Irish Horror: The Lodgers (2017)

The Lodgers is a 2017 Irish film directed by Brian O'Malley, stars Charlotte Vega, Bill Milner and Eugene Simon, and was filmed almost entirely at the infamous Loftus Hall in County Wexford, a real-life source of many urban legends and the location of much legend-tripping.

I first heard stories about Loftus Hall while I was was in college. Many of my colleagues from the southeast side of the country knew of this place. Today it has been reinvented as a tourist attraction (dark tourism, I guess) but back then it was dilapidated, rotting, and hella spooky. Pretty much everyone who spoke to me of the place had visited with their friends upon a dark night on a 'dare.' There are myriad local legends about the place, some of them unique to Loftus Hall, others seeming to be the kind of generic myths that get attached to any spooky old building. In particular, it was most often said that a gentleman visiting the Hall centuries ago was revealed to have been the Devil himself (he revealed a cloven hoof when a lady bent over to pick up a dropped playing card), upon which he disappeared through the roof in a pillar of fire. The patch where he burst through the roof was said to be still visible. Suffice it to say that Loftus Hall is a unique location in which to set a period ghost story movie, and I heartily approve. 

Another Michael Crichton Podcast: Congo (1995)

Join Cian and Chris for (they finally have a title) 'We Need To Talk About Michael,' a podcast in which they watch the movie versions of Michael Crichton novels and compare them to the original books, if they can remember anything about them, at least.

This time around it's 1995's Congo, a tale of diamonds, killer apes, and sesame cake. Listen in to discover why you never want Jimmy Buffett to fly your plane, why Tim Curry should never play a Romanian, and whether a pound of sugar is more expensive than a primatologist.

Like the movie itself, this 'cast had something of a troubled birth. Recording issues plagued the episode, so Chris, being a tech wizard, used some supercomputer thinking machines to piece the audio back together. Though there are still some audial oddities throughout, the banter is worth listening to, so click below, journey in search of the lost city of Zinj with us, and STOP EATING MY SESAME CAKE.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Click here to watch the trailer.

Off The Wagon Reviews: Name Of The Rose (1986)

If you've ever asked yourself, 'I wonder what Sherlock Holmes would have been like if he was a medieval monk played by Sean Connery,' then you've come to the right place! Cian and Eoghan don their robes to get medieval on 1986's The Name Of The Rose. Along the way, Cian gets schooled on historical matters and Eoghan learns the shocking truth that Hollywood likes to change the endings of your favourite books. Stay tuned for medieval murder mystery madness.

Listen to the podcast here.

Watch the trailer here.

Off The Wagon Reviews Jurassic Park Part 2

Cian and Chris return to finish off their T-Rex-sized rant about Jurassic Park, and they once again spare no expense in bringing you the analysis that was so big it needed two podcasts! Revel in the trivia; discover exactly what Dennis Nedry keeps on his desk, why Chris wanted to run like a Gallimimus, and choose your side in the infamous 'Tyrannosaur paddock moat debate.'

Listen to the podcast here.

As promised, we've now added some show notes. Below is a pretty good map showing someone's idea of how the Rex got out of her enclosure. Click here for a pretty good discussion about the confusion people have experienced watching this scene.

And here is Chris' map of the same scene. This is how we both imagined it went down when we were kids. Don't say we aren't good to you!

The Patriot (2000)

Some bad things get worse the better they're executed- and I think that propaganda is one of them. And I'm sorry to bring up some pretty heavy examples, but Birth Of A Nation and Triumph Of The Will are both all the more terrible for being particularly well-made movies. Nobody takes a bad movie seriously; in particular, nobody takes the message of a bad movie seriously. So when a movie that had a dubious message is well-made on a technical level, it becomes all the more troubling. Which brings me onto The Patriot, which, while not as reprehensible perhaps as those two movies, is still pretty problematic.


In this movie, Mel Gibson again reminds us how much he loves a bit of Brit-bashing. As you probably know, that's the kind of thing that usually plays well to Irish audiences. This is something else that I find problematic. No matter how enlightened we may think we are, for some if us there's always a bit of us that enjoys seeing the dirty Brits get their comeuppance, even if it's only in the form of a stupid and obviously cartoonishly patriotic Hollywood shlockfest. We tell ourselves that it's just a bit of a laugh and that we don't mean anything by it, and that it's no reflection on our attitudes towards the British today, but I think it says something about our inner nationalist side that we enjoy this stuff so much. As it happens, I have no idea why Mel Gibson likes having the British be the villains in his movies.  

The Patriot is certainly no Braveheart, but in terms of sets, cinematography and the ordinary nuts-and-bolts of movie-making, it's pretty good, and it should be, as it's made by people who know their craft. Jerry Bruckenheimer was the producer on this, and though he may be something of a schlockmeister, he sure knows how to make movies that look great. The Patriot aims at being a historical epic, and it definitely looks like one. The colours are lush, the landscapes are beautiful, and the action sequences are tense and thrilling. Mel doe a pretty good job directing too, which must have been difficult as he's in pretty much every scene. As someone who likes history, I sometimes enjoy even bad historical movies as I love seeing an era I'm interested in realised with a decent budget, and The Patriot doesn't disappoint in that respect.

Cup of Earl Grey?

