Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #211 Page 16
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A fan-cherished classic of a different kind comes to the screen in Bridge to Terabithia, from Katherine Paterson's 1977 novel of primary-school friendship and fantasy with a sting of reality in the tail. The novel is much less famous here than in the rest of the English-speaking world, so that it's possible to watch the film in ignorance of the defiantly unHollywood you-can't-do-that plot turn where readers are shockingly confronted with what the story is really about. But because the novel is pretty much a sacred text in classrooms across America, there's been mercifully little messing with the storyline—helped, no doubt, by the involvement as screenwriter of Paterson's own son Dan, for whom the novel was originally written. Animation legend Gabor Csupo directs a strong live-action team very well, and if neither of the experienced and capable young leads is ideally cast, AnnaSophia Robb makes a perfectly adequate fist of the part Dakota Fanning turned down, while Josh Hutcherson is particularly good at the hero's accumulated frustrations with family and peers.
And yet, with the best of intentions, the film has made the book into something disquietingly different. The decision to update the action from the seventies to the noughties must have seemed a relatively innocuous one: the story is meant to be a here-and-now story about its readers’ own lives, not a period piece. But while the issues of bullying, poverty, class, familial tensions, and the intensity and fragility of ten-year-old friendships are reasonably universal, in other respects the imaginative experience of childhood has changed dramatically in the generation since Terabithia was built. A token early reference to the internet and a schoolroom ban on electronic devices can't mask the essential fact that, even in rural Maryland (played here by the Auckland suburbs), children's imaginations have been relentlessly targeted and colonised by media franchises, and that if two ten-year-olds today were to devise a fantasy kingdom it would be a lot less literary than the trolls of Terabithia.
More seriously still, the film finds itself sucked into the need that Hollywood itself has created for spectacle in place of suggestion. In the book, the kids’ Narnia-derived private mythology was only glimpsed on the periphery, and firmly subordinated to the strictly realistic story frame. The film, conscious that such a novelistic approach to the fantasy elements holds little appeal for the children of Spidey and Sparrow, spares no excuse to expand the improvised play-sketches into full-on CGI action set pieces, which play havoc not only with the rhythm and tone of the story but with its very genre—elaborating a fantasy counter-plot about the “dark master” (they can't, of course, say “lord” or Saul Zaentz will have their gonads on a spit) that never gathers enough coherence to gel. The novel's message was that bad things happen to kids as well, and fantasy and denial are not going to get them through it. But as you might expect from the makers of LWW, the film's climactic money shot of the newly bridged Terabithia carries the rather different reassurance that poor folks can have Narnia DVDs as well; they just have to imagine it. As the script's catchphrase puts it, “You got to look really hard but keep your mind wide open.” Better still, you could simply read a book.
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In Hollywood, golden films have no trouble sowing their seed; but it's not often that even the most successful homegrown Britflicks have the luxury of a sequel at all. A rare and welcome exception, 28 Weeks Later arrives a full five years on from Danny Boyle's original biosplatter apocalypse; even Resident Evil, which came out back-to-back with 28 Days Later, managed two sequels in less time than Weeks took on development alone, and there's an awareness that more of the same isn't quite going to cut it when not only Children of Men but both Dawn and Shaun of the Dead have screened in the intermission. Indeed, the opening sequence does an effective job of recapitulating the first film in terms that leave you feeling quite strongly that you really don't want to sit through another of these. And sure enough, Weeks begins as a different and more contemporary kind of urban horror, in which a thoroughly Baghdadised London is occupied by the US military in a wildly optimistic effort to put the shattered nation to rights, only for the psycho virus to come thumping on the gates again and plunge Robert Carlyle's kids into a warmly familiar zombie-chase from the Isle of Dogs to Wembley via an impressive gallery of landmark London locations in grey magic hour and deserted Sunday best. It's an old-fashioned, home-made kind of sequel, done on the cheap and with energy, with Rose Byrne and her supporting cast of variously unconvincing pseudo-Americans doing duty for the pricier real thing. There are good twists in the fates of characters, and the first film's vision of a post-apocalypse capital is if anything surpassed; certainly no Londoner could ever wish ill to a film that sets a helicopter zombie-chase in Carter's Steam Fair. As a wry metaphor for the relationship between the British and US film industries in the global media battleground, it starts from the obvious premise that there's no way we can actually win; the best we can hope for is to keep running. That much, at least, can be confidently foreseen.
