In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

16. Byzantium (2012), dir. Neil Jordan

This was another Google Play Movies film, which I hadn't consciously heard of before this year, but which came up when I started typing search terms such as 'Dracula' and 'vampires' into their database. It sounded from their description like it was going to be pretty trashy and maybe even a bit porny, but the pickings of vampire films which they had available and which I hadn't already seen were slim indeed, so I downloaded it anyway, and watched it in a wonderful log-cabin in Queensland (LJ / DW) with nothing but darkness and the sounds of the rainforest all around me.

Happily, the on-site description turned out to be almost entirely misleading. It is actually a really great film, and I think one of the most feminist vampire films I have ever seen. The basic crack is that there is a secret society of vampires called The Brethren, all of whom are white, male and aristocratic, and who jealously guard the knowledge of how to become a vampire to keep it for themselves and their chosen associates. Early in the 19th century, a young woman called Clara has her innocence exploited by a human aristocrat to seduce her and push her into prostitution, and soon ends up broken and riddled wih tuberculosis. But when she over-hears a visitor to the brothel telling her exploiter that he knows the secret of vampirism, she sees her chance at life, steals the secret and takes immortality for herself. Once transformed, she secretly watches over Eleanor, her daughter whom she had borne early on and been forced to give up to an orphanage, and when Eleanor in turn is raped and infected with syphilis by the same exploiter, she uses the secret once again to transform her too into a vampire and save her.

Most of this we learn gradually via flash-backs from the present day. Eleanor and Clara are still living together and have been on the run ever since from the Brethren, who are of course furious that two low-born women have stolen their secret power. Clara, still fiercely protective of her daughter, ekes out a living as a sex-worker because that's all she knows, and torches the places they have occupied each time they move on to help hide their tracks. Meanwhile, Eleanor tries to come to a moral accommodation with her vampirism - for example by killing only those who are near to and actively longing for death anyway - and periodically risks their safety by trying to befriend humans and telling them about her and Clara's past.

Things resolve in a somewhat more traditional fashion at the end of the film, when Eleanor and Clara are saved from the Brethren by an old admirer of Clara's (rather than saving themselves), and both women are rewarded by getting paired off into happily-ever-after romances. But still! A film which is basically about disadvantaged women stealing noble men's privilege, forging their own paths with it and triumphing in the end? I am totally here for that.


17. Let the Right One In (2008), dir. Tomas Alfredson

This one I watched in Melbourne on my friend mr_tom's clever magical telly-box full of downloaded movies. It is widely highly-regarded amongst vampire film fans, and I absolutely agree. I thought it was beautifully shot and scripted, and loved how it gave vampirism a sense of reality by showing it as utterly brutal and animalistic while also thinking hard about how such a creature would operate logistically in the modern world. Apparently the main vampire character, Eli, is supposed to be gender-ambiguous, but I'm afraid I missed this on viewing and only really know about it from reading the Wikipedia page. I just thought the human boy character was surprised to see Eli's pubic hair, rather than any scar, when he saw her without clothes on, and that when Eli said "I'm not a girl" he / she simply meant they weren't human. I wish I had noticed at the time, though, as I feel it adds an extra layer of poignancy to both characters. The ending is ostensibly a happy one, as they appear to have settled into an accepting relationship all of their own, much like the vampire girl and the human boy (Arash) in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014). But I felt that, given the beginning of this film, there was considerably more scope for predicting an unhappy fate for Oskar (the boy) a few years down the line. After all, its opening scenes already showed us Eli's last human devotee, Håkan, failing him / her and dying miserably as a result...


