In-spy-ered

Hello Everyone :-)

I was having a bit of a rubbish day last Saturday so to cheer myself up I went to the pictures. I’ve been so excited about seeing this for so long; purely because of the stellar cast so my expectations were high as I settled down to watch ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ (‘TTSS’ from now on).

Just so you know, I’ve not read the book so everything from here on in is purely based on what I saw on Saturday, a point I will broach later…

Following a failed mission in Hungary leaving a Secret service operative supposedly dead, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is pulled out of retirement to find a mole operating at the top level of British Intelligence. George himself is a suspect along side 4 top government agents codenames Tinker, Tailor, Solider and Poorman. It’s down to George and his select team of past and present MI5 employees to discover the identity of the mole.

There’s a lot to say about this film but I’m going to start with Gary Oldman because George Smiley is the films axis. I loved him in this. It’s just such a measured performance that tells the audience everything they need to know without any superfluous characterisation. In the first scene that we see him there’s a shot of the back of his head and he moves his face very slowly to the right, that single movement said it all, no words necessary. It’s quite fortunate that he’s so talented because he doesn’t say a great deal. Oldman makes him so meticulous and unflappable that when he does show some sadness it makes it so much more heartbreaking. I loved George, the consummate professional with an Achilles heel.
Actually, it’s quite difficult to talk about performances without taking forever because all of the cast hold their own in this film, there is no weak link.
 Plaudits must go to Tom Hardy who plays Ricki Tarr, the muscle man for the secret service who goes to Budapest to try and recruit an agent and discovers something far more interesting. Tarr is the most emotive character in the film and I really loved his humanity, it endeared him to me straight away. Hardy is excellent and in my opinion still an underappreciated talent, hopefully this performance will get him the recognition he deserves.
‘Nerdy Rachel May’ favourite Benedict Cumberbatch plays Peter Guillam, Smiley’s right hand man. I know I gush about him non-stop but he is so good in ‘TTSS’.
As is Mark Strong. The go to ‘baddie’ has been cast in a more morally ambiguous role as Jim Prideaux. Again, understatement is the name of the game; Strong says very little (which is a shame because his voice is like melted chocolate) but does so much. 
I just want to name check the cast so bear with me; John Hurt, Stephen Graham, Colin Firth, David Dencik, Toby ‘Dream Lord’ Jones, Kathy Burke, Roger Lloyd-Pack and all the rest of them. I cannot stress to you how quietly wonderful they all are.

Tomas Alfredson seems to be carving himself a career making films that are ostensibly about one thing but turn out to be about something else. Take his tour de force directorial debut ‘Let the Right One In’. On the surface it’s a Vampire film but actually it’s about childhood and being an outsider. It’s the same with ‘TTSS’. On the most basic level it is a spy film but really it’s a film about male distrust. All the male characters play their cards close to their chest and that’s the point. Alfredson has such an eye for detail it’s wonderful to see; everything has a place and a reason. It’s a testament to his ability as a director that he made what is ultimately a very slow, wordy film very tense and there’s a constant sense of ‘will they won’t they?’ that kept me glued to my seat.

I was worried before I entered the screening because I had heard some reviews that said it was a bit cold and at times quite hard to follow. I understand why some people might think that but I didn’t get it myself. The film’s pallet is very cold, lots of greys, blues and dark colours but it sparked my interest rather than alienated me from the film. Also I don’t think it was as hard to follow as people think. Perhaps I had to concentrate a little more than usual but whenever I asked myself the question ‘do I get this?’ the answer was yes. On the way home I thought about it and mapped all the characters and stuff out in my head just to make sure I understood it but that’s not a bad thing, after all, clever is not a dirty word.

So onto the ‘a’ word. Adaptation.
This is a silver screen adaptation of the John le Carré Novel of the same name. As I said before I haven’t read it or seen the 70’s TV series so I went into this with no expectations. I imagine I’m in the minority as many people will go and see this because they loved the book or the series. One such person is the Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens. Hitchens wrote on his blog an entry called ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Travesty’ in which he talks about why he thinks the film is “absolutely unforgivably awful”. Now, the witterings on these pages are not to be taken seriously and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That said quality is not that subjective and I say that Mr. Hitchens is chatting shit.

You might get tied up in knots about the plot, or hate Gary Oldman’s performance but “absolutely unforgivably awful”? That’s a bit much. Is there nothing of value in this at all?!?! Well of course there is, like I said Mr. Hitchens is chatting shit. From an aesthetic perspective it is flawless, every frame is so crystal clear and pin point precise I find it hard to believe anyone could think that it’s “awful”. Also the score is wonderful; sweeping, atmospheric and tense (the scene where Peter is stealing documents from the archive, I had to bring my knees up to my chest and hug them I was that nervous!), Alberto Iglesias has done a brilliant job. So even if you hate the performances or whatever, it’s still an undeniable technical success.

