John Carter

I went to see this film a couple of weeks post release and at the earliest possible  showing of the two-dee version on a Sunday so I wasn't expecting the place to exactly crowded but there were only half a dozen of us in the particular screen. So fine views of the screen at least!

Once the ads and trailers were over we finally start into the film with an attack on the Helium aircruiser with the baddies' hellish new weapon then a meeting of Helium's Council to discuss the terms of the city's survival. As this involves her marriage to the enemy Jeddak, Princess Deja Thoris is somewhat unhappy with this. The film then breaks to Earth where we meet a youngish Edger Rice Burroughs being presented with his uncle's journal of the strangest gold hunter's dream ever. We then go back in time to the start of the Great Adventure. This bit we've seen in the trailers but John Carter is on Mars soon enough wondering just how come he can leap mountains and jump miles in a single bound...

Eventually Carter is found by one of the two main races on Barsoom, the lizard like tharks and after impressing their Jeddak with his strength he's sort of adopted and sort of taken prisoner. Of course being chained and unable to speak the lingo is no barrier to escape though shaking off the 'watch dog' might prove trickier. As Carter is about to be punished for the escape attempt, an attack on a Helium airship by their enemied diverts the attenton of the tharks and Carter meets Deja Thoris...

It was fairly easy to see where Disney had spent the money on the effects and if you can see homages to other films its also fair to recognise the debts their stories owe to the ERB originals. Of course, given modern knowledge of conditions on Mars, there are some serious suspension of disbelief issues to overcome but the story does largely do this IMO if not necessarily in terms of world sales figures - indeed Disney are looking to post a group loss after this.

You can read the originals as digital dowloads from Project Guttenberg.

The Manifesto

One of the strangest programmes on Radio 4 is Mark Thomas' 'The Manifesto' usually broadcast in the Thursday 18:30/19:00 comedy slot..

The premise behind this show is that the presenter gets various members of the audience to propose various laws they would like to see voted in. These tend to run from the deadly serious to the arcane (abolish Wednesdays anyone?) and with some of the most likely Thomas will take the proposal to an expert to get an opinion.

Given the political apathy shown by most people at actual elections the enthusiasm of the audience is rather startling and rather uplifting - perhaps it's (cynically) because these particular proposals have no chance of actually being enacted or (less cynically) because here the people are actually putting forward their own ideas rather than selecting from a set of canned party proposals that almost inevitably suffer from the exigencies of office should the Party in question actually get into power.

Although I doubt I fully share Thomas's sense of humour the zaniness of the show raises it to a whole new level!

The King's Speech

This is not my usual fair – a more-or-less accurate biopic telling the tale of King George VI’s attempts to overcome the speech impediment that had caused him great difficulties from his earliest years.

The film opens with the then Prince’s disastrous speech at the close of the 1926 Empire Exhibition but quickly jumps forward eight years to 1934 and a dingy consulting room in Harley Street with the Duchess of York visiting a speech therapist in order to help her husband, under the pseudonym if Mrs Johnson. When advised that her husband ought to find a new job, ‘Mrs J’ tells him that this wasn’t an option and the therapist comes back with a quip about the job being related to indentured servitude. Mrs J’s response is heart-felt agreement.

We then get to see the Duke make a start on overcoming the impediment, reluctantly at first and certainly not without many setbacks as the situation evolves; at first the Prince is going through the therapy in order to better fulfil his duties as a royal but as his older brother, the Heir, becomes increasingly infatuated with his married American, it becomes increasingly likely that Bertie will become the King, a thought that (quite rightly!) terrifies him.

We have the death of George V and the succession of Edward VIII and some very unbecoming behaviour of the not-yet crowned King and his paramour Mrs Simpson (honest, it’s not that she was American, just that she was a twice divorced American) and we have Edward VIII signing the abdication papers (1936) and the coronation of Bertie as George VI and the unmasking of his speech therapist as an apparent charlatan – we’ll give Archbishop Lang the benefit of the doubt and that he really did care that the King had been conned and after an emotional confrontation the King and the speech therapist declare peace. The newsreel of the coronation was followed by a piece on a Nazi rally – a nasty comparison between the leaders of the looming confrontation.

