Michael Myers Lives!

So, yeah, Halloween 5. The true nadir of the franchise. Or that might be Halloween 6, but I really cannot be bothered to dig out my video of it (The Curse Of Michael Myers is the only installment I don't own on DVD) and, hey, it's got Mike off of Friends in it, how bad can it be? It's fairly popular on the Internet Movie Database as well, but then, every film has its fans on the IMDb. Even Jaws 3-D. Yes, that's me.

It's a stupid, stupid film. Even leaving aside the wholesale raping of the finale to Part 4 and the sheer idiocy of the fact that some hermit - a fucking hermit! - looks after him for a year this is a movie where when he's locked up by the police, they don't even take his mask off him. Seriously, the guy is sitting there in a prison cell with his mask on. You have to wonder when they took the pictures if they took it off and then gave him it back.

There is one good bit in the movie when Jamie (having miraculously rediscovered the power of speech just as everyone who could interpret her for the audiences benefit bought the farm) is cornered by Michael (in a coffin he has unearthed from one of his previous victims, although why this is I have no idea) and as he pauses, she asks to see his face. He takes off his mask and we don't really see him. It's all in shadow and Jamie says 'You're like me,' which seems to be a remnant of a better script which dealt with Jamie's own homicidal impulses rather than bringing back Michael for a redundant encore.

Halloween H20, spurred on by the adrenalin shot administered to the genre by Kevin Williamson, is a much better film, mainly because it goes back to the essentials of the franchise. Whereas both Friday The 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street series were both much more about the killer, Halloween is much more about the victims, or the Final Girl. The true star of Halloween is not Michael Myers, but Laurie Strode (well, actually, the true star of Halloween is its cinematography, Dean Cundey is a cinematographer that films like Friday The 13th dream about). And so Laurie returns in H20, twenty years older and wiser. This is a film which attempts to explore the psychological ramifications of being relentlessly hunted by a homicidal maniac. She drinks, she freaks out, she represses her son and manages to fuck up every relationship she's ever had because she's scared. She is, in short, not the star of a slasher movie. She's a survivor of a slasher movie, plunged into another one. The most apposite comparison I can find to make is Ripley in the first two Alien movies. When she chooses to go along with the marines in Aliens, she's facing her fears, conquering them. That's what Laurie does in H20, conquers her fears. Only where Ripley uses a flamethrower and a power loader, Laurie uses an axe.

And while H20 has come in for a lot of criticism from hardcore fans (and where it comes to 'comic relief' security guard LL Cool J, I'm right there with them) it does a lot right, including the contentious decision to ignore the continuity for every Halloween film since Halloween 2. It's a franchise reboot that works, because it strips the concept down to the bone and just lets it play out. There's a very low body count, very little blood and, most of all, it's scary. Unlike Scream and the reboots of Elm Street and Friday The 13th which emphasised the comedy, H20 is as old school as you can get, meaning that it's faithful in spirit to the original, which is not something many films can say. I mean, look at the differences between Dr No and Octopussy, or Friday The 13th and Jason X, both of which are two examples of the same franchise separated by twenty years but which, surface aside, are very different beasts.

Halloween Resurrection makes the same mistakes as Halloween 5, retconning Michael's death in H20, putting Laurie in a nuthouse, despite the clear implication at the end of H20 that she'd conquered her demons and then presenting us with a bog-standard story. No, actually it's worse than bog-standard. It's a story that seems to have been written by someone who's just constructed a melange of slasher movie cliches in their head and then vomited them up on the screen. So the old Myers home, which was never that important an element, is suddenly vastly important in the same way that Camp Crystal Lake was important to Jason or that Elm Street was important to Freddy. And with the unforgivable dispatching of Laurie at the beginning of the film, we're left without a decent heroine. Resurrection descends into something its predecessors (even the abominable Part 5) never were; a faceless slasher movie.

As of this writing I haven't seen the Rob Zombie remake of the first film. The trailers look good, but what I've heard of it - that it explains why Michael does what he does - doesn't do much for me. Michael's homicidal rampage was all the more terrifying because we didn't know why he was doing what he was doing. Why did he have an overriding impulse to wipe out his own family? It's scarier if we don't know. If we know, then he just becomes another serial killer wearing a stupid mask.

