Library Tales: Observations I

When students attempt to hide books - that is, when they deliberately secrete a pile of un-checked-out books in a place that only they know so that they alone can gain repeated use of said books - it is mostly found to be Law or Business students (or Law and Business text books at any rate) that are the perpetrators. What are we to make of this?

The messiest book shelves - that is, kind-hearted students have made something like an attempt to return the item to the shelf, but instead have dumped them near but not near enough to were they actually should be. It's a benign dumping, rather than actively trying to stop people use books they want, they stop everyone, including themselves - are almost always to found wherever there are science and medical students. Mathematics students seem to find the classification system especially impossible to follow, maybe it's just too simple?

Some helpful students like to write notes on the frontispiece of books, "this one's good!" or "what a load of rubbish!" or point out good work by the author "good start!" sometimes they like to leave hand-written notes, "Recommended Reading." How sweet.

It is a  Japanese superstition that when one sneezes it means you are being talked about by someone. Since starting work at the library it seems I've become a regular topic of conversations...

The worst part of the job, taking books off the shelf. Not even to be cleaned or repaired, but simply packed up and sent away. First to an external store and then probable shredding. That I was 'weeding' philosophy books only compounded my ill feeling.

Haunted by Popular Music: Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove

Why?
I've been racking my brains, why I've had this song in my head all day.

Was it an advert? Can't think of one and don't have a TV, so seems unlikely.
Perhaps music in a film? I checked, none that I've seen recently.

Really, I just hope it's from a generally good mood that I find myself in.
The sun's back, I had a nice relaxing weekend.

Today really feels like a Magickal Monday
I hope yours is too.

Terrible Films I Love, Volume II : Dungeons & Dragons

Part two of the ongoing series: Terrible Films I love, start with the introduction if you haven't already.

Phantom Menace poster anyone?

As a teenager and into early adulthood I was an avid player of various RPGs and it was with D&D that I first began. It's been well over ten years now since I last played and I'm currently suffering from a real sense of nostalgia about it. It may well be time to dig out the old D&D books (unless I've sold them on eBay and can't remember) and try and convince some aging academics to take part in a game.

I can remember countless conversations when we were young about how our ideal fantasy film would look (and I think Peter Jackson did a great job of satisfying my 13 year-old self's idea of a Lord of the Rings film) and so although I was quite a bit older when I heard they had made a Dungeons & Dragons film, I was still intrigued with a proper Wizards of the Coast backed film project. Especially as it featured Jeremy Irons, an actor I really admire and enjoyed in Brideshead Revisited and many more.

One fear was a 'Disneyfication' of the film, by that I mean a softening of tone, although keeping various stereotypes, and an anachronistic simplification of Medieval style cultures, with a harking back to crypto-right-wing notions of tradition and hierarchy, albeit ones that never actually existed anywhere. This was something increasingly began to bother me about fantasy setting RPGs as I grew older. I need not have worried too much though, because that particular problem was the least of concerns for the Dungeons & Dragons film.

It would be no understatement to say that Jeremy Irons steals every single scene he is in, indeed, he does more than just steal scenes he utterly devastates them with overacting so fierce that it's probably dangerous to witness. It's scenery chewing that defies belief.


Don't look right at him!!

We might ask ourselves why, that is, why would a well-established, respected, and seasoned dramatic actor find himself with a first-time director, an awful script, and less than excellent co-stars? Perhaps he has a rubbish agent, or has no personal judgement, or is desperate for the money. 

Certainly it can't be his love of the project that motivated him. Irons gives the impression of a man who has found himself somehow in a crap job and thought to himself, "Sod this, I'm going to go as far as I can, have fun doing it, and let's see if that stupid kid director has the balls to stop me!" Which, for the record, Courtney Solomon did not, but also I'm not sure that Jeremy enjoyed himself given a brief insight a 'behind the scenes' clip gave me. 

