Four months later...

And I seem to have given up. I hate to call this the end of the line, so I won't, but who knows at this point? I probably could make the time to resume this (albeit having missed a ton of my recent reads) but it really comes down to how much satisfaction I get out of it. Maybe if I'd actually tried to advertise it somewhere I wouldn't be in this limbo, but then it also seems to me through my experiences in life that not enough people really care about literature, or any kind of art medium that takes time to understand. TV is the enemy.

I'm a grumpy old man now.

Anthony Burgess- A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Penguin Modern Classics

Anthony Burgess

1962

“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

Another long-term installment on the I-always-meant-to-read-that plan, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange is of course well-known as an iconic piece of subversive, counter-cultural fiction, unarguably a household-name and as such a touchstone for anybody looking to up their alternative reading credentials. Unfortunately for Anthony Burgess, a great, great proportion of this reputation is due to the cultural influence of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film adaptation, such is the power and reach of Hollywood and all that. I'm not a film buff by any means, but even I can comfortably state that Kubrick was a genius, A Clockwork Orange is an amazing film, and the growing realisation that his popular legacy was to be the man who wrote the book that became the film likely drove Burgess a little bit nutty.

Anthony Burgess

As a result, it's fairly well known that Burgess wasn't enamoured with the film (though nor was he overly-critical), and also that these days most critics point to his later novels as superior in their composition. My experience with these is limited only to his 1978 Orwell-themed novel 1985, which I read many years ago and probably didn't give a fair shot to due to youthful exuberance, but I remember not particularly enjoying it. It was mostly because of that that I didn't rush to find a copy of Orange, only eventually coming across a cheap second-hand copy by chance. It was a strange, possibly even unique feeling also to be worried if a book would live up to the quality of the film, but then Kubrick's work was just that good.

Considering how highly I value almost everything Kubrick made (though, whisper it, I never quite *got* Dr. Strangelove) to the point where I think he's probably the best filmmaker of all time, I'm not spoiling any suspense by admitting that no, I did not find Burgess' A Clockwork Orange to be as powerful or as absorbing as Kubrick's adaptation- and now I'm prepared to be ritualistically sacrificed by the book reviewing Illuminati for saying that- but that's not to say I didn't find it to be a thought-provoking and entertaining story.

Since it's an easy touchstone to reference, let me describe the novel by saying that it isn't much different to the film bar one crucial point, something that Burgess found infuriating, that the film concludes one chapter early. Personally I don't know if that chapter makes the story of the book any more better- in fact it may render it s message somewhat less powerful, but let's not get into spoilers- but in every other regard things are generally identical in terms of plot. The major difference, and something I worried would completely put me off, was down to Burgess' prose through the words of his main character, his well-spoken twinkle-eyed protagonist, so brilliantly bought to life by Malcolm McDowell. 

Alex narrates the entire story using Burgess' fictional youthful dialect named 'nadsat', a language intentionally confusing to adults comprised of pieces of slang derived from a number of places. Burgess doesn't provide a glossary, and so reading the first few pages were quite annoying until it all clicked into place that most of these phrases don't need any sort of translation to speak to the reader. Burgess is simply mimicking the intentional divergence of rebellious youthful terminology that occurs naturally with every new generation. For the most part, I read A Clockwork Orange as the depiction of a huge generational gap between parents and children, but it's not necessarily that specific.

The message of A Clockwork Orange isn't really very complicated, nothing that hasn't been done a thousand times before or since. The obvious influence is Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four, while a contemporary (-ish) comparison, and one that popped up in my mind several times as I read, is with Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. Orange supposedly had a similar effect in regards to offending public decency, but I think I've been far too desensitised in the past for something like that to effect me. The anarchic violence of Orange seemed to me to be too meaningful to be truly offensive, while Alex's almost constantly jovial tone adds a hint of black comedy. I also found it hard to dislike him despite his obscene behaviour- he seems partly like a chaotic force of nature, an almost naturally evil predator born of his surroundings.

A Clockwork Orange was by no means a book that changed my life or even stood out in a particularly meaningful way, but had I read it ten years ago it probably would've been. Regarded as sinister and ground-breaking at least in image, I actually found it deceptively simple, surrounding a standard anti-societal horror story with very memorable characters and prose with enough quality to hide the details of this decomposing England behind evocative insinuations. Unlike Winston Smith of 1984, Alex never gets too close to the full details of the larger picture surrounding his capture and rehabilitation, nor is he seemingly intelligent enough to conscientiously rebel.

As a result of its simplicity, I'd say A Clockwork Orange deserves its reputation as a compelling and undeniably influential piece of punk literature, but it's too limited in scope and design to fully reach classic status. I doubt I'll make the time to go back to the author in the future, but I won't soon forget the style and visceral energy that make up his most famous work.

Jack London- The Call of the Wild, White Fang & Other Stories

The Call of the Wild, White Fang & Other Stories

Oxford World's Classics

Jack London

1998 (Collected)

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.” 

The inebriated autobiography of John Barleycorn (1913) was an... interesting way to introduce myself to the work of perhaps the strongest name in American literature. Its increasingly bleak and seemingly honest nature had the effect of humanizing and quantifying the writing style and moral basis of Jack London, whose large body of work and immense reputation had previously seemed slightly off-putting without a good jumping-in point. With the ice broken, the next step to properly exploring London's work was quite clearly to read the subject of this review; a widely-found collection of by-far his two most famous works and a few short stories.

Jack London

To quickly review the short stories by essentially not reviewing them; I unfortunately didn't pay too much attention to them, and their proximity to the two classics put them into further obscurity. They undoubtedly make the book seem better value to those buying it, but I honestly feel that the effects of the collection's headliners made them seem so inconsequential that they would have been better served elsewhere in another collection.With that said, I say all of this in hindsight, as prior to diving in I really didn't know if I was going to enjoy any of this. It took the efforts of the first key work in this collection, The Call of the Wild (1903) to fully draw me in to the true powers of Jack London's fictional portrayals of the wild and the wolf.

I have to admit I was cynical about the maximum potential of a supposedly classic novella written with a dog (or a wolf if you prefer) as the central character, but I think that cynicism came from modern experiences with popular culture, specifically the unbearably cliched over-personification of animals as funny-looking humans (all of which whom are themselves unbearable racial or regional stereotypes). I should've assumed so beforehand, but London's style is far more Paul Auster's Timbuktu (1999) than your average Dreamworks borefest.

First edition cover

At only half the size of its more famous companion piece, The Call of the Wild is a fairly straightforward, truncated coming-of-age tale, where the immensely strong and powerful dog Buck survives a bucket-load of hardship and mistreatment to eventually find his true calling as a wolf in his ancestral forest surroundings. It's a simple and almost believable plot that requires a careful balance of typical narrative fiction tricks and techniques combined with enough authorial restraint to create the reader's suspense of disbelief. Personally I found Buck to be a little too strong, independent and basically perfect to fully immerse myself in his story, since it felt to a certain extent like a wish fulfillment fantasy, if not only for the reader but for London himself, who seems to marvel in the evocative power of nature.