Peace out.

The Night He Came Home. Again. And Again...

There's conventional wisdom about slasher movies as well. Mainly that the first one is worth watching and then it's a steady rate of decline from then on. Basically, the higher the number after the title, the worse it is, which is probably why after Friday The 13th Part 8 - Jason Takes Manhattan and Halloween 6 - The Curse Of Michael Myers they stopped using numbers and went with just the subtitles so that people wouldn't have any idea about how bad they were intentionally going to be (and, knowing Hollywood, there was probably some debate that if something is a Part 9, then you have to have seen Parts 1 through 8 to have made sense of it all, and in this dubious tactic they might be right, after all, The Golden Compass has just come out at the pictures and half the people I've spoken to have no idea that it's the first part of a trilogy - hell, I know people who went to see The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring and expected it to end).

But, as always, conventional wisdom doesn't have it entirely right. After all, Jason X (or as I like to call it, Friday The 13th Part 10 - Jason In Space!) is the best of the Friday The 13th films, including the first one. In fact, when it comes to Jason and his machete-wielding adventures, in my opinion, the first film is one of the worst (and not just because he's barely in it). In fact, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst (Jason Takes Manhattan, despite the best comedy decapitation ever) and one being the best (Jason X), the original Friday The 13th makes its home around number 7, above The New Blood and Part 3, but below such alleged franchise nadirs as Jason Lives and the non-Jason entry A New Beginning.

The Halloween franchise is slightly different. I'll take anyone outside who offers up the opinion that the first film in this, the most archetypal of slashers, is not a true masterpiece. It's so great they even teach it on Film Studies courses, alongside such recognised classics as The Searchers, Jaws and Casablanca. The sequels, however, are a very different kettle of fish. Just like no one would ever try to squeeze Jaws 3-D onto a degree level Film Theory course, no case could be made for any of the Halloween sequels, despite some of them being far better than their reputation suggests.

Before I start though, I'm going to say that I won't even be going anywhere near the Michael Myers lacking third entry. While John Carpenter and Debra Hill's idea of doing a 'Halloween' film every year with a completely different story/cast like a cinematic version of The Twilight Zone was a good one, it was ultimately scuttled by the gorehounds devotion to Michael Myers and his William Shatner mask wearing antics.

So, Halloween 2. Still scripted by Carpenter and Hill, but directed by Rick Rosenthal (who has since made something of a comeback directing episodes of Buffy, Point Pleasant and Smallville). It follows on directly from the end of the first film, so much so that you could watch both of them in a three hour chunk if you really wanted to. And it works watching them like this as well. While the first film doesn't offer any real sense of closure, Halloween 2 sees Michael dead at the end, burned up, giving Jamie Lee the chance to move on with her life. Except that she doesn't get that chance. Halloween 2 is actually a good film, very much a Moonraker to Halloween's The Spy Who Loved Me and none of the ancillary characters stand out the way that PJ Soles and Nancy Loomis did in the first installment, but all in all, it's a far better film than anyone could have hoped for.

Halloween 4, subtitled The Return Of Michael Myers, to assuage any confusion that it was going to be another Season Of The Witch, is also a far better film than it has any right to be. Starring Jamie, the daughter of Jamie Lee's character (Jamie Lee, seen only in pictures here, has been killed in an off screen car crash, Dr Loomis is inexplicably alive, given the ending of Halloween 2 and Michael is more or less fine, despite spending the last decade in a coma) and her step-sister Rachel are our main points of focus here and while you may question the sense in having a slasher film with an eight year old lead, it all works. Unlike most films of this type, the police are called in early (all the more fodder for Michael to work his way through) with none of the usual disbelief and 'cry wolf' tactics that usually pad out such films. The ending, which sees Michael dead (again), also plays against expectations, showing us little Jamie having been pushed over the edge from witnessing her uncle's reign of terror, killing her stepmother, an event which also almost pushes Loomis over the brink. His reaction to seeing Jamie standing at the top of the stairs - he pulls out his gun and goes to shoot her, only stopped by the Sheriff - is also fantastically demented. It's probably the last time in the series that Pleasence gets to do anything enjoyable.

