The 10th Kingdom (2000)

My rating: *****
Imdb link
Fan site

Beware! This is a bit more of a ramble than usual!

I borrowed the DVDs of this 10 hour Hallmark TV series released in 2000 with very low expectations. The cover notes were not enticing and suggested a somewhat tedious ‘family’ fantasy series. However I was pleasantly surprised to find a most unusual and unique series, which although produced by Hallmark with two of the main characters hailing from New York (complete with twin towers), was mainly filmed at Pinewood Studios in Britain and on location in various European countries. It is also written by an English writer, Simon Moore. Unexpected actors pop up throughout: Rutger Hauer doing one of his fine evil turns as a Hunter, servant to an evil queen, Robert Hardy as a member of the council of a Kingdom, Jimmy Nail as a green faced goblin (not enough of him unfortunately!) and other actors familiar to those who watch a lot of British TV.

The premise is that a 21 year old waitress (Virginia) and her janitor father (Tony) accidentally end up in a parallel dimension after travelling through a magic mirror in Central Park. This parallel dimension counts fairy stories such as Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and various nursery rhymes such as Little Bo Peep as part of their real history. It is a region inhabited by trolls, fairies, elves, dwarves, evil Queens and handsome princes, wishing wells, lots of magic and boasts institutions with enticing titles such as The Snow White Memorial Prison. The young woman and her father are accompanied in their travels by a snobby young Prince, who has been turned into a golden retriever by an evil queen, as well as a man who is half wolf. This is definitely not a children’s series with trolls who are not afraid to swear (what sounds like ‘fucking hell’ at first turns out to be ‘suck an elf’), sexual references (Wolf’s tail is the subject of some fairly risqué material), dead bodies, threats of torture and people in the rather brutal fairy tale kingdoms who display all the flaws of people in modern 21st century society.

There are funny scenes, such as our heroes careening along in a cart across rural fairytale countryside all (including the dog) reading the best of what New York has to offer in terms of self-help books, books collected by Wolf in a trip through the magic mirror to New York.

Another memorable scene takes place in an enchanted forest through which Tony and his daughter have decided to take a short cut. All the usual rules of magical forests apply – don’t drink the water, don’t eat the magic mushrooms and don’t fall asleep. As soon as they enter the forest Tony starts to hear Procol Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ playing in the background. Tempted by a very conveniently placed omelette pan and eggs, Tony decides to cook some breakfast. He does so in front of a grove of magic mushrooms who try to tempt him to place some of their number in the omelette. As he and his daughter start to fall asleep and are well on their way to becoming plant fodder, the mushrooms and Tony sing along to the end section of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. All those mushrooms singing in chorus is quite something.

A digression here, the first record I ever bought (back in 1972) was the 1969 album A Salty Dog by Procol Harum. My favourite song of theirs was the haunting title track ‘A Salty Dog’ which I liked both for the music and for the lyrics reminiscent of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. A few years ago I bought the CD, but the CD just didn’t sound the same as the vinyl. I have found this with other music I used to know very well on vinyl such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Fortunately, I rarely want to revisit past musical enthusiasms – there are far too many new ones to investigate.

Back to The 10th Kingdom however! The acting performance by Scott Cohen as Wolf is a real standout with a complex and necessarily over the top blend of tragedy, comedy and humanised animal traits. He is also an unlikely romantic lead but unfortunately this aspect of his performance is somewhat let down by Kimberly Williams who plays Virginia. The premise of her character is that she is cold, uninvolved and afraid of the world and the point of her journey is for her to learn to lose her fears and open up. Unfortunately Williams is not really able to demonstrate this transformation in any convincing way and remains much the same as she was at the beginning, a pretty and competent but rather disengaged and bland young thing.

All in all, a most enjoyable series. I have now bought the DVD as it is a series which can definitely bear multiple re-viewings.

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Romulus My Father (2007)

My rating: ****
Imdb link

This is a remarkable but extremely bleak film, which stays with you for days after viewing. It is based on the Australian philosopher Raimond Gaita’s memoir about his migrant parents and takes place when he is around ten years old and is told from his point of view. It is a tragic tale of maladjustment to class position, of the difficulties of migration and of grinding poverty. His feckless mother has affairs and eventually runs off with another man. She resents her class position and wants to live an unattainable high life. Instead she is trapped by marriage, children, poverty and by a country which she hates. Her affairs and her disinterest in her new baby drives her new de facto to suicide, she then kills herself which in turn drives her husband over the brink leading to his being interned temporarily in a lunatic asylum.

The poverty, misery, violence and unrelenting hard work endured by these people in 1960s Australia is shown in all its period squalor on screen. Kodi Smit-McPhee who plays Rai puts in a wonderfully convincing and nuanced performance and Franka Potenta as the mother and Eric Bana and Marton Csokas are equally convincing.

