance (which he often gets) misses the point somewhat. I also can forgive him for casting his wife and his best mate in virtually everything that he does...they usually get things right.

So, I wanted this to work...I was really hoping that it would be good. I was, admittedly, worried it would be awful - with, I think, some justification - but I was willing to give it a chance.

Unfortunately, it was pretty terrible. I didn't think anybody acquitted themselves particularly well in it. Michelle reckons that Helana Bonham-Carter was the only one who was any good - I suppose we can give her that - so it's not a total washout. I like Johnny Depp, he's usually good value for money - in this, however, it was just a bit of "I'm mad, me" schtick (yes, yes, I know he was the Mad Hatter, it just wasn't very mad...it was, well, mugging).

Mia Wasikowska, as Alice, was an odd choice. Given that the character was supposed to be an independently minded young woman, her unconventional father's daughter, raging against an oppressive societies strictures, it seemed odd to cast someone that appeared to be such a milquetoast. Awful...just awful.

Wasn't a great fan of it visually, either. Can anybody say "green screen"? One thing that you can usually say about Burton is that he has a fairly distinctive visual style. This, however, was (naturally, I suppose) filmed with some parts which really added nothing apart from an opportunity to show off this new-fangled 3-D thingy. In spite of the attempt to splash a load of psychedelic (but world in decay) colour on the screen, it just felt dull and bland. Oh, and that stupid battle at the end reminded me of a video game (I like video games, but they are not the same thing as movies, utter cack to watch passively).

Didn't enjoy the "some time later" piss, either. I would have much rather that they stuck to the book or had the courage of their convictions and done a "based on" that was a much looser re-imagining. This just felt like a half-way there piece of nonsense.

It's not the worst film ever (that's Crank 2: High Voltage) but it is a towering disappointment. Go see something good instead like A Prophet or A Single Man. Both undoubtedly flawed films, but they at least have much to recommend them!

Never mind, dinner in the Dhabba was as good as ever!

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit




Monday 8 March 2010

This is a song about a superhero named Tony!

I've been listening to a lot of proper music with words lately, instead of bands with names like Starving Weirdos that produce hours of psychedelic lyric-less drone. Not because I've suddenly gone off all that nonsense, you understand, just because I feel like a change now.

My favourite, um, rediscovery has been the Pixies. I forgot how fucking good they actually were. They also got me thinking about a couple of things.

Firstly - and I realise that this is relative - the received wisdom on the quality of Pixies studio albums is:

Surfer Rosa
Doolittle
Bossanova
Trompe le Monde

You know what? While Surfer Rosa is by far my favourite (I like the rawness of the production - pretentious sod though he may be, Steve Albini gets a lot of stuff right, his own bands Big Black and Shellac were also pretty goddamn good) I actually listen to and enjoy Trompe le Monde far more than the other two albums.

Second, it got me thinking about how music is consumed. Mp3 and media players do release one from the tyranny of the album. However, I can't help feeling that when people say that they don't like albums "because there are only 2 or 3 good songs" that this is because (a) they will insist on listening to crap music and (b) there may be an element that they aren't giving the supposed "filler" a chance. Though I like Surfer Rosa and Trompe le Monde more, there are actually very few (if any) songs on those 4 albums that I could describe as bad. Pixies were excellent, but there are plenty of bands that used to make (and plenty that still do) superb albums.

Third, I realise that the 45 minute long player came about purely because 2 sides of a 33 1/3 rpm record would take around 22 minutes of music a side and, latterly, CD albums would stretch to 70 minutes, purely because the space was there (apparently that length because the CEO of Philips had a particular Beethoven recording that was around that size...quite possibly utter cobblers that story, but there you go). That wasn't always a great time of albums of popular music - whilst Spiritualized's best album was a 70 minute beast (helped get me into a lot of other stuff, too) you'd have the likes of Metallica producing bloated turds (granted I never liked Metallica anyway...)

Although the Pixies avoided this, being 12 when Trompe le Monde came out, I didn't get into them until the albums were reissued much later. So for quite a while, Surfer Rosa wasn't my favourite of theirs - this was purely because the EP, Come on Pilgrim, was tagged on at the end. Some excellent stuff on there, but it did rather spoil the mood of the album - the production isn't the same as the later album and it does jar a little.