Because by the time we come to Halloween 5, subtitled The Revenge Of Michael Myers, again most probably to assure people that Michael would be in it, Michael is alive, having survived his fall down a mineshaft, taken a swim in a river and stumbled upon the wooden shack of the local hermit. He promptly tries to kill the hermit but falls into a coma. One year later, he wakes up, still at the shack (obviously it never occured to the hermit to take him to a hospital or call the police or anything else that might actually make sense), kills the hermit (at least he pays for his stupidity) and goes after Jamie again, who has been traumatised by the events of Halloween 4 and so hasn't spoken for a year. Now under the care of Loomis at the Haddonfield Children's Clinic, it transpires her step-mother is fine, the kid stabbed her and then, at the end of the fourth entry, she obviously decided it would be best to lay there in the bath quietly as she bled out to provide us with our shock ending. Rachel and her best friend, the annoying peppy Tina, come to visit her and tell her she'll be fine. Jamie uses sign language with them. I vomit.

I have to go to work now, so: To Be Continued...

Down And Out In Bradford

Traditional wisdom holds that most people, when starting diaries, do well for the first few weeks and then tail off. Ahem.

Not that much has happened in my life. At all. But I thought I should tell you all I'm still alive. Still single, as well, but that's not really a cause for celebration.

And there's not really any potential people out there for me. There're a couple of people I like - there's actually one person who I really like - but the liklihood of anything happening there is slim-to-none.

So I come back to my dilemma which is partially why I stopped writing on here in the first place - is this an online blog of my life, or the criticisms of a caustic critic? I just don't have the energy for writing two blobs (I barely have enough energy to do one). I originally thought that I might be able to combine them, but it looks a bit messy. But maybe that's what this blog is - a bit messy.

So, you'll be hearing from me soon. Hopefully.

Peace out.

In Search Of The Human Adventure

There's conventional wisdom in the world of Star Trek, perhaps more so than any other fandom that I am involved in, with the possible exceptioon of James Bond, and even with Bond, you do get the odd rallying cry to the true greatness of Moonraker or Licence To Kill.

Trek, on the other hand, is so rigidly organised that every movie has a set verdict already imposed on it. So here goes:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Worthy but dull
Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan - Brilliant
Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock - Unworthy
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home - The pinnacle of mainstream Trek
Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier - Bobbins, and probably all the fault of Shatner
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country - A worthy final voyage for the original crew
Star Trek: Generations - Two Captains in search of a plot
Star Trek: First Contact - Brilliant
Star Trek: Insurrection - An overlong episode of the TV show
Star Trek: Nemesis - Shite.

Now, by and large I do actually agree with most of the judgements, with two notable exceptions (and I have been known to watch TFF and enjoy it immensely on occasion, but that doesn't render it any less bobbins). They are The Search For Spock and Insurrection. Both of these films, it has been argued, are like overlong episodes of the TV show, with no real cinematic value. Which is kinda true. It's also true that they both follow on from tub-thumpingly balls to the wall action movie entries into the Trek canon and isn't variety the spice of life? If either TWoK or FC had been followed up by a film which had tried to do the same thing but bigger and better, they would have been doomed to failure. Look at the movie franchises which have tried that: Pirates Of The Caribbean, Batman, Terminator - it's a case of diminishing returns because you can only go so far before it just gets ridiculous.

