Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

The Lost Echo was supposed to be innovative and cutting edge. Maybe I missed the point, but I didn’t find it to be either of these things.

It was a mammoth production – about seven and a half hours, over two nights, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The four acts were all very different from each other, and, with the possible exception of Act II, I disliked all of them for different reasons.

Act I (The Song of Phaeton) concentrated on the stories of Phaeton, Callisto and Actaeon. It was mostly done like a musical – song and dance numbers, with dialogue – and in contemporary Australian dress. With nudity, sex and anatomically improbable fake penises. It was quite fun, though pretty lightweight, and at times a bit tasteless (though maybe I was supposed to see it as confronting, or shocking), but hardly innovative. There were two cases of cross-gender casting. Deborah Mailman was very funny as Satirino, but I really didn’t like Paul Capsis as Diana. I think this is because Satirino was done purely for laughs, but Diana was involved in storylines that could have been quite moving, but that lost their emotional effect with the central character being done as a rather over the top drag queen.

Act II (The Song of Mestra) was the stories of Myrrha, Salmacis, Beryl, Arachne and Procne and Philomela: all done by the actresses speaking directly to the audiences. This was actually very powerful, although to release the tension, in between each story there was a musical interlude, with more sex, nudity and fake appendages. Pamela Rabe was (unsurprisingly) very good as Salmacis, but I think the story that had the most impact was Procne and Philomela: Deborah Mailman, as Philomela, could not speak, so told her story in sign language, with Amber McMahon translating, and the effect was electric. Particularly at the end, when Philomela started screaming.

Act III (The Song of Bacchus) I believe came fairly directly from Euripides, although set in the most disgustingly filthy men’s room you could imagine. More sex, nudity and fake appendages, plus a lot of violence. It wasn’t ineffective, but I think maybe the two main actors – Dan Spielman as Bacchus and Martin Blum as Penthius – didn’t quite have the stage presence to carry the whole thing.

Act IV (The Song of Orpheus) was without doubt the most boring piece of theatre I have ever sat through. In fact, I seriously considered walking out, except that the actors would have seen it, and it didn’t seem fair to them, since it wasn’t their fault. Given that he was working with an Actors’ Company – the relevant word being actors – where the players range from the eminently capable up to the truly powerful, what can have made him think it would be a good idea to have a whole act of singing and symbolic, stylised movement? They were all competent singers (certainly far better than I would ever be) but they were employed as actors, and yet they weren’t really given the opportunity to do so. There was an okay bit in the middle, where the story of Echo and Narcissus was read out, and performed in dumb show; and it finished up with a song and dance number that I quite enjoyed (though I may have been, in the words of Antonia Forest, “confusing artistic appreciation with relief that the end was in sight”); but aside from this I was bored, bored, bored. On the plus side, the fake penises weren’t used in this act. On the other hand, by the end the actors were wearing nothing but their underclothes, and not all of them were really up to the challenge of this level of scrutiny. Though it was interesting to see which of the women were allowed to wear more than just a bra and pants, and to speculate on what the reasons for this might have been.

So, other than the fact that it was long (not necessarily a virtue), I didn’t really see anything special, or new, or exciting in this production. I’m kind of hoping that the next play we see (Fat Pig) will be a nice, straightforward, traditional production, with a linear storyline, non-symbolic characters, and a nice solid (if invisible) fourth wall between the actors and the audience.

I’ve been very slack – it’s three months since I’ve blogged anything. I’ve just done a lengthy write up of Superman Returns, and I’m going to do one of The Lost Echo in the next few days, but in the meantime I’ll do a quick summary of the films/plays I’ve seen recently.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at Hoyts, Broadway.
Quite fun, but nowhere near as fresh as the first one. They seem to have the idea that if something was good in the first film, having much more of it in the second will be even better. It isn’t.

Hoodwinked on Qantas flight QF580 (Perth to Sydney).
An enjoyable take on a fairy tale, and I liked the way it was all told in flashback from different perspectives. Compared to other digital animation films, it wasn’t as good as Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles or Shrek, but much, much better than Ice Age or Madagascar.

Thank You for Smoking at Hoyts, Broadway.
Funny and clever.