In case you can’t be arsed to read the link above (I can’t blame you, usually I avoid the Mail at all costs) Mr. Hitchens essentially bemoans the differences from book to film.  Some of the criticisms he lobbies against the film are things like how Gary Oldman doesn’t fit the physical description of Smiley, how in the book Smiley lives in Chelsea and in the film he lives in Hampstead, how the opening scene has moved from a forest in Czechoslovakia to a café in Budapest, how Jerry Westerby has been changed from an old man to a young man, how Bill Haydon looks too pristine and a other things of that ilk. I put it to you that Mr. Hitchens has missed the point somewhat. All the things he whinges about makes no difference to the story whatsoever.  I can assure you that Smiley’s appearance doesn’t have a bearing on the plot and if we’d have had someone that looked more like how Smiley is supposed to look we’d have missed out on Oldman’s amazing performance, and I know what I’d rather have.

I understand the apprehension. Some books mean a lot to people and there’s always a concern that you’ll go see it and it’ll spoil the story if they’ve messed it up. I’m of the opinion that adaptations should be judged on their own merit and not whether they stay 100% truthful to their source material. It’s always more important to keep the spirit of the original text than it is to preserve the minutiae and from what I gather (I’m heading to the library tomorrow to take out a copy of the book and see for myself) they’ve done that.

Another example of someone catastrophically missing the point is apparently HRH Helen Mirren. I love Helen Mirren, I really do, she’s all kinds of fabulous, but her gripe with ‘TTSS’ is supposedly the lack of women. Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mirren said: "How many women were in that? I mean, come on. There weren't any women in the '70s?”
"The secret service always had a huge number of women working for them, and they played major roles in real life. But they were ignored for this film!" Really? I like to think Helen Mirren is a bit brighter than that so I’m going to assume she’s either been mis-quoted or that someone has just made that up. But regardless, someone, somewhere along the line said it and I’m going to tell them why they’re wrong.
Undeniably there is a lack of XX chromosomes but the point of this film is that it’s about secrets amongst men. Why would there be loads of women in a film about blokes that don’t trust each other?
Also, to answer the question, there are three significant female characters in this film and I think they fight their corner pretty well considering they’re vastly outnumbered. Connie Sachs is an MI5 agent with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Soviet intelligence, is one of the first to realise there is a mole in the Circus and she comes to this decision (unlike some of the male characters who only realise this is the case after Control feeds them the idea) on her own.  Irina is bright enough to realise the information she has is a ticket to a better life and, despite it not coming to fruition, trades on that. Also Anne Smiley, we may not see her face but her presence is most definitely felt. Whenever George speaks about her or when we get a glimpse of a perfume bottle on the bedroom dressing table the audience know that she is George’s weakness, even if she is a bit of a bitch. There’s a choice bit of graffiti on a wall ‘The Future is Female’ and I think that sums up ‘TTSS’s attitude towards women, they are quietly running the show.

I loved ‘TTSS’. For me it succeeded as an adaptation as it was perfectly accessible to those who, like me, had no knowledge of the plot prior to seeing the film.  It was engaging and thought provoking and full of knock out performances. It needs to be savoured so you can soak up every detail (because believe me, every detail matters) but when those grey cells get going you’ll realise it was totally worth it.

Now I think I need some…

Reasons to be cheerful :-)
1. The Muppets are having a ‘Fanathon’ on Facebook! Miss Piggy has filmed a little video about how  people on Facebook waste their ‘Likes’ and how the Muppets are running  competitions to see if they can get a bazillion ‘Likes’. I love it! Who ever is in charge of their marketing campaign is a genius!
Muppet Countdown: 140 days to go!

2.  New Avengers pictures! Whoop whoop! These pictures are so exciting! Thor’s hair is longer (SWOON!), we get a proper look at Hawkeye and Bruce Banner and it’s always nice to see Tony Stark and his designer face fuzz :-)

3. MERLIN IS BACK TOMORROW NIGHT!!!! I know I know, I’ll be playing ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ next, but my nerdyness aside, Merlin is this shiz :-) Colin Morgan is great (and has a super sexy accent) and he did a lovely interview with Digital Spy. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to see Merlin in “fight mode” and apparently Bradley James gets topless in the first ep, teeheehee!

That’s it for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x

End of the Line

Hello Everyone :-)

Last Thursday night the final episode of the current run of Torchwood was broadcast so it’s about time we reviewed the last three episodes of the series, ‘End of the Road’, ‘The Gathering’ and ‘The Blood Line’. Expect a couple of minor spoilers about episodes 8 and 9 but I’m not enough of a cow to reveal anything about the series finale, so if you’ve not seen that one, fear not.