So, TSfS and I turn the heat down a little. It's a good thing. It lets the characters breath. As good as FC was, the only character who got a look in was Picard, with his Moby Dick homaging subplot. Everyone else in that film was simply acting out their plot function. I brings the cast of The Next Generation back for the first time since - arguably, the holodeck sequence at the start of Generations. Because no one would have watched the series for the epic space battles and action. As a weekly syndicated series, TNG was amazingly light on action. It was about character. We fell in love with Star Trek (and The Next Generation in particular) because of the characters, not because we turned in each week to see shit getting blown up. That's not what the TV show was about. It's not what the movies are about either. Both The Wrath of Khan and First Contact are anomalies in the ten-film sequence, much in the way that Tomorrow Never Dies is an anomaly in the Bond canon in that it doesn't feel like a Bond film. It feels like a common or garden action movie that just happens to have James Bond as it's hero. The Trek universe of The Wrath of Khan is subtley different to anything that has gone before in Trek and anything that will come after it. Even TSfS and TVH which follow on from Khan take place in a different universe. Not massively different, but enough to ensure that Khan's militaristic Napoleonic era sea battle transposed to space has a unique place. While First Contact isn't as drastic a departure - by this time the Trek universe was much more defined and rigid as it was when Nick Meyer and Harve Bennett were carving out new territory - it still carries with it a different mood - again, it's a much more militaristic Starfleet we see here (and it's ironic that First Contact, made before the start of the Dominion War over on Deep Space 9 is a much more militaristic film than Insurrection, which takes place during the war), emphasised by the new uniforms and the design of the new Enterprise-E. It also rewrites Trek lore to introduce the Borg Queen (and back in 1991, Peter David, that bastion of quality tie-in fiction had to have a disclaimer in his Borg novel Vendetta as it featured a female Borg and - according to Paramount at the time, such things did not exist). In much the same way that Aliens symbolically castrated the threat of the xenomorphs by having so many of them (and having them suddenly so easy to kill, a far cry from the one indestructable alien in Ridley Scott's entry) having a spokesman (or in this case, spokeswoman) for the Borg - giving an enemy whose facelessness was on of its most appealing factors - removed much of the threat and was an all too easy concession to the apparent need for the film to have an identifiable foe who could go up against Picard. And give Data a blow job in the most literal sense.

The Search For Spock is essentially Part 2 of the Genesis trilogy (although Part 3 - The Voyage Home is less concerned with what happened in the previous two films and more bothered about having a good time and delivering its eco-message). Unlike the films starring Patrick Stewart and co, the original series films more or less follow an arc, an arc which is most apparent between films 2 and 4, continuing on from each other as they do. As such, TSfS has a lot of mopping up to do, although why they felt they had to bring back Spock is beyond me. It is, at it's core, an unnecessary action. I know Spock is the most loved of the Trek characters (although McCoy will always be my favourite - while Kirk is the fist and Spokc the brain, McCoy is the heart of the original crew) but having him brought back, and by such an obvious plot McGuffin cheapens the character and robs us of what could have been an interesting new crew dynamic. Picture this: following the events of Khan, the Enterprise crew stay together, the ship being repaired. Taking Spock's place as Kirk's first officer is Saavik, it's obviously command that she's been groomed for when she takes the Kobayashi Maru test and her inexperience would have created a lot of interesting conflict and taking over at the science station is David Marcus, Kirk's son, who was all but wasted in TSfS, aside from the one short scene where he's talking with Kirk over the intercom and he says 'I knew you'd come'. Now, it's fairly clear from the closeness of Saavik and David in TSfS that they have some sort of relationship bubbling over so you have the chance to do what no Trek series did till DS9 did - you can tell stories about long-term relationships and father-son stories. Obviously, this wouldn't work in the conext of the movies because there wouldn't be enough room to develop those relationships to a sufficient degree, and anyway, I'm not here to regret what might have been. I'm here to defend the third film.

And it is worth defending. There's a lot of good in there, a lot of humour despite the rather grim plot, a beautiful restatement of what Trek is all about when Kirk destroys the Enterprise. Now, you have to remember how Kirk felt about the Enterprise. It wasn't just a ship to him. It was his home, his life, hell, it was almost like his lover. How many women did he fall in love with, only to leave them behind because he was more in love with the Enterprise? Exactly. Losing the Enterprise, and losing it in the way he did (especially so soon after losing his son) is - to me - a greater loss than that of Spock at the end of the previous movie. As Kirk himself says at the end of the movie, when Spock has been returned to him, "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." He's not talking about Spock's needs there. He's talking about his own. Having never faced death until losing Spock, he's come to realise that the Enterprise means a lot to him, but it means less than Spock does, than David does, because you can't deny that Kirk's actions are primarily motivated by revenge. He blows the Enterprise up to kill the Klingon bastards that killed his son. It's telling that he doesn't even realise what he's done until he sees the hulk of the Enterprise burning up in the atmosphere of the Genesis planet and it's up to Bones to tell him, or to mollify him, saying that he's done the only thing he could do. In essence, The Search For Spock is all about one man's greed and what it costs other people. And that man is Jim Kirk. Picard goes on a similar emotional journey in First Contact. Having been tortured and dehumanised by the Borg, he is prepared to go to any lengths - even sending his entire crew on a suicidal mission - to defeat them. The main difference between the two captains is that Kirk's greed is motivated by a desire to get his friend back - David's death and the destruction of the Enterprise are simp,y two unfortunate consequences of that desire - while Picard, like Ahab, is driven purely by a desire for revenge, and revenge, in the universe of TNG is not something that is tolerated.