The film ends on a note of hope but it is a long hard road to find even a glimmer on the horizon.

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Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

My rating: ***
Imdb link

This is of course an iconic film adaptation of a classic of the ‘chicklit’ genre. Not something that has been at the top of my list to watch but staying in a B&B on holiday this was on offer and I thought it was time I found out what it was all about.

It is an entertaining, well put together comedy with fine performances from all involved. Of course it is pure fantasy. How many ordinary women are actively pursued by two incredibly good looking and charming men (even if one of them is a cad and a bounder) and then has the dilemma of having to make a choice? Many single women in their 30s share Bridget’s preoccupations which helps explain the ongoing popularity of the film and book. I did find Bridget’s stupidity, incompetence and her lack of interest in anything beyond her own fairly restricted world irritating rather than endearing, but this is perhaps not to enter into the spirit of proceedings. I have no complaints about her three friends however – they were wonderful.

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I Am Legend (2007)

Spoiler alert
My rating: ***
Imdb link

This film is a remake and update of the 1971 Charlton Heston film The Omega Man. Will Smith plays a scientist struggling to survive in a post apocalyptic world inhabited by humans who have been turned into rabid monsters by a mutated virus that was originally engineered to cure cancer. At the time the film begins it is almost four years since the virus hit and in that time he has been working on a cure. The film is a tense watch with plenty of horror and Smith is a convincing hero.

Numbers of people have complained about the ending. After leading us to believe that Will Smith’s character is the last true human on earth, a woman and a child turn up and at the end we discover that there is a whole settlement of immune humans who have survived the attacks of the mutants and that they will be able to save the Earth using the cure the hero has developed. I didn’t actually mind this ending but it was less satisfyingly bleak and uncompromising than the ending of The Omega Man where the hero truly is the last man on Earth (hence the title). It is suggested however (religious symbolism to the fore) that his blood leaking into the water supply will lead to the beginnings of a cure.

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Balls of Fury (2007)

Spoiler alert
My rating: **
Imdb link

The only reason this film gets a two star rather than a one star rating is Christopher Walken. In recent years his choices of films and roles have been puzzling to say the least after a previously fairly illustrious career in mainstream and independent cinema. He is not listed on the Imdb as currently involved in any productions and one might speculate as to whether these kinds of roles have simply been a way for him to wind down to retirement and to have fun socialising on film sets.

This particular film appears to be a star vehicle for Dan Fogler – an actor in the John Belushi, Jack Black school. It is also a spoof of the 1973 Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon and the title clearly references the Lee film Fists of Fury. (According to Wikipedia the film makers describe their film as the ‘retarded ping-pong version of Enter the Dragon‘). Here ping-pong occupies the role that Kung Fu occupies in Lee’s films. James Hong, veteran of many a token oriental role, plays the clichéd blind master à la the TV series Kung Fu – cue for numbers of tasteless blind man jokes, including him falling down a lift well at the end of the film after declaring that ‘the master of ping-pong must be aware of his environment’.

Walken plays the evil overlord Feng and cuts a fine figure in a magnificent Fu Manchu outfit complete with nail polish and hair that is a cross between Elvis and a traditional Chinese long plait. It is worth noting that in spite of this costume, Walken makes no attempt to play standard ‘yellowface’. His casting choice is clearly a deliberate reference to the practice of having Caucasian actors play evil oriental villains in old American and European films. As one would expect from his past performances, Walken eschews the racial stereotyping of minorities and remains a New Yorker from Queens to the hilt. On this subject, the film is full of over the top spoofed orientalist clichés and American actors of Korean, Chinese and Japanese origin indiscriminately play ‘orientals’ in Feng’s South American head quarters. None of them appear to be taking proceedings too seriously.

The final showdown between the hero and Feng involves a game of ping-pong played in booby trapped suits – a game which continues off the table through the soon-to-explode villain’s headquarters and onto a jungle rope suspension bridge. Perhaps it is the sheer inventive absurdity of this battle and the chance to dress up that appealed to Walken’s sense of humour and of the theatrical and persuaded him to take part in this dire, if amiable, film.

Feng’s demise is undignified and it is disappointing to see Walken’s character treated in this fashion. On this subject, Walken’s character in The Stepford Wives meets an even more demeaning end and one feels uneasy viewing these scenes. An actor of this calibre is surely worthy of more respect from the writers.

At the end of the film, à la Saturday Night Live, all the actors get together to sing over the end credits to the strains of some nondescript rock song that the audience is clearly meant to find rousing and singalong worthy. Walken acquits himself of this task with grace and elegance and these are possibly his best (if brief) scenes in the film. His comedic villain role is now a well-worn one otherwise – we have seen him do it before – but usually not in such a magnificently costumed manner.