18. Crimson Peak (2015), dir. Guillermo del Toro

Another one from mr_tom's telly-box, which I had meant to see in the cinema but never quite got round to. Pace calliopes_pen, whom I know loves it, I'm afraid I found it hugely disappointing. It's one of those films which sounds good on paper – Tom Hiddleston, a haunted Gothic mansion in Yorkshire, a dysfunctional family with a violent past – but just doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts. It lost a lot of points in particular for the fact that the family house looked exactly like a classic American haunted house, and nothing at all like anything in the UK, let alone Yorkshire specifically. I don't mean that merely as an aesthetic complaint or gripe against the primacy of American culture, either - it's symptomatic of a major problem inherent in the film, which was the sacrificing of potential atmosphere, all the stronger for being rooted in realism, for over-blown symbolic pastiche. The same issue applied to the ghosts, which were far too corporeal, so that they reminded me more of the roaring CGI monsters in the terrible 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill than anything creepy or otherworldly. Similarly, where we could have had a compelling psychological portrayal of Edith (the main character)'s slow realisation of her circumstances, we were just flipped straight into melodrama and quivering terror instead. And it annoyed me that she was supposedly 'a writer', but nothing much was ever made of this and it didn't seem to me to make any difference at all to the way her character experienced the events of the film. In short, a very good example of why I usually avoid modern horror films and stick to those made before about 1980 instead - though, to be fair, Byzantium and Let the Right One In above are both strong counter-examples, so it does clearly pay to explore beyond my comfort-zone sometimes.


19. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) dir. David Yates

Watched on the plane from Sydney to Singapore. It would undoubtedly have looked better on a big screen, allowing all the strange creatures and scenes of 1930s New York to shine in their full glory, but it was still very pretty and pleasant to watch. That said, Eddie Redmayne was a bit more Hugh Grantish than I would have liked, and I had difficulties with the ending. The whole film is all about how Grindlewald’s plan to wipe out muggles (or ‘no-majs’, as they’re called in the States) is a Bad Thing, and how the mainstream magical community’s own strict rules about non-mixed marriages aren’t exactly helping to counter it. So, great, there's a good and very appropriate message there about how full-blown fascism is facilitated by structural racism. But then the no-maj character who has accidentally become embroiled in the magical world, fallen in love with a witch and (crucially) proven himself absolutely trustworthy to the magical community doesn't get to be straightforwardly celebrated for his role in defeating Grindlewald, and his relationship with the witch hailed as the first step towards a new and brighter future. No, he himself cheerfully agrees that it’s probably best for him to voluntarily step into some magical rain which will obliviate his memories of the whole thing, including their relationship. Even worse, just as he is standing in the rain and his memories are fading, the witch he’s fallen in love with steps forward and kisses him, knowing he won’t know she's doing it or remember anything about it. A follow-up scene in which we see her coming into his bakery and both of them smiling at each other with the implication that they will start all over again isn't enough to redeem all this for me, either. Why couldn’t they have just kept the honest, straightforward relationship they already had, rather than having to forge a new one which will be imbalanced from the start because she already knows lots of things about both of them which he doesn’t remember, which has the potential for dishonesty because she can now choose to keep him in the dark about her true magical nature, and is tainted by the fact that she has already kissed him when he didn’t know about it and couldn’t consent? I basically just really hate memory-wiping of all kinds in fantasy stories - it's lazy writing at best and very often (as here) comes as part of a package with characters trampling merrily over any notions of consent. So, down with that, and boo to it being in this movie.


20. Spectre (2015), dir. Sam Mendes

Watched on the plane on my final leg of the journey, from Singapore to London. I probably didn’t follow every detail of the plot, because the sound was ill-balanced, so that I could only follow what the characters were saying if they articulated clearly and crisply – and not all did. Still, it doesn’t really matter for a Bond film, does it? Essentially they are about expensive cars, jet-setting and looking cool, and this one did not disappoint in any of those departments. I liked that the overall plot carried a very liberal message about the dangers of centralisation and cyber-surveillance, and that the main female lead told Bond he couldn’t teach her anything about guns and rescued him at one point. Job done.


OK, that's enough of a batch for the time being to hit 'post', I think. Plenty more still to come, though! ;-)

So, yes - still a week behind on Who blogging, then. But I did really enjoy this episode, and not just in and of itself, but as yet another entry in what has so far been one of the thematically-strongest seasons of Doctor Who I've ever seen. Fear, heroism, companionship and prejudice are all being developed steadily and substantially from episode to episode - as the genre of each story permits, of course - and it is really looking impressive. I don't know what changed or what happened, but it really seems like Steven Moffat has his eye 100% on the ball at last. Perhaps things will suddenly go downhill again this evening, or perhaps the price we'll pay for this is a shoddy next season of Sherlock? But right now, I am liking it.