Episode 8 carries on exactly where episode 7 left off, Jack, Gwen, Esther and Rex are with the mysterious woman who was blackmailing Gwen. They arrive at her house where some questions are answered about who started ‘the Miracle’ and what Jack has to do with it. Meanwhile Oswald gets the rug pulled out from under him as Jilly drops a bombshell about his soon to be ending celebrity status. Oswald goes on the run and Jilly gets an interesting new job offer from the Blue Eyed man.

In my opinion this is the dullest of the episodes so far. There’s an awful lot of plot exposition which is good in a way because it answers some questions to which I have desperately wanted answers but they could have done it in a better way, it’s mainly people standing in rooms talking. There’s a load of made up Torchwood jargon as well which hasn’t been handled particularly well. I’m still not sure what a ‘morphic field’ is and its episode 8…

My favourite bits of the episode are actually the Oswald and Jilly scenes. I haven’t properly praised her thus far but Lauren Ambrose has been great as Jilly Kitzinger. She’s suitably jaded and cynical as a result of the nature of her job but she’s also a consummate professional. I like how she’s a sort of an ‘anti-Gwen’, Gwen is all jeans, boots, big heart and a big gun, Jilly is Dresses, Lipstick, press releases and a heart of stone.
There’s another interesting idea raised in these scenes as well, the notion of a category 0. Oswald hears from a prostitute he’s hired that he’s soon to become a category 0 and when he confronts Jilly about this she explains that criminals that have committed crimes and heinous as Oswald will be rounded up and sent to the ‘Modules’, thus prompting Oswald to flee. It’s a nice idea, I know I spoke last time about my annoyance at the ‘45 Club’ idea not going anywhere but I think that and ‘Category 0’ are just little notions that give the viewer an idea of what kind of times these are.

Like I said, I enjoyed the Jilly and Oswald scenes but they were too few in an episode that was overwhelmed by explanations and confusing made up science. My least favourite episode of the series.

Episode 9 picks up two months after the previous episode with Gwen back in Wales, Esther and Jack hiding out in Scotland and Rex back with the CIA. The world’s economy has collapsed, rationing has been brought in, countries are closing their borders and becoming more authoritarian. Gwen has been hiding her category 1 Father in the basement of her house for over two months but with raids being carried out on a regular basis, doubts are cast over how long they can keep him hidden. Jack and Esther travel to Wales and meet up with Gwen but they are joined by an unwanted guest.

This sat a lot better with me than the last episode. There was genuine tension when the raid was going on in Gwen’s house, I enjoyed the mystery on Jilly’s trip to Shanghai, it was nice to have the whole team under Gwen’s roof, Rhys had his moment of genius and of course the big reveal of ‘The Blessing’ (more of which later).

For my money Eve Myles is the star of this episode. I welled up a bit when she was begging the man leading the raid (who reminded me of Major Toht from Raiders of the Lost Arc) to spare her dad. Her performance has been wonderful. She’s had to be a family girl, a soldier, a best friend a wife, a spy and Myles has been pitch perfect every single time. I always say Eve Myles is criminally overlooked when awards season rolls round, give that woman a BAFTA!

As much as the episode was a good one, I did feel like they were leaving a lot till the end. Although there was the big reveal of ‘The Blessing’ there was never an explanation of what it was.  I was left none the wiser and that’s an awful situation to be in with one episode to go. A marked improvement on last week’s rather beige episode but I’m still not happy with the amount of stuff they’ve got left to sort out.

So, the finale. Episode 10, ‘The Blood Line’, kicks off where ‘The Gathering’ left off. Esther and Rex are in Buenos Ares, Gwen and Jack are in Shanghai, both are trying to gain access to ‘The Blessing’ and the families are all trying to stop them.

I have said that this series has lacked action in places but I think they may have been saving it all for this episode. Lots of shootings, lots of stuff blowing up, lots of fights and many many nameless henchmen dispatched. It’s excellent, if you were holding out for some action, consider it done.

There is a twist in the last 30 seconds of this show which means another series of Torchwood is definitely on the cards. I’ve asked my friends and family what they think and the results are mixed to positive. My mum loved it and a couple of my mates quite liked it but had reservations. I liked it; it’s a nice idea, it’ll be interesting to see where they take it. Fans of logic prepare yourself because the final revelation will annoy you. There is a massive gaping plot hole that’s been bugging me for the past few days. I won’t tell you what it is because it explains how the Miracle happened, but needless to say it’s doing my head in.  

Eve Myles is my star of this series.  She has put in an absolutely stellar performance; Gwen is the heart and soul of the show and always has been. She’s fantastically heroic and I’m glad that Torchwood has its younger audience because she’s a fantastic role model for young girls; she’s the ultimate working mum :-) I’m much happier with her relationship with Jack as well. In series 1 and partly series 2 I always felt like there might have been something more to Jack and Gwen’s relationship which never seemed right to me. Partly because I adore Rhys and the idea of Gwen cheating on him makes me cross but also it didn’t benefit the storylines in any way. I’m a lot happier now their love has been officially defined as platonic.