So what's the plot? Well, it's 1776, and Mel plays Benjamin Martin, a character who seems to be based on various real-life guerrilla militia leaders who fought in the War of Independence. At first, all we know about him is that he did shameful but unspecified things back in the French & Indian War, and therefore has no interest in getting involved in this new war against the British. He's got about a million kids to look after, including a young Heath Ledger, and a conveniently-dead wife (convenient for her predatory sister, that is, played by a very hot Joely Richardson, who was no doubt dreaming of her days on board the Event Horizon). So when a bunch of South Carolina powdered wig-wearers get together to debate whether they should join the rebellion, Martin is all like 'nu-uh, I don't do that shit no more, besides I gotta mind the kids, no matter how much of a dick King George is being, and no matter how much shitty tax he's putting on our tea.' This is important as it allows the screenwriters to have their cake and eat it too: Martin is show to be a pacifist, but later events (vis the eeeevil British) will force his hand and make him take up arms. He's a nice guy when he's allowed to be, but he's a badass when he has to be. These early discussions about when/if it's morally okay to use violence for political chance are kind of interesting, but they get dropped after this scene and don't really ever come back.

'Benjamin Franklin?'

The requisite events occur at the hands of Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs, also dreaming of his days aboard the Event Horizon), who is the most moustache-twirlingly cartoonish villain this side of Jafaar. He probably enjoys tying girls to train-tracks when he's not out committing atrocities in the South Carolina countryside. Tavington kills a bunch of unarmed prisoners, including one of Martin's kids, therefore filling our hero with righteous rage and usefully providing him with a guilt-free reason to go on his own rampage. Martin grabs the rest of his family and teaches them how to kill British officers, pretty much declaring a one-man war against Tavington. Martin comes to be known by the British as "The Ghost," due to his almost supernatural ability to kill large amounts of their soldiers. As far as I can see, the only special ability Martin has is being able to ignore soldiers who are not in shot during tight camera angles. But that's just me.

 Tavington gets chewed out by his superior, Lord Cornwallis (who's appeared on this blog before), for being too brutal. Apparently, Tavington's cruel tactics are not sanctioned by the British army and are not representative of their behaviour during the war. This again is a ham-fisted ruse by the scriptwriters that allows them to have their hateful, eeeevil villain, but not seem like they're implying the British were all bad. Too bad they stuff it up by having even the other, slightly more sympathetic officers be snooty, arrogant and disrespectful to the American soldiers every time they appear. They aren't decentl professionals who happen to be on the other side to the protagonist, they're twits and cowards. Some soldiers occasionally seem horrified at Tavington's actions, but they're pussies and don't follow their conscience. And just in case you hadn't got your fill of stereotypes, Tavington himself is effeminate and foppish.

Martin gathers a group of rag-tag militiamen and sets up camp in the swamps. A French officer joins his squad, resulting in much hilarity (sic). If you figured that there'd be jokes about the Frenchman overdressing and being vain, well, award yourself a beer. They organise more attacks on the British, leading to a climactic final battle in which Martin finally faces down his nemesis and gets to wave an American flag around in slow motion.

But for all my kvetching, the movie is very enjoyable. Mel and Bruckenheimer know what they're doing, and even the very well-worn tropes that they're using go down easy. The dialogue is largely enjoyable, the characters are likeable and hateable as they need to be, and everything looks great. Which is the problem, as the movie contains some pretty troubling ideas.

One of the main themes of the movie is that of using violence to solve problems. As I've mentioned, the film toys with going into the ethics of this decision at the beginning, and then dispenses with it altogether, becoming a simplistic glorification of violence instead. It's very black-and-white; us vs them. Which is one thing if a movie is dealing with completely fictional forces (ie, Star Wars). It's quite another when real peoples from history are involves. I feel that if a film-maker is dealing with history, they have much more of a responsibility not to simplify (though I accept that this rarely happens). It's far more irresponsible to have Tavington, as a representative of the British forces, commit war crimes, than to have Darth Vader commit war crimes, because Tavington's actions actually serve to represent how the British behaved during the real war. And, by extension, how the Americans behaved. In reality, atrocities were carried out by both sides, and there isn't currently any concensus that the British were any worse than the Americans.

Also troubling is the movie's treatment of black people. Martin's farm is worked by a bunch of happy, non-slave blacks who are insanely loyal to his family (yeah, right). There's a whiff of Uncle Tom off the whole thing. There's one black man who joins the militia, at first because he's gotta serve a certain amount of days to earn his freedom, but who later sticks around because he believes in the cause. Which is fine, except his final scene is horrifically offensive: he announces that now everyone's building a new world, he thought he'd help rebuild Martin's house first. WHAT? The man has not a single thought for himself? What about building his own Goddam house now that he's free for the first time in his life? Instead, he acts like the Magical Negro who's only around to help out the white folks.

I flip and flop on this movie. I guess overall I like it, because I usually prefer a movie that tries to do something ambitious and fails to a movie that plays it safe. Mel could have made a perfectly ordinary, dumbass action blockbuster. Instead, he made a dumbass action blockbuster that's dealing with ideas it's laughably unprepared to follow through on. It's a movie that annoys me as much as I enjoy it.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

For all that I bang on about Arthur Conan Doyle, I've gotta 'fess up to the fact that I'm not overly enamoured by his most famous fictional son. Mostly, I guess, because I simply have no interest in crime fiction, of which Sherlock Holmes was probably the most perfect kind. The mystery of a whodunnit always seemed rather paltry to me after an early diet of Clarke, Asimov, and of course, a cornucopia of mind-expanding 19th-century horrors. So what if one mammal kills another- boring. And you expect me to care about who did it? Bring on the Martian tripods, the undead half-breeds and the space-travel, please. I do have a passing familliarity with the Holmesian cannon, more out of a feeling of duty to my favourite author than because I've really enjoyed it. Well, I did enjoy The Hound of the Baskervilles, but it felt to me as though Doyle was somehow repressing his own natural urge to bring a wacky supernatural element to the story, just because, in the world of Holmes (though not, apparently, in the real-life world of Doyle), there has to be a more prosaic explanation.