In that sense I could see why it might not be considered by some to be a true American classic in the same respect that much more complicated novels by the likes of Hemingway are, but I do believe that stylistically it's absolutely top-notch work. London's ability to take a character with essentially no inner monologue besides that of instinct and then make him a figure that I cared about was no doubt entirely due to his select prose, resembling a high-class folktale of classic Americana ilk, like a Washington Irving story.

Though Call of the Wild was very good, I found White Fang (1906) to be exceptional, simply because it took the aspects I most enjoyed about Wild and gave them twice the space to fully form. Though the two are generally distinguished through their key plot points of returning to and then from nature, the emotional resonance of them are the same in that the antagonists are essentially finding their true selves. Most crucially, the increased time London spends on depicting the youth and development of White Fang compared to Buck is mostly spent on emphasizing the harsh cruelty of life, both in the wild and the world of man.

As a result, White Fang is a much harsher tale, surprisingly so I found. White Fang himself is warped into a hateful, unloved creature, thanks to a series of realistically-cruel humans and rival dogs, making his eventual redemption that much more rewarding for the reader than that of the much stronger Buck. Towards the end of the novel a couple of the set pieces are perhaps a little too cliched in a Hollywood sense, but I think without some sort of feel-good factor the earlier events of the story would've been unpleasantly pointless.

While neither of these iconic works has enough scope in total to really be compared to far more complicated twentieth-century US classics, London's pure writing talent evidently ranks alongside the very best, as his powerful, clear and evocative descriptions of an extremely difficult subject to realistically portray make White Fang a genuine classic, with The Call of the Wild at least a classic novella. While I don't expect to find anything else by London that's as good, my respect for his writing ability has grown exponentially and it won't be long until I pick up more of his books.

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter- The Long War

The Long War

Harper

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

2013

Other Terry Pratchett Reviews- Colour of Magic - Light Fantastic - Equal Rites - Mort - Sourcery - Wyrd Sisters - Pyramids - Guards! Guards! - Eric - Moving Pictures - Reaper Man - Witches Abroad - Small Gods - Lords & Ladies - Men At Arms - Soul Music - Interesting Times - Maskerade - Feet of Clay - Hogfather - Jingo - Last Continent - Carpe Jugulum - Fifth Elephant - Truth - Raising Steam - Blink of the Screen - Sky Adaptations  - Video Game 1 - Pratchett Portfolio - Dodger - Long Earth

“Fear generates big profits.’
‘You’re very cynical.’
'Joshua, cynicism is the only reasonable response to the antics of humanity.”

Upon hearing and somehow absorbing the immensely saddening news Terry Pratchett's death, I had the creeping feeling that I'd need to write some sort of personal obituary. The news hit me as hard as the death of a person I'd never met possibly could; I'd grown up alongside Pratchett's words, he influenced my writing, my sense of humour and even my own ways of thinking in inestimable ways, and the thought of a future without him seems cold and alien, to be a tad melodramatic. Still, I haven't been able to write it, at least not yet, simply because I realised that this reviewing odyssey- which started as an attempt to just cover the core Discworld books but has since expanded to include Pratchett's entire bibliography and adaptations- is itself a much larger tribute... even if it might take a while to finish at my speed.

Stephen Baxter

To today's book- after a gap following reading its predecessor, I delved into the second installment in the The Long Earth series. Based on an incomplete Pratchett project named The High Meggas (now published in The Blink of the Screen collection), Pratchett and science-fiction author Stephan Baxter explore the concept of humanity collectively gaining access to infinite parallel universes through a planned series of five. The first mostly dealt with a small group of characters delving further into the depths of this unlimited multiverse, while hinting at further social and philosophical quandaries now facing the human race, who, as far as they know, remain the only truly intelligent species inhabiting these Earths. I enjoyed it, but it could've benefited from a lot of editing for length.

To cut to the chase, I enjoyed The Long Mars to an equal extent as The Long Earth, no more, no less. Obviously it's only going to appeal to people who read the first installment, but it's also only going to appeal to people who enjoyed said installment for what it was- and it's certainly not going to appeal to the many, many Terry Pratchett fans who read The Long Earth because his name was on it and then found it to be too dissimilar to the author's regular, more introspective and humorous style. If you're one of those people, I'd seriously consider reading something else. Oh, and if you don't like science fiction at all, give it up already. To be honest, I don't know for a fact how much input Sir Terry had in writing this book beyond contributing to the plot. I hate to insinuate, but by 2012/13 Pratchett was increasingly ill and somehow incredibly productive, seemingly determined to put as much of his imagination in print as he could before his final day eventually came. While I have no doubt Pratchett constructed the key aspects of the overall plot and characters, I think it's safe to say that Baxter put in the heavy lifting while Pratchett focused his solo novels.

I prefer this French edition

For me that was fine. I'm a long-time fan of science fiction and Baxter's style reminds me of genre luminaries Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. It's descriptive and imaginative, with a wry sense of humility in the face of the power of the unknown. It's far from lyrical, imaginative, or evocative, though it is occasionally witty. None of the characters resonate particularly well beyond the basics; all are essentially boring genre archetypes, though I did find them mostly realistic. As sequels are want to do, the authors add a handful of new figures central to the story, and ostensibly turn the focused aim of The Long Earth into a wider ensemble piece, as various characters play their part in a slow-moving plot.

For over three-hundred pages of this five-hundred plus book, plot progression is delayed for as long as possible in lieu of attempting to establish the new characters and an ominous, foreboding mood. The real meat of the action only kicks in closer to the end, where the plot lurches forward with the inclusion of a new set of antagonists. I won't spoil specific details, but I have to say that with this the entire tone of the series shifts somewhat into a more outrageous, fantastical  science-fiction that I imagine might be the final straw for non-science fiction inclined readers, though it didn't put me off particularly, as at least it gave a solid direction to the meandering plot, assisted by the incredibly dramatic ending.

With three books remaining in the series, The Long War suffers from Two Towers syndrome most of the way through, relying on the readers' interest in world-building for now. It may seem far more relevant eventually depending on how the story continues, but by itself I ultimately found it to be a by-the-numbers affair, just good enough with its prose and imagination to keep me reading. The title of the next book, The Long Mars, promises further sci-fi interest, but I doubt the series will ever be considered more than an interesting curio from a man driven to put his entire imagination to print before his departure, and his capable but unspectacular co-author.

Obligatory 'I've just been busy/lazy recently' post. I just need an empty day off.

