Why the Hunger Games Fails

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is almost certainly one of the worst films ever made (no hyperbole intended). I patiently explain why, and suggest improvements

The cast of The Hunger Games, embarrassed about their crimes against cinema, listen to my suggestions attentively

A vast American woodland unfolds, bringing tidings of big-budget drama. Jennifer Lawrence is out hunting, and it's not long before she's shooting people with arrows and breaking boy's hearts left, right and centre (well, she is Jennifer Lawrence). As one ponders incredulously how anyone thought it would be a good idea to encourage impressionable young girls to adopt the solipsistic Katniss as a role model, the credits roll on an unconvincing cliff hanger. Hours have been wasted on limp social satire (if one can call it that) and gratuitous violence. I leave the cinema dissatisfied, annoyed that my cinematic companions ever thought it wise to subject me to this.
Bizarrely, my foolish friends had the audacity to believe that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a good film. Of course they were gravely mistaken, and so it is my solemn duty to instruct humanity on where this poor excuse for cinema is going wrong, and what can be done to stop the rot.

1) Get a better heroine

Jennifer Lawrence sets fire to a caravan. Nobody likes caravans.

Yes, she is Jennifer Lawrence, but unfortunately, Lawrence only shines when she gets proper roles, like in Winter's Bone and The Burning Plain. In The Burning Plain she set fire to some people, and yet still seemed more sympathetic than the cold fish she plays in The Hunger Games. That's mainly because she was allowed a little space to breathe as a character, rather than being flung headlong into unrealistic situations involving killer fog and spinning islands. Maybe I can't expect too much from teenage fiction heroes, Bella Swan and Harry Potter are hardly the most beautifully crafted creations in the world. But if such nauseating franchises are going to occupy so many of our cinema screens, can they at least behave a little like grown up films?
Katniss should be a little more like Tess Durbeyfield or Isabel Archer. Both of these women do unbelievably stupid things, Tess even turns homicidal near the end (not quite to the same extent as Katniss, mercifully). Yet they're likeable; you can empathize with them; they have more than one character trait. Need I continue? Yes, your heroine should make mistakes that may encourage the impassioned reader to want to shout at their paperbacks. But, she must at least feel a little self-doubt over her actions, and develop as a result (i.e. not continuing to shoot people with arrows).Then, perhaps, we may care when Katniss is struck by lightening, instead of hoping for a mortality in order to put an end to the whole sorry affair.

2) A moderately sensible plot wouldn't go amiss

Bernard and Lenina conclude they must sort their wardrobe out before they can save the world

Children killing each other? Really? Why? Aldous Huxley's World Controllers wouldn't even consider such an utter waste of resources, relying on their infinitely more subtle ways of manipulation. Orwell's tyrants recognized that fear, suspicion and constant monitoring is all one needs to keep the people down. With this, there's no need for such irresponsible, reality-TV-show inspired histrionics which, as the film demonstrates, have the opportunity of backfiring spectacularly. And don't you think that the parents would actually become more committed revolutionaries if their children were slain in the name of mass entertainment? The villainous Duke (Ralph Fiennes on top form) could only entrap Keira Knightley's eponymous Duchess with the threat of forbidding her from seeing her children. Once this threat was removed, I imagine she'd be perfectly happy to go skipping off into the sunset with Charles Grey, just as Suzanne Collins's would-be revolutionaries would then have nothing to hold back their efforts to bring down the Government.
Slightly silly plots are often a good thing. Slaughterhouse Five involved time travel and aliens, yet still managed to be a harrowing portrayal of the bombing of Dresden. Virginia Woolf's Orlando is deeply silly; the protagonist changes his/her sex halfway through for no identifiable reason, before living for hundreds of years with no one thinking this the least bit peculiar. How do these two texts get away with it while The -Hunger Games doesn't (apart from by being a lot better)? The difference is Vonnegut, Woolf and Huxley are all to some extent tongue-in-cheek, the reader is well aware that the author is delighting in being ever-so-slightly ridiculous. And yet they all portray a serious message about atrocities, gender and dystopian futures respectively. Orwell does take himself seriously, but then again Nineteen Eighty-Four had the solid grounding of the author's experience of Communist treachery during the Spanish Civil War, making much of the more elaborate aspects of the novel effectively allegorical. Until The Hunger Games stops taking itself so seriously (Harry Potter never seemed to in the earlier days), then perhaps it will have more success in broadcasting its vaguely Marxist message.

3) Get a better soundtrack (better still, turn it into a musical)

The Kaiser Chefs predict a riot

As I grimly braced myself for the ensuing cinematic torture that was The Hunger Games 2, I consoled myself with the fact that at least there'd be some decent songs in it. Coldplay had a solid contribution with the haunting Atlas (although fantastic verses give way to a weak chorus), and Ellie Goulding, Lorde and Of Monsters and Men had all chipped in. Imagine my horror when not one of these songs surfaced in the film itself. Why did these fabulous artists bother writing any of these numbers if no one was going to put them in the film they were singing about? All I got was the opening of Atlas in the credits, and as everybody knows, no one sticks around for the credits.
Baz Luhrman managed to include all of the songs sold as the Gatsby soundtrack into his film, and it clearly benefits from it (again, the point about not taking yourself too seriously stands, something Baz Luhrman can never be accused of). You can see the joyous delight Luhrman takes in cannibalizing pop culture in Moulin Rouge!. Gentlemen in top hats singing Nirvana; Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh's hilarious rendition of Like a Virgin; what's not to love? Indeed, why is The Hunger Games not a musical? Jennifer Lawrence could sing The Winner Takes it All! The evil President Snow could sing "you say you want a revolution, we-ell you know/ We all wanna change the world"! One of the riot police, or whatever they are, could sing "Oooo, watching the people get lairy/ It's not very pretty I tell thee" in an admonishing tone! In fact, lets change the name from the stupidly bland Catching Fire to The Hunger Games: The People Get Lairy.
But if in their wisdom, the makers of The Hunger Games decide not to turn the third installment into an all-singing, all-dancing finale, they should at least take a leaf out of Submarine's and Into the Wild's book and include some atmospheric, but not intrusive, ditties.

Quickfire Reviews (Part 6)

This Is The End/ The World's End

Can James Franco's strange hand gestures combat apocalyptic tidings?

 By some strange coincidence (or perhaps as a premonition of our impending doom) two apocalyptic comedies have been released about a bunch of blokes coping badly with the end of days. This Is The End is undoubtedly the funniest, with a collection of debaucherous American actors facing God's final reckoning at James Franco's house (much of the humour consists of the protagonists knowingly mocking the egotistical nature of actors, more specifically, them). The vague plot involves Emma Watson wielding an axe, Jonah Hill undergoing an exorcism and Danny McBride founding a cult of cannibals. But whilst This Is The End unashamedly goes for the obvious laughs, The World's End seeks to win your heart by one of the most bizarre set ups in the history of cinema. It's another collaboration between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, in which Pegg plays an alcoholic, egotistical failure of a man who, refusing to let go of the glory days of his adolescence, decides to revisit an unfinished pub crawl in his home town with four despairing friends. The beginning is almost painful to watch, with Pegg playing an utterly unlikeable character whose refusal to accept adulthood is more pathetic than funny. But in a shocking plot twist, the town has been taken over by robots with blue blood and it is up to the now drunken, slightly confused gang to save the world from invasion. The result is a decent send off to Edgar White's Three Flavours of Cornetto trilogy, although it's a shame that the chemistry between Frost and Pegg is only really capitalised upon at the film's climax, surprising being outstripped by Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel in the former film. So if your in the mood for a comedy about the end of the world (I often am), then This Is The End is your best option.