Jack has taken a backseat throughout the whole series (save for episode 7) and I didn’t mind it. I think because ‘Children of Earth’ was so Jack-centric it didn’t bother me. It made sense considering he’s the one mortal person in the world, he’s not been that vulnerable for a very long time, he wouldn’t want to stand out. Irrelevant of how often he’s been on screen John Barrowman has been a wonderful screen presence and episode 7 is, in my opinion, his best work to date.

I’m hesitant to criticise the writers because when it’s been good, it has been very good but it’s like they got it into their head that they had a 12 episode run and then when they were having their episode 10 script meeting someone popped their head round the door and said “you do know that you’ve got two episodes left and a shit load of stuff to explain?” and then everyone went mental and tried to cram everything into the last episode. I can’t help but think it they’d condensed it down, took the time to talk about the important stuff but not dwelt too long on things that don’t have a bearing on the plot, we would have had 5 or 6 episodes of great stuff rather than 10 episodes that vary in quality.

The squashing of the plot aside, I think the writers dealt with the characters really well. The old characters were made older and wiser; the new characters were naive and headstrong and there were some characters that fell into a moral grey area. I thought Esther’s story about her sister was good; I have a bit more difficulty with Rex and his relationships though. I thought the brief mention of Rex’s father went nowhere and was totally unnecessary, likewise the half arsed attempt of making Dr Juarez Rex’s love interest. They were both pointless plot devices to try and garner sympathy for a character that was brash, macho and massively unlikeable.

When I liked the series the best it was talking about humanity. Episodes 4, 5 and 6 were all about what can go wrong when people blindly follow instructions and what can happen when government decides who lives and who dies. That stuff was great.

All in all I’ve enjoyed this series. I’m a firm fan of the one story arc format as opposed to the monster of the week format of series one and two, for one thing it’s preventing the dodgy ‘alien orgasm cloud’ type storylines of series one. I also like the new setting, part in Wales, part in America. Not all supernatural shiz goes down in and around the Millennium Centre (and it pains me to say that because Cardiff is one of my favourite places).

Has this series been a success? Yes, but not a complete success.

Now I need some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1.  Liam Hemsworth has joined the cast of ‘The Expendables 2’. I feel I must explain myself because usually action films of this ilk don’t register on my movie radar (moviedar?). Well I went to the pictures to see ‘The Expendables’ and I quite enjoyed it. I liked the bromance between the two main characters; I thought the story was fine, predictable but fine and the sheer amount of munitions used was hilarious. It was a fun, action filled jolly.  Any who, I’m glad they’ve roped in Mr Hemsworth because what the new film needs is a dose of youth. As much as I like the idea of geriatric kick ass assassins, I fear it could not sustain itself for more than one film, Sly Stallone and Jason Statham have a combined age of 109 and as gorgeous and beef cake-ey as the Stath is, the they needed an injection of youth. To be fair I can think of no one better than Liam ‘Brother of Thor’ Hemsworth to step into that role. He’s set to play the uber masculine Gale Hawthorne in ‘The Hunger Games’ film adaptation out in march 2012 and quite frankly anyone that takes roles away from Taylor Lautner is fine by me :-)

2.  There’s a new Muppets parody trailer out! Yaaaaaay! I’m so excited! In fact I’m going to start a ‘Muppets Countdown’! So as of today there are 149 days left till the release of the new Muppet film :-)

That’s all for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x

"Shut up Katherine Heigl, you stupid liar!"

Hello Everyone :-)

I went to the pictures last night to see a film with three of my friends. I rarely go to the cinema with other people, partly because of personal preference (other people make too much noise/play on their phones/ask me stupid questions about the film), partly because most of my friends aren’t as willing to spend as much money to go to the pictures as I am and partly (I think this is the biggest factor) most of the time I want to go and see stuff that none of my friends are particularly interested in.

However I do have a rule, I’ll go and see anything on my own except comedies (I just think it looks weird if you’re sat on your own laughing to yourself), horror (I don’t go to see them anyway because horror films rob me of weeks of sleep but if I felt the need I’d have to go with someone else for moral support) and chick flicks (because I like going with a group of my girly mates to see girly films). The last one applied yesterday as four of us went out to take advantage of Orange Wednesdays and see ‘Friends with Benefits’.

The premise is simple. Jamie (Mila Kunis) is a head-hunter who poaches Dylan (Justin Timberlake) from his job at an online magazine in L.A to go and work at GQ in New York. The two become friends and enter into a ‘sex only, no emotions’ arrangement and we see how their relationship unfolds as things get a bit more personal.