Embers (Campion Decent) – Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre.
At the Talk With The Actors I learned that this style of play is called “verbatim drama” – absolutely everything said on stage is what someone said in an interview. The only other example of this I’ve seen (though I’ve heard of others) was The Permanent Way, which I found a lot more compelling, and in which I got a much better sense of the individual people the actors were portraying. Embers was strong, but didn’t really match up. My other thought was that it was such a celebration of Australian-ness, I wondered if it would ever get an overseas run, and, if so, whether people would understand it.

Superman Returns was another movie I couldn’t get really excited about. I went more out of a sense of completeness (and wanting to see if I could forgive Brian Singer for bailing on X-Men: The Last Stand) than because I really wanted to see it. But in the end, I enjoyed it much more than I expected.

I liked Brandon Routh’s Superman: he wasn’t quite Christopher Reeve, but he was good. I’m not so sure about his Clark Kent, but then the film wasn’t really about Clark. Actually, I never liked Christopher Reeve’s Clark – not because of the acting (which was phenomenal in the scene in Superman where he transforms from Clark to Superman and then back again in front of the audience) but because the way Clark is written I just find painfully embarrassing to watch.

[Digression. One of the things I liked about the series Lois and Clark was that it was more about Clark than about Superman. I think Dean Cain is a more limited actor than either Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve, but I think a Clark story is more interesting than a Superman story. At one point in Lois and Clark he says “Superman is what I can do. Clark is who I am.” But in the movies, it is Superman who is the real person and Clark who is an act. (I don’t remember the earlier TV series well enough to know which character it was about, and I’ve never actually read the Superman comics). In some ways having Superman as the real person works symbolically – many superheroes put on a mask to distinguish themselves from their secret identity, but Clark takes off a mask (his glasses) when he’s becoming Superman – but in the end I think Clark has more potential as a central character. End of digression.]

It’s not the popular opinion, but in many ways I thought Kate Bosworth was excellent as Lois. I thought she really got across the idea that she had been badly hurt, and wasn’t going to let it happen again: that she was determined not to feel anything for Superman, and if she did, she wasn’t going to admit it, either to herself or to anyone else. If only Kate Bosworth had been ten years older. Because she’s only about 23 – and looks it – which makes it just absurd that she has a five year old son, born after she has established a reputation as a hard-hitting journalist.

Actually, I liked all the actors. Kevin Spacey made a great Lex Luthor, I loved Parker Posey (and the Pomeranian), and I though James Marsden was really good. I even liked the kid.

Warning: Spoilers follow

The movie had a lot of little references to the earlier movies, some of which I liked (“I hope this hasn’t put you off of flying. Statistically speaking, it’s still the safest way to travel”), some of which I hated (Lois fainting) and all of which I would have been oblivious to had I not seen the original on DVD a week earlier.

All the publicity, and much of the content, made it clear that this movie is a direct sequel to Superman and Superman II. As a result, I was actually a bit puzzled about the scene with young Clark running/leaping/flying across the cornfields, and then (in a manner reminiscent of Spider-Man) realising that he doesn’t need his glasses any more. Presumably the implication is meant to be that this was the first time he had used his super-powers – or even realised he had them – and until this moment, he actually did need to wear glasses. But this doesn’t fit with the absolutely iconic image from the first film of Supertoddler picking up the Kents’ truck. Because I was so slow on the uptake with this, it also meant that I didn’t understand – mega spoiler: stop reading here if you haven’t seen the film – why Jason wasn’t displaying super-powers. I even speculated (completely and utterly wrongly) that maybe his asthma medication was somehow spiked with Kryptonite. But this would mean that it was probably Lois doing it, presumably to protect him or something, and this really messed with my head. It wasn’t until much later that I worked out he really was asthmatic – right up until the time he used his powers to shove the piano.

Another random thought I had while watching the movie was around the scene where Lois drops a pile of papers and Clark’s glasses fall of as he helps pick them up. Apparently this was a reference to Superman II, which I didn’t get as I hadn’t re-watched it in preparation. But the thing I really noticed was that as well as the papers, she dropped her phone, and it was still lying on the ground as Clark put his glasses back on. Given that most phones now have cameras – and this was actually part of the plot – I was absolutely certain that it had been bumped at just the crucial point, and snapped a photo of Clark-without-glasses, which she would come across later in the film. But she didn’t. So maybe I was reading something that wasn’t there. Or maybe they’re saving it for the sequel.