Not Books XIII- With Extra Added Sci-Fi

Films-

Prometheus (2012)

The first time I saw Prometheus I was disappointed that it didn't immediately seem like the blow-away sci-fi instant classic I think we all wanted from a new Ridley Scott film of this type, and I undoubtedly underrated it without considering that it had more depth than my bad attention span could cope with. The second time I saw it, any ambiguities regarding the plot were quickly cleared up, and it also automatically became more enjoyable that I wasn't constantly waiting for any massive revelations, nor for a legion of Aliens to suddenly run from the hills. This was the third time I saw Prometheus, and this time it was pretty damned great.

I should admit that I'm often not the most attentive of movie-watcher, and so any increased enjoyment found in a re-watch will naturally take me a few more goes than the average person, which is why it only really clicked this time just how much of an impact Michael Fassbender's android David has both on the direct plot and the thematic exploration of the film- as the human beings so desperate to meet and understand their makers completely forget about their own sentient creations. Fassbender was the star of the film for me, and watching it this time with the clear knowledge that he was pulling the strings leading to the demise of his creators gave it a sadistic black humour.  There's no great plot twist, nor much of a sense of existentialism, so I don't think it matches classic sci-fi like Scott's own Blade Runner, but I'm still very much looking forward to the eventual sequel.

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Star Trek- The Motion Picture (1979)

Despite wasting way too much time from my life on episodes of Star Trek, for some reason I'd never seen films I-III or V before- probably because I worried they'd be terrible. After mostly-enjoying every episode of The Original Series, and particularly being sold on the Kirk/Spock/Bones trinity, it seemed the time to change that. From the very beginning the ten year gap between series and film and presumed huge budget increase gave the proceedings a very different vibe. The sight of the older, fatter cast-members covered in infinite layers of make-up was not a good sign- Nimoy aside as a never-changing icon of course- and things just went down-hill from there as soon as things started to happen.

The transition from TV to film essentially ruined everything about James T. Kirk for me, as the ravages of time and the growing eccentricities of William Shatner transformed the character from a dynamic young space hero to a doddering, wry old bore. Not that I'm claiming he was ever a good actor in the typical sense, but the difference here is that before every line reading he pauses to adopt a thoughtful, smug look as if he can't quite believe how great he is, and it's massively annoying. Kirk is made twice as boring by the inclusion of new character Captain Decker, Kirk's replacement after he ascended into Admiralty. He is nothing more than a black gravity vortex that sucks any subtle remnants of charisma out of every scene.

The plot has a decent premise but doesn't really go anywhere, and its history as an episode for the cancelled Star Trek: Phase Two project is horrifyingly exposed as the writers try desperately to extend the script to two hours. The visuals, while an obvious 'homage' to 2001, are at least interesting, although I may have been watching a digitally remastered edition. Whatever the case, it didn't stop me taking three attempts to get through this phenomenally dull and disappointing film.

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TV Shows-

Red Dwarf IV (1991)

I was surprised to find that Red Dwarf IV was made so long ago; if you'd have asked me I would've labelled it as mid-90's, partially due to my first exposure to the show during childhood, and partially because of how much better this series looks than the three prior. In mine and most people's opinions (or so it seems, anyway), Red Dwarf IV marks the beginning of a two-season golden period of the show's peak. Most Internet reviews suggest to me that the majority of people prefer Red Dwarf V, but I've always slightly favoured this iteration. Whatever the case though, it's notable how all the elements of the show come together to create a fantastic sci-fi comedy that I think as good as Douglas Adam's Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Things kick off well with Camille, a strange but hilarious sci-fi take on Casablanca, where the crew respond to a distress call and find a female who appears differently to each crew member, existing as their own personal fantasy- a pleasure GELF (genetically engineered life-form, I feel I must add). Despite really being a giant green blob monster she and Kryten fall in love, leaving Kryten to make a tough choice as to their future. It's both completely ridiculous and quite touching, expanding upon Kryten's personal evolution into more of a free-thinking individual.

DNA, the second episode isn't quite as good. First of all it's another Kryten-centric episode, which is just bad episode arrangement. This time the Dwarfers encounter an amazing machine on a derelict spaceship that can transform DNA molecules into pretty much anything, and thus Kryten temporarily becomes human. The biggest annoyance is the way how Kryten, formerly an intelligent, capable android, suddenly becomes a massive idiot as a human, incapable of understanding the basic tenants of human biology. It might be a nit-pick, but it really does hurt the episode for me.

Smoke me a kipper...

Justice continues the trend of getting the cast out and about, to an abandoned (as everything is 3 million years in the future) prison complex in which they must fight for their lives against an insane rogue android. Not the funniest episode, but the action is a cut above anything the show had ever done before thanks to the much more convincing sets and props. The fourth episode White Hole continues on the theme of visual improvements with some much tidier digital editing than ever before, as an attempt to boost Holly's intelligence leaves them dead in the water.

Dimension Jump is my favourite episode of any Red Dwarf, as the crew encounter Ace Rimmer- a version of the hapless Arnold from another dimension who just so happens to be the greatest adventurer of all time. Both hilarious, poignant and iconic, Dimension Jump put the Rimmer character in a whole different perspective for me, and is the greatest example I think of the writing team of Grant Naylor using alternate versions of their characters to full explore the original's psyche.

The final episode, Meltdown is another funny action adventure, though not without a few plot holes. Kyrten discovers hiding away on the ship a piece of experimental technology that allows them to teleport great distances across the universe. They head to the nearest planet with life and an atmosphere, and wind up in the middle of a wax-droid theme park (full of famous historical figures from Hitler to Ghandi) run amok and at war. The guest actor look-a-likes are all pretty funny, making this a pretty memorable gimmick episode, but I'll never get over the logic hole where the crew never use their incredibly-useful transportation device ever again.

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Dragon Ball GT (1996-1997)

Yes, I am a nerd. Dragon Ball GT is easily the most unloved installment of the Dragon Ball franchise, the follow-up to the anime juggernaut that was Dragon Ball Z. The show was handicapped from the start by virtue of not being based on an original Akira Toriyama manga, with Toriyama having little to do with the project. Of course that wouldn't have really mattered so much had Toei Animation actually been able to come up with at least a competent story for it. Running for only 64 episodes compared to the 291 (and legion of films and spin-offs) of DBZ, before this recent re-watch I'd only seen half of them at most simply because it just wasn't worth the effort to try and get home at the same time each day to watch Cartoon Network. Thanks for helping me out, Internet.

The younger version of myself was one of many DBZ fans put off by the lack of quality and awkward style displayed from the very first episode. DBGT attempts to recapture some of the spirit of the original Dragon Ball series by having old enemy Emperor Pilaf and chums turn lead character Goku back into a child through use of the magical Dragon Balls- which then disperse themselves across the universe, leaving Goku and friends to the task of finding them again before the Earth explodes for some reason. That kind of back-tracking annoyed me a little, but what it essentially resulted in, at least to begin with, was a series of self-contained stories slowly leading towards a larger plot, as Goku explores the universe with his immensly annoying grandaughter Pan, and former DBZ bad-ass turned DBGT pathetic nerd Trunks. There's a massive focus on humour, again going back to the original DB series style. That's not necessarily bad by itself, but as a sequel to the steroid-fueled super-heroics of DBZ it simply doesn't match up.