In any case, I've finally gotten around to a viewing of Hollywood's latest tinkering with a classic, and wouldn't you know, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting- perhaps because I'm not too tied to the original source material. Basically, Guy Ritchie's sort-of made another one of his cheeky-chappie Cockney gangster flicks, except it's happening in the 19th century. Well, there's more to it than that, but still. Robert Downey Jr. and J*** L** play Holmes and Watson respectively. Predictably for a Hollywood adaptation, the movie ups the action and dumbs down some of the original material. But is it any good?

Overall, it's a gorgeous-looking romp that's good fun. Honestly, whatever sins Ritchie has committed by making Holmes into a two-fisted, pit-fighting dandy are more than made up for by the sheer liveliness and speed of the story. The relationship between the two leads has been slightly altered- they are now fast-talking buddy-movie leads, but the dialogue is pithy and hilarious throughout, and there are just enough elements from the stories left in, or slightly misused, to make you believe, at least for 100 minutes, that this is a legitimate interpretation of Doyle's character. Holmes is a flamboyant, over-intelligent misfit who doesn't live in or interact very well with the rest of society. Watson is a lady-killer who loses his patience with Holmes's eccentricities at times. And the two of them do have a brotherly affinity for each other in a kind of hetero life-mate kind of way (if not outright bro-ners) that is threatened when Watson gets married. So maybe Ritchie is stretching this stuff, but it's all there in the books.

Another thing Ritchie has done is to remind me why I'm fascinated by Victorian London. He makes it seem so fun (which it obviously was, if you lived in the right part of town). He even drags in an occult conspiracy that rips elements wholesale out of From Hell, whether he knows it or not. It's quite possible that he just reckons you can't tell a gothic London tale without this stuff, but the parallels are striking-

-a Masonic-type society that controls the empire
- secrets of the ancients
-a plan involving the occult architecture of London, including a scene with a giant map

What do you think?

The Wolfman

Pity the poor lycanthrope. With no distinguished source material to draw upon, and no big-name author to place before the title, it seems the wolfman is barely holding onto his position among the monstrous big-hitters. Dracula and Frankenstein must shun him at parties. Hollywood has had to base their recent wolfman effort on the 1941 original, and though the charmingly low-tech practical-effects wolfman is present and correct, it isn't the 1940's feel that causes the viewer to howl.


Instead, it feels as though the filmmakers have taken a cheesy 70's Hammer script- a relic of a simpler time when certain tropes were not quite as hackneyed as they are today- and filmed it in 2009, with a decent budget and played absolutely straight. It's the only explanation for the way the film plays every single Victorian horror cliche without irony and without any attempt to present them in any new way.

Decaying Gothic mansion? Check. Fair enough. Fog-shrouded moors? Check. That's allright, too. But in the same movie as mystic gypsies, torch-wielding superstitious villagers and cruel Victorian asylum 'scientists'?

Damn, I'm making this sound like the greatest movie ever. Any film containing such a cornucopia of treats should be a winner. But believe me- whatever you have in your head right now is almost certainly a thousand times more entertaining than the Wolfman actually is. There's something about how these elements are presented- I feel they would only work if the audience had absolutely never seen a horror movie (or a Saturday morning cartoon, which is where most of these elements now belong) before. Maybe if this movie had been made in 1941, or in 1971, it would have been a masterpiece, its strong visual style setting trends for decades to come. But The Wolfman instead trots out time-worn plotlines and expects us to be affected by them.

Ditto for the dialogue- maybe I'm just close-minded, but I feel as though the day has passed when you can put such downright corny words into a script and still play it straight. When Anthony Hopkins first appears (wearing a hideous tiger-skin jacket that in no way telegraphs the later 'revelation' of his bestial nature) to greet his recently returned son, I literally begged him not to quote 'the Prodigal son returns'. Just as he said it. The film is full of moments where you think 'ah, now if this were a cheesy movie made before 1979, they would say X here'- and The Wolfman never disappoints. As soon as Emily Blunt is shown researching werewolf lore in a dusty library, we know that we're gonna be confronted with this:

































Yeah, so there hasn't been a werewolf movie made yet that doesn't feature this woodcut: So far, I've noted it in The Wolfman, The Howling, and the X-Files episode 'Shapes'. But usually the pain is eased somewhat by having it introduced by Dick Miller (everything is better with Dick Miller).