But I think the thing that really made the film for me was the relationship between Superman, Lois and Richard. So often in this kind of romantic triangle, the other man is either a bit of a nonentity (Spider-Man 2) or (more often) actively repellent. But in this case, Richard was not only a nice person, he was also genuinely heroic. And in absolutely every way that matters, except biologically, he was Jason’s father – a fact that I think was very deliberately emphasised when Jason drew the picture of all four of them. So rather than be a standard, clichéd triangle, it was much more akin to the Casablanca situation, which made it a much more emotionally powerful story than I had been expecting.

The only thing that worries me is what they are going to do if there is a sequel. Because it would be like having a sequel to Casablanca. Lois ultimately ending up with Superman would just completely undercut this film. But there’s also the point that (unlike in Casablanca) sooner or later Richard is going to realise that Jason has superpowers, and know that he must be Superman’s son. The abolutely only way I can think of to get a satisfactory ending – one which wouldn’t devalue the first film – would be to kill Richard off. And even this would need to be handled very carefully, so that it didn’t just seem too convenient for everyone. Maybe there’s some other solution that I haven’t thought of. But if there is a sequel, I just hope that it doesn’t retrospectively spoil this one.

I couldn’t work up any real enthusiasm about going to see Cars, but in the end I enjoyed it far more than I had expected.

My lack of interest was less to do with the fact that it was about cars, and more because it seemed like a standard version of the conceited-loudmouth-meets-innocent-countryfolk-and-becomes-a-nicer-person plot. I’m not actually a big fan of this plot. (When I said this to Michael, his response was “What about Pride and Prejudice?”, but I don’t think that’s quite the same – Darcy is not changed by the innocent Meryton villagers (who aren’t particularly innocent anyway), but rather by Elizabeth’s intelligence and wit and willingness to say what she thinks of him. So it’s not really the same.)

But Cars does have exactly the redeemed-by-innocents plot, so I was all set to dislike it. And for the most part, there wasn’t really a lot to it. But the thing that made the difference – at least for me – was that there were a few brief moments in the early part of the film, where you saw that maybe there was a nice person underneath Lightning’s unpleasant exterior. I thought the opening (black screen, with him focusing for the race) was quite strong, and also the brief second when he realised that he didn’t actually have any friends. But the one that I really liked was the bit when you saw him back at the dirt track, trying over and over and over again to take the corner properly. To me, it showed that he wasn’t just about the glory of winning – he really did have a passion for doing it as well as he possibly could (even though at this stage he didn’t respond well to constructive criticism).

A lot of the quirky characters didn’t really do it for me – for the most part, I found them only mildly amusing, and rather one-note. Though I did enjoy Luigi and Guido (even though I have to admit they were also rather one-note), and I thought Doc Hudson was really good. I was a bit disappointed with Sally: I thought maybe she could have had a bit more bite, particularly in the earlier parts of the film.

Naturally, the animation was just superb. Pixar gets better and better with every film. And in spite of the fact that much of it was predictable, I did find the final race sequence very exciting and dramatic, and quite moving at times.

I’m a little conflicted about the ending of the film. Yes, it was nice, and sweet, and wonderful, and really the only possible ending. And yet … in the real world, what are the chances that a small town, been bypassed by the Interstate, would actually get a new lease of life? Pretty remote, I’d have thought. So while I could be happy for the characters in the film, it had the added (unintentional, I’m sure) effect of making me sad for the fact that it would not actually happen in real life.

While I quite enjoyed X-Men: The Last Stand, it wasn’t up to the standard of the previous two X-Men films. It was definitely action at the expense of character. This doesn’t put it in the same league as Mission: Impossible III, which I really didn’t enjoy that much – I thought the action sequences in X-Men: The Last Stand were better, and while the character development was underdone, it wasn’t the same one-man-show as M:i:III.

X-Men: The Last Stand really did have the potential to be a strong, character-driven film. There were some powerful storylines, and some really good moments, but none of them were developed as far as they could – should – have been. Maybe it’s partly that there were too many characters, but I think it’s also that Brett Ratner was more interested in directing a (good) action film, than in dealing with characters’ doubts and uncertainties and life-changing decisions.