By the time the writers seemingly realised this, it was already far too late. About half-way through the run they bring the action back to Earth and create a series of super-powered villains to threaten the world, while also bringing back many popular DBZ characters in prominent roles. In a sense this was the lazy and safe option to fix the show, but it doesn't quite work thanks to the generally awful plotting, although things do get better further in. The final saga of the show beings with about fifteen episodes left, and is easily the most entertaining and compelling of everything GT thanks to its success in re-using elements of DBZ but with a few fresh ideas. I particularly enjoyed the very last episode, essentially an epilogue to the whole Dragon Ball concept that I personally thought in terms of writing it was a level above almost anything else the franchise ever produced, in terms of providing a great,thematically-relevant and even emotional finale.

Still, now with the new DBZ film series looking like it'll be successful for a good long while, DBGT sits in a curious position within the DB continuity- Battle of the Gods was particularly careful never to actually ret-con (or should that be future-con?) the events of DBGT (which take place after all of the DBZ action, including the new films), though certain aspects of the plot and the promise of more to come does suggest that a full ret-con might be in the series' future. That doesn't bother me too much, since as a fan I'm happier for them to re-write the post-DBZ series events rather than continue on past those of DBGT, though I am disappointed that the GT final will likely be wiped out of continuity with it.

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Video Games-

Full Throttle (1995)
LucasArts (PC)

Though I've played through Full Throttle more than a couple of times in the past, this current run of adventure games I'm on quickly led me back to it, one of LucasArts most popular and stylish efforts. Released during the heyday of the greatest adventure games development team of all time, Full Throttle was the first game to give the position of project leader to now-iconic designer Tim Schafer, who'd previously co-designed the first two Monkey Island games and Day of the Tentacle. Developed with the trusty SCUMM graphics engine (and the help of some 3-D extras), Full Throttle places the player in a Mad Max-style future world, in control of grizzled biker outlaw Ben- leader of the Polecats biker gang.

After a chance meeting, Ben and the Polecats get caught in a vicious battle for control of bike-makers Corley Motors, as cartoon villain Adrian Ripburger (voiced by Mark Hamill) attempts to seize control of the last motorcycle manufacturers in the country to build minivans instead. At the start of the game Ben is stranded with a trashed bike in a town in the middle of nowhere, and so the player must exploit the usual adventure game mechanic of 'find thing, combine it with other thing' to get him back on the road and after the villains.

The voice acting, dialogue and visual style of Full Throttle are all superb, absorbing the player into an atmospheric and edgy cinematic universe from the start. The puzzles are inventive, and the interface is one of LucasArts' best. The game offers a couple of opportunities for simulated action, giving the player limited control over driving sections and disguising a simple puzzle sequence as an action one. What there is of Full Throttle is slick, dramatic and funny (if not laugh out loud) stuff. Unfortunately there's just not enough of it.

Comfortably the shortest proper adventure I can remember playing, Fully Throttle is extremely, notably short. Compared with your average LucasArts adventure it's twice as short as most, and in comparison to, say, Double Fine's Discworld game it's positively minute. The game fits a lot of story into the time through a series of excellent lengthy cut-sequences, but in exchange there are very few puzzles, none of them particularly challenging, and even fewer non-player characters, with little interactive dialogue. As a result of its shortness, I found Full Throttle to be a quick burst of solid entertainment, but realistically from a gameplay standard I can't consider it a true classic of the genre. 

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W. Somerset Maugham- The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil

Vintage

W. Somerset Maugham

1925

Other Maugham Reviews- The Magician - The Moon and Sixpence - Cakes and Ale - The Narrow Corner - The Razor's Edge

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

One of the things I like the most about keeping this obsessive blog flowing is the ability to look back at the past few years and map out my own progress, altogether giving me a better understanding of my typical reading habits. On top of that, it stops me from finishing one book and rushing straight into another, instead forcing me to more fully contemplate each book with the goal of producing a blog review so that I feel like I've achieved something. No author has benefited more from this process under the gaze of my critical eye than one W. Somerset Maugham (I'm sure he'd be very proud), whose bibliography first captured my imagination almost three (!) years ago with the hastily-reviewed The Razor's Edge. Since that fateful moment I've become more and more appreciative of each Maugham book I've read, with the pinnacle standing as the sublime The Moon and Sixpence.

Furious Maugham

Still, despite all that, when I sat down to begin reading The Painted Veil (chosen randomly from the four Maugham books on my to-read pile) I wasn't expecting to do something I haven't done since 2007 with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and sit and read the damn thing start to finish (well, with the odd break to make coffee and such)- and I only did that with Potter because I had a six hour window before the book's owner, who had just purchased it on midnight release, took it away on a bus journey, so that's my excuse. But anyway, I didn't intend to read The Painted Veil so quickly, but found it so engrossing I couldn't help myself, and at roughly 250-pages it was just the right length to finish in around 2-3 hours. Oh, and before I started reading I dropped my copy and broke the spine, so I had to literally hold it together to read.

It's not even as if I was blown away to the point where The Painted Veil became my new favourite Maugham novel. For the first thirty-or-so pages I thought I was set to be very disappointed, as Maugham led me down a false path in regards to the genre before opening up into his usual quality. Written in the third-person, The Painted Veil is the story of lead protagonist Kitty Garstin, a pretty young girl living amongst the British gentry of colonial Hong Kong. The opening segments of the book duped me into assuming the worst, that this book might be an uncomplicated romance novel. Maugham described Kitty, unhappy with her boring, inattentive scientist husband Walter, throwing herself into the arms of the witty and dashing (but also married) Charles Townsend- and all that was left, seemingly, was for them to find a way to get free of their partners (what with divorce being difficult back then and infidelity being illegal) and they'd be set for a future together.  

Pocket Books

When Kitty spills the truth of her affair, Maugham finally pulls back the wool from his reader's eyes to reveal the characters in a far more detailed light. Kitty, reveals her naivety by failing to realise Charles is simply one cad of many, promising Kitty a future life together to get her into bed. Walter, meanwhile, transforms under the realisation he is a cuckold, abandoning the image of a loving, devoted husband to reveal himself as cynical, dangerously intelligent, and unpredictable. He tells Kitty that he is to travel to China in a seemingly-selfless attempt to use his medical knowledge in the fight against a deadly outbreak of cholera. With nowhere else to go, she follows him to the sight of a convent acting as a make-shift hospital, where death is a constant presence.