Copyright © 2007 Nick Lowe
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LASER FODDER @ 500 RPM—Tony Lee's New Regular Review of DVD Releases
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Created for TV (and novelised) by Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere (1996) was recently adapted for the comics medium by Mike Carey and Glenn Fabry, but this disc offers, undoubtedly, the purest version. Mysterious Lady Door (Laura Fraser) leads hapless romantic Richard (Gary Bakewell) on a merry dance through weird shadow realm London Below, encountering darkling strangers with inexplicable motives for bizarre rituals, and freshly iconic, urban-legend figures (like the angel named Islington) of a synthesised yet brilliant mythology. It's a wittily devised metro-centric adventure into a perverse labyrinthine wonderland, an unpredictable journey of self-discovery and affecting heroism for one lonely yet ultimately wise human soul on a daring mission to save the orphaned Door's endangered underworld. Belatedly rescuing this instant classic from obscurity, the welcome DVD release boasts nearly three hours of superb British television that deserves your attention.
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Richard Jobson's romantic mystery A Woman in Winter looks quite fabulous, yet its flimsy plotline is frequently patience trying, at best. Brilliant astronomer Michael (Jamie Sives) meets quietly enigmatic French photographer Caroline (Susan Lynch), in Edinburgh, where their obsessive yet clichéd affair eventually collapses, in tandem with a local observatory's research into a new supernova. With the hi-tech glamour of a quantum computer, plenty of dazzling space artwork, glimpses into the rich cultural backdrop of Scotland's capital, an amusingly pseudo-intellectual love story conveyed by a talented digital-filmmaker's clever authorial trickery, this splendidly melancholic drama is actually more interesting than good. Brian Cox's amiable consultant doctor furnishes clues but doesn't explain whatever's going on here ... A time travelling ghost lover, perhaps? Fascinating art house meditation on the true meaning of coincidence and destiny when measured against a multi-verse of possibilities? Or, simply, another overtly pretentious example of the cerebral male's perpetual bewilderment in a fateful encounter with feminine mystique?
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Throwing cerebral intrigues of Cronenberg and cosmic wonders of Lovecraft into the same brainpan, Andrew van den Houten's Headspace benefits from a great central performance from newcomer Christopher Denham as Alex, whose prodigious mental powers have opened a ‘link’ for phantom creatures (brain-eating spawn of Cthulhu?) to enter human reality. Desperate for any help to understand his increasing cognitive gifts, Alex makes quite a nuisance of himself at the New York home of troubled artist and chess grandmaster Harry (Erick Jellenik), but no amount of big-brotherly advice can prevent Alex's frontal-lobe overdrive from a horrifying meltdown, and soon his fragile sanity unleashes homicidal rage upon anyone he touches. With Dee Wallace, William Atherton and Olivia Hussey as the baffled doctors, Larry Fessenden and Sean Young as Alex's p
arents in the disturbing opening scenes, Mark Margolis as a former eastern bloc scientist (guilt-ridden over KGB weapon experiments on Russian ‘links'), and Udo Kier on good form as a disbelieving priest, this US indie production has an impressive supporting cast. Despite unconvincing monster effects, it's an imaginative drama with plenty of successful frights and interesting development of the appealing characters.