Finally, I hadn't really listened to these albums for a long time, it's amazing how quickly I remembered all the words and how right they all felt. This is what I worry I've lost (there is an obvious element of being older and therefore not necessarily having the pressure to be quite so tribal about music as one does at the age of 16) over the years. The quick and easy availability of music now, coupled with my desire to hear lots of new (both as in "just out" and "new to me") music means that, often, I may like something but only end up listening to it a few times, because there's something new to try out. I wouldn't like to go back the way (for one, I couldn't set up a massive playlist of roots and dub reggae and stick it on random, I know, I know - try it in summer though; great fun!) but there is sometimes a sense that it would be nice not to feel that I must hear everything ever BECAUSE I CAN! (This is my problem and I'll deal with it. Maybe.)

Currently listening: Pixies – Surfer Rosa

Thursday 4 March 2010

I've never said anything like *this* before!

Thought I'd write a little bit of nonsense about SF this evening. It's a sort of defence; that said, I don't expect to change any minds (let's be real...who ever changed their mind about anything because of something they read on the internet?)

The idea behind this post came from reading the SF Site readers poll of the Best books of 2009. Admittedly, I have no idea how wide the readership of SF Site is, and those polled in readers polls are naturally self-selecting; I also have absolutely no idea what the "average" reader of SF Site is like. However, after the savaging of the Hugo Awards last year (another reader chosen SF award) by Adam Roberts (which I'm inclined to agree with) I was struck by the quality of the books that were in the top ten of the SF Site poll.

Something that I often bemoan is the ghetto that SF tends to find itself in. There is the possibility that some of this is self-imposed, but whilst I accept that not everybody necessarily like SF (and nor should they) I do object to the idea that SF is inherently inferior to so-called literary fiction. This can probably be applied to any genre fiction, but it was SF that I grew up reading so that's my focus. Suffice to say however, whilst I may not be a huge fan of, say crime or romantic fiction, I accept that the very best that those genres have to offer may well prove to be enjoyable reads.

To put it another way, it seems to me that when SF is being judged as poor quality it is based upon the very worst aspects of the genre (poor characterisation, bad plotting, over-reliance on an idea, horrible HORRIBLE book jackets) rather than the very best that SF has to offer. If you compare Sixth Book in Turgid Space Opera Series with, I dunno, The Name of the Rose (change according to preference - I like Eco) then, yeah, genre SF is going to look pretty bad. If you compare the best of lit-fic with the best of SF (or, indeed the worst of each) the distinction in quality will seem less.

The other thing to remember about all this is that many SF tropes make their way into mainstream and socially acceptable literature. Off the top of my head, several books that are accepted as part of the literary canon but include at least some SF tropes are: Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World. Atwood is a good example of the problem SF faces, more of her work than just The Handmaid's Tale can be described as SF, but she refuses to acknowledge this, because it would limit the appeal of her work. This, I find unfortunate, because I really like what she does and I find that attitude upsetting.

Sometimes I find myself sympathising with Michael Chabon's idea that he'd like to have a bookshop with only two genres "good" and "crap" (wait a minute...forget the crap). That said, I do like science fiction, as I said, I grew up reading it: genre can, admittedly, be a good filter.

The one thing that I would have to confess to - and I wouldn't ask a non-genre fan to do the same - is that whilst I don't have a lot of tolerance for the truly diabolical, and I love to read quality fiction, is that as a genre fan I am prepared to tolerate some less than great writing. For example, I love Philip K. Dick, but even at his very, very best he wasn't a great writer. I have an appallingly high tolerance for his second-tier stuff...

Anyway, all this rambling nonsense brings me back to the SF Site vote. I hope that this is an indication of what we can expect over the next year in SF awards. The fact that Paul McAuley, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jeff Vandermeer and Adam Roberts all made it in there is good news indeed (they all produced fantastic work in 2009). Iain Banks, I feel is a little below par over the last few novels and Robert Charles Wilson aspires to great stuff, I think, but I'm not totally convinced he makes it there (I'm still reading The Windup Girl, OK so far, and Robert Jordan I don't know. As for Cory Doctorow, I really *want* to like his stuff, but can't quite, sorry! Mieville, the jury is out, but that's a personal taste issue).

Kim Stanley Robertson, Paul McAuley and Adam Roberts especially (Finch was excellent and Vandermeer is a fantastic writer, but I think that it is is a bit too weird (no bad thing) for a major award), whilst they all produce work that is definitely genre, have all written books that I believe would be at ease in the company of any non-genre award. Do their publishers submit these books to the Booker judges? I'd really like to see Yellow Blue Tibia on the short-list. Hell, if historical fiction can win a major literary award, I say it's time for SF to get some mainstream recognition.