The key to where it all goes really wrong lies in the asylum scene. Del Toro, who knows by now what he has become, is being studied by a demented 'doctor'. He's one of those Victorian sadist scientists who thinks that the best way to cure dementia is to cut out the patients' brain, or dunk them in freezing water. This particular trope has been used in From Hell and other movies to great effect, but here, the scientist is a ridiculous cartoon character who understates the horror we should be feeling. He straps Del Toro into a chair before an audience of doctors and students, in order to prove that no transformation will take place when the moon turns full. Of course, Del Toro knows all too well what will happen, and his desperate pleading is taken as being no more than proof of his dementia. It ought to have been a tense, physchological scene with the scientists waiting to be proven right, and Del Toro (and the audience) waiting for the carnage they know is about to occur. Instead, everything happens in a rushed manner reminiscint of a music video. Del Toro is strapped in, he warns the scientists, the moon appears immediately, he wolfs out within seconds. The resulting violence (and it is a great scene) feels light and pointless because of the botched foreplay.

The Wolfman does look great- dark and brooding- but ultimately, this is another slick trick to distract the audience from the fact that there is no substance. The edits are cut so tight that the film seems afraid to linger on anything for more than a moment, as if aware of how hollow the plot is. And apart from some howlers (the dodgy-looking were-Gollum should never have got past the script stage), the use of CG is mostly used to augment the wolfman as he leaps about, while he is portrayed for the most part using practical effects. And if I haven't mentioned any characterisation yet, well, that's because there isn't any.

Khartoum (1966)

The great British public have always loved a good failure- Scott, Shackleton and Oates (to name several Antarctic-related examples) all became national heroes because they did not succeed in their efforts, but put up a jolly good fight none the less, and showed the world that the British upper lip remains stiff till the end. To this distinguished list one can add Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, the Governor-General who died at the siege of Khartoum in the Sudan in 1885. In 1966, following the success of Lawrence of Arabia, he finally appeared on film.

The shadow of that earlier movie looms large over Khartoum. Once again, a charismatic English military man is sent into the burning sands to live amongst Arabs (and Europeans in blackface!) and rally them for a historic battle. Sound familiar? In this case that man is Charlton Heston as 'Chinese' Gordon, hero of the Crimean and Opium Wars. British Prime Minister William Gladstone sends Gordon back to the Sudan, where he had clashed with slave traders just a few years before. Trouble is brewing there in the form of one Mohammad Achmed (Laurence Olivier), the self styled Madhi, or 'expected one', who is uniting the various Sudanese tribes against Anglo/Egyptian rule.

The politics of this time are not easily understood, and to its credit the film does try hard to hint at their complexity without getting bogged down in too much detail. If you'll bear with me, I'll provide a little background: Britain under Gladstone was at an unusual point in its Empire-building career. While he was virulently anti-colonial, the British Empire ironically grew faster under his watch than at any other time. Despite his protestations, events continually conspired to cause Britain to engulf country after country.

The Khedive of Egypt, while nominally a subject of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, was in reality completely under the influence of the British and French due to the massive debts the weak ruler owed to European countries. Britain, criticized for allowing Egypt to go to ruin, 'reluctantly' decided to take a more hands-on approach. Thus Gladstone also inherited an unwanted responsibility towards Egypts own 'empire'- the Sudan. Egypt, however, was clearly not up to the task of combating the Mahdi's uprising. Gladstone was left in the unenviable position of having to prevent a humanitarian crisis (the large amount of Egyptians and Europeans who would be massacred should Khartoum fall to the Mahdi) while not wanting to directly involve the British government or army.






















So, one's interpretation of the situation (and of the film) may be, to a large degree, depend on one's opinion of Gladstone himself. He is played as a bit of a villain in the film. As an Irishman, I certainly have a lot of time for the Grand Old Man's distaste towards Britain's habit of acquiring colonies. But having inherited what was already the largest Empire on Earth, this attitude frequently caused him to flip-flop on issues. His refusal to commit to the Sudan- a situation that Britain was already up to its starched collar in- was bound to end in disaster. In place of official British intervention, Gladstone unofficially sent the one man he knew he could distrust- Gordon. But enough history. Is the film any good?

Damn straight it is. For starters, anyone who questions Chuck Heston's ability to carry off charismatic characters like Gordon deserves a bayonet through their DVD collection. Granted, the Omega Man is an extremely unusual choice to play a 19th century British officer, but there wasn't a man alive in 1966 who'd done more to prove his chops for carrying historical epics. His accent tends to migrate more than a wandering albatross, but he brings just the right sense of pathos to Gordon, as the man who fears failure but not death slowly realizes that Khartoum will bring him one of both of these things. Laurence Olivier also makes the most of his part- his Mahdi is a character to be feared from a distance more often than encountered, but his (fictional) meetings with Gordon do not disappoint.

The music is also truly awesome- it ranges from stirring military marches to the kind of exotic sensationalist Orientalism that would have Edward Said choking on his Turkish coffee. Hell, if you're not a fan of un-PC depictions of Eastern culture, then stay away from 19th century British history, and stay the hell away from Khartoum! This is a world of minarets, dancing harem girls and blackface white actors praising Allah. Having said that, the Madhi in particular is played as a smart and complex man, who points out to Gordon that their aims are not so very different. And if he's also portrayed as a barbarian who collects the heads and hands of his enemies- well that's ok, because the real Mahdi was a man who collected the heads and hands of his enemies. So its not all Arabian Nights fantasy.
























As I've stated above, this movie does suffer by comparison with Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is a British film made by a visionary director comparable in style to Stanley Kubrick (in fact I believe I made this very comparison myself in a previous review). Khartoum is very much a straightforward American-style movie, and fits very much into the 1960s 'epic' movie cycle. The shots are slightly more artless, and the desert is used as a slightly arbitrary location rather than as a character. Perhaps comparisons would be unfair- were it not painfully obvious that Khartoum clearly got the green light because of the success of Lawrence. It even steals the 'overture' and 'intermission' structure of David Leans movie, slightly watering down the concept in the process.