This Is The End 7/10
The World's End 6/10

Dear River/ The Civil Wars

John and Joy smolder as they think of sheep and banjos

Everybody loves a bit of folk (well maybe not everybody). But aside from Mumford and Sons, and their mini mes the Lumineers, which bands are likely to get you raving whilst sheering sheep in a desolate field in Scotland, if that is indeed what folk fans do? Fortunately, help is at hand. Emily Barker and her Red Clay Halo are back with Dear River, but for fans of her previous album Almanac, a melancholic and atmospheric tribute to traditional folk, this latest offering may be something of a surprise. Emily Barker is now something I never thought she'd be: loud. Indeed songs like Tuesday and Ghost Narrative almost call for head banging, which as we all know, is a bit odd if you were expecting something along the lines of Danny Boy. Barker and her entourage appear to be veering towards the marketable stereotype of madly-strumming-guitars-accompanying-massive-folk-sing-along that the Mumford and Sons have clung to. Nevertheless, Dear River captivates with its first song and is never short of memorable melodies. The same can be said for The Civil Wars eponymous second album, although it's a somewhat darker affair than Dear River. You get the feeling of the songs been set in some barmy small town American backwash, where our male and female vocalists John Paul White and Joy Williams boast about their sexual exploits in the rollicking I Had Me a Girl. In the surprisingly cheerful Oh Henry, Joy threatens the lecherous titular character with the alarming line "Don't you know that we don't need one more grave in this town?". But despite being slightly dangerous to be around, The Civil Wars deliver an impressive collection of songs, with the addition of a couple of atmospheric covers. So all in all, folk lovers should probably buy both, to while away the midnight hours whilst leaping round a camp fire roasting marshmallows on horseback (is that folk lovers or Boy Scouts?).

Dear River 8/10
The Civil Wars 8/10

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet/ Jacob's Room

Something very interesting occurs to the left of Virginia

So as I am such a cool person, I decided to compare modernist Jacob to postmodernist Jacob, or in normal terms a Virginia Woolf novel and a David Mitchell novel. Jacob's Room was Woolf's first experimental novel, and the seeds of Mrs Dalloway are clearly identifiable. But there are a lot of things wrong with it, the authorial presence seems uncertain at times with ill advised intrusions and her attempt to convey the meaningless of life through the idolatry of the silent Jacob begins to become "Jacob's heartbreak of the chapter" near the end. But nevertheless, there are those traditional details of character that make any Woolf novel sumptuous, and a bad Woolf novel is still a good work of fiction by any other standard. Whilst modernist Jacob is an enigma, postmodern Jacob is your likeable Everyman, desperately trying to hold on to moral standards in the immoral surroundings of the Japanese port of Deijma. The book is divided into three acts, which start off fairly sensible and end up utterly barmy. Of course it's all a comment on how we poor souls are being manipulated by advanced capitalism, with a particularly nasty villain and the theme of language, culture and their manipulation running through it. And although the central set-up of the evil monastery on the mountain is a little bit silly, it works out as a clever metaphor for women trapped in the expectations of modern day life. And at any rate, the historical backdrop is fascinating.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 7/10
Jacob's Room 7/10

Topical Ponderings: Social Satire and the Questioning Reader

Should every work of art offer a shocking insight into the current cultural zeitgeist, or is perhaps an exploration of the inner life more important? To begin this deep and probing search, I shall examine a very odd film by the much loved director of Back to the Future, Bob Gale.

Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road manages extraordinarily to be even stranger than Gale's earlier time travelling extravaganzas, and perhaps sometimes gets lost in its own oddness. The tone is uneven and it uncomfortably vacillates between bildungroman and social satire, only really excelling when focusing on the latter. James Marsden's performance as our hero Neil Oliver often falls a little flat, and his quest to meet the ethereal girl he obsessively draws is unrealistic to say the least. But some little gems emerge nevertheless as Oliver journeys down the eponymous road (that doesn't exist). We are presented with the predicament of a town where the crime rate has been kept down by legalizing highly addictive drugs which kill the sex drive and essentially makes addicts slaves to the Government. Metaphor for late capitalist consumerism anyone? The scenario has been stolen from the barely readable Naked Lunch if I remember correctly, but it's still impactful.

Aldous Huxley has infinite amounts of fun toying with drugs in Brave New World, with the World Controllers using some bizarre form of hypnotism whilst people sleep to encourage them to taken Soma, a hallucinogenic without all the unpleasant side effects. The idea is that when our sulky hero, Bernard Marx, has all his depressing ideas, he should take the drug to achieve short term happiness. After all, "everyone is happy now". Of course everyone only thinks they're happy and Bernard Marx chooses to grumble rather than take Soma. 
It's not hard to make the leap to a society where buying the latest consumer goods and satisfying all kinds of desires at every turn prevents any serious thought or questioning of the ruling powers. And as David Mitchell astutely predicted in Cloud Atlas, the human hunger for more will remain insatiable, possibly leading to our destruction, but conveniently encouraging free people to give their consent to be enslaved by society.
These are both interesting works, fantastical yet cerebral, and hopefully encouraging us not to be so lethargic about living and question things more often. But is this all that makes a great work?
The Waves by Virginia Woolf is a very good book, for some the culmination of a run of experimental novels which began with the famous Mrs Dalloway. But aside from a few cheeky pot shots at empire (imperial hero Percival dies by falling off a horse, all of the characters take this very seriously but it's easy to see the irony), there's not a lot in the way of social criticism. Even if there was, would what was radical in its time still be radical more or less 100 years later. In the case of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Howard's End and The Great Gatsby yes, but in most cases probably not.

If so, what makes The Waves great? Many would say its experimental style. It's written in prose that feels more like poetry, consisting almost entirely of "dramatic soliloquies", no dialogue, interspersed with the occasional descriptions of the waves breaking across the length of a day, which of course is a metaphor for life itself. Furthermore, whilst the other novels and books mentioned have focused on making us question social structures, The Waves makes us question selfhood. This is most powerfully envisaged through Bernard, who takes on the character of Byron during his youth to hide behind, only feels himself when recounting empty phrases to others, and at the novel's climax his sense of self abandons him and he tops himself
In fact all of the characters lead a thoroughly miserable existence; even Jinny, who only seems to care about fashion and seduction has the occasional wobble. Rhoda lives in a fantasy world, is terrified of human contact and lacks any sense of self; Louis is commercially successful, but locked in a constant mission for perfection; Susan retreats to a pastoral idyll with a Victorian housewife's mentality, occasionally glimpsing something more which she had failed to reach; Neville is horribly intense and only flourished in intimate one on one situations. Bernard comments over dinner (in his head mercifully) that they have all failed to be human beings, and you can't help but agree with him. But in the end, don't we all fail?
It's good for us to be made to question things on all sorts of levels. We shouldn't ignore oppressive regimes and outrageous poverty to sit in candlelight pondering the meaning of life, but equally if we're overly political we may lose track of deeper philosophical questions. Therefore both Huxley and Woolf are worth a read, and despite its occasionally terrible moments, Interstate 60 is also worth a shot.

