August 2010

The City and the City - China Mieville

We visited Calke on the way back up North a few weeks ago, stopping off the A50. Lingering taste of weirdness. You go in through a fairly normal country house hall, maybe a few more stuffed trophy heads on the walls than usual. Mild eccentricity in the the 'cartoon room' where someone in the C18th pasted humorous prints all over the walls and on to a fairly conventional dining room, though apparently this was hardly used and has been spruced up by the Trust, and through to a massive room, formerly the main hall, completely stuffed with furniture and collected things.

The 1981 John Carpenter film with Kurt Russell. Class on a no-effects-to-speak-of budget. The rather stupid premise (Manhattan Island has become a giant prison which the President accidentally crash-lands in) gains such a lot of atmosphere from its minimal treatment that it becomes something really strange. It's all filmed at night, in urban dereliction just dressed with a bit of burning rubbish and the odd police helicopter, Carpenter's own music sounds as if its been played on an old-style synthesiser with one finger .. and it is creepy, as well as funny.

I rate this top of the stuff we saw in our several-day stay at the Edinburgh fringe at the end of August this year. A vigorous physical theatre piece with a large stage, an international cast of nine (speaking a range of nonsense languages) and a strong atmosphere which livened up the underlying bleakness of the plot.

Saw 'Moon' at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. Another home cinema screen, like FACT (though that has trendy sofas) and the cinema in Oban (not trendy at all). 'Moon' was ok, enjoyed it. Not mindbogglingly new but perfectly acceptable, like a reasonably good Twilight Zone episode. Started out hinting at Solaris, went on to Space Odyssey, finished up a bit like a cross between BladeRunner and The Truman Show. With a hint of that Arnie film - no, not that one, the unmemorable one, 'The 6th Day'.

I miss Primeval, the weekly hope that someone might get eaten by a dinosaur. The premise wasn't all that subtle: Walking with dinosaurs did well - lets do running from dinosaurs. It did better as a kids show in spite and probably partly because of not being initially aimed at kids. Once evil Helen stopped flashing her cleavage and just started being Cruella de Ville, and the scripts started mixing in slapstick and sibling bickering in that old Scooby way it started to pick up.

Here's my basic categorisation scheme for movies: A is obviously top stuff; B is typical B-movie material ie I like it but I'm not saying it's especially good. C is just about passable, D is dreck. I put Blade 3 at C, along with Chronicles of Riddick. The titles are great, but then they often are in bad films, as if someone realises the product isn't so hot and ups the budget on the packaging.

Atmospheric but confusing. It's a long time since I read the Earthsea books, and this animation doesn't bother with explaining plot points. Why are the dragons there, and how is the girl a dragon? Who is Sparrowhawk and why is he involved?

It's nearly very good. The architecture is lovely, great pillared halls, castles and ancient crumbling towns. In one scene Sparrowhawk comes over a rise onto a great deserted beach strewn with the huge hulls of abandoned warships. What is lacking is the strong storytelling heart, that would have us care for the folk that inhabit this impressive world.