But such gripes aside, the quality of the movie is good evidence that it ought to have been made regardless of circumstances.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

This was intended to be a mini-review.

(That's right. I didn’t think I had too much to say about Lawrence of Arabia.)

The reason for this is that it's a classic, and you should go see it, and that's all there is. If you still need more persuading, let me tell you that this movie features Alec Guinness out in the desert wearing a brown cloak. Given the evidence of Star Wars, that can only be a positive thing.

It's the War to End All Wars, and on the Arabian peninsula, the scheming Brits intend to overthrow the ailing Ottoman Empire by uniting the various squabbling Arab tribes. Granted, compared to the epic slugfest going on in central Europe, it’s a distinctly second-tier affair. Guinness plays the Arab leader Prince Feisal, and Peter O'Toole (repeat offender!!) plays T. E. Lawrence, an Englishman with conflicting feelings of identity. Lawrence is fey and a little bit fruity (not sure if O'Toole intended to portray him as being gay, but it's a possibility). His superiors don't quite trust him, but before you can say 'the Judland wastes are not travelled lightly', Lawrence has recruited Feisal and other chiefs, and sent them on their merry way to raid that hive of Turkish scum and villainy, Aquaba. The Arab Revolt is underway!

This film gets everything right. It's epic without ever being boring or ponderous, and that's a tough line to straddle. Not many four-hour long movies achieve it. The first half of the movie is especially stirring- watching Lawrence whip his rough-and-ready camel commandos into shape as they score some early victories is thrilling. Like djinns, they appear out of the desert leaving the Turkish guns at Aquaba pointing uselessly out to sea. Huzzah! The second half focuses more on political machinations, as Lawrence begins to wonder exactly what the British have planned for the Arabs after the war. Things do slow down a bit here, but it's still fascinating viewing.

The film is similarly rough-and-ready with history. There are inaccuracies and plot holes large enough to march the 11th hussars through, but it all makes for a better movie. The cinematic Lawrence is made more sympathetic by his ignorance of the Sykes-Pycot agreement to annex Arabia, which in real life he was well aware of. Such discrepancies rankle less than they might- often simplifying a complex situation allows a movie to flow better.

In terms of sheer cinematic craft the film is unmatched. When Lawrence first announces his excitement at being sent to Arabia, there's a jump-cut from a lit match to the first burning rays of the rising desert sun that rivals the bone/spacecraft cut from 2001: A Space Odyssey for sheer pretentiousness. In fact, much of the movie is very like Kubrick's classic in feel. Like 2001, much is hinted at rather than explicitly stated in long, lazy scenes.

A note on the score- upon arriving at the top of a hill or mountain and suddenly being confronted with a dramatic view of the surrounding landscape, a suitably dramatic theme is required. I once had a friend who hummed the Lord of the Rings theme to himself in such situations. Not me- for me its gotta be Maurice Jarre's immortal Lawrence score that sums up the right kind of majesty. I've heard it said that the mark of a good movie is how it affects you in your life afterwards- I guess this applies even to trivial things like the above statement.

The most powerful character in the movie is the desert itself, portrayed with stark beauty by director David Lean. The visions of impossibly remote and desolate dune-scapes are awe-inspiring. It’s a harsh, unforgiving and inscrutable world of mirages and quicksand, sandstorms and vicious bedouins. Somebody once called the Arabian campaign 'the last picturesque war'- a somewhat thoughtless but fitting epiphet, given the evidence of this movie.

Deserts hold a fascination for me- the combination of endless flatness and murderous sun is almost the complete opposite of the wet greenery of home (Ireland!). It’s a completely alien world. In an early scene, Lawrence journeys alone through the desert to meet his British contacts, and sings that old music-hall classic 'I'm the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo' to keep his spirits up. He's singing to himself, but the song echoes off the rocks and is reflected back to him. It’s a bit like staring into the abyss, and having the abyss stare back, I guess- this inhospitable environment will mirror aspects of a man's character back at him that he didn't know were there. Indeed, Lawrence finds his life's worth in the desert. It's the old colonial fantasy of the white man who leaves his starched-collar world behind and lives as a native in a more primitive environment where men can be real men (except if they're gay. Maybe).

I guess I did have a bit to say about Lawrence of Arabia. Who would have thought?

Zulu Dawn (1979)

Somebody once said that Richard Attenborough's Ghandi is 'not a movie, but a laboriously-illustrated textbook' (thanks, World's Greatest Hollywood Scandals!). For all the croaking people do about Hollywood's free-wheeling take on history, there are times when a movie gets so entangled in historical minutia that it forgets to be, you know, a movie. Which brings me to Zulu Dawn.

Made 15 years after the original Zulu, today's feature tells the tale of the battle of Isandlwana, which took place prior to the battle of Rorke's drift. Isandlwana was the single greatest defeat the British suffered during their empire-building heyday. The fact that it occurred at the hands of a primitive people probably wounded their pride a whole lot, and they've spent the century since trying to figure out exactly how such a thing was allowed to happen.