Quickfire Reviews (Part 5)

Exams are over, and so it is time for me to share my cinematic experiences with you. Enjoy.

Evil Dead

Jane Levy is looking good

Well, I couldn't resist. After the Plasticine zombie romp became a cult film and spanned a cult trilogy, Sam Raimi and co. have decided to see if they can milk some more money out of it in the 21st Century with debut  director Fede Alvarez at the helm. And we all know that horror movie remakes have a tendency to be ever so slightly awful. This originally seemed to be an exception. The acting is infinitely better, and benefits without the wooden performances of Bruce Campbell and his zombified friends. Jane Levy radiated sympathy as Mia, a drug addict going cold turkey. Things start to get a bit out of hand when Mia's hairy friend reads from a scary book, defying common sense by ignoring many elaborate warnings against doing so. Then Mia is got by a tree, but her unpleasant friends won't let her leave. And then everyone turns into zombies.
There are many good things about this film. It is tremendously good at suspense in the early stages, and the theme of drug addiction and the shots of characters seeing zombified versions of themselves in the mirror adds a new level to the ensuing shenanigans. There's a lovely sequence involving Jane Levy and a flooded basement, and believe it or not, this remake actually has some emotional depth to it (it has to, there's violins), which the original embarrassingly searched for.
But there are still some blunders. Alvarez relies to much on gore, meaning that when we actually get round to the proper scares they lack impact and it succumbs to the familiar horror movie flaw of not knowing when to end, it always seems like there's one more demon that threatens to kill our protagonists, whilst the encounters with the zombies do become a little repetitive, as they tend to be strangely inspired by 127 Hours.
But the main flaw with trying to remake Evil Dead is that there is already a remake, it's called The Cabin in the Woods and is a lot better. This plucky reboot was doomed from the start.

Rating: 5/10

The Tree of Life

Brad Pitt's fathering skills come into question

Throughout Terrence Malick's movie, you get the feeling that the director is sitting somewhere, smug about how clever he is. This film oozes 'deep and meaningful' undertones, with tortured characters murmuring profound phrases against scenes of the creation of the universe whilst an enthusiastic soprano sings the Agnus Dei. The film is meant to be about the search for God, but it ends up being about Brad Pitt being generally unpleasant and corrupting a child that has the pleasure of growing up to be Sean Penn, who wanders aimlessly around Wall Street looking grief stricken. Critics love it, but I found it unengaging, with some visually breathtaking or eye opening moments lost in a desert of far too many close ups of Brad Pitt's odd looking child (Hunter McCracken). And after two hours of not a lot happening, everyone decides gleefully that God does exist without any prompting. Perhaps I'm missing something, but after rave reviews this was a bloated disappointment.

Rating: 4/10

Moonrise Kingdom

Everyone loves a wedding

From Wes Anderson comes one of those conscientiously quirky films designed to make your heart melt. Every shot is so self-consciously odd that its bound to put a smile on your face. Bob Balaban's Narrator appears randomly across the idyllic New England isle we find ourselves on, informing us of the surrounding environment and weather conditions with the zeal (and appearance) of an enthusiastic geography teacher. Edward Norton's Scout Master Ward seems like FBI Agent Dale Cooper in a parallel universe where his career hasn't gone quite as planned. Our two young leads (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) seem like younger versions of the protagonists in Submarine, playing troubled children who find each other in their chaotic lives, and both come across as completely charming. This is pure escapism, reaching back to a simpler time where all it took was survival skills and a few sci-fi hardbacks to flee from the mundane nature of everyday life. And there's fireballs and hurricanes. I defy anyone not to enjoy this!

Rating: 10/10

The Reader

Kate Winslet makes the difficult decision as to whether she prefers Fiennes or DiCaprio

In a role that's about as far away from Titanic as you can possibly get, Kate Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a mysterious woman who seduces an impressionable 15 year old (David Gross). The 'lovers' are abruptly parted, until Schmitz awkwardly resurfaces at one of the later Nuremberg Trials, uncovered as a heartless Nazi who compiled lists of people to send to death camps and watched coldly as Jews were incinerated in a burning church. Director Stephen Daldry enjoys creating moral ambiguity, bizarrely encouraging us to root for Schmitz despite her heinous crimes. Joyously, Schmitz's conquest grows up to be Ralph Fiennes in a typically fantastic performance, but even he isn't very nice and verges on being solipsistic.Although the film contains some important lessons about the Holocaust, the focus is always firmly on the relationship between the two protagonists, preventing the viewer from being consumed by the sheer awfulness of history. The result is an accomplished tragic love story.

Rating: 8/10

Into The Wild

Christopher McCandless goes for a walk

I more than anyone am sick of books and films claiming that they are going to change the way I think forever, or something very similar. This one makes no such grand statements, and ironically is one of the few movies that would be justified in making them. Based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, a college student who sold all his possessions in order to journey across America, with his ultimate goal being to live alone in the wilds of Alaska. McCandless is intriguing from the start, embodying the very American idea of self-creation by christening himself Alexander Supertramp, but rejecting out of hand the materialism at the heart of society which arguably imprisons us all. However, this is not a gleeful call to arms for us to all up sticks and live on the open road. This is a tragedy, with McCandless's hubris being his disregard of other people, often abandoning those who have grown to love him and showing clear callousness to his broken family, and his dream of living in the wilderness threatens to destroy him. Emile Hirsch does a great job of playing Christopher, really capturing his spirit and making it hard for us not to love him. Jena Malone plays Christopher's long suffering sister, reminding us throughout of the devastating effect of Christopher's abandonment and explaining the reasons for his escape. The supporting cast are equally brilliant, the soundtrack irresistible, the shots on location breathtaking. This film will make you heart soar, and then mercilessly break it.

Rating: 10/10

The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby invites us to admire his bowtie

Well, there certainly has been a bit of controversy surrounding this one. Baz Luhrman's attempt to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald's much loved novel has its lovers and loathers. His decisions to use rap, 3D and place poor old Nick Carraway in a metal hospital have received excited criticism. Nevertheless, something we should agree on is that Leonardo DiCaprio makes a great Gatsby, with more charm than Rodger Redford's take and capturing both the "irresistible imagination" of Gatsby and his more dangerous and criminal side. Carey Mulligan manages to make Daisy marginally sympathetic, no easy feat, and Tobey Maguire makes a touching Carraway. Some may object to what has been called the "neon" Gatsby (bright, empty and slightly painful to look at), but it is exciting to watch and accessible to a modern audience. It's two and a half running time doesn't have a dull moment, with humour, romance and heartbreaking tragedy. Fitzgerald's best line are fitted in nicely, the soundtrack works surprisingly well and the haunting green light reminds us that there's a little Gatsby in all of us.