In this particular episode, there was a lot of very good stuff about fear and bravery and what makes a hero, but most of that has been discussed at length all over the internet, so I won't be adding much if I talk about that now. Let's just say I liked it a lot, and leave it at that. Perhaps more interesting, and less thoroughly raked over, was how much the story really explored ( the relationship between the Doctor and Clara )

Companionship issues aside, Listen was more straightforwardly a classic ghost story, and like all the best ghost stories, it kept the matter of whether or not there is actually an unseen other-worldly entity out there ( as ambiguous as possible )

Other things... I like the way the Doctor and Clara are ( positioned as complementary equals in this story )

I also think there was ( a nice little riff on Harry Potter )

Then, of course, there is ( the scene in the barn )

Finally - and I am sorry to keep going on about this - there really is ( quite a lot of watery business going on in this season ) All of this could still turn out to be nothing remarkable, but in case it isn't, I'm setting out the pattern as I see it so far here. Time will tell.

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'Kay, so.... like three days ago I wrote up a post about the books, films and TV which I had read or seen in 2010, noted that I had yet to review seven of them, and resolved to spend January writing those reviews up "while doing my utmost to avoid accruing any more". Only then I realised that, actually, I was going to have to break that rule for the new Harry Potter film, because if I didn't get on and see it now, then I would miss my chance to catch it in the cinema. I've managed to see all of them on the big screen so far, and I don't want to break that now when we're so near to the end of the franchise!

So yesterday afternoon I skived off work a little early, popped into Next and Marks & Spencers to spend my Christmas vouchers, and then settled down in the cinema with a lovely big bucket of popcorn and the tinkle, swoop and build of the familiar theme music. I think I was probably only just in time, too, as there were all of about twenty people in there with me.

My expectations weren't that high. I found many of the performances in the last film passionless, although I liked some of them - particularly Jim Broadbent and Tom Felton. But while this film still wasn't a patch on Prisoner of Azkaban, I was pleasantly impressed.

Of the performances, Tom Felton remains strong, and I was also quite taken with Helena Bonham-Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. For a lot of the time I managed to forget that she was Helena Bonham-Carter, and to believe entirely in her as the character of Bellatrix - something which I find I can almost never do with H B-C, no matter what type of character she is playing. And of course Alan Rickman was as marvellous as we've come to expect. There wasn't all that much of Snape in this film (there never seems to be enough!), but what there was was fantastic. His materialisation at the Malfoy Manor and masterful sweeping stride straight through the wrought-iron gate certainly made me sit up in my seat. :-)

Most impressive of all for me this time, though, was Emma Watson as Hermione. Given that she actively annoyed me in Order of the Phoenix, this is quite a turnaround. She seems to have really grown into herself in the role, to have dropped the rather over-mannered pauses and dramatic intakes of breath, and generally acquired a sense of quiet confidence and control which really captured my attention throughout the entire film. Hermione does a lot to drive this story, of course, while Ron and Harry flounder around rather like wet blankets - and I felt that Emma Watson carried this really well. Suddenly I wonder whether she won't be the one who can boast of the best post-Harry Potter career in a decade or two's time, rather than either of the boys.

I liked the visual design, too. I was struck from the very beginning by how most of the 'good' characters appeared ground-down and glamour-less, with red-rimmed, dark-shadowed eyes to convey what they have already suffered and what they know lies ahead. And I loved the way that this also extended to giving us a nervous, unshaven Lucius Malfoy - so very different now that he has fallen from the Dark Lord's favour to the arrogant, cock-sure figure of the earlier films. And David Yates' muted colour palettes seemed to work much better here than in the previous film, creating a convincingly sombre mood to suit the dark events of the story, and the autumn and winter timescale of the action.

When reading the book I was rather disappointed by JKR's decision to set most of the action outside Hogwarts, and indeed wanted to hear more about what had been going on there while the trio were busy hiding in tents. But watching the film, I found that I didn't miss Hogwarts at all. The settings of desolate forests, mountain tops and beaches worked much better for the sort of story which was being told here - mainly one of Harry, Ron and Hermione working out their personal issues with each other and learning to manage without the guidance of the adults who have so far protected them all their lives. In fact, this felt like the most genuinely emotive and grown up film in the franchise to date - which obviously isn't to say it is suddenly a cinematic masterpiece which transcends its origins in rather pedestrian children's literature, but does help to make it feel as though the franchise itself has grown and matured a little over the past decade of film production.