Thus, Rogue, Jean and Wolverine all had really interesting stories going on, that were just criminally under-explored. I was a bit puzzled by Storm – I gather Halle Berry demanded a bigger part before agreeing to do the film, and she certainly seemed to have more screen time than in the previous two, but I thought her character was fundamentally uninteresting. Yes, as leader of the team she was technically more important, but from a character point of view I thought the actor had more to work with in the first two films.

The other character who bothered me – in fact, who absolutely infuriated me – was Professor X. He was so self-rightous in his defence of what he had done to Jean. Even when he said it was the lesser of two evils, he didn’t seem to acknowledge that what he did was terrible. I think he needed to demonstrate a bit more empathy towards her, or at least to have given a sense that it was a difficult decision that he agonised over. But he never seemed to show the slightest regret over his actions, or to wonder whether, if he had tried harder, he might have found a better solution. He was behaving much more like Captain Janeway than Captain Picard – and Janeway was one of the reasons I stopped watching Star Trek: Voyager.

Having been warned beforehand, we stayed right to the end of the closing credits, and it was certainly one of the best after-the-credits sequences I’ve ever seen. It was so obviously prefigured in the content of the film, and yet at the same time I completely didn’t expect it.

Overall, though, the film was a disappointment. It could have been much worse, but it could also have been an awful lot better. Our main reaction on leaving the cinema was to think Bryan Singer had better have done a good job with Superman Returns to justify abandoning the X-Men series. (Actually, I am so late on writing up X-Men: The Last Stand that we have already seen Superman Returns, and he did, indeed, do a good job. I’ll try to get to it later this weekend.)

It has been months since I blogged about a book. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading (a complete impossibility) but simply that I haven’t found time to write up Never Let Me Go, A Feast for Crows, The Penelopiad, or any of the other numerous books I have read or re-read in the past few months.

However, I’ve decided to break the drought with Jaclyn Moriarty’s new book, The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie.

It’s amazing how Moriarty never repeats herself. This is the third book in the Ashbury High series, and all of them have similar presentation methods (though she has expanded from the letters/postcards of the first book to a variety of first-person media) but they are totally different from each other.

Feeling Sorry for Celia has a slightly surreal aspect, with all the letters from The Association of Teenagers, the Society of People who are Definitely Going to FailHigh School (And Most Probably Life as Well), the Best Friends Club, and so on. I also find it far and away the funniest of her books, particularly the fridge-note exchanges between Elizabeth and her mother (the idea of an “emergency meeting of the poetry club” will be with me for life!) And yet, it still has its serious – and painful – moments.

For me, Finding Cassie Crazy wasn’t laugh-out-loud – and I found Emily’s malapropisms irritiating rather than amusing – but it still had a lot of larger-than-life comic scenes. However, the emotional traumas Cassie goes through made it distinctly darker than Celia.

Bindy Mackenzie is far and away the darkest of the three. I know some people still find it funny, but I found it more like watching a slow-motion train wreck – horrifically compelling, but absolutely nothing to laugh about. I also know that some people find Bindy a distinctly unlikeable character, and I agree that she’s not really someone I would like to meet in real life. But I didn’t actually dislike her. Mainly, I just felt sorry for her – her view of the world and her place in it was so much at odds with reality that I couldn’t help but sympathise with her, even as I was mentally screaming at her not to do things. And it also became very obvious that her skewed personality was largely the product of her father’s treatment of her.

If Cassie showed someone who was in an emotionally vulnerable state (but who also had great emotional strength), Bindy is a picture of someone going through a complete physical and mental breakdown. It was a totally gripping read. I didn’t actually like the fact that it was ultimately a thriller/murder mystery, as that seemed surprisingly conventional, but it didn’t really detract from the powerful presentation of Bindy’s emotional journey. Of the three books, Celia is still easily my favourite, but Bindy was certainly unputdownable.