Director Douglas Hickox remains scrupiously fair at re-creating and re-analysing this famous event. In the film, many officers (including Peter O'Toole and Bob Hoskins- repeat offender!) are shown contributing to the British downfall at Isandlwana, and there's no easy decision to be made regarding who was at fault. Because of this, the movie feels a little flat, especially compared to its predecessor. There are no characters to root for in quite the same way as we did for old Hooky and his gang in Zulu.

On its own merits, Zulu Dawn would be considered a classic historical movie. There's endless shots of the South African landscape being all majestic, and endless scenes of troops and cannons crossing rivers, but for some reason it's all a bit dull. The campaign seems complex and muddled compared to the simple scenario in Zulu. I have no doubt that the campaign was complex and muddled, but that's not always what makes good cinema, as stated above. Because of its illustrious ancestor (which I will review one day, damn your eyes!), I feel this film is destined to remain just an interesting relic.

The Big Pendulum

When it comes to literary (or film) criticism, one can present incredible interpretations of the text in question without ever assuming that this is how the original author intended it to be interpreted. A sterling example is found in an article called 'The Return of Hobbes' by a chap named Galvin P. Chow (Google it, do I have to do everything myself?). This postulates that Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes is somehow the same character as Tyler Durden from Fight Club. At first you think 'uh-huh, right' but then after reading some of it you realize that it's making sense, and by the end of the article, you're thinking 'damn it, that sounds downright plausible!' Chow piles on the evidence, and once you start to regard the issue correctly, the similarities become almost unavoidable.

Now, do I reckon that Bill Watterson or David Fincher really intended their works to be seen this way?

Come on.

Chow so expertly teases aspects of both works, re-moulding them according to his own wants, that he is able to convince us that there was an intended connection where in fact there must have been none (perhaps this is how conspiracy theories get started. But I am getting ahead of myself). This is a large part of how literary criticism seems to work. In school, while doing my Leaving Cert, I was often told that I could take any stance on a novel when writing an essay, as long as I backed up my idea with evidence and examples from the text. Any stance. Any text. There's a wide sargasso sea of potential stupid ideas right there.

Dipping my toes into this sea, I will begin by noting what I see as some bizarre similarities between The Big Lebowski, and the book Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Yeah, you know The Big Lebowski, and if you don't, boy have you come to the wrong place.

Foucault's Pendulum, on the other hand... I will understand if you don't. It's a large, complex, demanding book about Italian magazine editors who concoct a super-conspiracy theory (told you I'd get around to them) that includes every other such theory ever flaunted. All your old favourites are trotted out- the Templars, the Jesuits, the Nazis, the Rosicrucians, Count St. Germaine, etc (Tellingly, Eco is even more fond of lists than I am). It's been described as 'the thinking man's Da Vinci Code'.

To be honest, this book will probably ruin conspiracy theories for you forever. The joke is that though the book deals with every conspiracy theory ever hatched (pre David Ike) with more detail and accuracy than you'll find (or want to find) anywhere else, he still understands that it's all nonsense. The reader is drawn into the narrator's paranoid way of thinking as the characters begin to believe their own hype. They find connections between events that can only (to their fevered imaginations) be explained by a vast, all-encompassing Plan. And yet we the reader know it's applesauce. The conspiracy theorist's mind, and his reasons for believing, are examined so convincingly that you'll never be able to take another 911-truther seriously again (if you ever did anyway).

Phew. All of which is a long way from the Dude and his soiled rug. Or is it?

Consider. Both deal with three middle-aged (or nearly middle-aged) guys who hang out together because they have too much free time, and have few other meaningful relationships in their lives. In Lebowski, the trio are the Dude, Walter and Donny. Dude is the laid-back main character. Walter is an angry, offense-taking overgrown child who is obsessed with being Jewish, though his racial background suggests otherwise. Though Donny does very little, he does serve a purpose (through his death, hard cheese). The Dude and Walter do not share one scene together in which they do not fight or fail to communicate with each other. Donny's 'funeral' is one of the only scenes where we realize that they really do care for each other. And though we may have suspected it throughout the film, the lack of anybody else at this pitiful ceremony shows for sure that these three guys (now two) are the only close friends or family any of them have. It's a touching (and hilarious) scene.

In Pendulum, our trio consist of Casaubon, Belbo and Diotallevi. Though a bit younger than the others, and a dab hand with the ladies, narrator Casaubon is still rather detached from society. He drifts further and further from his girlfriend as the three become immersed in their obsessive creation, the Plan. It is clear that until meeting the other two, he has never been so challenged or stimulated intellectually. Belbo is arguably the main character- his twisted genius drives the creation of the Plan, and his cynicism makes him the most laid-back of the three (though we do eventually find out that this is a front). He has few close aquaintences besides the other two, and he seems more or less okay with this. Diotallevi is the quiet, abused one, though a direct comparison with Donny would perhaps be unfair to him. However, the kicker here is that he is obsessed with being Jewish, despite his racial background. In his own case, it stems from his being a foundling. In his need for identity, he watches his Jewish neighbours preparing for Shomor Shabbas (which Walter is also obsessed with) the night before, longing to take part. In any case, both texts deal with the friendship and need between a trio of men who, unusually for their stage in life, have no other strong relationships.

Both the Dude and Walter are obviously products of the 60's- the Dude represents the hippie generation with his take-it-easy attitude and his history of protest, sit-ins and dope-smoking. Walter represents the other side of the same coin- obsessed with rules, firearms and Vietnam, he is everything the Dude stood against at that time. But they seem to get on fine.