The pacing did still feel wrong, though, just as it did in the book. There is just no reasonable explanation for why it is that Harry, Ron and Hermione set out to find the horcruxes - but then end up spending months at a time hanging round in tents, not even discussing where the remaining horcruxes might be, let alone looking for them in any likely places. And when I got home, I was surprised to note that this film had covered approximately 2/3 of the book, leaving much less than half for the final instalment. I can see how that might work - there is still quite a lot of backstory about Dumbledore and Snape which can be lingered over, as well as scenes such as the final battle at Hogwarts, the Kings Cross scene and the epilogue which can all be made into epic set-pieces. But I might have preferred the first half to be just a little shorter, all the same.

Finally, glitzfrau was right to say that the visual highlight of the film was the animation that accompanies Xenophilus Lovegood's telling of the Tale of the Three Brothers. And a thought occurred to me which never did when I read the book - how clever of JKR to insert within her own story something which appears at first to be a simple tale from a children's book, but is then proven to be 'true' by the existence of the elder wand and the invisibility cloak. What a lovely way of enhancing the pretence that her own story, too, may be based on real events! And how even cleverer to then follow up by producing a real-life hand-written collectible edition of that very story-book, which is, as Amazon say, "an artifact pulled straight out of a novel". Surely, then, Harry Potter too must really exist, just out of sight down a mysterious alley-way?

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I watched this last night because I had been at work all day doing horrid marking, and felt I deserved a treat. And for obvious reasons, I'm feeling fairly Potterish at the moment. No, wait, who'm I kidding? Fairly Snapeish.

I'll need to re-watch Order of the Phoenix when it comes out on DVD to be sure, but I'd be surprised if I change my mind - and certainly right now, I remain convinced that this is the best Potter film to date. It helps that it includes the best of many great Snapey moments filmed so far - the scene with Sirius and Lupin in the Shrieking Shack (closely followed, actually, by the 'Potter has porn!' / L'Oreal scene¹ in the dark corridor). But it isn't just his moments. The sheer quantities of rich detail packed into every scene are exactly the sort of thing I love in any film. Like Percy pouring himself cups of tea from a floating two-spouted teapot in the background while Arthur Weasley warns Harry about Sirius in the Leaky Cauldron. Or the mystical writing carved into the walls of the Divination classroom - which you never get to read properly, but adds so much to the feeling that it is a real classroom that has been used for centuries. Or the dozens of carefully-worked-out moving portraits plastering the castle walls. I really ought to pause some of those scenes and scour them in fine detail some time - and the same goes for all that lovely Latinate writing around the edges of the Marauders' map!

Azkaban is easily a finer film (and book) than the previous two, because it's here that the plot moves beyond introductions and orientation and into a darker, more epic register. But it also has a natural advantage over the fourth and fifth films in that it's based on a shorter book. Between that and the tiny details which allow the director to convey so much with every shot, it does a great job of conveying the full extent of the material in the book without feeling rushed or missing out sub-plots - and this despite being the shortest film to date (I know, because I wanted an early night, so more or less chose this one on that basis). The only thing which felt slightly rushed in Azkaban was the sub-plot with Buckbeak, which seemed to go from Draco having his arm broken and muttering things about how his father would be furious, straight to Hagrid bursting into tears because Buckbeak had been sentenced to death. But that was pretty minor, really. By comparison, films 4 and 5 feel actively rushed throughout, and I don't see how the sixth or seventh can avoid the same problem (although there is a lot of room for hacking out tent-sulkery in seven).

That's not to say I won't be rushing out to buy film 5 on DVD the second it is released, of course! But Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban retains a degree of stylishness and panache that I just don't expect to see outdone by these films again.

---

1. For non-Potterites who are puzzled, this is what fandom has made of the scene where Snape discovers Harry wandering around the castle with the Marauders' map in the middle of the night.