One thing that fascinates me about Moriarty’s writing is her interest in the strength and importance of friendship – in particular, female friendship. Celia shows the slow development of a mutually supportive and rewarding friendship between Elizabeth and Christina, as well as the gradual death (or, at least, Elizabeth’s outgrowing of) the childhood friendship with Celia – a friendship that had become unbalanced and almost emotionally parasitic. Cassie, on the other hand, shows a three-way friendship that has lasted since childhood, and shows no sign of being outgrown: Lydia, Emily and Cassie have an exceptional level of support, understanding and commitment to each other. Bindy, however, has no female friends at all, and so nobody she can turn to – or who will pro-actively turn to her – when things start to go wrong. She does have a male friend – Ernst – but a possible flaw in the book is that I never got a real sense of where this friendship came from, and how deep it went. Or maybe I just missed this. In any case, this friendship doesn’t seem to offer the same type of emotional support and commitment as those of the earlier books. And unlike Elizabeth (who goes through a period of confusion about her friends) Bindy doesn’t have a strong connection with her mother – Elizabeth’s mother may not have been “nurturing”, but there was an exeptionally strong and open level of mother-daughter communication. More than any of the other characters, Bindy seems to be compeltely alone in the world. Ultimately, though, she does get the help she needs from the other members – boys as well as girls – in her “Friendship and Development” group.

So I guess if there’s one theme that links all of the Ashbury High books, it is the idea that close and supportive friends are a vital part of surviving adolescence.

I wasn’t expecting Mission: Impossible III to have deep characterisation, or a fascinating plot, so I wasn’t really disappointed in that regard.

However, I was expecting good action sequences, and for me a lot of them didn’t really work. The first one in particular – it was so dark, with so much happening, that I found it too confusing to really enjoy. And a lot of the others didn’t really do it for me either.

I think the other main problem was that it was just too much of a Tom Cruise vehicle. Yes, he can certainly still fill the screen with star presence. But a lot of the other characters felt as if they only had a page of dialogue (if that). And for the most part, it was pretty pedestrian dialogue. Maybe if there had been a few more (or any) clever one-liners, I would have had a better time.

I didn’t think it was an actively terrible film, but I didn’t find it all that good, either. Pretty forgettable, really. In terms of the “I can’t tell my wife what I really do for a living”, I’d take True Lies any day of the week over this one. And in terms of action-film-driven-by-a-MacGuffin, well, when we got home we re-watched Ronin on DVD. As well as guns and car chases, Ronin has Atmosphere and Clever Dialogue and Good Acting and an Equivocal Ending – all things that were notably absent from M:i:III.

She’s the Man, as all the publicity points out, follows the tradition of Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You in translating a classic work into an American high-school setting. In this case, the classic work is Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – my absolute favourite play, so, even though the trailer didn’t inspire me with confidence, I was determined to see this film. And ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised (at least relative to my expectations).

Twelfth Night is clearly the primary source for the plot, but there are a few other films/plays it calls to mind. It seems to owe a certain amount to Bend it Like Beckham: not only that soccer is the sport of choice, but also in the situation of an athletic daughter and a mother who wants her to be more feminine. The scene when they are learning to be debutantes is reminiscent of the opening of Mulan – and the film also shares with Mulan a distressing tendancy to find “humour” in having the heroine grossly overact when she is disguised as a boy (more about this later!) Finally, the scene in which Viola (disguised as Sebastian) is trying to show Duke how to talk to girls by “pretending” to be a girl for him to practise on, could be straight out of As You Like It.

The main thing I didn’t like about this film was the number of times Viola overdid it when she was pretending to be a boy (Viola the character, that is, not Amanda Bynes the actress). Productions of Twelfth Night have been known to show Viola having difficulties with the mannerisms and activites of masculinity, but this can only go so far, as it’s not specifically there in the text. But there are no holds barred in She’s the Man. Particuarly early on, Viola often speaks with an exaggeratedly deep, hearty voice, and stagey manner, and with lines that are so unconvincing it’s impossible that a halfway intelligent character could think they would make her fit in with the men. It’s the humour of embarrasment, which I loathe, and this was a particularly unsubtle and puerile version, and totally cringeworthy. At least in Mulan there were only two scenes involving this, but in She’s the Man it kept recurring throughout the entire film. She wasn’t like that all the time, but it was much, much too often for my taste.

The other thing I found repellent was the character of Eunice. Does anybody really wear that type of external mouth brace? And having made her as unattractive and awkward as possible, they then burdened her with a neurotic personality as well. I found it very tasteless – and from a plot point of view, there was absolutely no reason why Toby should be even vaguely interested in her. The other character I didn’t like was the principal, but he wasn’t actually offensive, just chronically unfunny: someone like Joss Whedon would have written a much better version (eg Principal Flutie in the first season of Buffy).