Maugham uses these morbid and depressing surroundings and its characters to effect a transformation in Kitty, to replace her immature naivety with tougher worldly experiences. The eccentric new characters Kitty meets here essentially shape her personality, giving her increased strength through opening her up to alternate ideas about the world. Maugham's carefully-selected prose is outstanding and compelling,  shifting the his writing style to represent the changes experienced within Kitty. I mostly followed and enjoyed her transformation, mostly admiring Maugham's ability to hold such a delicate, changing character study so carefully, but by the end I must admit I hadn't been completely sold on the character, mostly because despite growing as a person as she does, Kitty still has the propensity to cry at every available opportunity, which became somewhat annoying closer to the end of the novel.

I think that's down to Maugham's insistence on never making his central characters too appreciable- he avoids a predictable heroic outcome or much of a happy ending by resisting the temptation to ultimately make his creations too successful, leaving the reader ambiguous as to their eventual fate. His character development is so focused that I think Maugham would have  done himself a disservice through writing a happier ending; as always he leaves the reader with plenty to contemplate and no hard answers. Though I raced through the book I wasn't left with the same sense of thoughtful awe that I was with Moon and Sixpence or The Narrow Corner- part of that because I wasn't as emotionally invested in the central characters- probably because, as good as Maugham is, I can't buy into his portrayal of female characters as I do his males.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend The Painted Veil as anyone's first Maugham book since there are better ones available, but after I had become immersed in his style and themes from prior books this was another interesting take on his central themes of human obsession and spiritual discovery.

It just occurred to me I never talk about books that I find so bad I give up on them for the sake of saving my precious seconds left on this Earth. Mark Gattis' The Vesuvius Club is one such book, abandoned this morning for being so obnoxious it hurt my brain. That counts as a review, right?

Jim Thompson- The Getaway

The Getaway

Orion Crime Masterworks

Jim Thompson

1958

“He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn't have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking.”

I seemed to be on an unfortunate run of feeling disappointed with supposed classics recently, so I hoped to buck that trend by picking off the shelf what appeared to be an easy option. Orion Publishing's Crime Masterworks series had so far introduced me to the sublime noir classic Double Indemnity by James M. Cain and Georges Simenon's very interesting (though not as good) The Blue Room, so I felt confident of finding something more engaging than the somewhat impenetrable international fiction of someone like Yvgeny Zamayatin. I find myself increasingly attached to the whole notion of crime fiction lately, and it's easy to recognise the similarities in that genre and that of Orion's other genre-collecting series, Sci-Fi Masterworks.

Jim Thompson

Both genres offer a universally-recognised set of story-structures that, while very malleable (especially in the hands of a genre-transcending master like Kurt Vonnegut), remain recognisable thanks to a hundred years of almost-unavoidable twentieth century literature and film, and so in theory half the work of establishing a recognisable narrative complete with relevant themes has already been done; a benefit to the author and the reader. With both genres though, the ease of access for both reader and writer naturally leads to a large number of unimaginative, poorly-written, all-in-all substandard attempts from unfortunately less-talented authors. I had hoped that the Masterworks series was also a short-cut to avoid wasting my time on those in general.

I'd been looking forward to reading something by Jim Thompson for a while now, having seen his name crop up plenty of times as a prominent writer of classic twentieth-century crime fiction. The Getaway is seemingly his most famous novel (though The Grifters is another title I see crop up often), perhaps due to Sam Peckinpah's 1972 film adaptation starring Steve McQueen. It was the obvious place to start, with the help of Orion. The break-neck plot seemed right up my alley; charismatic hardened criminal mastermind Doc McCoy and his devoted wife Carol stake their lives on a bank-job with some dicey allies, and wind-up in a gritty race for the safety of the border with the law and the underworld on their trail. Despite the usual double-crossing twists and turns, it's a fairly simple, cinematic action plot starring pulp-influenced over-the-top genre stereotypes. In short, something I've seen and read maybe too many times already, leaving it to live or die on the strength of the prose. 

This is where it all fell apart. A streamlined action-packed plot comprised of familiar stylish elements can only take a writer so far dependent on their ability to construct this world through interesting and consistent writing, neither of which are attributes I ascribe to Jim Thompson. That Thompson's goals in terms of style and impact are well-established is at least admirable, but from the very first pages of The Getaway I was immediately put off through what I perceived to be Thompson's amateurish style. The Getaway is written in the third person, giving Thompson the potential advantage of being able to describe his characters without the inherent bias of a narrating personality, but from the very beginning his establishment of characters and setting massively jarred.

My biggest stylistic hate came from Thompson's repeated habit of literally telling the reader directly what his characters are thinking, in the form of italicized quotes just lacking quotation marks, over and over again. It's a lazy technique that tries to claim the best of both worlds, but failed for me each time since every thought the characters have are just as cliched and superficial as their dialogue, leaving the marked effect of exposing them all as completely two-dimensional. I'm not expecting some sort of extended Dickensian character analysis, just a modicum of depth. In comparison to a classic crime noir character like Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Doc McCoy is a hollow, uninteresting bore who's superficial coolness is made an unintentional mockery of through its very construction. Harsh criticism, perhaps, and I'm sure Thompson's work isn't any worse than your average run-of-the-mill thriller writer, but I expected far more from a supposed crime classic from the same publishing series as James M. Cain's Double Indemnity.

Whether I'd recommend it to anyone is an interesting question (well, to me anyway), because it really depends on what the reader expects and what they're willing to put up with. I absolutely do not recommend it to a reader looking for a classic crime noir on the literary level of the Hammett, Cain, or Raymond Chandler and the like, because it's bound to end in disappointment. For a reader who enjoys the comfort of quick, cliched thrillers that are easy to get through, then this might be a great option. Oh, and since we're at the end of the review, it's only appropriate to mention the end of the book; a final chapter that weirdly morphs in style to an ethereal, hallucinogenic-like dream-state that's not too badly written in comparison, actually, though I've no idea what he was trying to achieve with it.

Missing Review Catch-Up III- International Edition

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The Dragon and Other Stories (1913-1937)
Yevgeny Zamyatin

Penguin Modern Classics

After Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita failed to melt the solid wall of ice standing between myself and the great unexplored mass of classic Russian literature, I wasn't to be put off so quickly. Rather than run towards the possible safety of recommended heavyweights like Dostoyevsky and friends, I rebounded in the only way I know how- something completely random, that in this case just happens to also be pretty obscure. The Dragon and Other Stories stood out with its odd cover, and of course Penguin Modern Classics status. Everything I learned about Zamyatin (not much- Russian dissident who wrote a letter to Stalin so he could leave Russia) came from a quick scour of the internet, so I went in to the book mostly ignorant. Sometimes a random book read at a random time can be a game-changer.