Right - better get this written up before everything is eclipsed this evening by The Book. Seen at the Light with gillywoo at midnight on Saturday 14th July.

( Spoilery if you've not read the book )

Well, I have read The Half-Blood Prince now. I didn't actually think I'd be able to by the end of Saturday, being a verrrryy sllooooooww reader (basically I read at speaking pace). But I read for four hours when I first got home, and then all day once I woke up again at 1pm, so I've managed it.

Waiting in the queue for it was definitely worth doing. The time seemed to pass so quickly: even though I know we were there for over an hour, it felt more like about 15 minutes. We all gave way to our inner children, and spent a lot of time bashing each other over the head with the snot-green balloons which the WHSmith staff came out and gave us. We also got sweets, pencils and Panini stickers - my best trophy was a Ravenclaw house badge sticker, which davesangel very kindly gave me. 30 seconds before midnight, the WHSmith staff led us on a shouted count-down, and finally we all rushed forth to the tills, waving our pre-order receipts and our money.

Me being me, I turned straight to the back of the book at the earliest possible opportunity, and did a lot of gaping, boggling and "bloody hell"ing as I rapidly established the identity of the character who would die, the character who would kill them and the Half-Blood Prince. The first two certainly shouldn't have been a surprise, as I'd seen both stated in what actually turned out to have been remarkably accurate online spoilers earlier that day. But the power of having it all confirmed at last by JKR herself was nonetheless quite sensational. (Although I did spend a minute or two going through a phase of thinking "But this is so shocking and such a big thing for the characters concerned, have I actually been sold a fake copy made up by internet trolls, just to see if we all fall for it?")

Now I've read it properly, I of course have lots and lots of thoughts, questions and responses about it... However, I'm also horribly aware that I only have four days left until my Reading interview, and will be spending half of one of them travelling to England. So I am sitting in my office right now, about to do some more work on my presentation, and while I may be able to post full responses before I go to Reading, the odds are it'll actually have to wait until next weekend. Pity, because there's so much to say, but we have a good couple of years to chew it over until the next book comes out after all, whereas I don't have two years to get my presentation sorted!

The first teaser trailer has debuted on Apple.com, and you can see it here, in QuickTime format. It's very teensy-tiny, but it does look exciting, with a similar dark feeling to the previous film (both in its colour palette and its content).

Sadly no Snape - in fact I don't think I have even seen any stills of Snape from the new film yet. But then he's by no means the only character we haven't seen in a GoF context yet - other important ones including McGonagall, Hagrid, Barty Crouch Jr. and Mad-Eye Moody, to the best of my knowledge. So hopefully it doesn't mean he doesn't have much of a role, because he is pretty important to the plot.

On Monday night, I finished reading Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. I had a couple of questions in mind when I started reading this book. One, about how Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, was quickly and easily answered. The other was already bigger when I first asked it. It hasn't been completely resolved by reading the book, but I now have further thoughts on the issue, so here I shall record them.

The question was whether or not a narrowing of Alan Rickman's eyes during the 'Shrieking Shack scene' in the film was consciously supposed to represent Snape using legilimency to discover Sirius Black's innocence, but still persisting in trying to get him Kissed by the Dementors anyway. Or, as innerbrat put it so nicely, I wanted to know whether Snape was 'the man who knows Sirius is innocent and wants him Kissed anyway.'

The short answer is that I could not find anything in the equivalent scene in the book which indicated that Snape was using legilimency at this point. The long answer, is, well, a lot longer. In essence, I now think that for Snape not to use legilimency at this point in the story is almost as bad as using it and then ignoring the information it yields.

For more details, follow these cuts:

( The nature and extent of Snape's legilimency )

( Lupin the legilimens )

( Snape's agenda: self-delusion, or something worse? )

( Last but not least, the Dumbledore factor )

My conclusion to all this? Well, canon Snape is not very nice, is he? I'm increasingly finding that I want to distinguish pretty sharply between Rickman-Snape and book-Snape. And while the first is troubled but sexy, the second is really very difficult to like.