The final section is the King’s speech of the title – the speech that the King gave to the Nation and the Empire warning of the potential horrors to follow on the day war was declared, which while not necessarily the smoothest speech ever, managed to capture the mood of the nation with montage images of those he had been involved with including his brother in exile.

Playing a person with a stammer must be an actor’s worst nightmare but Colin Firth was up to the task and Helena Bonham-Carter appeared to manage to capture the spirit of his wife, Queen Elizabeth and there were plenty of emotionally affecting scenes, one of the more surprising when his daughters greeted him with curtsies just after he had acceded to the kingship. However, there were elements of humour as well – the King and Queen accidently meeting Mrs Logue and her husband’s reluctance to let the King meet her.

The film did not really deal with the politics of the situation, the abdication crisis being basically a few moments and the lead up to war being largely ignored too, but these were not the foci of the film. The focus of the film was on the relation between ‘Mr Johnson’ and Logue and while I guess most of this would have been made up, it certainly felt like it captured the nature of the nature of the relationship.

As a side point, the fact that the Harry Potter franchise is coming to an end has released some senior actors for a number of roles in this; Michael Gambon was George V and Timothy Spall played a passable Winston Churchill and there’s Helena Bonham-Carter herself, as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

This is the third installment in the Narnia books and sees the two younger Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy, return to Narnia along with their obnoxious cousin Eustace.

Unlike its immediate predecessor, 'Prince Caspian', this film follows the book surprisingly faithfully with only the inclusion of the external influence of the evil Dark Island on events a serious deviation; in the book things like Lucy's desire to be beautiful like her sister were all internally generated.

The actor playing Eustace was fantastic capturing his nature down very neatly. Alas, this is going to be the last time we see the Pevensies for quite a while (assuming we do get the rest of the films!).

An unreserved 4/5

John Fairhurst
http://www.johnsbooks.Co.Uk

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

Having just seen the latest Harry Potter I ain't ashamed to say that I found it quite enjoyable - not that this is to say that the subject was particularly enjoyable!

He who must not be named has made his move, Dumbledore's out of the picture and the Order of the Phoenix decide Harry needs to be hidden. Harry's aunt, uncle and cousin move out from Primrose Avenue and Hermione bespells her family so she's no longer part of the family.

Various members of the order meet up at Harry's and half are bespelled to look like him so they can attempt a shellgame. But right from the off the deatheaters are after the members of the party so we get a chase scene that wouldn't embarrass Bruce in a Die Hard film and the producers don't shy away from casualties and we don't actually see anyone actually die, we see an injured Weasly twin.

We see a meeting Ingram the dark council with a somewhat dissolute Lucius Malfoy, and a frankly petrified Draco in attendance.

A change in the minister of magic sees a change in policy towards the muggles too and half-bloods with lists being produced of the undesirable.

All in all, the film makers went to a surprising degree of effort to make the new ministry look and feel like pre war nazi Germany. However, they've also managed not to be too heavy handed with this - not to be too cynical but there's that 12A rating to protect after all :-).

As this is only half of the book the ending does leave us hanging somewhat but in a rather intriguing way...

John Fairhurst
http://www.johnsbooks.Co.Uk

UFO or not?

Is the blob in the sky a UFO or not?

Well, actually not. It's just a plane coming into the nearby local airport but for the few seconds that its course had it heading almost directly towards me it gave quite a good impression of an unidentified light just hanging there. Although not particularly uncommon this was particularly impressive as it broke through the band of dark cloud...

John Fairhurst
http://www.johnsbooks.Co.Uk

New buses

The last couple of weeks have seen Stagecoach Manchester, my main bus company introducing brand new dual fuel buses to something of their routes down the Oxford Road corridor (once identified as the busiest bus routes outside London).

Even over the packed masses of students new and old for the two universities and several schools served by this route, the smell of 'new vehicle' has been a particularly nice experience both going to and coming home from work. Their far quieter engines have been more of a mixed blessing as those same students talk quite loudly!

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for these buses to come into general service.

John Fairhurst
http://www.johnsbooks.Co.Uk