I’ll start at the beginning; it’s got a great opener. Will Gluck (director) clearly knows the genre, knows what the audience is expecting and gives us an opening scene that’s a nice little curve-ball and brilliantly funny.

The Dylan and Jamie relationship seems more than plausible. Kunis and Timberlake (it needs to be said, his body is lush!) have a great onscreen chemistry and I’ve no doubt that with some other actors in the lead roles the film wouldn’t have kept my attention as long as it did. There are some nice supporting characters; Woody Harrelson is great as Dylan’s gay colleague (a subtle twist on the usual rom com cliché of the female lead character having a GBF). Emma Stone and Andy Samberg are brilliant in their cameos, likewise Jason ‘I love him’ Segel and Rashida Jones are fantastically hammy in the spoof rom com that Jamie and Dylan watch together.

There are lots of references to various rom com conventions all of which made me smile. When Jamie shouts "Shut up Katherine Heigl, you stupid
liar!" and when Dylan talks about the music in films I had to laugh. The spoof rom com is brilliant as well, coming out of what is meant to be Grand Central Station in New York on to a road lined with palm trees that is clearly in L.A. Those little bits are great.

The film does fall down when they decide to throw Jamie and Dylan’s parents into the mix. As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They
may not mean to, but they do” and there are various mummy and daddy issues littered throughout the latter stages of ‘Friends with Benefits’. The Jamie/Mummy issues thing didn’t bother me as much as Dylan’s. It’s not been kept particularly quiet but there’s an Alzheimer's thing in this film and it annoyed me. I’m particularly critical, but this Alzheimer's thing comes like a bolt from the blue and is a total shift in gear that I never quite got my head around. I think if it was just a ‘my mummy left and now I have commitment issues’ type of thing, it’d be a lot simpler and the end would have panned out the same, for me it just didn’t add anything to the story.

Also there’s a random mention of Dylan having had a stutter as a child which culminates in him sitting on the Hollywood sign and his stutter returning when he gets scared of jumping down. What was that all about?!?! It was just the weirdest, most unnecessary cul de sac of a plot point to throw in, it didn’t go anywhere!

I like a rom-com, ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, ‘Never Been Kissed’, ‘She’s All That’ amongst others, all have places on my DVD shelves and I did enjoy ‘Friends with Benefits’, ultimately though, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

What starts as a good idea soon gets tangled up in ‘my mum left me’/’I never knew my dad’/’my dad has Alzheimer's’ plotlines and other bits and bobs that seem fairly superfluous. Not to mention the massive rip off from ‘How to lose a guy in 10 Days’ towards the end (girl goes with boy to his parents house and falls in love with him, girl over hears a bit of a conversation she doesn’t like, falls out with boy). It’s a shame really because Will Gluck has demonstrated that he can make interesting and clever rom coms in ‘Easy A’ one of my absolute favourite films. It seems like he had half a good idea but didn’t have the courage to see it though so plumped for a clichéd ending. That said Kunis and Timberlake are great and they are the reason the good bits are so good. Alas, like so many relationships, it was fun while it lasted.

Now I think we need some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. Merlin is back! Oh how I’ve missed Merlin! I’m so pleased it’s managed to sustain 4 series. I mean I’ve loved it from the start but having seen the demise of the BBC series ‘Robin Hood’, which was in a similar vein, I was nervous about its longevity in the Saturday schedule. It would appear I’ve been worrying for no good reason because it’s back and judging by these pictures it’s looking pretty good :-) Above all I’m just massively excited about having Bradley James back on my telly on a weekly basis!

2. ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ is out tomorrow! I’m so excited! Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Hurt, Mark Strong and Gary Oldman in THE SAME FILM! It’s doesn’t get much better than that! I’m so excited I’m feeling the need to do a happy dance every 5 minutes :-)

That’s enough for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x

p.s I can’t bear Ashton Kutcher so I didn’t see ‘No Strings Attached’ to which ‘Friends with Benefits’ is being rather obviously compared. If you’ve seen both of then please leave me a comment about which one you think tackles the subject of ‘fuck buddies’ the best…

Torching the place

Hello Everyone :-)

I’m finally caught up with the telly I missed from the weeks I was away so while it’s all still in my head let’s talk Torchwood!
The episodes that aired while I was away were episodes 5, 6 and 7 which are ‘The Categories of Life’, ‘The Middle Men’ and ‘Immortal Sins’ .
‘The Categories of Life’ is as simple as it sounds. It’s an episode that explains the different categories of life that are decided as a result of the Medical forums set up to discuss the ‘Miracle’. Category 3s are able bodied people with no minor injuries, category 2s are people who have persistent but stable injuries/diseases and category 1s are people who are brain-dead or should be dead.
The group decide to go to one of the new ‘Overflow Camps’ which they found out about from the hard drive they stole from Phicorp. Rex goes undercover in one of the camps because he actually is a category 2, Esther joins him at the L.A Overflow camp working in the office and Gwen goes undercover as a Nurse in the Cardiff Overflow Camp.