But not this time. Again I totally failed to connect with a piece of Russian literature, to the point where it'd be stupid to even try to write a proper review, hence this short one appearing here just to sooth my obsessive compulsiveness. Zamyatin's various short (and less short) stories collected in this posthumous volume describe with authority seemingly-meaningful tales that drift between the harsh realities of Russia's past and then-present and some more fantastical parables that take on dark fairy-tale like scenarios. I think since my knowledge of Russian history is confined to... um, no, can't think of anything... nothing, then, I was probably the wrong person to appreciate the layered allegories that I'm sure permeate Zamyatin's dense stories.

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Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words (2005)
Jay Rubin

Vintage

This book, on the other hand, I was very tempted to write a full-length (by my standards, anyway) review for, only to decide at the last moment that its content and topic might just be too obscure to be interesting . Jay Rubin is a very familiar name for English language-reading Murakami fans, for being perhaps the most prominent of all yet to translate the author into our language (as well as translating Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon collection), and so it seemed only natural for Rubin to write a book about his life and works. Part biography, part critical interpretation, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words looks at the inspiration, creative process and public reaction to every Murakami novel, as well as his most important short stories.

I'd straight away recommend this to any serious Murakami fan looking to put his work into a greater context. The biographical information is interesting, though not particularly in depth- personally I prefer this to be the case, as Murakami's mystique works better without the obvious-in-hindsight revelations that he's actually a fairly normal man. As someone who pays little-to-no attention to the contemporary Western literary scene, let alone the Japanese one, it was also interesting to read more information about Japanese literary history, especially Murakami's influences and contemporary critics.

The one major criticism I found was that the book attempts to cover too much ground in too little space, particularly in regards to Rubin's interpretation of Murakami's fiction. I often found myself disagreeing with Rubin's ideas, but that made them no less interesting, and so the problem was that Murakami's longer works really need more space to accurately discuss. Rubin's reluctance to persist with spoilers also damaged his analysis for me, especially since I can't imagine there are many people who'd read this without already having devoured Murakami's own bibliography. Other than that, this was an enjoyable and informative take on an author very deserving of further public discussion. 

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The Immoralist (1902)
André Gide

  

Penguin Modern Classics

Man, French literature is just weird. Everything past the nineteenth century seems to have existentialism burnt in to its very core, and each author I read has an unstoppable fixation with looking at the worst parts of human nature in one way or another. Everything's constantly intense, everyone guilty of something, and nothing ever gets resolved neatly. Andre Gide's turn of the century novella The Immoralist was decried for years due to its homoerotic overtones, though reading it over a hundred years later it seems hard to see what the fuss was all about. Instead this novel to me, rather than focusing on the protagonist Michel's growing attraction to men was really all about his generally horrible treatment of his wife, Marceline.

The plot of the novella revolves around Michel recovering from a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis, on his Tunisian honeymoon with Marceline, who has lovingly nursed him back to health and attended to his every whim. Michel responds by re-discovering himself in the arms of young Arab men, and waxing lyrical on the new realizations he understands about life. I couldn't connect with him whatsoever, and thus the story was lost on me. Gide's work is well-written in translation at least, with an extensive vocabulary and poetical nature, but it's contents said little to me. Michel came across as such an unlikable character, with his over-bearing self-realizations clashing with his actual behaviour, that I was the most disappointed I have been by a piece of French literature.

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Kingsley Amis- Lucky Jim

Lucky Jim

Penguin Modern Classics

Kingsley Amis

1954

“How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.”

  

Though Kingsley Amis is enough of a literary establishment in Britain that I'd been aware of his reputation as an author for some time, it took the knowledge of endorsements from my current favourite writer W. Somerset Maugham for me to pick up a copy of his most famous book. Lucky Jim has been lauded by the establishment as a classic piece of twentieth-century English fiction, portraying the turmoils of the life of a young teacher attempting to survive the political minefield of a chaotic new University campus. I was in the mood to enjoy a dry, sardonic comedy as a break from the typically direct doom and gloom I seem to always read, so I really wanted to enjoy my first experience reading Amis (random side-note- I did once read a Martin Amis novel once, it was horrible), but ultimately finished with mixed feelings.

Kingsley Amis

The eponymous Jim Dixon lectures in medieval history, but struggles to keep on the right side of academic politics amongst the faculty and so constantly worries for his job. His snide, pretentious colleagues patronise and irritate him, and his personal life is no better. Trapped in a volatile relationship with an emotionally insane woman he doesn't even actually like, his response is to get dangerously drunk at a party hosted by his senior professor, black out upstairs with a cigarette, and set fire to the bedsheets. When trying to conceal the crime in the morning, he meets Christine Callaghan, the beautiful girlfriend of the aforementioned professor's son. At this point the novel's true direction becomes abruptly clear, as the educational back-drop simply becomes the stage for a pained romantic conquest.

To a certain extent, this was actually something of a relief to me, since up to then I'd grown little-to-no attachment to the plot, setting or themes. I had no prior bias for or against them, but I couldn't get invested in Amis' portrayal of his comic surroundings. Amis' prose is technically excellent; flowing and consistent, but certain antiquated aspects of his style bored me; a real problem, since Amis emphasizes his main point of satire- that being the egotistical pretentiousness of those with power in academia- through his style, specifically character dialogue and Dixon's own critical trains of thought. As a result, I found the entire book to be overwritten, in the sense that each theme and subject of satire is over-laboured with a tone that itself became annoying eventually.

I won't deny that I did get a little invested in Jim and Christine's impossible relationship, and I also felt that Amis' eventual extrapolation of Margerat's (Jim's on-off girlfriend) psyche was by far his strongest writing; resembling Somerset Maugham's own fixation on the oft-disturbing motives of human obsession. Unfortunately the University setting fell almost completely flat for me, and there was so much more of it in comparison to the little I found engaging that the book became a chore. Perhaps my tastes in comedy have been irreversibly twisted by more contemporary things, but whatever the case was I just couldn't find any deeper meaning in the novel. It felt like a high-brow romantic comedy, harsh as that sounds.

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

An author who literally changed my life. RIP. More thoughts to come when I'm feeling more coherent.

Not Books XII

TV Shows-

Red Dwarf III (1989)

Series three of Red Dwarf was integral in developing the structure of the show towards the style that people remember most fondly, though by itself it's perhaps not quite the best- as Rob Grant and Doug Naylor struggle a little in further involving the usual technobabble of more adventurous science fiction. From this point on, the mechanoid Kryten (introduced in the first episode of II) returns as a regular cast member, as both a lovable neurotic idiot android and a source of valuable exposition, necessary to explain details to his three idiotic crew members (ship's computer Holly's role is reduced and recast, Norman Lovett replaced by Hattie Hayridge).

The first episode of the series sums this all up perfectly; Backwards begins with Kryten and Rimmer falling through a time hole in space, arriving on the other side to find themselves back on Earth in the 20th century- only an Earth where time is running backwards. The logistics throughout the episode don't make any sense, but seeing the crew get off Red Dwarf to explore some whacky sci-fi is a welcome relief after the ship sets had become somewhat stagnant. The next episode, Marooned, goes back to the Rimmer/Lister divide in a slower-paced story, but the pace picks up again with Polymorph, where a genetically-engineered emotional vampire stows away on the Dwarf and turns them into radically different people, like a much funnier Alien.