Rating: 9/10

Quickfire Reviews (Part 4)

It's been a while. Here are some films I prescribe next time you find yourself on the hunt for DVDs, and some that I advise you avoid at all costs:

Sunshine

Danny Boyle's 2007 follow-up to the slightly manic 28 Days Later seems to have received a lukewarm reception, and I admit I'd never heard of it until I explored Mr Boyle's filmography. Nevertheless, this is a loving tribute to what Boyle calls "serious sci-fi films", and works with the templates created by Alien and 2001. It combines the horror of the former film and the imagination of the latter to create "a thinking man's thriller".There are buried religious themes, but bizarrely you can interpret them as both confirming and denying the existence of God, depending on which perspective you look at it from. The visual style is characteristically visceral, and we move from a low-key start to a gripping, if slightly confused, climax. My only criticism is that the ensemble cast of characters means you never really get to emphasise with any of them, but that's a common feature of these types of films. Cillian Murphy still performs admirably as our unwitting lead without really saying anything.

Rating: 8/10

Mars Attacks!

Speaking of filmographies, this is a surprise entry from Tim Burton. It seems to be a film without a real cause, tracking the lives of various oddball characters as badly animated Martians invade America. Unfortunately, oddball in this case means two dimensional characters with occasional propensities for strangeness. Nevertheless, there are some little gems. Jack Nicholson as the self-interested and incompetent oath who happens to be President is a highlight, and Tom Jones pops up near the end of the film for no apparent reason. As much as I admire Burton's stab at social commentary (saying that technologically advanced nations can't be barbaric is a bit rich coming from the USA), the characteristically beautiful "twisted fairytale" vibe that came to dominate his later films hasn't yet been established fully, and this is no Big Fish or Edward Scissorhands.

Rating: 5/10

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene's shocking and engaging book is turned into a slightly less shocking and engaging film. Although the soaring violins give the film a romantic dimension that was lacking in the book, there's been an annoying reshuffling of characters, and Sarah eventually gives up on her promise to God in the cinematic version, which seems to undermine the whole religious/redemptive element. Nevertheless, Ralph Fiennes excels as Bendrix, becoming the type of obsessive monster that develops when the moral laws he should have used to check himself with are slackened by the mid-20th Century. Julianne Moore arguably steals the show with the bomb scene, while elsewhere Stephen Rae is a truly dishevelled husband and Jason Isaacs (forever Jackson Brodie) is a condescending priest.

Rating: 7/10

Twelve in a Box

Pitching itself was a low-key comedy without the inherent quirkiness of In Memory of My Father, Twelve in a Box turns into one of those comedies where the best you get out of it is faint amusement. Essentially, it's a big game of  'spot the British sitcom actor'. The absurdly convoluted plot should lead to giggles, but doesn't. Twelve old school friends have to spend four days in a stately home to earn £12,000,000. Lives are ended and marriages are broken, but it plays out like the concoction of a few bored amateur dramatics. The worst part is that we're promised on the box that Miranda Hart will take the lead, only for her to be hysterically bungled into a spare room. A disappointment.

Rating: 6/10

The Boat That Rocked

Now here's how comedy should be done. We have nostalgia, a whole host of lovable characters, a killer soundtrack and an anarchic sense of humour. We're aboard a less than sea worthy vessel that broadcasts the popular pirate radio station: Radio Rock. Unfortunately, Kenneth Branagh is employing the evil Twatt (Jack Davenport) to close down the station for its promotion of sex, drugs and rock and roll. All three of these are in abundance, as James (Charlie Rowe) somehow ends up on board to correct his wayward nature (not the wisest idea) and embarks on a quest to lose his virginity and find his father. This is another film where the lead barely says anything (you're not the first Cillian Murphy!), but with a supporting cast this good, it's hard not to take a back seat. We have 2/3 of the cast of the IT Crowd, and Bill Nighy is always ready with a wonderful one-liner. Richard Curtis has delivered an absolute delight.

Rating: 9/10

Topical Ponderings: What Makes the Perfect Ghost Story?

Horror: one of the most repetitive genres out there.  But what is the winning formula? What makes the perfect ghost story?

Tonight (26/4/13), disappointing supernatural drama Lightfields, which had been about as pale and insubstantial as the ghost at the heart of the story, comes to a presumably disappointing end. Anyone with half a brain cell is way ahead of the lazy, meandering plot, which makes it all the more infuriating when it casts suspicion on people we know didn't kill Lucy Felwood. The parallel lives of the three different generations are too disparate, with a few of the same characters crossing over but no thematic links apart from the ghost of Lucy Felwood, who is irritating.

Lucy isn't a particularly good ghost. In Lightfield's 2011 precursor Marchlands, at least the little girl was inventive when she chose to pounce on you, at one point being in the washing machine. Lucy is just very good at counting, which isn't particularly terrifying. So if Lightfields fails, what makes a really chilling ghost story?

If asked to name the best haunted house film of recent years, many would say The Woman in Black. We are presented with good old fashioned scares involving a seemingly omnipresent spectre and an ensemble of dead children. And because somehow it was only a 12A, it's probably succeeded in condemning several children to nightmares involving ghosts attacking Harry Potter. Speaking of our protagonist, Daniel Radcliffe isn't very good, but mercifully all he's called upon to do is look scared. However, beneath the creepy music, it's fairly run of the mill. The thought of children committing suicide is repulsive, but I prefer something a little more chilling in more supernatural yarns.

Films like The Woman in Black are brilliant when you're in the cinema, and Insidious is another example, but they don't leave much of a lasting impression afterwards (other than the embarrassment of clutching one of my friends knees in sheer panic, but we wont go into that). Proper ghost stories send a shiver down your spine whenever you recall them.

The Awakening is a better film for me. While the scares are less frequent and sometimes less impactful, a shock twist at the end makes the film stick in your memory. And it's creepier than The Woman in Black or Insidious, as dead children are always worse and we all fear the spectres that may be lingering in our memory. Another shock ending is The Sixth Sense, but the rest of the film is fairly average so doesn't live up to the final revelation.

\But yet again, these films don't quite cut it, as the movie needs to be brilliant all the way through, it can't just have a good ending. And with all the dramatic music and sharp editing, its easy to become detached and not care about our hero's fate. We need to feel like we're stuck in the same situation as our protagonist, to fill our pulses rise in sync with theirs. And if that's going to happen, the film needs to have a lower budget.