Insurrection is, in my opinion, probably the second best of the TNG movies. Nemesis obviously brings up the rear, it's poorly thought out plot, flat direction and basic lack of understanding of the characters/concepts that make Star Trek what it is cripple it and the good in it - and there is some; Riker and Troi's wedding, Dina Meyer as the Romulan Commander, the battle between Shinzon's vessel and the Enterprise - is not enough to tip the balance. Generations likewise suffers. The first twenty minutes or so - the portion with Kirk essentially - is wonderful, but the easy rapport between Kirk, Scotty and Chekov casts into sharp relief the cold formality that exists between the crew of the Enterprise D. Only Will Riker comes across as a geniune human being while Patrick Stewart is crippled by a plot which kills off his brother and nephew and then asks him to be a gung-ho hero, which is impossible, even for an actor of Stewart's calibre. Plus the bizarre decision to introduce elements like Data's emotion chip - which, for an audience who hadn't slavishly followed The Next Generation on television would have seemed out of place at best and mawkish at worst - it's clear that Ron Moore and Brannon Braga (G's writers) didn't have much of an idea about the differences between film and TV. Ironically, had it not been so bound up in the mythology of the TV show, All Good Things..., the series finale, has more scope and potential for action than Generations. And they waste Kirk, in more ways than one. And they got it wrong twice. First Kirk dies by getting shot in the back, then in the reshoots, they killed him by having him on a bridge that collapsed. Kirk should have died sacrificing his life, choosing to die, rather than in some stupid accident. It's no wonder Shatner had second thoughts and resurrected Kirk in the novels.

In many ways, the naysayers of Insurrection are right. It's a story which - Generations aping finale excepted - could have been done as a two parter on the TV show. But does it really matter? There's more essential Trekkiness in Insurrection than in all the other TNG films put together. There's more humour... there's more heart. And that is what Trek was all about, in the final analysis. It's just that the fans expected something a little more bombastic after First Contact - a film in which the entire galaxy was at stake - than Insurrection which is a more personal story on every level.

It reminds me of a comment I read somewhere concerning the deaths of the Tom Baker and Peter Davison Doctors. Tom Baker was better, they said, because he died saving the universe while Davison died saving just one person. In my humble opinion, they got it the wrong way round. Davison was a far better hero than Baker because he was willing to sacrifice himself just to save one friend (and it's telling that Eccleston does much the same thing in the rebooted Doctor Who). Insurrection is much the same. It's not hard to try to save the universe. Saving one person? That's much harder. As Kirk himself says at the conclusion of The Search For Spock after Sarek asks him if the sacrifice was worth it, given the cost of his ship and his son: "If I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul."

So it's been nearly a week. And, Jesus, what a week. I mean, leaving aside all the Natalie related issues, we've still got the refit going on at work - the entirety of Sunday was spent transferring stock from the shop floor to the Post Office next door where we're now operating from temporarily or the back stockroom - and that's almost enough to occupy anyone's time. But add to that the Natalie stuff, and you'll see that my brain is pretty well fried.

Because, ah, Natalie.

Yes.

She did indeed come into the shop on Wednesday. More than once, in fact. And every time she came in, she was with Jade and laughing her head off. Never even made eye contact with me, let alone spoke. So I text her when I'm on my way home asking her if I embarrass her. No reply. So I talk with Kelly the next afternoon and she says text her once more, be blunt about it and if she doesn't reply, then call it quits.