In one of the many pointless extras on the DVD, there's an opportunity to see the "D&D creator" in a cameo appearance. I'd like to point out that there were TWO D&D creators, although Dave Arneson was probably lucky to get that mention (even though he got deleted from the film) as Gary Gygax was probably better known (thanks to Futurama).

Anyway, in said clip, we see Jeremy Irons gie'in it laldie (much like the clip above) and once line is delivered and "cut!" is called he drops and stomps off with such an expression that you'd never think he was in any way finding joy in his work.

Summary: If only Jeremy Irons played every character in this film...

What of our heroes? Well, they're quite a pair... Ridley or Ripley (excellent fantasy name there writers! Oh and I checked it was Ridley) is your typical anti-hero every-man super-man, played with something like charm by that bloke who played 'Jimmy' in the New Adventures of Superman  (Justin Whalin). I say 'something like charm' because the only evidence of this charm is the occasional attempt at a mischievous grin, which results in our hero looking like a lobotomy patient or deranged sex pest. This isn't to say the actor's terrible, or massively overacting, but just that he seems woefully miscast as the hero. Especially when they have to rely on a chosen one trope to explain why any of this shit is happening. 

So far so American hero cliche, what better accompaniment than a throw-back black sidekick? Marlon Wayans plays the servile retarded comic-relief character Snails as a homage to Chris Tucker's character in The Fifth Element. Although I've no way of checking and it hardly excuses him anyway, Wayans filmed his scenes in only four days before returning to another production. Maybe that's why he didn't notice quite how awful it all was and it's certainly why when both heroes are wounded, one falls to an ignominious death (Snails) and the other (Ripley?) is, for no other than reason than he's the 'chosen one', healed by the elf king (is he a king? maybe not, but he's Definitely NOT Elrond) played by the least elf-like actor they could find, the always extraordinary Tom Baker. Maybe it was the Doctor Who connection that led to his casting, but not even as Doctor Who has Tom Baker had to say such nonsense. Actually, it appears the director was trying to give us another depiction of despised Jar-Jar Binks from the Phantom Menace in the character of Snails, because he's apparently meant to fulfill the same role, in that he's equally irritating and offensive. If, however, you've got a character who spends the majority of his time wailing and falling into things it does seem a bit odd, cruel even, to then have him slaughtered and throw his body off a castle battlements.

Summary: Worst buddy combo ever? Miscasting and offensive stereotypes are not a great double-act.



What of the supporting cast? Because no true D&D inspired film should be without 'the group'. For those that don't know, one of D&D's key features (that makes up for the lack of actual role-playing) is the necessity for a group of characters to work together, each utilising their class-specific skills, i.e. you need a thief to open doors and disarm traps, a fighter to fight, a cleric to heal, and a magic-user to support with magic.

So, what's the combination of the movie team? Two thieves, a mage, a dwarf, and an elf 'tracker'. Actually, Ridley is probably more of a thief/fighter with some innate magic skills. One of the benefits of being the 'chosen one' is that you can do everything on your own, which goes against the whole idea of D&D as a game. Not that a truthful adherence to the rules will make it a better film, but just that (like I've mentioned before in my Hobbit review) it's a Tolkien-influenced fantasy theme for the individual to be reliant of his or her group, that is, their friends. D&D as game comes from the Tolkien idea that nothing can be achieved without collaboration as a group.

I've already got to the point, much quicker than anticipated, where I can't be bothered going on with this review. If I was to tell you ALL that is bad about the film it would take another 100 hours and probably remove all the fun you can have with it.