OK, now for the stuff I did like. I thought it was quite a clever adaptation of the plot. It didn’t match exactly point for point (e.g. Viola specifically disguised herself as Sebastian, rather than just as a random youth – though, contrary to the impression the trailer gives, he doesn’t know she’s doing it) and some of the characters were changed (I got a bit of a shock when Olivia went out with Duke to make “Sebastian” jealous). But in general the central triangle was nicely done. And there were a few fun jokes for people who know the play – e.g. Malcolm having a pet tarantula called Malvolio, and everyone going to “Cesario’s”. Plus the “some are born great” speech was included in full.

Even aside from the cringe-comedy, much of the humour was fairly broad. Some of this I didn’t like (e.g. the scene where Viola is trying not to let Monique see her too closely), but for the most part I was able to connect with my inner teenager and have a good time. So I enjoyed the not-appearing-in-Twelfth Night bit where Viola is trying to be both herself and Sebastian at the fair, the time when Viola and Duke leap onto the beds to escape the tarantula and then freak when they find themselves embracing, the inevitable men’s change room scenes and even the moment when Viola gets a soccer ball in the groin and takes a few seconds to realise what her reaction should be. And as well as the broad comedy, there were some funny one-liners, such as the deadpan delivery of “Is it me or does this soccer game have more nudity than most?”

But I think the main reason I enjoyed it was that the two leads were so charismatic. Some of the reviewers don’t seem to like Amanda Bynes, but for me she filled the screen with personality every time she appeared. She had a lovely smile, and was a nice combination of bounciness and determination and blind panic and (where appropriate) wistfulness. And (except in the cringe-making scenes) she was also very funny. Channing Tatum wasn’t as central, and didn’t have the same range, but he was very decorative, appealing in the scenes when he was showing his “sensitive” side, and good at the end when he thinks “Sebastian” has betrayed him, and then learns the truth about Viola. The scenes they had alone together, and the relationship they presented, were some of the best parts of the film.

The critics are somewhat divided over She’s the Man, but on average more seem to dislike it than like it – and while some absolutely loathe it, even the ones that like it don’t give it a complete rave. On At the Movies, David found it “jaw-droppingly awful” and only gave it half a star, while Margaret (somewhat to her surprise) enjoyed it and gave it three and a half. For me, it was definitely worth more than half a star, though I’m not sure I’d go quite as high as Margaret did: some parts were jaw-droppingly awful, and the stuff that I did like wasn’t enough to completely block this out.

But it’s a pity, because I think it did have the potential to be a really good adaptation – maybe up there with Clueless (though a higher suspension of disbelief would have been required). Much of the plot and character transposition was cleverly done, and most of the actors were very engaging. If only there had been less time spent on cringe-making slapstick comedy, and more on clever dialogue (of which there was some) and the relationships between the characters. After all, the relationships have plenty of comic as well as romantic potential: I’m not just talking about the main triangle, but also Viola and her mother, Monique, etc – the comedy here could range from subtle to extremely broad, without necessarily spending too much time on the humour of embarrassment.

A lot of reviews say that this film is aimed at younger-end teenagers: it’s notable that the parties and drug/alcohol references of Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You are replaced with a fund-raiser fair and a debutante presentation. And I guess the younger demographic is supposed to really get into the slapstick, whereas the changes I want would have shifted the film to a higher-end teenager chick flick/date movie. So maybe it wasn’t what the filmmakers wanted to do – but with the material they had to work with, they could have done it, and it might have been really good.

I find it interesting that She’s the Man was much more about issues of masculinity and femininity than Twelfth Night. Not that I’m saying gender is irrelevant in Twelfth Night, but it seems to me that it is much more driven by individual personality. You have two completely self-absorbed, self-deluded people, who get a complete shake-up when a self-aware, empathic and intelligent outsider enters their lives (I’m reminded of an expression used in Grosse Pointe Blank: “Shakabuku … a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever”). In spite of the gender differentiation, Orsino and Olivia are very similar in personality; and Viola’s gender is only one part of what makes her what she is.