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The complete Charmed (1998-2006) 48-disc boxset is available, packing all eight seasons into a collectible ‘treasure chest'. Aaron Spelling's impressive fusion of Charlie's Angels and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a usually whimsical fantasy show. Created by Constance M. Burge, it concerns the Halliwell sisters Phoebe, Piper, and Paige—who replaces Prue, all using witchcraft to save innocents in San Francisco and elsewhere, and it's wholly underrated if compared to its closest genre-TV rivals. Most famously, the original cast's headliner Shannen Doherty was replaced by junior Rose McGowan, in season four, but without damage to the show's format or changing the dynamics of its ‘power of three’ set-up. Showcasing more teleportation per episode than Star Trek (possibly more than The Tomorrow People), this stubbornly cheerful and quietly feminist comedy-drama is centred on spell-casting adventures in Wiccan rituals, tackling demons, ghosts, and other foes, in a suburban environment. Gently mocking domestic and familial routines, while exploring sibling rivalries, romances, and the maturing lifestyles of glamorous superheroes, Charmed profits from likeable supporting characters, while its flawed heroines are not always perfectly ethical role models worthy of their matriarchal inheritance, magic bible/guide ‘Book of Shadows'.
The pragmatic handling of elements and lore from classical myths, legends (Roman, Greek, Oriental, Egyptian, Arthurian), fairy tales and various pop culture references (Tolkien, Disney, comic-books, etc), ensures that average episodes include sufficient lively wit and fun. Amusing use of common SF tropes (telepathy, alternate timelines, body-swap identity theft) add cross-genre plot variants to its broad fanbase appeal.
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In The Lost Room, writers Laura Harkcom and Christopher Leone retrofit X-Files style conspiracies to a Twilight Zone jukebox of themes, centred on a derelict motel in New Mexico, the source of everyday objects (key, watch, comb, photo) with quirky magic properties. Joe (Peter Krause, Six Feet Under) is a cop whose young daughter vanished in room ten. While Krause is a stereotyped hero, Dennis Christopher (from Vernon Zimmerman's influential Fade to Black, 1980) lends the unfolding mystery greater emotive depth as a doctor recruited by sinister cabal The Order. Femme fatale Jennifer (Julianna Margulies, Mists of Avalon, The Grid) follows a different agenda, representing the rival Legion, but neither group has Joe's interests at heart. Low-key visual effects, and cool usage of each unique prop, supports the wry commentary on corruptive materialism, religious zealotry and factional secret societies (not all misfit collectors believe the ‘Occupant theory'), which strengthens an update of the ‘fabled-artefacts-quest', of the sort last chronicled in J.J. Abrams's variable Alias. Although it fails to engage with the same intensity as recent premier-grade SF series like Odyssey 5 and ReGenesis, this ingenious series of just six episodes is far superior drama to the lacklustre Surface and Revelations, and it provides a boost for the Sci-Fi Channel's reputation as supplier of quality entertainment.
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Maker of the post-millennial Dracula trilogy, Patrick Lussier does another typically slick yet unsophisticated job on White Noise: The Light, a follow-up the 2005 film starring Michael Keaton. Here, Slither and Serenity's Nathan Fillion stars as widower Abe Dale, haunted by grotesque accusatory spectres, while stuck between mourning the violent loss of his wife and son, and newfound social responsibilities as a psychic saviour acting on gifts resulting from his near-death-experience. Muddling together premonitory visions and knotty moral dilemmas, the episodic narrative reveals how honest Abe goes about saving lives (including that of a nurse portrayed by Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff), but these are the damned, time bombs of horror waiting to happen with calendared pre-determinism. Owing more to the effects-laden Final Destination franchise than spooky tragedy The Sixth Sense or uncanny classic Don't Look Now (allusively referenced here), Lussier's sequel abandons the eerie chills of Geoffrey Sax's original, and is concerned only with recycling familiar psi-fi thrills and jumpy CGI shocks, nosily reinforcing the simplistic message that even an intuitive superhero cannot cheat fate. Disposable entertainment, notable only for its winning streak of knowing humour, including a death-by-falling-piano sequence, and the silly finale's spectacular ambulance chase.