Lets talk about Blair Witch Project. In the great scheme of things, it's done more bad than good, Cloverfield and the boring Paranormal Activity series. But although many disagree, I thought it was brilliant. The atmosphere was so electric that you could really feel our heroes isolation and desperation growing, and it was as if you were in the forest with them. Yes, the plot is almost non-existent, but it generally is in ghost stories. The ending, which many find insubstantial, I think makes the film. We never discover quite what caused the death of our intrepid film makers.
spawning an overwhelming number of found footage films, including the appalling

Another ambiguous ending concludes the equally experimental Silent House. Featuring Elizabeth Olsen, who was so brilliant in Martha Marcy May Marlene, the film is made to look like it was shot all in one take, moving in strict real time rather than the days that Blair Witch Project spans. Olsen is very good at being scared as she dashes through the darkened house, and we feel everything with her. The jaunty camera work means that sometimes we're not quite sure what's set her off, and robbing us of this knowledge is a master stroke. The movie sets itself up to be fairly low key, but it spirals into a surreal nightmare. In a strange nod to to The Evil Dead (you just can't escape that film), Olsen finds herself in a bathroom with a strange girl in a bath and blood pouring out of a cistern that's facing out of the wall for some reason. By the end, the trust we've invested in our fellow sufferers is shattered. Of the cast of four: three of them are murderers, one of them's a child abuser and one of them's a figment of the imagination.

These two films are fantastic, but can what we've learnt about disorientation and ambiguity be applied to a traditional ghost story? For anyone who's read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, the answer is yes. And the book is such a good ghost story because it's never really about ghosts, in fact it's questionable if there's any ghosts in it at all. It seems to be about the disintegration of the upper class, the ghost of country house dramas is still a reminder of a simpler life before the woes of the modern age. But it's also about madness, family ties and love. The whole book is fantastic, but with the ending it really hits the nail on the head. Because we're never sure who killed the final inhabitant of Hundreds Hall. The easy explanation is that it was the ghost of the little girl (and this is an improvement on the norm, we have a homicidal ghost), which is in keeping with all the oddities that have occurred thus far. But if we move away from the comfort of supernatural explanations, we're left with the bare facts that our protagonist, the kindly Dr Faraday, chucked his jilting lover down the stairs. And if you think about it, this does seem the more rational explanation. After all, there has to be a touch of evil about a man who takes advantage of a woman's fragile mental state to seduce her. And if there's no ghost, then the family was mad, or maybe our doctor killed the rest of them. The moral of this story, living people are infinitely more scary than dead ones.

So, in our discussion of Lightfields we've made many important discoveries. First of all, you have to be moderately interesting before you die. Lucy Felwood is about as insipid as they come. Secondly, it's not all about the shocks if you want long term impact, a creepy concept will serve you well. And finally, for a killer ghost story, you need a touch of uncertainty. It can't be clear cut, there must be some detail that haunts the viewer, like a ghost that just refuses to go away.

Journey of a Gentleman in Search of Culture (Part 1)

The perilous voyages of a bourgeois gentlemen to the theatre and the cinema.

The RSC is like a theatre on steroids, in fact it is the only such establishment in which I have found a bewildering hall of mirrors and a restaurant that serves divine lamb and delicious mushrooms with feta cheese. But once they'd gone to all this trouble with the theatre, I regret to say the advertising of Hamlet left a little to be desired. The poster was simply a fencing helmet. I want portraits of renowned actors who look like they're engaged in existential puzzles, not a bloody fencing helmet!

After this minor disappointment, an ominous voice instructed me to "turn of my mobile telephone" and "proceed into the auditorium". It's always a treat seeing what elaborate concoction the RSC have dreamed up for their latest attempt to bring deeper context to Shakespeare's plays. The Globe are satisfied in giving you  strangely nostalgic treat in trying to recreate traditional Shakespearean performances, but the RSC go the extra mile, taking each play individually and styling it according to its unique character.

The set for this latest take on Shakespeare's most famous play was a curious mix of a school gym and a Bavaria hunting lodge, with a dramatic roof stretching overhead which created a sense of claustrophobia. It was all pleasingly rustic, with the central stage surrounded by filth and skulls embedded in the dirt (I felt it represented the death and decay at the heart of the play and all our lives, my theatrical companion was less sure). Lighting was used to striking effect, we were plunged into neon darkness at each appearance of Dead Hamlet and the lighting for the rest of the play perfectly matched the tone of that particular scene.

It turned out the minimalistic poster was set to reflect a minimalist take on Hamlet. Following David Tennant's renowned take on the Prince of Denmark, which played out like a slick version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, David Farr had chosen to take the play back to basics. Taking inspiration from the line "O that this too too solid flesh would melt", the creative team had chosen to portray Hamlet as suffering from depression from the start, making the play a savage attack against the modern stigma of depression. Although I admired the fresh take, the central mystery of Hamlet is whether he's really mad or simply putting on "an antic disposition". He was clearly bonkers in this one, Jonathon Slinger coupled moments of delirious madness with sober contemplation of "self slaughter".

Now I know this is a rather peevish criticism, but Hamlet was definitely a mature student, and his interaction with the considerably younger Ophelia (Pippa Nixon), Horatio (Alex Waldmann), Rosencratz (Oliver Ryan) and Guildenstern (Nicholas Tennant) was frankly quite odd. After a string of brilliant younger Hamlets (Branagh, Tennant, Wishaw) why abandon this tradition now? Speaking of Horatio though, it seems the reason he's not "fortune's slave" in this one is because he's too drugged out of his skull to care, in fact the general trend was retro 60s attire coupled with some hideous jumpers surely knitted by The Killing's Sarah Lund. Indeed Horatio is portrayed as a pathetic figure here, rather than the soft spoken and wise version that consoled David Tennant. This made it all the more poignant that Hamlet holds him up as a shining example of a man and that he's the only one who has got anything good to say about the Philosopher Prince, and let's be honest, Horatio was always Hamlet's bitch.

The effect of removing the majority of the glitz and glamour means that you can almost envisage the play taking place in a much colder Middle East, especially with the added emphasis on the multiple disturbances and attempted coups. Strangely they cut Fortinbras again, which is a shame as now three and a half  hours of play tails of with Horatio getting soaked (don't ask) instead of the nice summing up Shakespeare had in mind.

Stand out performances came from  Robin Soans's Polonius and Pippa Nixon's Ophelia, two characters which are usually portrayed as a blithering idiot and an annoying subplot respectively. Greg Hicks's isn't bad as Claudius either. He's certainly mastered a thin smarmy political veneer and makes an excellent ghost, but when he finally gets round to confessing his crime it falls a little flat.

The next day, I exchanged the beautiful suburbia of Stratford for the gritty reality of Stoke. After dodging several knife attacks and gang shoot outs, I arrived at Costa coffee and celebrated my survival with a Mocha Latte that was slightly too heavy on the chocolate. However, as I sipped my drink I felt a sniper trained on me in the distance by a rather disgruntled member of the proletariat. Thankfully, I was saved by the arrival of my cinematic companion, the dog-dying-laugher Oliver Getley, and we retreated from certain doom to the safety of the Odeon.