Similarly, Belbo and co. have their background in the student politics of the 60's. Belbo and Casaubon first meet at a student protest during this time. Back then, they chanted slogans and marched, and got chased by the police. The only difference is their cynicism to the ideals of this era. Really, they take part in this stuff because they feel it is expected of them, or because they think they will pick up girls. Still, the connection is noticeable.

There is also the film noir element. I've already mentioned that Lebowski is basically a subversion of Chandler (a few scenes and plot elements are robbed from The Big Sleep, in particular), with the Dude as a clueless stand-in for Philip Marlowe. Dirty dealings, red herrings, L.A. setting- all present and correct. In Pendulum, Casaubon actively compares himeslf to noir heroes Sam Spade and Marlowe on more than one occasion.

Perhaps the final similarity is how the plots of both texts stem from misconceptions. In both cases, events quickly spiral out of control in terms of complexity, with a conspicuous nothing at the centre. In Lebowsky, all the characters believe there has been a kidnapping, and a twisted trail of deception develops around it precisely because nobody knows what's going on (it's a pastiche of the LA-set Chandler novels). Of course, there was no kidnapping. Eventually, one of the characters (Donny) dies, arguably as a result of the stress and excitement of where their adventure finally takes them. The script could have had him shot by the nihilists, but instead points out that it was a heart attack. We'll never know if he died as a result of the events of the movie, or if it was something that might just have happened anyway.

In Pendulum, the trio at first construct the Plan as a joke, knowing it is false, but slowly become convinced of its veracity, as do several other nefarious characters. These troublemakers assume that Belbo and his friends must know something because they refuse to tell (of course there is nothing to tell, the plan is false). By the same token, Belbo figures that the Plan must be real because these people already take it seriously. In both cases there is a case of 'much ado about nothing'. Towards the end, one of the trio (again, Diotallevi, the quiet one) dies. He contracts cancer, again something which may have happened naturally, but which he in his obsession views as somehow being caused by their association with the Plan. Convinced?

Perhaps the ability to make such comparisons between such disparate works is possible because any decent book, film, or whatever that's had any modicum of thought put into it will have some deep or fascinating ideas that can be easily hijacked to grind one's own personal axe on.

The History of Mars Attacks

In 1996 Warner Brothers released Mars Attacks. It featured more big-name stars than it knew what to do with, so it killed most of them off- none of the top-billed actors lived to see the end credits. This aside, it was very much a Tim Burton movie- the photo-realistic (at the time, anyway) rendering of a completely ludicrous B-movie situation was oddly creepy, and had the familiar Burton mix of merriment and the macabre (Jack Nicholson’s death scene is particularly memorable). The eerie, skeletal Martians and their array of cheesy but terrifying weapons and vehicles were ludicrous and straight out of a cold-war era 1950’s communism-parable invasion movie. However, the characters within the movie accepted this situation with po-faced seriousness, and as the script was unafraid to serve up horrible deaths to them, the audience was forced to take it seriously too. A quick scan of the net shows that this movie traumatised quite a few youngsters during its original run.

The inspiration behind the film came from an unusual and far more disturbing source- it may in fact be the only movie ever made based on a set of trading cards. In 1962, the company Topps, who specialised in baseball cards and bubblegum, released Mars Attacks, a series of cards that featured science fiction scenes. Topps had previously scored big with a civil war series of cards popular with the kids due to their high gore content. The idea of the Mars Attacks cards was to up the gore while presenting a loose retelling of a ‘War of the Worlds’ type invasion story, updated with 50’s sci-fi staples like flying saucers, ray-guns, marauding robots and giant insects.

The art was by Norm Saunders, a man known for many a lurid cover during the pulp-magazine era. These covers hinted (usually inaccurately) at the wonders within- scantily clad broads writhed in the grip of hideous monsters and unscrupulous Nazis, and square-jawed heroes and detectives shouldered open doors to come to their rescue. Saunders brought to the Mars Attacks cards a kind of hideous and gritty comic-book realism.

The plot wasn’t much to write home about- Mars is about to self-combust due to a build-up of internal pressure, so the big-brained Martians send thousands of warships to clear some new real estate for themselves on Earth. This they achieve with a violence that is genuinely astonishing. Flying saucers with mysterious heat-rays deal death onto army bases, topple skyscrapers, burn entire herds of cattle, leave Washington and New York in flames, slice passenger planes in two and make human torches of individual civilians. The scenes of death and destruction feature gory close-ups of humans with pained and agonised expressions that are occasionally quite unsettling. The Empire State building tumbles, trapping thousands of workers in a hellish blaze while hundreds more kill each other in the panic to leave the city by car. The cockpit of a fighter plane becomes a ‘’flaming coffin’ for a valiant pilot foolish enough to try to intercept a saucer.