So, for the sake of brevity and my sanity, here is just a short list of a few of things that I could have mentioned:

1. Where did that dwarf come from? What's his name? Where's he gone? Who the hell is that guy?! Why is the DWARF the same height as everyone else?
2. Does that elf's breastplate have nipples?
3. Why does the big bad guy have blue lipstick? Who'd tell him?
4. Richard O'Brien has a 'crystal' maze.
5. Constant establishing shots of Disney castles.
6. Does the director really love Indiana Jones THAT much? *copies scene*
7. Not Phantom Menace too! *copies inherent racism*
8. "We're all equal... and I'm getting knighted." *sigh*
9. Random purple headed man, possibly an extra from Buffy.
10. If you can't afford decent CG why use it so much? And in direct shot?
11. Thora Birch can't be bothered to act. Note: This is being EXTRA kind.
12. Who the fuck are these guys? Where did they come from? What are they saying?
13. Makes an episode of Xena look like a well-researched historical epic.
14. Must have taken plot ideas directly from a 12 year-old boy's D&D game.

That's probably enough.

Final reckoning: If not for Jeremy Irons this would be an excruciating experience, but once ol' Jezza has settled you in for what's in store, it really is quite a fun shout-at-the-idiot-athon.

Requirement: Beer, group of raucous friends, ability to find humour in dire acting/script/effects.

Finally, a top 20 moments video compilation from the same guy (The RetroCritic) that made the excellent Street Fighter movie 'embarrassing moments' video.

Library Tales: Dedications III

As you might have noticed I only choose the interesting dedications for my collection. 

It's fair to say that I ignore a great deal and they tend to go in this order of appearance: 

Mum and Dad, children, husband or wife or significant other, dead people, people related to the author's subject (for the children!), people working in the same field as the author, famous people the author hopes will be pleased by their dedication.

Also, this is the last 'Dedications' for a while as I've moved to different project work and won't have the opportunity to inspect books.

To Mary Alison, John David, and Timothy

for Whom This Anthology Is Written

and Who Will Soon Judge Its Merits

For my mother, Phyllis Katz,
who gave me humor,
and my father, Arthur Katz,
who taught me to sing without words.

To the millions of poverty-stricken children in this country whose voice is too
amorphous and diffused to be heard by the powers-that-be!

To our parents,
To our children
And to Le Petit Prince
Who helped us understand so much

To the pioneers,
listeners and dreamers of dreams,
all of them.

A tous ceux et toutes celles pour qui la ville
et les quartiers populaires sont une promesse.

For Steve, my valkkaittunai
Finnish 'life's help'

For the men of my family:
my father, Nelson; my brother, Ronald;
and my husband, Ronald Nelson

I dedicate this book
with profound affection and gratitude
to the Sanchez family,
whose identity must remain anonymous

Dedicated to bisexual people everywhere -
Come out, come out. wherever you are,
It is our time to dance!

to partiality, irony, intimacy and perversity

For Ian, with love
and the hope that boys and girls of your generation
will grow up to enjoy a safer, saner, more loving,
and more fulfilling sexuality

To Bob and Lorraine
for the gift and luxury of 'imagination'

The little god of Love is generally represented as 
a child; and rightly perhaps, considering the erratic
character of his ways among the human race. There
are signs, however, of a new order in the relations of the
Sexes; and the following papers are, among other
things, an attempt to indicate the inner laws which,
rather than the outer, may guide Love when - some
say - he shall have come to his full estate

Cinema on Saturday - Tideland : a quick defence

(Yes, it happened again)

I thought I'd take a short break from writing my Dungeons & Dragons review to talk about a film I saw the other night. Tideland is a 2005 Terry Gilliam film that until Thursday night I had never heard of. Being a fan of most of Terry Gilliam's work I was pleased to discover it and intrigued by the blurb and cover artwork.

First reactions: Tideland is not an easy watch in places. It manages to get under your skin and crawl. It reminded me very strongly of Jan Svankmajer's Alice, which is no surprise as Gilliam himself describes Tideland as "a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Psycho." Perhaps had I known more about the plot of the film I would not have watched it, but I'm glad that I did, because although unsettling in places (and maybe a little too ghoulish) it is a rewarding watch. The performance of Jodelle Ferland is excellent for one so young, which can only be because equally excellent direction. It's no surprise to me that Gilliam understands children as his films have always struck me as being childlike in a way that really remembers what it's like to be a child. 