Here I could appreciate Danny Boyle's latest masterpiece, Trance, starring the fabulous James McAvoy and two other people (Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel). The two other people actually turned out to be just as good (and just as nasty) as McAvoy, in a bizarre cross between Boyle's Shallow Grave and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with possibly a dash of Inception in the dream sequences. But it all played out spiffingly, with Boyle's characteristic off key charm and visceral imagery. True, I was slightly dazed by the end of it, and wasn't entirely sure what happened, but this simply demands a second viewing. Donnie Darko made a lot more sense by the fourth time.

So, I had survived the perils of Stoke-on-Trent, whilst finding time to appreciate the works of Shakespeare and Danny Boyle. But how will this posh twit fare on further cultural exploits? Will the Disgruntled Proletariat Sniper finally get his revenge on the bourgeoisie? Find out in Part II.....

Topical Ponderings: The Death of the Real

Has cinema become terrified of that nasty thing we call the real world? What is the source of the current obsession with revamping fairytales? Simon Fearn investigates.

A few years ago, the winner of the prestigious Eurovision Song Contest (not really) was a Norwegian twelve year-old who grinned his way through a chorus of "I'm in love with a fairytale, even though it hurts". My inability to recall the singer's name is evidence enough of the song's success, but our obsession with fairytales has persisted. When I (not unreasonably) wanted to go and see Danny Boyle's Trance at Uttoxeter's Cineworld, I was confronted with unspeakable horror. Their four screens were filled with Oz: The Great and Powerful, The Croods, Jack the Giant Slayer and Hansel and Grettle: Witch Hunters. It seemed not to occur to them that people over the age of twelve might like to go to the cinema. But even more alarmingly: two of these films were fairytale-based action movies which are becoming something of a pandemic and one of them was a prequel to a children's book (which apparently has hidden depths concerning Great Depression related satire, but even so). Why are we so obsessed with bloody fairytales?

There are probably many explanations. Escapism is now in vogue in an era where the Germans think its acceptable to take 40% of someone's money out of their bank account. The latest Hobbit film was a telling example of this longing to hark back to some sort of pastoral netherworld without George Osborne condemning us to increasingly depressing budgets. Perhaps people are just running out of ideas. This would explain why every October we're treated to yet another Paranormal Activity film which is a carbon copy of the last one. Perhaps fresh tales can never have the same impact as the old ones, which is why shady Hollywood film makers wish to milk the cash cows of childhood fables.



Can the opening scene of 28 Days Later be described as iconic?

In a recent interview with that demon of our airwaves, Chris Evans (I am often forced to listen to Radio 2, and am shocked that Evans doesn't know when Easter is), Danny Boyle said that he tried to give his films an element of the mythological. Then Chris Evans went on to insult him by saying "there is a chance that no one will like your film". But aside from my desire to be the architect of Chris Evans's destruction, Boyle has a point. In 28 Days Later there's that iconic scene where our hero wakes up in a deserted London, that cannot fail to send shivers down your spine. That sequence has seeped into out cultural fabric, and was adapted by US zombie fest series The Walking Dead.

And if we're going to talk zombies, they've been attacked from every imaginable angle with varying degrees of success. We've come a long way from Romeo's iconic Night of the Living Dead, we now have the zomcom (Zombieland), zombie romance (Warm Bodies) and zombie psycho-drama (BBC3's fantastic In The Flesh). Is it just me, or did someone, someday have a good idea and everyone's just milking it for all its worth? Is it the same with fairytales?

Last year there were two films about Snow White (Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman). It's a story about nasty fruit (which has itself been ingrained in our psyche since Eve made the mistake of listening to a talking serpent), vain women and short people. Do we honestly need two films about it? I've already talked about out obsession with vampire films in a previous article, and the idea of modern vampires all stems from a book by Bram Stoker, whose tedious use of the epistolary form bores even the most patient reader.

If we include the modern vampire story as a fairytale, then our definitions includes practically everything that's had time to sink into our psyche. The practise of allusion in novels mean that old books never quite die, and great authors will be quoting Shakespeare till kingdom come. And perhaps that's why we have this reverence for classic literature, but yet we don't share this respect for more modern books. I'm not of the belief that fiction has got worse, so why are older books considered far superior to some of the most exciting, experimental works of the 20th century?

If pressed, I wager most of us know the basic plots to Hamlet, Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. And they are iconic tales, beautifully crafted in such a way that every moment deserves the historic significance we give it. Unlike the fairytale adaptations that cinema is currently churning out, they were beautifully constructed with a view to telling us something about the human condition that fairytales can never quite achieve. So it seems peevish to say that they've sunk into our psyche simply because of age and constant allusion in younger texts. Indeed, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has become iconic, with big brother and room 101 sticking in our minds. But is this the way Orwell wrote his masterpiece, or simply because there have been TV shows called Big Brother and Room 101?

Taking this into consideration, it's difficult to say whether iconic tales are iconic because of their individual merit or because of the constant brutalisation they receive at the hands of profit hungry morons. The latter seems to be the case when more people have heard Kate Bush's song Wuthering Heights rather than read Bronte's novel, and as a result of this Heathcliff has become some kind of rugged, tempestuous romantic hero. The song fails to mention that he murders puppies or the horrific way he treats his wife to get at Cathy. And so these elements of Heathcliff's character fail to register with many of us. This also explains the appeal of fairytales. Most of them aren't very good, but we all know them from childhood, so this explains the curious desire to see them played out on the big screen.

Those who are a fan of postmodern philosophy (and I doubt there are many of you) may be aware of a theorist called Baudrillard, who famously said that Disneyland exists to make the rest of America seem real. He believed that we're so overwhelmed by simulations (yes cinema, that does include you) that much of our experience of the real world is constructed around representations of it (how does seeing countless on screen couples say "I love you" influence how we say the famous three words). Baudrillard also said that we are desperately looking for reality as we realise everything that we thought was real is so dependant upon simulation that it can be dismissed as fake. But on this point he seemed to be wrong. We seem to have given in, let ourselves be overcome by the death of the real. When we once searched for gritty realism in our films, or social satire on the latest political outlook, now we seem to be churning over our culture, trying to remodel old ideas. It as if we're trying to worm our way into the comfortable fabric of our cultural history, scared of our future and in denial of our present. Is this just a passing fad, or is this our future? If it is, then I can see my trips to the cinema becoming more and more infrequent.

Simon's Revision Tips: Twin Peaks

Feeling down at the prospect of hours in front of a desk revising your way to certain doom? Simon Fearn has some advice.

Yesterday, I faced the depressing task of constructing a revision timetable, consigning myself to endless hours of trying to memorise dates, places and philosophers. Looking at the stoic columns of revision slots stretching out to envelop the forthcoming days, I felt despair creeping up on me. The only solution was to take the advice a slightly odd FBI agent gave me a few days previous. "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.". So I followed Agent Cooper's advice, and scheduled a Twin Peaks break every day at 1:30pm, to be enjoyed with a slice of killer cherry pie.