I’d been pondering the Overflow Camps since the end of episode 4 and I’ll be honest, I didn’t see the twist coming.  I knew it would be sinister but not that sinister. This episode also marks a denouement for one of the characters, as unbelievable as that seems in a world where people can’t die.

I do like that about Torchwood, they kill people off. It sounds cruel but it just doesn’t happen in other TV shows. ‘Being Human’ and ‘Doctor Who’, two shows I’ve talked about here and I love them both very much, however they’re a bit reluctant to kill any one (Rory from the latter, as much as I don’t want him to die, appears to have the same amount of lives as a cat and being ripped apart by a Werewolf didn’t seem to stop Herrick from returning to series 3 of ‘Being Human’). As much as I mourned the loss of Owen, Tosh and Ianto (particularly Ianto, I cried more than one should at the death of a fictional character) I understand why they do it. Do you really think, doing all these dangerous things and secret missions, that no one would get hurt? No, of course not, that’s not how the world works and in a show that is all about the supernatural it’s nice to have a bit of realism. It’s also true that, as Captain T Davies has said before, having the unpredictable element of death lurking about in the series really does keep audiences on their toes.

I really enjoyed this one.  Some people have taken issue with the switching of location but I’m quite enjoying it, it mixes it up a bit. With all the undercover-ness it’s a tension packed episode which works well alongside the more social aspects of the plot. It puts humanity under a microscope with not particularly nice results. I know it’s sci-fi but think, what would happen if no one died anymore? What would happen to the mounting casualties that should be dead?

Episode 6 (‘The Middle Men’) opens with Stuart Owens, the Chief Operating Officer of Phicorp, sending someone to Shanghai to find out about some construction that’s going on there. The man then calls Owens and rather than tell him what’s happening he jumps off a building to put an end to his own consciousness. Jack tracks down Owens and confronts him about Phicorp’s work and Owens confesses that he knows little more than Jack does and that there’s something bigger pulling the strings.
Meanwhile Gwen in Cardiff and Rex and Esther in L.A try to show the world the dark truth about the Overflow camps.

It’s a weird one this episode. Parts of it are awesome, parts are dull and some bits are quite hard to watch.
I know I’ve whinged about Esther and how she needs to man up but she does come into her own in this episode. She’s still being very sneaky in the offices of the L.A Overflow camp which I quite like and there are also some pretty graphic scenes of violence towards women later on in the episode where she is the unfortunate victim. I feel quite bad because I’ve been a bit hard on her. This episode reminds us that whereas Rex, Gwen and Jack are used to being attacked and shooting people Esther was working in a office before this, it’s a totally new world for her.

This episode is a bit uneven in its ideas. The writer introduces two concepts, ‘the blessing’ and ‘the 45 club’ both are interesting ideas. In the newly established ‘post Miracle’ world if you throw yourself off a building from 45 floors up it is enough to make you lose consciousness permanently so that’s what people start doing hence ‘the 45 club’. ‘The Blessing’ is spoken about but never explained. I figured that ‘the Blessing’ would become part of the bigger story arc but it just seemed so weird to mention ‘the 45 club’ and not take it anywhere because it’s an intriguing idea. This just seemed like a very un-Torchwood thing to do, they’re usually quite tight on their storylines and having something like that just seems a bit superfluous.

Jack seems a bit redundant this week, Rex gets tortured by a crazed Overflow Camp manager, Esther goes through the mill and poor Gwen, after blowing up the Cardiff Overflow camp (it was brilliant!) discovers via the magic contact lenses that her whole family has been kidnapped and is being held ransom. So all in all, bit of a mixed bag.

Episode 7 is ‘Immortal Sins’. This takes place mainly in flashback flitting between present day L.A and 1920’s New York. Gwen has kidnapped Jack and, under order from the captors of her family (conveyed via the magic contact lenses that are proving to be an invaluable plot device), is delivering him to a location of their choice. Jacks flash backs are about his time in New York in the 1920’s and how he came to meet Angelo Colasanto and Italian immigrant who becomes Jack’s lover.

This episode is completely Jack centric. Most it is flash backs of 1920’s New York which is nice, it’s easy to over look the many lives that Jack has had and the possible repercussions of the things he’s done. Daniele Favilli is great; he plays Angelo, a mere mortal that falls for Jack. I question the fact that he seems pivotal in the whole ‘Miracle’ however there has been no mention of him till episode 7 of a 10 episode series, but that doesn’t detract from Favilli’s excellent performance.
However as you might expect in an episode where Jack is in nearly every scene, John Barrowman is the star. In ‘Immortal Sins’ Barrowman carries the episode shoulder high. The little snippets of dialogue in the present day between Jack and Gwen are wonderfully played. There’s this overwhelming love that the characters obviously share but coupled with the fact that they are divided, she has a family to whom she is devoted and he has seen so much but not really let anyone share it with him.