I later found out that Tideland got quite a hostile critical reaction and has a very low score on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes (26% and 30% respectively). Again, I'm glad I didn't know all this before watching the film, although that partially explains why I'd never heard of it. Not an excuse really, why should we base our film-watching habits on the biased views of critics?

This quick response then is a defence of Gilliam's film from the what I see as the personal disgust most reviewers felt when they should have been critically objective in their analysis. Put simply, the film unsettled them and most people don't like that, so having been given a nasty shock they hit back in the only way they could.

What then is so upsetting about the film to so many people? Typically it is because it is dealing with subjects that most people would rather ignore; drug addiction, child neglect, child abuse, isolation, mental illness, death and decay, and the death of so-called innocence. The last is the most important, and as far as I can see the most ignored. Paradoxically the film is about innocence, the entire film being seen through the narrator's eyes, who is a nine-year old girl called Jeliza-Rose.

The romanticisation of innocence. What is innocence? I think that the majority of people have a distorted view of innocence, particularly when it comes to the representation of innocence in film. So, when I talk about 'the death of so-called innocence' in the film I'm talking about the death of this particular innocence. This distorted innocence comes from, first, a refusal to deal with the lives of children, in a sense, it is a failure to properly remember what childhood was like and replace it with fantastical notions of purity that one is constantly fed from representations of children in fiction. The second place this distorted innocence gains it's history is, no surprise, from a populist description of the Judeo-Christian notion of innocence. In this sense innocence is an absolute freedom from the guilt of sinning, something that only the young can have as they have had no experience of evil.

Tideland instead gives us a more realistic view of childhood innocence (albeit an abnormal childhood). In the film's introduction by Gilliam (an odd step, but probably one necessitated by the panning it received)  he makes a plea for us to forget everything we've learned as adults and to remember the resilience of children. Now, although the first is an impossibility, it is directing us towards something important. Innocence in Gilliam's view is more akin to ignorance or lack of knowledge, in which the gaps are filled by imaginative attempts at description or understanding. Children are natural story-tellers, particularly isolated creative children like Jeliza-Rose. I think people came to this film expecting the same old depictions of whimsy, of fantasy, that did not challenge them but instead confirmed their received views of what childhood innocence constitutes. The idea that children can have naive thoughts about intimacy, expressed through childlike notions of 'marriage' and 'kissing' rather than adult understanding of what that means, true though it may be is repellent to the distorted notion of innocence, because this shows children trying to make sense of the adult world rather than being somehow unconnected to this world we understand. That by creating this false notion of childhood innocence as being utterly unaware of adult notions allows the belief that we can be 'purified from the world' and it's horrors at least for a little time.

Gilliam's second plea, for us to remember the resilience of children, explains why Jeliza-Rose can deal with all the horrible things that happen to her and still carry on. That see can live in a house with her dead father for so long seemingly without concern while her 'adventures' continue is from this childhood innocence that doesn't understand, it is this ignorance that gives her resilience. Although perhaps we could also say that children are more resilient as they have not made decisions on what things are meant to mean, these actions are fluid and can be interpreted in different ways, they are receiving so much information about the adult world that they are not able to make immediate understanding and instead create a story with which to temporarily explain, until they are told about how they should feel.

I'll stop myself there. There's plenty more I could say about the film; beautifully shot prairie vistas, the 'Southern Gothic' characters Dickens (Brendan Fletcher) and Dell (Janet McTeer), cameos by Jennifer Tilly and Jeff Bridges, Gilliam's trademark cinematography, and so forth. Whatever else one might say about the film, it's understanding of what constitutes actual childhood innocence that over-rides the false romanticised ideal of innocence is the film's best achievement and one worth defending.