You may be wondering what Twin Peaks is, and why I am prescribing it as the cure to your revision woes. And this surprisingly takes me to Bastille's debut album: Bad Blood. Slated as a rip-off of the synth pop that apparently only the now extinct La Roux is allowed to play, Dan Smith released an odd fusion of addictive vocals, anthemic choruses and classical references (the opener is called Pompeii). The best song on the album was entitled Laura Palmer. Despite the bland chorus lyrics ("this is your heart, can you feel it?"), it had intriguing references to "all the people of the town, cast their eyes right to the ground, in matters of the heart" and "such terrifying final sights". Who was the mysterious dead girl who went running out into the night, never to be seen again?

The titular characters of this anthemic song next shows up when she washes up as a corpse wrapped in plastic in 1990's Twin Peaks. Deep fault lines are revealed within an enclosed community, and practically everyone seems to be conspiring against everyone else. Then Agent Dale Cooper arrives on the scene, and things start to get really confusing. Dark figures haunt the dreams of the townsfolk, especially a terrifying vision of an animalistic man with long unruly hair. Then Agent Cooper starts basing his investigation on the testimony of an ethereal midget, who also feels the need to tell Cooper that "his favourite gum is coming back into fashion". This leads him to the seedy One Eyed Jack's Casino, owned by the insidious Ben Horne, where all manner of nasty things take place.

Essentially Twin Peaks is all about pairings and oppositions, togetherness and duality. The first series has so many couples conducting secret affairs that we're almost in soap opera territory, but these clandestine doings are conducting in quirky ways with the ominous threat of violence. Meanwhile, there seems to be inner conflicts within all of the characters. Bobby Briggs is one of the most complex characters on television: utterly wild, capable of acts of great love and great callousness, both altruistic towards his paramour Shelly Johnson and inherently selfish, determined to break away from his conservative military father, but then breaking down whenever someone breaks his fragile outer shell. Josie Packard is a similar case, throughout her time in the first series it seems like everyone is willing her downfall and she's the innocent victim, but then the tables are turned when it transpires that she is involved in some exceptionally dirty deeds.

The reason I recommend Twin Peaks to provide a break from the Sisyphean nature of revision is that there's so much going on in it that you can't help put be pulled in to the mysterious ways of the titular isolated American settlement. Plus, Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer are two of the most developed characters I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Kyle MacLachlan can take much of the credit for the success of Special Agent Dale Cooper, who's idiosyncratic portrayal holds the whole thing together. Meanwhile, the uniting strand tying all the disparate threads into one cohesive plot is Laura Palmer. Despite being dead from the start (unless you believe she's somehow being reincarnated as her cousin Maddy, played by the same actress), her presence haunts proceedings, with each episode ending with the credits rolling in front of her photograph, she even has her own theme tune. A little like our introduction to Jay Gatsby through rumour, the only information we get about Laura Palmer is from the testimony of her friends, who constantly produce more extreme accounts of her wayward and confused personality.To complement these meaty characters, we have oddballs such as the Log Lady and the comically tragic Leeland Palmer.

The most delightful thing is that the second series just gets weirder and weirder. Cooper now has nightly visits from a Big Friendly Giant and Leeland's hair mysteriously turns white overnight. We gaily throw ourselves into the abyss of utter farce, which is strangely coupled by a darker tone as Laura's killer begins to make himself known. All this is ideal as light relief from revision. So treat yourself. Join Cooper and co. in David Lynch's postmodern comedy nightmare.

Topical Ponderings: Where Now?

How do you follow a hit film, book, album or TV series? Same again or pastures new? Bigger and bolder or smaller and more intimate? Is there anything in the final masterpiece? Simon Fearn has none of the answers.

It's now barely 4 days until Danny Boyle's latest offering, Trance, is released in cinemas. The famously eclectic director, arguably one of the best British filmmakers of our time, has produced the best zombie movie so far (28 Days Later), a mainstream re-imaging of bollywood (Slumdog Millionaire) and is about to tackle the sort of psycho-drama that Christopher Nolan thought he had a monopoly on. Furthermore, his leading man, James McAvoy can hardly be accused of being type cast, playing a doomed lover (Atonement), a plucky but ultimately hopeless university student (Starter for Ten) and softly spoken superhero Professor Xavier (XMen: First Class, alongside the equally versatile Jeniffer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender). This year alone he's tackling the roles of Macbeth, a slightly dodgy cop (Welcome to the Punch), a very dodgy cop (Filth), a cold hearted criminal (Trance) and an inadequate husband in forthcoming double film experiment The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers. The pair seem to be able to do just about anything, and not only that, do everything spectacularly.



However, things are not looking so good for James Franco, one of Danny Boyle's ex-leading men in 127 Hours. Franco flops big style in Oz: The Great and Powerful. The supposedly enigmatic 'wizard' should be played as a failed, but ultimately good man or a hopelessly corrupt dictator beyond redemption. Franco manages to miss both interpretations, aiming at a vague mess of the two. More intriguing is Disney's choice of director for their pointless prequel: Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame. Back in 1981, Raimi was directing his leading man Bruce Campbell in a freezing cabin in the woods as Campbell tackled encroaching Deadites with his iconic chainsaw. True, now the film does seem ever-so-slightly dated, but at the time Raimi was pushing boundaries, managing to achieve the coveted title of Video Nasty. Now Raimi is directing Campbell again as "Winkie Gate Keeper" in his latest bland offering. What the hell is a "Winkie Gate Keeper"? The wooden acting and unnatural dialogue have  somehow carried over from The Evil Dead, but the run of the mill content reminds me of Tim Burton's abysmal Planet of the Apes remake, and just about every family film ever made. Hero finds himself in unfamiliar territory; hero meets love interest; hero does A Brave Thing; evil army amass to kill Hero and Accomplices; dramatic but ultimately pointless final battle; everything turns out alright in the end by some miraculous, but predictable, twist.

We can also blame Raimi for more family friendly fluff in the form of the Spiderman Trilogy, so it's not surprising that the thing he's most remembered for is his 80s gore fest. But can we blame him for his move to the mainstream? Would I still be criticising him if he continued in the line of low budget horror flicks? Hence the uneasy conflict between doing what you're good at and being eclectic enough to avoid being accused of being stuck in a rut. We can't all be Danny Boyle or James McAvoy.

Nowhere is it more problematic to find a formula and stick to it than in the music industry. Mumford and Sons were slated by their 2012 epic Babel, with Q Magazine  peevishly claiming that it was "just like the last one". But as the band claimed, it was evolution, not revolution. The foursome knew what sort of sound was there's and seemed to be constantly refining. True, Babel is the natural progression from Sigh No More, and none of the tracks are much of a departure for their winning folky formula, but it's a lot better than their debut. Surely that counts for something! The same is true of Florence & the Machine's Ceremonials. More epic pop anthems you say! What did you expect?

On the other hand, Paramore are almost unrecognisable on their latest single Now and sound like a somewhat annoyed version of Haim. Back in the days of Brand New Eyes, listeners would be slightly taken aback by Hailey William's singing "now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow", and even now it's slightly annoying. Nevertheless, the band settle in to a comfortable Paramore-esque groove in the pre-chorus, reminding us that the teen-punk-pop angst isn't quite over yet (despite one of the tracks being called I'm Not Angry Anymore, yeah right!). The fact that they're making the bold (or lazy) decision to release a self-titled album seems to suggest that we're finally going to be treated to the true essence of Paramore. But then again, The Beatles's self-titled double album involved strange departures into the Wild West and the confounding Revolution 9.

