Bad Omens

Now that all the fuss surrounding Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' has died down, and copycat books aren't as common, I have deigned to view the movie based upon that most famous work of conspiracy fiction, and was singularly unimpressed.

I'm not mad keen on Tom Hanks at the best of times (sorry, Tom, you spent too long playing the same 'nice guy' roles), but his character in this movie was almost entirely devoid of character (and not Hanks' fault, either) and his involvement in this plot seemed rather contrived. I've heard before that Mr Brown relies far too heavily, far too frequently, on deus ex machina and coincidence, but The Da Vinci Code was his most highly praised work, so I kind of expected better.

I don't doubt that the film is substantially dumbed down (thanks, Hollywood!), and Akiva Goldman's screenplay is not a patch on the work he did on A Beautiful Mind (let's just forget about Batman & Robin), so I suspect it's not as dumbed down as such a complex melange of folklore might otherwise have needed to be, had it been particularly convoluted in the first place.

On the upside, at least its final twist (which I saw coming fairly early on) wasn't centred on a character who only appeared in the last half hour of the film, but so much of the plot was revealed in the trailers, it almost seemed pointless to sit through the rest.

Audrey Tatou put in an excellent performance, though mainly speaking English, so she seemed rather wasted in the role (OK, the character she played was French but were the casting people relying on having a French actor to give the role credibility?)... and, ultimately, this was little more than a convoluted, slacker-free version of the story told in Kevin Smith's Dogma.

That might be a spoiler.

Recently, I watched the second and third films in the original Omen series when all three were shown back to back one evening. I believe I saw all of the first many years ago and, not being massively impressed by it (or the remake, which I turned off part way through!) so I figured I'd skip it this time round.

Damien: Omen 2 (for some reason dropping 'The' from the title) centres on his pre-teen years, specifically his time at a Military academy... and, aside from glaring people to death, Damien Thorn doesn't really do a great deal. Much (fatal) misfortune befalls anyone working within the Thorn empire who doesn't follow the 'global domination' angle, and it's made clear to young Damien that, as his nanny says in the first film, it's all for him. Ultimately, though, it's one of those films where you could look at some of the deaths and see horribly complex chains of coincidence rather than any direct, malign influence. Sure, that's just as unbelievable but, if a couple of train engineers leave their vehicle unattended and didn't put the brakes on properly, it's not inconceivable that it'll start rolling again. What is inconceivable is that (a) anyone standing in its path would fail to move out of the way and (b) no-one else in the train yard noticed that there was a runaway train on the same tracks as some unattended rolling stock that was still carrying cargo. To be honest, it didn't really stand on its own as a movie... proving that the concept of a trilogy where the middle part is just filler is not a new one.

The third film, The Final Conflict, does slightly better... but ends up just coming across as a desperate attempt to prove that Evil will never succeed, despite the rather compelling evidence to the contrary presented by the first two films. Sure, Damien gets his way for most of the film, and actually succeeds in bumping off an entire cabal of monks before even one of them can stab him with their suspiciously nail-like daggers. Sure, he has creepy conversations with a statue of Jesus, and there's a 'clever' bit (in the sense that I'm sure the film-makers were terribly pleased with themselves) where it appears that the statue is crying blood (because Thorn cut his hands gripping the crown of thorns). Sure, there's the bit where it appears that he somehow has the world at his feet thanks to the power of a disco ball in a cave... But he ends up getting done in in the most random fashion, by a woman he'd essentially conquered only a few scenes before. It is strongly implied that the Christ child must have been slain (among the hundreds of other babies killed throughout the film) and yet one character explains that, somehow, that one baby is safe and away from danger.

And then to have a vision of Christ to appear in a broken-out window as the resolution of the film just seemed cheap.

I did start to think that, in theory, there could have been a follow-up, because Damien may well have impregnated the woman who eventually kills him... but then I realised that his physical conquest of her was by means of anal sex, so that put an end to my speculation.

Of course, it turns out there was an 'Omen 4', made for Television... It seems to be about Delia, an adopted girl with psychic powers who - lo and behold - turns out to be the biological daughter of Damien Thorn. No mention is made of the biological mother, but one can easily believe that Mr Thorn was happily sowing his satanic oats for years. A few moments with Google reveals that Delia's mother was intended to be the woman who killed Damien but, for unspecified reasons, "this was dropped from the final film."

Weird...

Matters of Identity

I only briefly touched upon the death of one of my grandmothers a few years back but, for a completely random reason, I picked up the order of service from her funeral just moments ago. I'd always been somewhat proud of my 'mixed heritage' (using that term in the loosest possible sense because I'm entirely Anglo-Saxon), with a particular fondness for my globetrotting Welsh grandmother and her inability to pronounce any initial H ('Ospital, 'Otel, etc).

But it turns out there's a very important fact buried in the potted 'istory contained in that booklet.

She wasn't Welsh.

Not technically, anyway. She was born and raised in Wales, yes... but her parents were from Worcester and London (Highgate, fer crying out loud!).

All these years I've been happily telling people I'm a little bit Welsh (and they nodding sagely, saying that probably explains my morose tendencies), and it's all been a lie.

Well, fuck.

Film Noir Is Dead...

...Long Live Film Noir.

The other day, I caught a film on TV called 'Brick', starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the charmingly impish Emilie de Ravin. I may have mentioned in the past that I don't 'do' teen movies, but this is yet another exception to my oft-bended rule.

Had it been a radio play, it would come across as a pulp noir in the best Sam Spade/Mike Hammer tradition... but the film is set, largely, in an American high school. It centres on the investigations of a jilted boyfriend into his former girlfriend Emily's (de Ravin) death, and the circumstances leading up to it. Along the way, we meet a couple of femmes fatale (cleverly presenting them as the stereotypical 'nightclub canary' and 'gangster's moll' while remaining within the high school motif) and a teenage drug baron (Lukas Haas) who somehow manages to conduct his 'business meetings' while his mother potters about, offering his 'friends' cereal and juice.

Gordon-Levitt puts in a perfectly pitched, taciturn performance as Brendan Frye, the hard-boiled detective, obsessed by a case that hits too close to home, ignoring all the warnings that he might not like the story he's unravelling, picking fights with kids far bigger than him... And the whole film is so cleverly done that the fact that he's informing to his teachers, rather than 'the cops', isn't at all jarring to the story.

It sets up several Noirish twists, but doesn't trip on any of them, and the dialogue is peppered with the kind of frequently impenetrable slang one would expect to find in a Bogart movie.

Naturally, for this kind of film, it doesn't have a happy ending, even though (or should that be 'because'?) the protagonist succeeds in his task. In the end, you're kind of left wondering whose self-destructive behaviour was worse, Emily's or Brendan's..?

In other news, I'm getting a bit annoyed with myself over a few of my artistic endeavours. One is basically nearly done and exceedingly frustrating because I know it's not going to be as good as something else, so I'm just not inclined to finish it (and I've tried!). Another is only in its preliminary stages and I already believe it's going to be even worse than the other one. The last is really only at the concept stage, and I'm terrified to even start because, while the concept is utterly awesome, I just don't feel I'll be able to do it justice.

How fucking stupid.