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Loading ... 75% routine indie sci-fi, Gamebox 1.0 is written and directed by brothers David and Scott Hillenbrand (makers of King Cobra), who re-mix Tron with Gamerz, while also borrowing from Cronenberg's Videodrome and eXistenZ (both of which are cited in dialogue). It all starts as a video-game tester, lovesick Charlie (Nate Richert), receives a futuristic console and VR helmet, apparently controlled by A.I. which lures him into low-rent cyberspace without providing an obvious exit. As he moves through different generic levels of the game, Charlie is reunited with his dead girlfriend Kate (Danielle Fishel) in the guise of a ‘Princess’ character, and then joins her ‘mission’ to deliver a locked briefcase acquired during the game's initial noir-mystery scenario. From its early dreamscape pursuits to the first-person-shooter scenes (a POV most effectively presented in Doom), cheesy arcade-style graphics maintain consistently pleasing aesthetic values despite the obvious illusory qualities of their design. Bravely establishing depressed geek Charlie as its hero, the Hillenbrands’ adventure offers a poignant reminder that mortality is always scarier than monsters, and there's some wonderful animated wallpaper eye-candy to counterbalance the closure's rather trite lesson that real life is the only game worth playing.
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In the wake of two-disc special editions of The Thing from Another World (1951) and Things to Come (1936), we now have a 50th anniversary DVD of Forbidden Planet (1956). Whereas those predecessors were rooted in postwar UFO myths and Wellsian visionary futurism, respectively, Fred M. Wilcox's classic space opera was inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest and eagerly anticipates Star Trek. So far ahead of its time that its celebrated electronic score (by Bebe and Louis Baron) wasn't considered to be proper music back in the 1950s, this revolutionary MGM production remains the one authentic masterpiece of pulp sci-fi cinema. Revelations about the super-tech legacy of extinct aliens, its scary invisible ‘monsters from the id', the weird magic of painted planet-scape backdrops, and a storytelling mode of enthralling romanticism are just as charming today, especially when viewed as ‘Golden Age’ antidote to this century's soulless miracles of digital imagery. Amazing!
Copyright © 2007 Tony Lee
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SCORES—John Clute's Regular Review of the Latest Books
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Richard Flanagan, who would have been 45 years old when The Unknown Terrorist was first published last year in Australia, is old enough to know what he knows. The great strength (and intermittent exiguity) of this extraordinarily black post 9/11 novel both stem from his determination to tell us exactly what that is. From the very first sentence—"The idea that love is not enough is a particularly painful one"—what he knows is that we have done ourselves in; that we in the World of the West, which includes Australia and New Zealand if you sail in the right direction, are collaborators in the rotting from within of a civilisation whose long disease 9/11 only pulled the log off of.
In a tone of traumatised fever, The Unknown Terrorist sniffs along two or three lines of analysis: the interweaving complicities of media and government and police whenever a “terrorism question” surfaces and we must be seen to be protected by magic thinking from a contagion whose habitat is the body politic; the interweaving complicities of money and power and media and government n
ecessary to keep the Disappointment Management culture of the West turning—the consumptions cycles, the debt spirals, the reality show texture of life in the polis—because if we stop we either die or our eyes are opened. None of this analysis is exactly new in 2007; but Flanagan tenders old wisdoms about the world as though he had just now learned to utter them, in phrases familiar but somehow new-minted. Here is the doomed heroine, sliding deeper:
And then she would have to go shopping again.
She would roam the beautiful shops with their beautiful décor and beautiful shop assistants, their exquisite, thoughtful interiors marred only by their awful customers ... So much beauty in service of so much that she found so ugly, so much that was hideous seeking cover, and in all the shoppers she saw only a different aspect of herself: wounded animals desperate that no one else see and know their fatal hurt.