Throughout the story, the sense of hopelessness is palpable. People hide out in basements until forced by hunger to leave their homes and walk streets where marauding bands of Martians exterminate humans on sight. Any brave attempt to resist or fight back is rewarded only with instant and horrible death. Martians capture beautiful girls to perform sadistic experiments on (there is a card depicting a dying mans’ removed heart being shown to him by his grotesque surgeon) in order to learn how to more effectively dispose of us, something at which they are extraordinarily creative. Saucers with giant shovels clear the streets of people and crush them against walls, Martians shrink humans to nothing or make frozen statues of them, and gargantuan robots walk the streets crushing humans beneath their spiked heels. Any prisoners captured by the Martians are no use to them due to the language difference, so they are strapped to the exhaust ports of their enormous machinery to be blown to oblivion. The diabolical scientists of the Red Planet have also devised a way to enlarge insects, and soon the world is overrun with a new horror. The US army is overwhelmed by a horde of homicidal spiders and the Eiffel Tower is consumed by a monstrous caterpillar- all in lurid comic-book Technicolor. And all the while the masters of the invasion watch and laugh from Mars.

Finally, the combined military of the ‘world’ (though only WASP American soldiers are shown) gets its act together and sends rockets to Mars to counterattack. This part of the story is gloriously ludicrous- because of a forcefield around the planet that prevents orbital bombing, soldiers wearing military helmets under their glass spacesuit helmets (why?) parachute to the surface and enter the Martians domed cities to deal out some vengeance. And yes, the cities have monorails (all ‘futuristic’ domed cities from the 60’s have monorails). The soldiers use their weapons to rip open the Martians huge, exposed brains. Nice. Actual earth tanks with US symbols on them (!) roll across the sands of Mars and smash their civilization into the ground. Eventually, the stars and stripes is hoisted on Mars and the soldiers leave just before geological forces tear the planet apart. All in all, it’s an enjoyably silly and unapologetic end to an otherwise harrowing tale.

Unsurprisingly, the cards were pulled from shops due to parental complaints. They are extremely rare nowadays, and a full set is worth around 2,500 US$. Scans of the cards are easily found on the Internet, and many of the images still have the power to shock. Due to the cult nature of Mars Attacks, in the 80’s a similar series was released called Dinosaurs Attack, which similarly featured a fanciful sci-fi premise, ridiculous amounts of gore, and scant regard for scientific or paleontological facts. Perhaps the most disturbing descendant of Mars Attacks is Don’t Let it Happen Here, a‘patriotically’ themed set of cards with artwork depicting scenes of hideous torture, terrorism and human rights abuses in countries other than the US. Scenes include an Iraqi man having his tongue cut off for speaking on television against Saddam Hussein, the Tokyo underground nerve gas killings, and young women in Bangladesh being scarred with sulphuric acid for rejecting suitors, a crime which, according to the card, is endorsed by their government. Presumably the reader is expected to think ‘thank God I live in America where nothing bad ever happens!’

Trading cards are not a phenomenon that ever really caught on outside the States. Just don’t get me started on Premier League Stickers…

The Wrestler Review

It’s the sort of thing one picks up through osmosis, pro wrestling. You may turn a blind eye to every bout of pretend pub-fighting that occurs on Smackdown come Friday night; you may turn a blind ear to every comment around the water-cooler come Monday morning. But if your friends are into it, you will succumb. At night it crawls into your ear, camps out in the Eustachian canal, and refuses all eviction notices. Pretty soon you will know what a ‘heel’ is, what a ‘face’ is, why nobody does a piledriver on Hulk Hogan anymore, and why Chris Benoit is now referred to only as ‘a certain Canadian’ (may he rest in peace, the murdering bastard). The trivia is as fascinating as it is- well- trivial.

It’s the kind of thing that could only have been born in the good old US of A, where even genuine sportsmen step up to bat to their own theme tune. It’s a world where the sport has taken a back seat to the spectacle. And it’s this which makes for such thrilling viewing, and such harrowing drama when it all goes wrong. A glittering façade of high-flying moves, memorable catchphrases and predetermined endings- but what does it hide?

The Wrestler opens with scenes of an aging Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke) recovering from a small show in a school gym in the backwoods of Nowheresville, USA. He pants. He pukes. His glory days are fifteen years in the past, and he’s got no insurance scheme. The promoter appears to give him his fifty bucks. He’s been screwed again.

My God, breathed the wrestling fans in the audience. It’s too real. At last, here was a vision of the seamy side of ‘the business’ that they recognised. Rourke is a likeable screw-up who loves what he does even though it’s literally killing him. His life is so tough that at times it’s hard to watch, but he makes the best of it with admirable good humour and attitude. He befriends a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold (Marisa Tomei) and tries to get in touch with his long estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). If all this sounds a little like Oscar fodder…well, it really is. If the schmaltz is a little heavy and frequent to be overlooked, then at least its well-handled schmaltz, with just the right amount of humour to boot. This is truly the only film featuring the ‘Necro Butcher’ that you can take your girlfriend to see. Rourke is amiable, and we want him to have some measure of success, though we know it won’t be anything unrealistic. It’s like a Rocky you can take seriously.

Wrestling fans know what they don’t want, and they’re pretty vocal about it. They know what happens to washed-up wrestlers in real life (they’ve seen them ‘perform’ at Neptune stadium), and you can’t sell them a Hollywood ending in this kind of story. The film doesn’t even try. It keeps its cred, even among the diehards, by getting all the details right. These guys know how wrestling works at the highest levels, and more importantly, at the lowest levels. The fights are convincing and accurate (more than you can say about this weeks’ Smackdown, probably). The crowd chants are cruel and thrilling as they are at a real event, and oddly infectious. You will laugh, cheer, stamp your feet and wince in pain. There is great enjoyment for fan and neophyte alike to be had from this peek into the bizarre demi-monde of pro wrestling.