Unfortunately the season goes downhill from there with Bodyswap. While the increased focus on sci-fi remains, the story of Rimmer 'borrowing' Lister's body is a decent idea that goes nowhere fast and quickly runs out of jokes. I much prefer Timeslides, an episode where Kryten discovers that three million years of stagnation has mutated the ships photo-developing fluid into what is essentially a form of limited time travel. The science makes less than no sense, but it's a great excuse to delve into both Rimmer's past and explore Lister's growing realisation that he's wasted his life.

The final episode, The Last Day, is another Kryten episode, where he learns he is to be replaced by an upgrade. The upgrade, Hudson, is another example of the writers exploiting popular sci-fi for laughs, this time The Terminator, and the episode- while not a classic- is a nice way to round off Kryten's first series as a regular. It's not the greatest series, but in terms of the development of the show and its balance of sci-fi and comedy it was essential testing for the future, with the prime of the show just on the horizon.

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Firefly (2002)

Thirteen years on from the cancellation of Mutant Enemy's beloved sci-fi western series, millions of fans over the world have written a million essays online about how much of a stupid waste of potential said cancellation was- so I'm going to try to resist from joining in, since it'll probably just get ugly. Before we move on though I will say that the facts of the matter were firmly on my mind during this recent re-watch, mostly thanks to how polished and entertaining the show became after barely a couple of episodes, and it feels as much of as a tragedy as cancelling a television show could possibly be. Not quite as bad as world hunger, but at least on the level of ebola.

Having said that, this was only the second time I'd ever watched through all of Firefly's meager fourteen episodes, despite being a huge fan of Mutant Enemy and the work of Tim Minear in particular, and it came perhaps two months after finishing a re-watch of every episode of Angel. As a result I couldn't help comparing the two shows (with Buffy the Vampire Slayer firmly in the back of my mind too), and came to the conclusion that Firefly's critical success was built not just on its clever mixing of genres, but from the now very-experienced writing staff cherry-picking from past successes. I don't mean any of this as a criticism, but many of the character arch-types are direct lifts- the most obvious example to me being the Simon and Kaylee courtship, which was like a heavily-condensed version of Wesley and Fred from Angel.

Anyway, after taking perhaps two episodes to get into stride, Firefly quickly becomes absolutely exceptional, thematically and visually. The visual choices, the music and the crafted dialogue drew me in completely, and like a typical Whedonite, made me dream of what this show could have been. I'm not going to delve any further than that because I'll come across bitter and sycophantic, but god damn. Thank god for Serenity.

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Films-

Serenity (2005)

The one random little fact I always remembered about Serenity in the years inbetween its release and my eventual viewing of it, was that in 2007 SciFi Magazine readers named it the very best science fiction film of all time. That's ahead of Star Wars, 2001, Blade Runner and The Matrix, to name just a few examples that popped into my head, and so that's some pretty god damned lofty praise. When I did eventually get around to watching all of Firefly and then this film for the first time (which typically took me a long time even though I love Mutant Enemy's stuff) I absolutely loved it, but I wasn't quite that big a fan as those SciFi readers. 

Now, having seen it a few more times since, including twice in quick succession over the last few weeks thanks to a random TV showing... it's not the best sci-fi film of all time. It might be the greatest TV-to-cinema jump of all time though, and it is fabulous. The cast jump back into their roles like they were never away, but it's the writers who deserve the most credit for solving the problem of just how to translate their original plans for Firefly as a TV series into a single two hour film. Though it does leave a few stones unturned (Shepard Book being the obvious example), generally the key storylines and character arcs of Firefly are followed up on if not completed, and each of the characters get a nice little send-off. There are legions of dedicated, loving Firefly/Serenity fans out there that have analysed it all in far more depth than I care about to imitate, so let's leave this one as simply a thumbs firmly up review.

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Death Race (2008)

I wasn't too keen on watching this recent remake, but it was my girlfriend's idea (presumably thanks to the chiseled jaw of Jason Statham). I've never seen the original, but a couple of facts about it always sticks out in my mind; firstly that original Judge Dredd artist Carlos Ezquerra based his original designs for the lawman of the future on the masked visage of Death Race 2000 lead Frankenstein- and secondly that it was the basis for the gleefully distasteful video game series Carmageddon. None of this convinced me that this remake would be any good whatsoever, since it stars Statham and was directed by Paul WS Anderson, who's not exactly known for his quality pieces of film.

The plot is simple, as a simple but potentially brilliant single concept idea; Statham's character is a former racing driver trying to make a life with his wife, when one day she's brutally murdered and he's framed for it. In prison, he is invited by the powerful warden (played by Joan Allen, who is dire) to play a part in the Death Race- an armoured racing extravaganza broadcast to the masses, where prisoners battle for the right to be released. Those two situations obviously aren't coincidence, but it takes Statham a while to work it out.

Basically the resulting film is obvious, brain-dead stuff, as Statham finally works it out, gets involved in some mediocre race battles, and pulls Megan Fox. The combination of Anderson directing and Statham starring forms a sort of black hole of blandness, where every piece of CGI action is somehow made as boring as possible, and every piece of dialogue mumbled into an uncharismatic nothingness. Although Ian McShane is in it and he's awesome, so there's that.

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Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015) 

As a long-time follower of DC comics' animated straight-to-DVD films, it's been noticeable that the company have recently been focusing on adapting more recent comic book storylines; specifically from The New 52. That's the nickname for DC's current in-continuity universe, created afresh about two years ago. I was not a fan of this move when it happened, as I was perfectly content with the old DCU. Justice League: Fate of Atlantis is the sequel to 2014's Justice League: War, both of which were adapted from the Geoff Johns-written Justice League. As I've given up on keeping up with the New 52 that makes this the first DC animated movie of which I haven't read the source material.

The aforementioned JL: War was an entertaining if very unrefined movie that just about succeeded by being composed mostly of balls-to-the-wall action. It had the advantage of dealing with DC's most powerful, villainous villain in Darkseid, alien god of evil, and upped the violence quota to surprising levels. JL: Fate of Atlantis, however, is unfortunately not blessed with those same advantages, as rather than the featuring Jack Kirby's unstoppable fifth world demon and his planet of incalculable sin, it features Aquaman and the Atlanteans.

To be fair, I don't have the same issue with Aquaman that so many other comic book fans and Internet bandwagon-jumpers seem to have; he's a character like many others, requiring naught but a decent writer to become interesting (I particularly enjoyed Grant Morrison's late 90's JLA version of Aquaman the most). The Atlanteans, on the other hand, are among the most boring creations ever to have existed in this or any other potential universe, and their introduction automatically relegates this film to mediocrity.

