The Next P K Dick Movie

There’s a new movie coming out in a few weeks based on Philip K Dick’s ‘The Golden Man‘, one of his longer short stories. Of course the big question is: is this another Blade Runner, or is it more of a Paycheck?

We’ll have to wait and see whether Next is any good. It has the potential to be interesting, with Nicholas Cage playing a Las Vegas magician who can see the future and hence change it, but it’s definately more ‘based on’ the original story than faithful to it. In the original, the Golden Man was the next stage of human evolution – unable to communicate, but with the ability to see the future and a huge threat to mankind due to his extreme fertility and attractiveness to human females. Oh, and he was gold. Dick wrote a story that discussed the possibility of mankind being replaced by a species better suited to the world, but less intelligent – an animal in human form. The movie takes just one of this mix of ideas and puts together a pre-summer epic involving terrorism plots and lots of running away. So it won’t be considered a ‘Dick’ film by anyone other than the marketing folks who get more attention through using his name, but if you want mindless action I’m sure it’ll be just perfect.

Bond, not Blond

Last night we went to see Casino Royale the new James Bond movie, and it’s definately a thumbs up – with some reservations. Like many fans of the series I was mildly concerned by the choice of a blond actor, however talented, to play Bond – but the high class of acting and toughness of Daniel Craig has won through to create a new, darker yet highly enjoyable Bond. Read on to find out more – although be warned, there are some spoilers…

After the campy 60s Casino Royale there was no way this Bond could be anything other than dark. In fact almost to counter the saturated colours of the last version, this new Royale starts in black and white – although I have to say the choice of ‘dramatic’ angles actually made me almost laugh in their naivity and seemed to echo the other. That laughter was soon quelled as Bond brutally and realistically achieves his double-0 status with his two first kills. More ‘Layer Cake’ than James Bond.

Then the titles… which weren’t good. They really need to stop using computer generated cleverness on this and get back to basics.

We cut to later, Bond is now in the African jungle hunting a potential bomber with his inexperienced partner. One slip up and Bond is thrown into a man on man chase through jungle, market and building site – but this is no normal Bond chase. No gadgets, no cutting corners just man against man as they literally race up scaffolding and jump across fatal heights in an amazing balletic display of speed and violence. This alone made the movie worth watching for me, while simultaneously making me feel vertiginous as they run across cranes. Amazing.

The trail of the bomber leads Bond onwards towards bad guy LeChief’s airport ‘terrorist’ plot, demonstrating the frailty of the leads he has to react to in order to save lives, whilst destroying property. The script deftly takes Flemming’s original novel and interjects the modern fear of terrorism while maintaining the development of Bond’s cold detachment and athletic prowess. Again, gadgets are at a minimum, but thrills are not.

The stage is now set for the title player, Casino Royale, to make an entrance as LeChief has to make back the money he lost after Bond thwarted his plan. Now this is the first point at which I feel the film looses itself a little bit, as more supporting characters are brought up with minimal introduction – all apparently integral to the plot. Some script editing would be useful as we deal with the new ‘Bond girl’ Vesper Lynde, Mathis the local bureau contact, corrupt police, more henchmen (& women) for Le Chief and a plethora of supporting poker players. Yes, poker not bacarrat. In amongst all of this, Bond has to cooly out play LeChief, win all the money, get poisoned and almost die, fight some guys, woo the girl and invent a cocktail. Guess what. He manages it all, but it takes some time – which could easily have been trimmed.

The game is won, all is good. But wait, there’s more! Betrayal, a chase, an amazing torture scene which, if you’re a woman will have you drooling and if you’re a man will have you wincing and calling your gym at the same time. Then, somehow, Bond escapes, he recuperates, gets the girl and goes on holiday. Here things, to my mind, really start to fall apart… After Bond ‘escapes’ the torture chamber I was convinced that he was being drugged to give away the passcode to the money, but turns out I was wrong – turns out the film makers needed a good 10 minutes of film to convince us that Bond and Vesper were in love. Star Wars II anyone? In fact it almost looks like the same European lake… Ug. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of writing here is infinitely better than Lucas’ pre-pubescent efforts at love scenes, but it’s still drawn out.

Oh wait. That wasn’t the end. The usual model of ‘Bond and girl float off into the sunset together’ is royally turned upside down. It’s a great twist, leading to another good sequence, but no better than what went before. Plus at the end of it all we get Dame Judi Dench delivering some platitudes to Bond about how he’s learnt, before he goes off to coldly get his revenge. Then the film ends, not with a cliff hanger – but with the introduction of the new, darker Bond forged from fires of betrayal and loss.

Sigh. So almost perfect. This could have been the best Bond film ever, even knocking the early Connery efforts off their podium. Just a little bit of editing, a little bit less Sony product placement and a few less characters to identify and understand. Maybe next time?

Uncovering Missed Gems

It’s been a weekend for catching up with mindless video style enjoyment, in between back breaking sessions on a 3000 piece jigsaw. My colour blindness and the jigsaw’s bad colour printing (and indeed their trimming the edge of the image on the box lid) is certainly making that more challenging than I’d like. Definately getting value for money from it.

First up was Stranger Than Fiction – the new Will Ferrell film widely touted as a Ferrell’s first effective cross over into ’serious’ movies. I was a little bit apprehensive about this as some commentators had classed it as a Charlie Kaufman movie, without Charlie Kaufman writing it, luckily it came into its own and was a highly enjoyable romp. All the players were outstanding, with the exception of Queen Latifah who was just wasted, and Emma Thompson excelled as the neurotic writer for whom Ferrell is just a character in her latest novel. Strange, but entertaining – go see.

Continuing in the Charlie Kaufman vein, I finally got to see the wonderful Human Nature – Kaufman’s first collaboration with Michel Gondrey (before the excellent Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind). This beautiful film, which I had somehow managed to miss even though I’m a fan of both Gondrey and Kaufamn, didn’t do so well in the cinema – even after getting pretty good reviews – but it certainly should have. Great performances from all the principal actors, especially Rhys Ifans as the ‘ape’ man trained in manners by Tim Robbins’ repressed, and saved by Patricia Arquette’s hirsute nature writer. On top of the usual Kaufman script forging, Gondrey gets to extend and evolve his nature filming from the Bjork videos of old, plus introduce some beautiful CGI mice. Not sure how I missed it, but hoping I find some more wonders like this again.

Finally, another TV series I’ve been avoiding for a while for some unknown reason, Arrested Development. This now, unfortunately cancelled, series is pure genius – following the antics of a rich, orange county family whose patriarch has just been arrested for improper financial dealings and his second oldest son Michael’s attempts to keep the dysfunctional family functioning and save the company. With the likes of David Cross in the mix you know you’re in for a treat, but everyone else in the cast also excels to produce a laugh out loud comedy that reminds you however bad your family is – they’re your family.

Next stop.. the new James Bond movie, which everyone is calling superb which is good news indeed.