But the driving force behind She’s the Man is less Viola’s individual personality than the fact that because she is a woman she is more in touch with her emotions, and more able to talk about them. This is what attracts Olivia to her, and is also why Duke is able to open up and express his own “sensitive” side in a way that he can’t to his actual male friends. The counterpart of this is that a lot of the embarrasment-comedy (the stuff I objected to above) arises from Viola’s difficulties with finding an acceptable form of masculinity. Much of the “humour” occurs when she shows a feminine response, and then, in an attempt to recover from this, overreacts with what she thinks is masculine response, but which is so exaggerated as to be just as much at odds with Duke and the others: “What does your heart tell you? … I mean, which one would you rather see naked?”

I’m not sure that these ideas about gender actually go anywhere, but I found it an interesting line of thought …

I enjoyed Inside Man.

I thought all the cast were very strong – major and minor players. It’s arguable that Jodie Foster was a bit wasted in a smallish part, but I think you really needed someone with a strong screen presence for the role to work. And Denzel Washington and Clive Owen played off each other well. (Early on it seemed like Clive Owen was going to spend most of the film in a mask, which would have been a bit of a waste, but fortunately he did take it off after a while.) And I liked the fact that all the cops were basically working together well, rather than having a situation where one of them (normally one who doesn’t get on with the main character, and doesn’t agree with his/her methods) comes close to messing the whole thing up for everyone. Initially it seemed like there was going to be this type of conflict between Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe) and Detective Frazier (Washington), but that was actually resolved quite early on.

I liked a lot of the small vignettes, such as the Sikh man who doesn’t want to answer questions until they give him back his turban. I gather this is quite typical of Spike Lee films (I’ve not seen any others), and most of them did come back to the same themes of racism/violence in modern society, but I still thought they gave the film a kind of richness and detail you don’t often get in action movies.

The plot was convoluted, and I liked the way some of it was shown out of sequence (e.g. interspersing the siege with bits from witness interviews). It seemed to be emulating films like The Usual Suspects, although it didn’t achieve the same level of complexity, and the key point was, ultimately, guessable.

Also, it was a bit disappointing that there was once crucial piece of information that was never provided, and at least one massive great plot hole.

Warning: SPOILERS

In the end, I wasn’t actually all that fussed that we were never told how Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) knew about Arthur Case’s past, and the existence of the document in the safe deposit box. It would have been better if we had known, since it was a pretty staggering amount of information he seemed to have at his fingertips, but it didn’t actually spoil things for me. I guess maybe you’re meant to assume that the Jewish person on Russell’s team had some past connection with the events.

The plot hole did rather annoy me. Even if you allow that the police missed all signs of digging in the store room, how come the next bank staff member to go down looking for photocopy paper didn’t think “This room used to be bigger. There used to be an extra section of shelf before the back wall”? If you use a room on a regular basis – particularly if it’s a small one – then you will notice if it changes in size – particularly if you’ve got a week to do so, and you know there have been a bunch of bank robbers inside for hours. I’m not sure how – or if – the filmmakers could have gotten around this problem, but I ended up with a sense that they simply hadn’t bothered. Which was a pity.

Tristan + Isolde had at least as many anachronisms as Troy, and possibly more. My personal favourite was the quote from John Donne, though I was also rather fond of the fancy roll-down map, with removable boundary lines. And in my reading of Rosemary Sutcliff, I seem to have missed the part of the Dark Ages where Ireland conquered England.

But I think the main problem with the film was the two central characters. I’ll admit, I do tend to start out with a basic lack of sympathy for Tristan and Isolde (like Lancelot and Guenevere) – the whole “you can’t help what you feel but you can help what you do about it” principle. Which isn’t to say there aren’t times I find them sympathetic, since the whole duty-versus-desire struggle can be a very powerful driving force. But this film wasn’t one of those times. Having made the decision to give up Isolde, Tristan then started behaving like a jealous and sulky teenager. And then once he was over that, the presentation of Isolde shifted into the whole “tempting the hero from the paths of honour and righteousness” mould, which I find particularly annoying (and more than a little offensive). Given the way the part was written, I think Sophia Myles did a reasonably good job of it; but possibly an actor other than James Franco could have made Tristan seem a bit more of an adult.

Spoiler follows: I was pleased to see they had the guts to kill Tristan off at the end (unlike Paris in Troy – maybe this says something about James Franco’s value versus Orlando Bloom’s) but I thought it was a cop out to have Isolde just disappear. With the whole duty thing, plus the fact that she did actually like and respect Marke, I’d have been happier if she had stayed with him and they had achieved what he wanted, even though she could never truly love him. Or something like that.