There are some pretty difficult scenes in this. In the middle of the episode Angelo discovers Jack’s immortality and thinks he’s the devil so stabs him to death. This leads to everyone in the neighborhood finding out and Jack being repeatedly murdered and coming back to life while chained up in a cellar. I found it particularly hard because it seemed to go on forever, it was really bloody and was just not nice to watch. Having said that I doubt it was ever meant to be an easy scene and it was massively effective in its attempts to convey that that was the worst thing that anyone has ever done to Jack.  
I’m enjoying Jane Espenson’s scripts and in ‘Immortal Sins’ she’s written one of the best episodes of this series. It’s been apparent for some time that Jack has got something to do with ‘the Miracle’ and this episode goes more towards explaining where he fits into the scheme of things more so than any of the episodes before it. The cliffhanger is a stonker which is great because I don’t think we’ve had a particularly great one for this whole run.
Three episodes. One I liked one I really liked and one I can take or leave. I’m a bit concerned that I haven’t loved any episode so far this series but I’m eternally optimistic for the remainder of the series.

Now, I think it’s time for my…

Reasons to be cheerful!

1. Batman set photos! Yay! After the Avengers-fest that was my last post I feel like I’ve neglected the Caped Crusader. So here are some photos of Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (baring more than a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn).

2. John Malkovich is going to fight zombies. Yes you read that right. John Malkovich has been cast in the film ‘Warm Bodies’ a ‘zombie romance film’ told from the point of view of a Zombie that falls in love with the Human girlfriend of his latest victim. I hadn’t heard about this till now and I’ll be honest it sounds fucking mental. I CAN’T WAIT! I’ve become a bit of a fan of Zombies over the past couple of years. ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Zombieland’, ‘The Walking Dead’ are on heavy DVD rotation at my house and there’s a lot of new Zombie based celluloid offerings hitting the cinemas in the next year or so (World War Z, Zombieland 2, Pride, Prejudice and Zombies) which all look rather interesting. Watch this space for more news of the undead on the big screen.

That’s all for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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Calling time on 'The Hour'

Hello Everyone :-)

I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve posted on here but Cyprus was calling me and I had to go. But now I’m back and I’ve been catching up on the telly I’ve missed over the last two weeks.

Today I’ll be casting an eye over the last three episodes of ‘The Hour’

We find ‘The Hour’ in episode 4 after the self inflicted demise of Thomas Gish. Freddie visits Mr Gish’s widow Jane (played by Jessica Hynes) so he can get some answers about the relationship between Mr Gish, Peter Durell and Ruth Elmes. After visiting Jane Freddie realises that he’s being followed by a sinister black car and confides in Executive Producer Clarence. Meanwhile things are getting more and more heated between Bel and Hector and they eventually take their relationship to the point of no return.

I bloody love Jessica Hynes (nee Stephenson). She’s been in just about everything I think is good, Spaced, Doctor Who (possibly the most heartbreaking Dr Who double bill ever ‘Human Nature’ and ‘The Family of Blood’), Shaun of the Dead and now this. She’s not in it for long but she’s great, Jane is a woman that’s had to deal with having a husband that kills people for a living and has the stiff upper lip to show for it.

As always Mr Lyon held my attention like no one else. I’m going to have to buy the box set when it comes out because I don’t think I can go without my weekly Freddie fix.

The penultimate episode in the series sees word getting out about Bel and Hector’s affair and in the wider world there are riots on the street as the public say they won’t take part if war is wages against Egypt in the Suez crisis.

It’s all gathering speed at this point and I think the writers deal with the shift up in gear rather well. Freddie puts aside his Ruth Elmes investigation so he can do what he does best, go out, get in amongst the riots and report from the heart of the story. Also the relationship between Hector and Freddie gets more and more genial, especially when Hector starts helping Freddie with his investigations.

The series finale turned everything up to 11. Freddie’s digging in the Ruth Elmes case went to new, more dangerous heights and Bel was given an ultimatum by Clarence to end her affair with Hector or face the consequences. Add to that Bel’s decision to run a controversial sketch about the Suez crisis and the whole episode was so anxiety laden my shoulders actually tensed up.

