For me, it started with a glaring continuity error.

Let’s back up for a minute here. The most important thing a movie needs to do is keep your disbelief suspended. It’s what lets you watch James Bond movies and think of a car with missles under the engine as integral to the plot (Die Another Day is another matter). Three hours of The Lord of the rings would scarcely work if you couldn’t for that time believe the story.

So it’s an inauspicious start when there’s a simple and glaring continuity error. Not very long into the film, we see Kevin Spacey’s too-clever-by-half MIT lecturer deal out the first round of a Blackjack game. Cards are dealt face up to the the four players, and that’s part of the key to 21‘s premise, that you can beat the system by counting which cards have been dealt and so concluding which cards are left.

The camera then switches to a shot of our nominal protagonist, Ben (Jim Sturgess). He’s making excuses for not joining the team. You know it’s a weak excuse because the premise of the movie, what you’ve seen in the trailer, is that he’s going to go to Vegas-Baby-Vegas. The shot switches back to Spacey, and bam – continuity. There are now 6 cards on the table, face down.

If you’re not looking for it, you might not see it (though after reading this, you certainly will be). I wanted to see the cards out of curiosity at the hands dealt, expecting the first lesson in card counting to come then. But the sudden jolt of continuity threw me back into the fact that I’m in a theatre, and the elementary rules you expect to be followed have just been thrown out. It’s the same as why programmers can’t stand to watch movies about “hackers” – knowing what you know, the pretensions to reality are implausible.

And here, it’s something as simple as cards being upside down. It throws you off the dialogue, and makes you walk back through the plot you’ve seen already, thinking about whether you’ve missed any other goofs.

The second most important thing for a movie is to not be entirely predictable, and on that count, 21 fails utterly, and miserably. Continue reading →

William Gibson’s name first crops up attached to Neuromancer, which is held by many to be the genesis of the cyberpunk genre. Back in 1984, Gibson imagined a VR-Internet, coining the term ‘cyberspace’, extending contempary technologies to create a view of the future that was entirely possible. Neuromancer was set well into the future, imagining a world somewhat like Blade Runner, space stations and all, and one of its key premises of humans interfacing with computers directly, along with AI, served as inspiration for The Matrix.

While Neuromancer’s sequels Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (yep, Matrix again) were set along the same timeline inevitably, Gibson’s next major work moved backwards, coming closer to the present, with the Bridge series. Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties were set in a future just around the corner, a post-modern world where earthquakes had struck Tokyo and San Francisco. There was still an element of Gibson’s defining science-fiction in these, but other than stylistically, they may as well have been written by a completely different author to those of the cyberpunk stories.

Post-2001, post-9/11, it would appear that Gibson left the science fiction genre entirely, his novels now set in a contempary world that is entirely recognisable. Pattern Recognition dealt with the story of a “cool hunter” chasing an unusual film being released peicemeal over the net – apart from one or two details, there was little in Pattern Recognition that was science fiction. Cayce Pollard, protagonist, uses a G4 Cube, catches entirely normal flights, and does yoga in a yoga studio in north London – no Boston-Atlanta conurbation here.

Spook Country takes this one step further. Gibson removes any element of the unknown, and refers to real-world events with an attached timeline, where Neuromancer had nary a reference to a year or date in it. 9/11 figures again, though not as prominently as in Pattern Recognition, and it’s clear Gibson has taken that date as a turning point. The story starts with three seperate threads, each interleaving their way to a finish that feels almost anti-climatic. Continue reading →

I first read Dracula in year 8, for English, and I remember then that I had found it a little tedious, and yet simultaneously slightly terrifying. So what did I think when looking at a wall of ultra-cheap classics than “why not pick up this one again?”

I’ll freely admit I don’t have the head for horror stories, be it in movies or books. Indeed, books are worse because my overactive imagination which sees phantoms in every shadow is required throughout the book, while movies are far more passive and creating the horrors has been outsourced. When it’s from your own head, it’s somehow more attuned to the things which get to you, and much more freely called up…

In any case, I was reading Dracula again, despite reservations. I wanted to make an effort to read more of the classics this year, more on a whim than anything else.

Having read it before, I thought it wouldn’t have the same tension to it – but I realised I’d forgotten all but a vague structure, and my continuing dislike of the diarist style of story telling. There’s a lack of flow that annoys me, and the unrealism of being able to remember all the day’s events and conversations to the word is something I can’t quite put aside. It does however show off the writer’s strong ability to think differently for each character, something rare enough even in good stories.

I probably can leave out the bit here entirely where the plot of Dracula is discussed. Suffice to say, it is the prototypical vampire story, and it broadly sets the pattern for all later monster/horror stories. You’ve probably already seen it in one form or another, and it is predictable in many ways.

However… that’s not to say it’s not a strong story. There’s a reason it’s a classic, and it does stay reasonably enthralling. Being able to identify with some of the locations – having been to London – makes the story a little more real and relatable, and those strange noises in the dark make you jump that little bit more.

Stoker is occasionally inconsistent in the characterisation, particularly of Van Helsing, and parts of the story haven’t aged well; for example, when the men decide that Mina Harker is to play no more part in the pursuit of Dracula despite her having thus far been the key to their understanding, she accepts her role as a woman is not to step in front. Indeed, while this may have reflected the times, there is also something of an independent woman glimpsed in Mina’s character, which fleshes her out far more than Lucy.

All told, it is still a classic worth reading; Stoker only steps as far outside the mundane as is necessary to provide some excitement and narrative tension, which leaves it feeling more approachable than the completely extra-ordinary fantasies and horror stories. I can’t help but to think of Mel Brooks’ version of the story, though.

A visual review for a very visual movie:

Norah Jones debuts, with blueberry pie.

Wong Kar-wai plays with camera angles and positioning.

Rachel Weisz plays distinctly against type, and looks gorgeous, particularly with the soft-lighting treatment she gets all throughout.

The visual technique of looking through the windows is quite strong, and plays out the theme underlying the movie.

You may be beginning to guess that this movie is mostly at night…

Not really helped by placeholders such as this for daytime. (fear not, there’s at least 3 scenes in full daylight).

But even Nat Portman with a languid southern drawl can’t save the movie from its underwhelming plot. Gorgeous cinematography, but beyond the visuals there’s not much to it.