Now, I am going to bed to start Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I have now rewatched all three of the Harry Potter films. I can highly recommend the DVDs, especially for the numerous cut scenes included on each. Although you do generally have to leap through rather tedious hoops in order to get to see them, especially on the DVD of the first film where they are the reward you get for solving various puzzles. Great for hyperactive kiddies: merely irritating for adult film aficionados.

I have also begun reading The Prisoner of Azkaban, which is the first book in the series that I have not yet read. This, of course, means that I am reading it having already seen the film, so I have a couple of questions in mind which arose from seeing the film, and which I am hoping the book will either answer or, at least, illuminate.

Cuts follow for spoilers and rather excessive length:

( Question one: Sirius Black and Azkaban )

( Question two: Alan Rickman, J.K. Rowling and Snape's legilimency )

Ooh, so it did snow in the end, even in Birmingham! I thought for a while there that the whole of the rest of the country was going to get it, but not us.

I have just been watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, taped from earlier in the evening, sitting as I did so in the middle of the lounge floor wrapped up in a huge double quilt, with glowing embers in the hearth and various chocs and other goodies spread out around me. I often seem to end up watching films late at night in this fashion over Christmas, and there is, in my opinion, no better way to do so.

Presents were multiple and all delightful. I'm glad to read that stompyboots got a stocking, because that means it's OK to admit that my sister and I still get them too. Much of the stuff contained therein tends to be useful / practical these days: e.g. washing-up gloves, a micro-umbrella or spare electric toothbrush heads. But Santa also brought me various types of chocolate, two sets of postcards of Roman things in the British Museum, an 'Earth from the Air' calendar and some body-spray.

Tree presents (i.e. presents from family members, placed under the tree on Christmas Eve) included some very posh make-up from my sister: a deep purple Sephora lipstick, and a mauve, shimmery Chanel eyeshadow. I don't think I've ever owned anything Chanelesque before, so that was very exciting, and both were worn for Xmas dinner in the evening. From my auntie Pat I got some dangly earrings, and from my uncle Duncan a £10 book token. And Mum and Dad got me a guinea-pig calendar (I was a very enthusiastic guinea-pig owner as a child, and would love to live somewhere where I could have them again now), and DVDs of A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and Moulin Rouge (1952), both featuring... what, you guessed? Also a special mug to make proper filter coffee in at work, a Boots gift card (the modern equivalent of a gift-token, it seems), a CD of my equal-favourite (with David Cordier) countertenor, Robin Blaze singing music by William Byrd, including one track called 'Constant Penelope' (in fact, it turns out to be a translation of a poem by Ovid), and four books: 'Brighton Rock' and 'The End of the Affair' by Graham Greene, 'The White Goddess' by Robert Graves' and 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Diana Wynne Jones.

And finally... could this be the best of all? I now own this pony (Star Catcher).

As for the day itself, the morning was spent first opening our stockings, and then baking and eating croissants from ready-made dough which you can buy in funny carboard tubes. They tasted very nice, actually: easily as good as buying them fresh from a boulangerie, and possibly even better.

Then I boiled down stock from the giblets which came with the duck we'd be having in the evening, while simultaneously doing general pottering, showering and fire-lighting. Lunch was a selection of cold bits and pieces: much of it still left over from our party on the 23rd! Then, after lunch, we were finally allowed to open our tree presents: something of which much ceremony is made in our family, with each person getting given a pile of their own presents, and then sitting in a circle and opening them turn by turn. People who want to really spin it out and make the others fume may open only a card on their turn... or, if they're my Dad, they leap straight in to the biggest present on their first go.

Finally, we cooked our duck, and had our proper Christmas meal in the evening. Everyone agreed it came out really well, with an excellent bitter orange sauce (which is what the stock was needed for), as directed by Delia. We finished with Christmas pudding, properly set alight with brandy and all (this bit is always my job - yay!), and then sat round with brandy and port as the last tinkles rang out on our angel chimes.

Now it is nearly 2 in the morning, so I rather think I ought to put my head down. Even though it's not Christmas here any more, I never quite like to go to bed on Christmas evening... After all, when I wake up, it will only be boring old Boxing Day, and another 364 days to go until the magic comes round again.

Oh: or a mere 356 until the next Saturnalia, of course!

Nighty-night, peeps.