FC by the FC

I recently watched the French connection and ultimately it left me disappointed. However, looking back on it,  I have been a bit harsh. Yes it had some flaws, but I looked at it with over 40 years of cinema advancement. I'm enjoying thinking about it more than I enjoyed it first time round!

First off, I have to address a major flaw ; the soundtrack. Countless times during the film any possible tension was ruined by almost comically bad music telling you it was going to be tense. This isn't something you can blame on age as a lot of older films have fantastic soundtracks. It seems a small thing to talk about, but it ruins many good films. My other complaints are the ending seemed confused. 2 or 3minutes less and it would have been brilliant, but as it was it just got a bit confused. And the other thing was the pacing of the plot in the first half, but this may have been a consequence of it being a true story.  It went very slow,  then big lump of plot in a single scene.

That apart it was actually better than I gave credit for. Things that seemed cliché weren't when it was new,  and I didn't credit this. The chase scene must have been groundbreaking and the interaction with the characters outside the main 2 cops was a lot of fun. A favourite scene was the subway one trying to follow alain, which was a lot of fun.

Overall it is a good film,  and I think I will enjoy it more the second time provided I watch it right. If only it had a better sound track...

Backdated 4 - Lions Watch!

Mid 6nations is the classic time to start picking a lions squad. Only it's never that simple. England will be expected to make up a large section of the squad but Gatland will no doubt pick plenty from Wales. Scotland have been better than expected this season and the iris are missing plenty who'd expect to make the plane. So my squad:

Front row
Last tour the Welsh lads made all the headlines,  but they've not been In the same format this year. That said you can't discount their class.  Dan Cole and cian healey look nailed on,  and from scotland I always like Ross ford and euan murray. Dylan Hartley and tom youngs both make a case.  For me murray Cole healey jenkins Jones ford Hartley Rees.  Youngs unlucky but just too soon. Might bolt

Second row
English and scottish both look strong here. The players missing from ireland and Wales want in too based on  class. Launchbury lawes and gray look to be the future,  but you ignore hines parling oconnell and wyn Jones at your peril.  For me the 3 young guns, oconnell if fit and hines. Tough on parling

Back row
This is interesting. Key for me is balance. I know gatland wants a fetcher to combat pocock, which points to Warburton. I think the best 2 back rowers have both been injured recently - croft and ferris. Robshaw wood heaslip obrien Lydiate and faletau are all good players too but this a lot of players that more look like 6.5s  I'd go with croft ferris and faletau, taking wood heaslip obrien and Lydiate. Robshaw too if space allows

9s

Youngs and care.  Next

10s
Farell and sexton are the favourites.  I'd take hook for versatility and would be interested to see if there's any new ones wilkinson

12
Roberts would be favourite but not playing great this year.  Barritt will lead the defence,  Marshall may find it too soon. No scottish candidates and D'Arcy is not the player he was

13
Old master and young pretender.  Odriscoll and tuilagi. Bod possible (probable?) captain.  Tough on Davies who is looking better and better. 

Back 3
Cuthbert north and bowel will almost definitely make the trip. Ashton needs to up his defence.  Halfpenny and kearney are probable and I'd take foden. Hogg and the Scottish wings look nice too. Nice problem to have! 

Backdated 3 - The Hobbit as a film

Growing up, one of my favourite books was the hobbit. I've read it loads of times, can pick it up from anywhere and know exactly whats happening straight away, and know the full mythology. I really enjoyed the lord of the rings film, so with peter jackson now making the hobbit,  with the excellent martin freeman in the lead role, I was excited. Only to be let down.

Before I launch into a tirade, I should note that as a film it was very good. It just wasn't the hobbit, the book from my childhood that I loved.

I will admit to being a purist; I think Tolkein's words are great, and shouldn't be messed with. So the fact that a large section of the plot was changed just to elongate the film and turn it into 3 so they can get more money really offended me. The main character differs from the one in the book, and the reason for the dynamic changing within the group is also wrong. The narrative voice from the book, a fantastic part of it, which really sets the tone of it is lost, and I'm not sure its even attempted. Nothing is made about going over the edge of the wild, key from the book, and things happen on the wrong side of the edge, losing the whole raison d'etre of it.

But all of this pales in comparison to what they do to the characters. The dwarves "look" wrong, and are far too silly. Thorin is too young. Saruman, who shouldnt be seen, is far too silly and not respected, which ruins a link that is needed for the start of the fellowship of the ring. Radagast is humiliated, and shouldn't even be in the film, he's not in the book. Azog, whose being dead is pretty necessary for the book, is miraculously alive and suddenly a main character.  This is when akl thats said of him is "whose father you slew in moria", azog being the father. Its so far removed from the book its not even funny. I was so disappointed in a film that could have been brilliant.