When making a choice about how to pitch your next project in any of the arts, you need to make one key decision: bigger or smaller? Florence and Mumford both went bigger with superb results. Ellie Goulding laid on the synths in a big way in Halcyon, which while being infinitely more ambitious than the cutesy Lights, seemed to have both drama and subtlety. The cult BBC 3 series Being Human made the unwise (but possibly inevitable) choice of keeping going bigger, culminating in a hugely bizarre situation of the devil taking over the world and our supernatural heroes being stuck in some strange kind of dream world without even knowing about it. Tobey Whitehouse's constant pressure to raise the stakes ever higher meant the series had nowhere to go after its fifth run, and fizzled out just as he'd gone to the trouble of replacing all three of his leads. The truth is, although going bigger sometimes yields great results, its the obvious thing to do. A much braver decision is going smaller.

Take David Mitchell, postmodern visionary and general awkward genius. He followed the bonkers Cloud Atlas (which spanned hundreds of years and had a huge ensemble of disparate but interconnected characters) with the intimate Black Swan Green (a semi-autobiographical account of the day-to-day ordeals of a schoolboy stammerer living in the middle of nowhere, spanning just one year). True, when we think of Mitchell, we think Cloud Atlas, but Black Swan Green is perhaps more beautiful. Mitchell wields his characteristic way with words while maintaining the distinctive character of Jason, and make a single year in the life of a schoolboy look just as wondrous as centuries of human history. While I prefer Cloud Atlas, Jason Taylor is my favourite character from the two books.

With all this to think about, it's no surprise there's so many one-hit-wonders. Where was Richard Kelly meant to go after he stunned the world with Donnie Darko? If George Orwell had managed another book, how would he follow Nineteen Eighty-Four? It seems there's something in final masterpieces. If you have these big moments early in your career, then the rest of it is going to consist of you constantly weilding out the old behemoths while your latest, possibly more rewarding work, becomes a mere footnote. No wonder Radiohead got sick of Creep, with Tom Yorke wailing "this is our new song, just like the last one, a total waste of time" in My Iron Lung. The wait of history arguably turns the old visionaries like Sam Raimi into Hollywood's yes-men. Even Tim Burton suffers, not only was Planet of the Apes terrible, but so was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, with Burton making the curious decision of trying to appeal to nine-year-olds. None of his recent works can live up to Edward Scissorhands or Big Fish, two films which seemed to capture the essence of Burton.

Danny Boyle seems not to have any of these worries, avoiding the woes of the disappointing follow up by making his films distant cousins rather than successors. But most mere mortals in the artistic world will always be pursued by their own back catalogue. The Raimis and Burtons of this world will hide in the big money and big audiences of Hollywood, the Paramores will stoically refuse to grow up and the Mumfords will develop at the pace of a snail playing a banjo. And so our artists heroically continue along the road to certain obscurity, but are capable of minor miracles along the way.

Ratings of films/books/albums/TV series mentioned:
Oz: The Great and Powerful- 3/10
Mumford and Sons: Sigh No More- 7/10
Mumford and Sons: Babel- 8/10
Paramore: Now (Single)- 6/10
Being Human: Series 5- 7/10
David Mitchell:Cloud Atlas- 9/10
David Mitchell: Black Swan Green- 8/10
Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton Remake)- 4/10
Big Fish- 8/10

The End of the Affair: Graham Greene

Maurice Bendix is very good at brooding, in fact his brooding can extend to just about anything. At the opening of this novel he broods about the opening of novels in a metafictional tone that may have seemed adventurous at the time, but seems distinctly ordinary nowadays. Then he goes on to talk about hate a lot.

Our narrator seems determined to colour the whole novel the darkest shade of black, offering only occasional light relief through a bumbling private detective Parkis and his trusty sidekick. Through his immense depression, the reader is pulled into the darkest recesses of Bendix's soul searching as he contemplates his stormy affair with Sarah, wife of the far-to-amiable-for-his-own-good civil servant Henry Miles. The novel starts some time after the affair has ended for unknown reasons and Maurice has been left broken and filled with hate. Henry unwisely places the idea to set a private detective on Sarah into Bendix's head, and things deteriorate from here on in. Why did the affair end? What is the boundary between love and hate, are they one and the same? And how much are we meant to read into the ominous comment at the end of Chapter One?

We start off liking Bendix, which is good as we have to spend a great deal of time with him, but as his obsession with Sarah is reignited he changes from satirical, downbeat observer (he is a writer after all) to jealous maniac. The increasingly crazed, inhuman Bendix begins spouting all sorts of self-loathing remarks, but occasionally he has something very intelligent to say: "In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”

Nevertheless, it's never good to have a narrator/protagonist who's all "Me! Me! Me!". Nick Carraway learns to take a backseat, occasionally throwing the odd barbed comment while he lets his idol, Jay Gatsby dominate. Great Expectations, the book that inspired Greene to attempt a first person narrative, was led by the charming Pip. True, he made some fairly naff decisions, but his concern for others, his fascination with the world around him and his biting, but not over-the-top, self criticism gave the epic novel its character. In The End of the Affair, Bendix's only interest in others is to insult them and tell them how they haven't got it as bad as him. In effect, he's acting like a stroppy teenager, and the reader may have an overwhelming urge to yell at him to "get over it". After all, Greene only portrays his longing for Sarah as sexual desire, so its hard to have much sympathy for him.

But aside for our moaning narrator, the book has many merits. For starters it conducts one of the greatest literary U-turns I've ever experienced, introducing its main theme of religion more than halfway through the novel. Apart from fleeting references to God at the beginning, it seemed like it would be a straightforward examination of the nature of love. But when Maurice gets hold of Sarah's diary, a huge chunk of the book is dedicated to her Catholic guilt, and the novel's conclusion is fraught with religious angst.

Sarah's section is actually the strongest in the novel. It does that wondrous trick of reinterpreting everything that's gone before (much like the divine psychoanalysis at the end of Sebastien Faulk's Engleby). While Maurice at times simply appears sexually frustrated, you can sense Sarah's world falling apart around her. Her awakening conscience seems destined to lead to her doom from the start.

While Greene's novel is unlikely to make you believe in God by its series of flimsy 'miracles', it does suggest the implications of a God and the pain of belief. Would you really want a God that kept you in an unhappy marriage and tore you apart from the ones that you love? Bendix is caught in the unpleasant situation of being adamant that he will remain an immoral person, but unable not to believe in God. You sense that if the novel where to continue, Bendix would take the same path of self destruction as his lover.

So The End of the Affair isn't groundbreaking, but it plays with some serious themes in an entertaining manner, although at times you feel you may be crushed under the weight of despair. The novel has flaws, Smythe seems to be simply an object for Bendix's hate and an antithesis to Sarah's developing Catholicism, but if you accept these flaws then satisfaction is guaranteed.