They pack a lot into the last three episodes, the revelations are eked out over the three but it did seem like a bit of a race to the finish. The discovery of what the ‘Brightstone’ is, the nature of Ruth Elmes and Adam Le Ray’s relationship or more to the point the relationship between Angus McCain and Adam Le Ray.  The ultimate twist has been discussed in my house since over the past week, my Dad says he feels let down because it wasn’t done in a massive way and he wanted the finale to pack a punch. My argument is that the whole series has been so slow burning, if you threw in a mad, loud final twist it would be out of place with the rest of the series. I personally thought the ending worked but that’s a matter of taste, I just hope that for those that didn’t enjoy it, the ending didn’t detract from what was otherwise 6 hours of excellent television.

I’ve spoke a lot about Ben Whishaw, possibly to the point of tedium and I still maintain that he is brilliant but he’s not the only brilliant one in the cast. Romola Garai is great as Bel, I’ve really enjoyed her. You can tell that she’s a bit of a feminist because she’s really made Bel someone for girls to look up to, a woman that really can make it on her own in an industry that was at the time, dominated by men. Also the relationship between Bel and Freddie is totally believable, they’re a mix of old married couple and best friends with one having unrequited feelings about the other.

A special mention must go to Julian Rhind-Tutt. I am a big fan of the Channel 4 comedy ‘Green Wing’ in which Mr Rhind-Tutt plays Mac who is gorgeous in every way and has meant that my default reaction to anything he does is just to love him. The reason I say this is because this series has bucked that trend. In Angus McCain, Julian Rhind-Tutt has created a character that is just about the creepiest, slimiest weasel of a character that I’ve ever seen. He made me feel queasy when ever he was on screen which is a massive achievement considering prior to watching this I thought he was just about the loveliest thing going.

Lovely supporting performances from Oona Chaplin as Marnie Madden, Juliet Stevenson and Tim Pigott-Smith as Lord and Lady Elmes, Anna Chancellor as Lix and Anton Lesser as Clarence Fendley who was more present in the last three episodes of the series and was quietly superb.

Over all I’ve been very impressed with the series. As always with the BBC the production values are brilliant, every shot is gorgeous and everything within that shot has a reason to be there. The period detail throughout the series has been spot on, the cars, the clothes, all of it.

I saw the last three episodes in one sitting because I simply couldn’t bring myself to stop watching them and that can only be a good thing. In this time of disposable, transient television like ‘Come Dine with Me’, ‘TOWIE’ and ‘The X Factor’ it is so lovely to have something with such depth. If they were foodstuffs  programmes like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ would be candy floss, sugary, fun but ultimately gives you a headache if you have too much, ‘The Hour’ is like dark chocolate, something to be slowly savoured, piece by piece until you realise 3 hours later you’ve eaten the whole bar.

Whether it will get a second series, I’m not sure. The way it ended seemed to be quite final but you never know. I think this is a case of quality over quantity, I’d rather it end and be the 6 episodes of engaging, exciting drama that it is than have them make another series with a half arsed story just for the sake of it. I have loved this series and will treasure it on DVD.

Now it’s time for

Reasons to be Cheerful

1.  Some people are sick of it already and it’s not even out till May next year but new pictures have turned up online of the cast of the Avengers filming in New York. We get to see not only Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man/Tony Stark, Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans looking totally gorgeous on a lovely retro Motorbike), Thor (the bang tidy Chris Hemsworth), Loki (Tom Hiddleston) but also Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner and his lovely arms), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the new Hulk/Bruce Banner played by Mark Ruffalo, which is super exciting!!! I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I love Superheroes and I think with the current standard of Marvel films being as high as it is and that cast being as great as they are this film looks set to leave me a Superhero induced puddle on the floor.

2. We are out of Summer Blockbuster season and into the season of Oscar bait. Bless them, the Academy Awards panel are a forgetful bunch so, seeing as films released in the US from 1^st January to the 31^st December are eligible, film makers that want their films nominated release them in the latter half of the year to limit the amount of time the Academy have to forget them. For example, James Cameron’s Awards magnet ‘Avatar’ released on 18^th December, ‘Titanic’ released on 14^th December, ‘The Social Network’ released 1^st October, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ had it’s US premier on 12^th November, ‘Shakespeare in Love’ opened on 3^rd December and ‘The King’s Speech’ which pretty much cleared up at every awards ceremony this year, released in the US on 6^th September. All of this means that we’re due some good films after some of the tedious popcorn fare of the summer. I’m personally looking forward to ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, ‘War Horse’ (alas not out in the UK till 13^th January next year but hits cinemas in the US on 28^th December), '30 Minutes or Less' (not Oscar bait but I bloody love Jesse Eisenberg), 'Drive', 'Crazy Stupid Love' (bit of a Ryan Gosling theme with those last two...) and 'Warrior'.

3. ‘Doctor Who’ is back! Yay! The second episode of this season aired on Saturday and it was a good ‘un! ‘Night Terrors’ was penned by Mark Gatiss who I love. It was a great stand alone episode; I’ll be posting a review of it and its predecessor, the brilliantly titled ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’, later this week.

That’s it for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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