Which I did. I texted her on Thursday night essentially saying 'do you like me or not?' and she never texted back. She's been into the shop a few times since then, but has never spoken to me yet. It's funny how these things work out, isn't it? Of course, everyone in the Mow now thinks I am seeing Natalie (and, according to Stacy, she's fairly sure Natalie's got the clap, apparently).

But I am determined this is not going to get me down. Well, not as down as I was over Allison. Or Stef. Or Isabella. No. I got a text off Clare saying her and Richie are going to see Potter 5 with Mark and Tracy, so I'm going to ask Bryony if she wants to go with me. Kinda like a date. Ish. It's a pretty much last ditch attempt to get her to like me, you know, in that way, before I give her up as a lost cause.

I Say, She Says

So, after an awful lot of deliberation and that fact that Natalie texted me again later on last night, I have discovered that 'tb' is not in fact a misspelling of 'to' or even a reference to tuberculosis. It does, in fact, mean 'text back'. I think.

So I texted her back and I was in Sunderland today looking for David's birthday present and just on my way to the Metro to go to Newcastle when she texts me again asking me what I'm doing. I tell her, she texts back saying she's in Newcastle going for a job interview. Great, I say. You fancy meeting? She says she's with a friend. I say fine, I don't want to get in the way of anything. She says no, I'd love to meet you. She thens tells me where she is and that she's going for something to eat. I text back asking her if she does want to meet up then. And I don't here anything back. I wander round Newcastle for about half an hour and she still hasn't texted back. So I go for the bus. Now, I go for a bus which doesn't take me home. It'll take me to Chester, where I can get a bus home, but it's a lot easier than walking all the way up Northumberland Street to the new bus station for the bus that would take me home. And because of where Natalie lives, she gets that bus home to. Exact same bus. And it's one of those frequent services that run every five minutes so it's a pretty big coincidence.

However. (There's always an however in my life.) However, I see her before her and her mate get to the bus stop. Doubtless she sees me as well. And she doesn't come to stand in the queue. She doesn't even wave hello or anything. Her mate does, but then her mate is a loud mouthed gobby loon. And when the bus comes and we get on it, she walks straight past me without even making eye contact. Then they both get off at Gateshead. I then spend the rest of the journey home and the majority of the afternoon thinking I should send her a text with the general gist of 'what the fuck was that?'. I don't however. And this eveing I get another text from her saying she's been feeling a bit down today because her gran has just died. I text back saying okay, and that I'm at work tomorrow so if she needs to talk that she knows where I am.

I hope I do see her tomorrow. Because until I speak to her, face to face, I just won't be able to shake the suspicion that there's something not right about the whole thing. I don't know. I know Terileigh wouldn't do anything nasty to me, like giving me someone else's number or something. But at the same time there's this queasy uneasiness about the whole thing that I can't shake.

I don't know. Maybe she just doesn't want her relationship with me to be so out in the open, especially not in such early days. Maybe I'm just being blindly optimistic here. Maybe she's shy. She doesn't seem the type, but I don't know, maybe she really does like me a lot and doesn't want to fuck it up. Ah, there's the return of the blind optimism, yeah? I'm trying to avoid the theories that it's all a big joke that's being played on me, or that she thought it was a good idea to give Terileigh my number on Saturday night and changed her mind. Jesus H Christ. All Hail Marky, for he is the Master of Paranoia. This is why I'm so depressed all the time you know, because I always look for the bad shit in everything.

Peace out.

The Vagaries Of The Txt

So, Natalie did text back, after a day in which she came into work a few times, never said anything and seemed to be laughing her head off every time she saw me. Now, you kow me, I am King of all that is paranoid. So I'm standing there, Natalie's in the shop but she's not talking to me. Instead, she's laughing with her friends. And Jesus H Christ, what does that make me think?

But she's texted back. Unfortunately for me, her text is pretty garbled. The one thing that is clear is that which I already knew; that she doesn't have any money on her phone. So what do I do now? That is the question, whether to bear the slings and arrows and text her back or wait and see if she comes in the shop on Wednesday.

You know, after a couple of million years of evolution you'd think that (A) we'd have the whole dating thing down to a fine art and (B) that we'd have invented a form of communication much more refined than text messaging.