i'm not going to give too much away about the new project tommy and i are working on in an as yet undecided medium (we'll get the plot decided first), suffice to say, the working title is 'the hunt for dan brown' and it's going to be splendid. i think the most important plot point might be discovering why dan brown is propped up against something in every available publicity photo (it might have something to do with real dolls, or not.)
i saw war of the worlds a couple of days ago, i thought it was actually good. seeing people being zapped by the heat ray in the opening scenes was properly horrifying, and overall i think the film should have been rated higher than a 12A. maybe that's just me getting older. julie couldn't get over her hatred for tom cruise, which i just took as read from the start of the film and moved on from, even if the film makes clear he is the best crane operator in 12 systems, just to prove everyone's gotta be good at something (incidentally i read in the fortean times how he had two gifts for everyone on the film: a coffee bar and a church of scientology booth). i love (and have always loved) many things about the war of the worlds; the hopelessness, the red weed, the fact that for all intents and purposes the martians win, and without compromise. this version was pretty faithful, adding only really bad transitions between some scenes (how did they get from 'hamburger hill' to the loner's basement? how was their car unscathed after everything else around was destroyed when a bloody aeroplane fell out of the sky?), a wonderful young actress (clearly the next drewbarrymore), and an unbelievable twist on the ending, that the martians couldn't survive in our ecosystem: the revalation that "no death is in vain" . the ending was the same; the aliens caught the common cold and died. but the angle they played on it ignored the poetic injustice of other versions i have experienced (an older film and the jeff wayne version); for all our great weapons and tactics, nature is more wonderful still. it seemed to say that the end justifies the means, &c. not in this story it didn't; the aliens weren't defeated because of all our brave lads who died for us. it had nothing to do with us at all. in the other versions, the aliens catch colds and die, simple as that. here, the aliens are attacked by bacteria, which not only causes them to behave erraticly, but inexplicably stops their force fields from working, just so we can get a few minutes of men finally taking out a tripod, because they could have done it all along, if it weren't for the martian's dastardly technology. L made a good point that bacteria are only good at affecting us because of co-evolution, and introducing a new organism to an ecosystem, one finds that it is devoid of predators, so the aliens wouldn't have been affected by anything in our ecosystem as it wouldn't recognise them as a target. he's wrong of course, because of fresher's flu; you go to a new area, and there's all sorts of new strains of viruses that you're not immune to. of course, by the same measure, it would be funny if the aliens brought some viruses with them from mars that later killed all life on earth. why didn't wells think of that one? i suppose it doesn't help the narrative much, it's just a twist too far.
intersting article that i feel quite passionate about - lisa stansfield
In the end my decision wasn't that hard. I went with my gut instinct and decided to take my husband's surname. Why? Because I wanted to. Nothing to do with tradition and nothing to do with what anybody else thought.
Was I selling my sisters down the river? No. What better way of being independent and believing in the social and economic equality of the sexes is there than making your own choice? That choice was mine.
PEOPLE=SHIT
how can she say that it was nothing to do with tradition? i agree, the choice was hers, but she can't say her choice had no influences, nor ramifications.
i wish the martians would come and take you away. right now.
6 comments:
Aw Grilly - you've just spoiled the film for me now!
the obvious joke has to be made: tom cruise spoilt the film long before i mentioned it.
sorry for assuming everyone knew the story to war of the worlds was common knowledge. i should stick a spoiler alert in.
by the way, who are you?
i'm not "wrong of course", you fucker.
how could a virus inject it's dna into an alien cell, supposing that aliens have 'cells' in the same way that we consider them? The chance that an alien would have a similar rna/codon style protein synthesise is practically nil.
bacteria operate in a very different way but it's a similar principle. harm that pathogens can cause is nearly always host specific. an alien, having different organs and bodily functions, being effected by these would be like a fern catching a cold - but weirder.
now look, you made me talk like an x-files cunt.
I saw WOTW last night and I thought that the first hour was really good. I think however that a film like this finds it hard to make the transition from bombastic opening to low-key, down-beat ending that the story demands; without at least leaving the audience a little cold.
I mean, War of the Worlds was basically about how we could be wiped out at any time, and the only thing that stopped the alien invaders was fuck all to do with mankind's much lauded-technological achievements.
Naturally, Spielberg took this sentiment and tried in the final minutes of the film, to twist it into some Happy Days mantra to allow the audience to leave the theatre without an overwhelming sense of just how useless, puny and smite-able they all were. And was that Morgan Freeman he got to read out the voice over? That 'aint gonna to help, Steve.
The 1953 film where the aliens' proboscii that light up green is still the superior version, purely because the ending is handled in a very spooky fashion. And the Spielberg WOTW simply wasn't murky enough at the end - you could almost hear the producers scratching their heads and thinking "how are we going to end this one BIG?" as some soldiers shot down a tripod that was completely without purpose.. except perhaps for inclusion in the trailer reel.
And that boy should've died as well. But no, he had to live the American Dreem and run off into some stupid war to prove himself as a man. And of course... he lived.
Spielberg, has Schindler's List taught you nothing?
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