And mediocre it is. Despite a few highlights among the under-featured regular Justice League crew (like Nathan Fillon's Green Lantern), this new Aquaman origin story is unimaginative trite. Cliched and predictable, Arthur Curry gains his rightful (but totally unearned) place on the throne of Atlantis after a political conspiracy almost causes war with the surface-dwellers, but not quite. Smug Aquaman then confidently promises to both rule his new underwater nation and serve on the Justice League as a superhero, despite having sod-all experience or expertise in either. None of the other characters feature enough to save it, making this the most miss-able of all of DC's effort.

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Thor- Tales of Asgard (2011)

Though DC's recent animated films haven't been particularly exciting, at least they get the benefit of the doubt considering the average high quality of their usual releases. Marvel's animated film department, on the other hand, have released precisely zero films of note. I think I've seen them all, but I can't remember anything about any of them except the titles. Pretty sure they did Planet Hulk, and some random Avengers of the future films, for some reason. With that in mind, I had very little expectations from the final entry in Marvel's animated line, and it also had the little matter of the whole concept of the film being stupid and pointless to deal with. 

Essentially to sum up the most generic of generic plots, Thor: Tales of Asgard is a film set in Asgard, obviously, during a time when Thor and Loki were but mere... younger teenage Gods with an attitude problem, who constantly find themselves at odds with their alpha-male father Odin. Disobeying his commands, they get into a beef with the frost giants, and hi-jinx ensue While the shine of the live action Marvel cinematic universe might seem to rub-off on lower-profile tie-ins like this, when actually viewed with any kind of critical though the whole thing is quickly revealed to be a very lazy tie in, void of original ideas. The troubled relationship between fathers and sons theme has been played out a million times and this offers nothing new, just a homogenous skeleton. In terms of writing, Tales of Asgard matches up only to the general quality of a lazy Saturday morning cartoon. The voice actors pathetic imitations of the voices of the Hollywood stars' was the final nail in the coffin of this boring cash-in, though I still watched it all for some reason.

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Donnie Darko- The Director's Cut (2001)

I'm very much an obsessive-compulsive person when it comes to my viewing and reading habits, as proven by the existence of this very blog, but I've always been bad at deciding on top ten lists of my favourite things. For years now, I've only been able to decide on the order of my top three favourite films (Jurassic Park, Blade Runner, 2001, that order), with the rest of the top ten comprised of some amorphous undefinable blob... until now, that is, thanks to a recent re-watch of Richard Kelly's feature-length directorial debut Donnie Darko (quality alliteration if I do say so myself). I've seen this film numerous times in the past, but I think this was only the second time I'd seen the director's cut edition, something which absolutely makes all the difference.

I don't want to go on a long tangent here about why I've come to now 'understand' Donnie Darko (though I do) because the explanation will just make me sound like a geek, but suffice to say the differences in this cut and the original are so strong that it does make the purpose of the film that much clearer, and once I figured it out the film became a masterpiece on a whole other level- specifically for me as an English student. I'll say no more other than it's both a literal and metaphorical deus ex machina of fantastic detail.

Other than the usual art student nonsense worship reasons, it's also a great film because it's quite funny, emotional, and has a wonderful soundtrack. Kelly captures the feel of his 1980's suburban American wonderfully, and Jake Gyllenhaal puts in as good as a performance as you'll ever see as the misunderstood teenage male outcast role. Looking back, it's no wonder so many of my film student friends were so enamoured with this film when we first saw it back in the early part of the millennium; it's also a wish fulfillment fantasy. I've been seriously thinking about getting a Frank the Bunny tattoo since watching this, though the desire may float away the further in time we get from that. Until I see it again, of course. Fourth favourite movie of all time.

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Video Games-

Ace Attorney Investigations- Miles Edgeworth (2009)

Capcom (Nintendo DS)

Got to love sprites

Having found great enjoyment in the original Phoenix Wright trilogy of adventure games, played on my trusty old stolen Nintendo DS (stolen from my sister, so it doesn't really count as theft), I've been raring to go at the spin-offs. First on the list came an adventure starring Phoenix Wright's chief rival-turned-ally Miles Edgeworth, given his own set of five brand-new murder cases. Though there's no Phoenix or his partner Mia in sight, prior fans of the franchise should be satisfied to discover that this game otherwise takes heavily from the cult franchise, with old favourites like Detective Gumshoe on hand for a sense of familiarity. Some of that was needed early on, I found, as Capcom have tweaked the original gameplay style enough to make things feel less familiar.

First of all, gone are the trademark courtroom battles of the series. Ace Attorney Investigations keeps Edgeworth out of the courtroom and exclusively on location at the crime scenes. Initially it seems odd for Capcom to have removed the series most popular feature, but in reality they haven't; the back-and-forth statements and rebuttals have simply moved to a less official capacity, with Edgeworth engaging in verbal sparring with his suspects elsewhere. The main gameplay difference, and something I had a little trouble with to start,  is that the game no longer exclusively relies on pre-rendered backgrounds combined with simple animations.

Instead, Capcom limit the pre-renders to conversations and close-up examinations, and have programmed isometric levels complete with 16-bit (maybe 32 at a push) sprites. The player must use a section of the touchscreen to direct Edgeworth's movements on the upper-screen, and this is somewhat awkward, though it's far from a game-breaker. After I'd overcome the awkwardness, it became clearer to me that the key development of the series was more apparent once I'd really delved into the game.

As becomes more and more glaringly obvious further into the game, AAI is the most linear of all the Ace Attorney games so far in relation to the amount of input the player gets. Obviously each of the AA games are ultimately very linear by their nature as adventure games, but it seemed to me that Capcom made that very obvious this time around. There is an extensive amount of dialogue, as there always is, but it seemed that this time there were less and less opportunities to investigate, and a far lesser selection of different scenes to investigate at any one time. By limiting the players' options the game becomes easier, and the rather convoluted over-arcing plot is simpler to figure out, but as a result there's a far less impressive sense of achievement.

The story is genuinely a good one, as Capcom learnt from the experiences crafting the three Phoenix Wright games to become rather good at crafting long-form overbearing plots. It's nowhere near as good Trials and Tribulations, sadly, but then it hadn't the advantage of being the third in a trilogy with plenty of story to conclude. Also (and I sort of hate to admit this), but Miles Edgeworth just isn't as compelling a character as Phoenix Wright to play as. Part of this I think comes from his past history as an arrogant rival turned good accomplice, to where his dialogue in this game varies between heroic and heelish, making it hard to grow a real attachment to him.

Though easily the weakest in the series so far, AAI was still fun for me, and I was most disappointed to find out that its sequel is yet to receive an official English translation. There are, however, unofficial translated ROMs out there, and I don't think I'd feel morally bad about playing one considering there's no other alternative, so that's been added to my future gaming plans. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go back to a bit of classic LucasArts...

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