Backdated 2 - Sorkin's Stuido 60 is Sublime

Sorkin’s supreme studio 60 on the sunset strip

Aaron Sorkin is rightly renowned for the award-winning West Wing and Social Network.  The Newsroom, his current TV show, is something I am very eager to watch, and sad that I haven’t been able to yet.  His star is likely to rise higher still with the forthcoming biopic of Steve Jobs, which will apparently be done in just 3 different scenes, each one in the build up to a major product launch.  But one show that is often overlooked and was cancelled far too early is the quite brilliant Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

I’ve just finished rewatching the entire series, for only the second time, and I loved every moment of it.  Sorkin’s snappy dialogue fits the setting and the back and forth between the cast is a joy to behold.  As in West Wing, he is joined by Thomas Schlamme, and the camera work has some trademarks that let you know who it is behind the camera.  There isn’t quite the “Walk & Talk” of West Wing, but there are definite marks of it.  And when something is as seminal as that, why not continue to use it?

To summarise the major premise of Studio 60, it is a behind the scenes show about a late Friday night comedy show, in the style of Saturday Night Live.  The writer and executive producer, Wes Mandell loses his rag with the FCC and the censorship of his show live on air, gets fired and two old crew members return to rescue the show.  Starring Matt Perry as head writer Matthew Albie and Bradley Whitford as executive producer Danny Tripp, their chemistry (again first seen during Perry’s guest appearances as a lawyer on West Wing) is a joy, and they’re joined by a few others from there.

Through the first half of the series plot lines are set up which could conceivably last for a good 4 of 5 seasons.  Unfortunately, due to lack of rating success it got cancelled early, and you can see the rush to tie up a succession of loose ends.  It seems somewhat ironic that a show about a show where the ratings sometimes get glossed over in favour of putting out a good product gets canned for ratings.  And its a great shame, I would have loved to have seen how they would have been dealt with had time been their call.

That’s not to say that the second half of the series is devoid of good episodes in favour of finishing the plot.  Yes the final four have a lot of content in them, but they are stunningly written and performed, and the Disaster Show, featuring a cameo from Alison Janney, is great fun.

The backdrop of having to get a show ready to go every Friday night brings continual time pressure to the show, and adds an edge to it.  The constant reminder of the countdown clock in Matt’s office doesn’t let you forget it.  Remember, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Backdated 1 - Prometheus

Warning.  Here be spoilers!

I rarely, if ever, do film reviews, so this attempt to air my opinions on Prometheus may end up slightly haphazard.  Set in the same universe as the Alien quadrilogy, it had some stiff competition to stand up to in the two originals, widely regarded as classics, while having to cope with being expected to be far better than films 3 and 4 (which I am yet to see).  It also had the added pressure of being a prequel, and having to therefore exist as a standalone film, while setting up any future plots it chose to and adding to the mythology.

The film started with some fantastic panoramic shots over mountain tops and valleys, before focusing in on the top of a waterfall.  A humanlike figure approached, with enough difference to make him alien.  He drank some black liquid which transformed him, black patches appearing over his skin, and his body beginning to fall apart before he tumbled over the precipice, with the camera zooming into his body, down to his DNA which mutated and was ripped asunder before our eyes, before reforming.  Visually impressive, and raising questions as to what happened after it reformed, it was a very good opening teasing us with what was to come.

Unfortunately that was as good as it got.  The film seemed to suffer from a great deal of confusion, hints of ideas formed throughout but none really developed to a level where you could see if they had any scope.  There was a lack of identity, right down to what it was trying to be.  The original Alien was a horror and the sequel an action packed journey.  But Prometheus seemed to want to do both but without being able to do either well.  If it chose which path to take, and replaced some of the scenes of the opposite nature with more plot development it could have delivered a film to back up the opening visuals.

The plot in a nutshell is that archaeologists on earth had found images in 7 different ancient civilisations that all showed men looking up at larger humanoid figures pointing to the same pattern of stellar objects.  We then travel to the only known place with this system, and the only habitable location within it, and find a non-natural structure that they then explore.  Inside they separate into 2 groups, find a body with the head perfectly preserved and more of the mysterious black liquid.  One group taking the head back to the ship, and the other group end up trapped inside over night and get attacked by creatures that grow from the liquid.  We return in the morning to find them both presumably dead, one of the crew poisoned with a drop of the liquid by the ships android, and the android goes separately and finds one of the humanoids (who the head belonged to and turns out to be a form of human that we descended from) alive in a stasis chamber.  We return to the ship, have one of the supposedly dead crew attack it after being mutated, while another member turns out to be pregnant with an alien baby after sleeping with the poisoned man who gets torched to death.  After an emergency caesarean she thinks she kills it, and finds that the company founder, close to death, is on board trying to find the reason for life.  Together (with android) they go to the stasis human and ask it, only to find more black poison, wake the ‘human’ and for it to destroy the android, kill the founder and try to kill the rest.  She runs away, the ship goes on a suicide mission to stop it trying to kill everyone on earth.  It survives the crash, comes after the heroine but gets eaten by the alien baby, from which is born the alien of the quadrilogy.

Fully developed the idea of why these people came to earth (and other planets), left and why they then want to kill them could have made for a good film.  Explanation as to what happened when the ‘human’ drank the liquid in the opening, full blown action fight between the people from earth and those they go to see, proper horror with aliens of both kind lurking around the darkened corridors, all would have been an improvement on the confusion.  Unfortunately this isn’t what we got, and they just tacked the link to the universe onto it, and had no need to apart from the name.

The titan Prometheus tried to put man and god on a level.  Ridley Scott tried to put this on a level with the original 2 Alien films, missed and will be lucky if its considered on the same level as the latter 2.