One thing I did like about Balls of Fury was its bringing together of an ethnically diverse cast. It’s a pity that they weren’t given better material to work with and that it is not always entirely clear whether various racist stereotypes are being lampooned or simply perpetuated.

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Alien Hunter (2003)

Spoiler alert
My rating: ***
Imdb link

Another collection of science fiction clichés, but enjoyable nonetheless. We have the usual group of scientists isolated in an Antarctic lab with an alien presence plus the requisite romance between two warring scientists who had previously fallen out but are forced together again by circumstances. Gabriel Byrne plays the standard role of the scientist who becomes hysterical and violent when things go wrong. The scientific language used by the scientists is satisfyingly high level and doesn’t try to dumb things down too much. There are a few departures from the clichés in that the aliens turn out to be only inadvertently harmful due to a pathogen they carry and at the end they carry the infected scientists off to their own planet thereby saving the world. James Spader in the main role looks like a young Christopher Walken but without the cold menace that the latter is able to exude.

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Avatar (2004)

My rating: *
Imdb link

All I can say is that Joan Chen and David Warner must have been paid a lot to appear in this shocker. It’s a totally amateurish cyberpunk science fiction ‘thriller’ filmed in Singapore about evil corporate goings on in virtual reality. The acting and scripting are wooden to say the least.

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Aeon Flux (2005)

My rating: ***
Imdb link

This live action film starring Charlize Theron and New Zealand actor Marton Csokas, bears no resemblance to the MTV anime series from which it is derived, apart from the names of the characters and places and its science fiction setting. The costumes and sets are beautiful to look at but the film is really of not much general interest beyond that. What made it for me, however, is the way the love story between the two main characters Aeon Flux and Trevor Goodchild is handled. Goodchild allows Aeon to take the initiative and reverses the usual power balance of romantic relationships by not taking on the usual male role. He is soft and yielding rather than domineering in the relationship – even if in the public social sphere he occupies a position as one of the city’s leaders. Csokas mentions in an interview that this was a deliberate acting choice on his part – and he plays it in a satisfyingly subtle manner. It really works and highlights by its difference from the norm just how used we are to seeing entrenched gender roles and hierarchies playing out in romantic relationships.

Incidentally Csokas also plays one of the main roles in a wonderful but extremely bleak 2007 Australian film Romulus my father (2007) which I will write about later.

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Stardust (2007)

My rating: ***
Imdb link

A film from the pen of Neil Gaiman set in an amusingly modernised fairytale world. What really made this film for me, however, was the performance of Robert de Niro as a cross-dressing pirate. All bluster, walk the plank and aaargh me hearties to the exterior world, in the privacy of his cabin this pirate is a kind-hearted man with a love of fine (female) clothes, culture and music. He is anxious to preserve his reputation as a ferocious take-no-prisoners marauder however – a reputation much admired and upheld by his motley crew. He only learns late in the piece that his crew are well aware and perfectly tolerant of his proclivities and quite happy to play along with the charade.

The theme of a menacing, or alternately bumbling, public persona which is used to disguise a heroic, cultured or highly intelligent real person is one that has always fascinated me. Characters such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, Pimpernel Smith (from a 1941 film both starring and directed by Lesley Howard), or Severus Snape from Harry Potter are all characters who fit the bill. Somebody who does this in real life is Christopher Walken. His menacing screen persona belies his mild but sometimes eccentric conduct off screen.

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Foucault and the history of the present

Michel Foucault. (1994) [1967]. Qui êtes-vous Professeur Foucault? In Dits et écrits: 1954-1988. Vol I. D. Defert, F. Ewald & J. Lagrange (Eds.). Paris: Gallimard. (pp. 601-620).

Michel Foucault. (1999) [1967]. Who are you, Professor Foucault? In Religion and Culture. J. R. Carrette (Ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press. (pp. 87-103).

The page numbers below refer to the French edition.

Foucault argues that the polemical force of his work comes from showing that things that are considered as purely contemporary are very much a product of the past and of past ideas and practices that people thought were dead and gone. (p. 607) For example, in The Order of Things it was a matter of looking at the historically specific nineteenth century origins of an object called ‘Man’. The human sciences which see themselves as thoroughly contemporary are centred around this nineteenth century concept. Advocates and practitioners in the late 1960s and early 1970s of some of these human sciences were none too pleased at Foucault’s exposure of their historical roots .

In order to understand what is going on ‘today’, Foucault argues that we need to undertake a historical excavation of how the current universe of thought, discourse and culture came about (p. 613).

In view of the aforementioned polemics around Foucault’s work, I think another lolcat might be in order.

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