Writing

Three films. Nearly nine hours in one sitting. Was it worth it? Yes. People gave Hornet’s Nest a lot of flack because of its slower pacing, but I still think it stands up well. Larsson’s books were largely responsible for introducing me to crime noir and a teenager, and the high quality of his prose is reflected in these three adaptations. Read on for some rough commentary notes for Dragon Tattoo (and some very rough ramblings for the other two, by which point I’d lost the energy for taking detailed, coherent notes).

Continue reading “The Millennium Trilogy: Extended Editions”

The Western is a chameleonic beast. While the genre started off on the page with penny dreadfuls, it quickly expanded to the silver screen with the John Ford and Sergio Leone classics that have come to define its most popular examples today. Yet the genre has expanded far beyond the confines of deserts, sixguns and cowboys. Take a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for the Western and you’ll find a grand total of 29 sub-genres, including the Greek Western, the Ramen Western, and the Weird Western. The author Will Wright, in Sixguns and Society, summarises these archetypal narratives as ‘a lone stranger who ides into a troubled town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the schoolmarm’.

Continue reading “Review: Nope”

With 75 issues to condense, adapting Neil Gaiman’s revered dark fantasy series was never going to be easy. Numerous attempts to bring the author’s lavish dreamscapes to life in film have been aborted, including a Warner Bros project with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached. As Gaiman (who, thankfully, was directly involved in the show’s development) has noted, the silver screen doesn’t provide viewers with the necessary breadth to stage his material, which follows the trials of the anthropomorphic Dream/Morpheus as he is accidentally captured by occultist Roderick Burgess, played with sardonic brilliance by Charles Dance (it’s pretty difficult to imagine Dance playing a wholesome character after Game of Thrones, and he certainly doesn’t break the mould here). Escaping after 100 years, Dream wreaks revenge on his captors then seeks out the stolen items (a ruby, helm and a pouch of sand) that provide him with his full powers.

Continue reading “Review: The Sandman”

Carlo Bonomi, who has died aged 85, was best known for his voice work on the late nineties Claymation hit series Pingu, which was originally made for Swiss television. With its lack of spoken language, however (the showrunners created a fictional language titled ‘Penguinese’, derived from earlier language Bonomi created in Italian animated series La Linea), the show’s universal appeal quickly attracted foreign audiences, no doubt in part due to Bonomi’s loud ‘noot noot’ noise. Akin to a horn, this sound was emphasised by the animal’s beak morphing into the instrument’s shape, and became the penguin’s de facto catchphrase. With his eclectic voice range, Bonomi voiced all the characters for the show’s first four series.

Continue reading “Obituary: Carlo Bonomi”

‘The man who moved the earth’

The Syncopy and Universal logo flash on the screen, disappearing as quickly as they arrive. No clear image is seen as a voice announces a changing world, urging an unseen figure to seize his chance. Sparks of light can be seen against a pitch-black background, but nothing else. A different, doom-laden voice chimes in alongside an ominous soundtrack as we see an assortment of objects arranged on a table, among them a hat and pipe. Descending, ticking clock figures appear one by one before we return to the sparks, which evolve into a fiery hellscape. We see the back of a figure as he faces a window, adjusting the hat we saw earlier on his head as the time figures decrease further. The fiery image appears again, dominating the screen, even more tumultuous than before. Finally, we see the figure of Cillian Murphy walking at the front of a crowd. The time figures are no longer there, replaced with the unsettling, laconic tagline ‘The World Forever Changes’, before finally cutting to the title screen alongside a voice announcing the significance of Cillian Murphy’s unspeaking figure.

Continue reading “Minimalist Moments: Oppenheimer Announcement Trailer”