prometheus (take 2)

This film polarises opinion. Want to know what I really think? It's a silly escapade on a distant world and bears no relation to reality. It’s daft fiction with a pseudo-science basis. Instead of genuinely seeking the truth of man’s creation, a trillion-dollar jaunt into outer space becomes a study in juvenile meddling.

The film opens on Earth with an alien humanoid erupting after drinking juice from a mysterious phial. His DNA breaks down and mingles with native material. So much for the back story of creation. Swiftly we move to a gigantic spaceship (flown by an android-cum-butler) carrying a familiar motley crew of social misfits and buffoons at the speed of light. The chums awake from their induced slumber, crack inappropriate jokes and some begin smoking.

Cave paintings on Earth have clued them into their destination and when they land they waste no time in jumping out to explore. Before long the helmets are off and they are declaring, “Mmm, this smells nice.” Never mind about gravity, atmospheric density or airborne micro organisms.

Inside a hollow mountain their android pilot finds some creepy goo which he decides to pocket. Soon they find an apparently long dead being whom they guess to be an Engineer – a creator of humankind. With his severed head in a bag they troop back to the ship. Naturally they leave behind a couple of twits who got caught in a dust storm.

Quarantine is for wimps, so they haul the head straight into a lab aboard ship to examine it. This procedure is left to the girls, who giggle and stick an electrode in its ear while they wonder how much juice is enough to revive it. Remember, this is the most exciting discovery in the history of the Universe. Re-animation doesn’t go so well and after some lip-smacking and eye-rolling, the head explodes like a watermelon hit by a sniper.

The dodgy android slips the goo into someone’s drink and he’s sure to be a goner, you just know it. Meanwhile the guys left in the mountain find an alien cobra thing. Do they run like the wind? No they get up close with it and then it bites a lot. A search party is dispatched headed by the infected guy. The cobra is down someone’s throat in next to no time and they all run back to the ship.

Naturally anyone knocking on the back door is granted admission and a fight ensues, a fight won by the mission leader with her flame thrower. Somewhere along the line a girl performs her own caesarean section and removes a squid-like object. No one seems bothered that she is smearing blood everywhere. And these are scientists, right.

A very wrinkly old man (the mission funder), played by a youthful but heavily made-up Guy Pearce, arrives on the scene to examine an alien space craft that’s all set for lift-off with a cargo of alien goo. Pearce wrestles with another Engineer and comes off worse. Actually, why not just have a real old-man-actor? The Engineer is so angry he tears the android’s head off next. They all decide to jump in their spaceship and escape the mayhem.

After launch most decide to sacrifice themselves by flying into the aliens’ craft as it takes off. One girl sensibly stays behind to try her luck in the obligatory escape pod. Remember the squid? Now it’s swollen to a crazy size and sets too with an Engineer. I forget which ship they are on or if it even matters.

Bottom line, this is beautifully filmed and the effects are outrageous but don’t expect an iota of common sense. All that glitters is not gold.

prometheus

Film franchises are not obliged to run chronologically forwards. This was pointed out elaborately but, in artistic terms, entirely unsuccessfully by George Lucas with his Star Wars prequels, not one but three. Ridley Scott has taken an altogether more serious and potentially more exciting approach.

The Alien trilogy is well known to science fiction aficionados for its merciful avoidance of slapstick characters in favour of gritty realism. (Jaja Binks relegated what remained of a tidy story to a cartoon. In my opinion.) It’s over thirty years since Alien and twenty since the second sequel. A lot has happened in the field of computer generated imagery and the public’s expectations are higher than ever.

Prometheus is not precisely a prequel but, after elaborating on some of Alien’s themes, actually appears to be heading further back in time, rather than catching up. Ridley Scott might have stumbled on a money-spinning notion whereby each of his creations delves further back in time to seek its own creator. And so On. Funded by a wealthy philanthropist, an unlikely assemblage of travellers (of whom more later) head to the outer reaches of the known universe where they believe they will find the Engineers who created life on Earth. What they find turns out to be a space ship loaded with Engineers who had died before being able to escape the dreadful biological life forms we now know as the ‘Aliens’.

The special effects are simply astonishing, the other-worldly scenes gigantic and entirely convincing, and the technological wizardry on board the spaceship Prometheus is mind-blowing. This is a real feast for the eyes and the imagination. That said, there are the usual and inevitable scientific loopholes although casual observers will easily overlook these. The intrepid crew consists of a couple of crazies whom no right-minded organiser of a trillion-dollar voyage would take along, members of several ethnic groups and of course a smidgen of female eye-candy. The earlier films gave us the memorable scene where a slithering parasitic creature burst from the belly of its host. It's fair to say there is no lack of such excitement in the latest instalment.

 

Prometheus is a current clear winner in this genre thanks to a number of genuinely tense protracted scenes and the very credible Alien life forms. There are chase sequences and titanic struggles of mind and body which are riveting. The face-clamping organism from the original films is there in a larger and quite frightening form, resembling a large squid with horrific tentacles. Its struggle with a reanimated ‘Engineer’ is masterful. Also of particular note is a scene where a female crew member, pregnant by a contaminated partner, arranges her own surgical termination with the aid of an automated operating room. Not for the squeamish.

 

Beneath the gloss and the excitement there are serious undercurrents of deeper meaning. Many scenes are based on eternal themes like beginning and end, death and resurrection, sorcery, narcissism, sacrifice and redemption. Without doubt this is a film which will reward subsequent viewings. 7/10

winter running

Each breath pulls a knife into my chest and my lungs shrivel. The sidewalk is mostly clear but here and there ice lurks in treacherous patches like polished, grey steel. I hold my breath and run across, flat-footed and slowly. This is no weather for outdoor exercise but after a week of confinement I was going stir crazy.

 

I reach Ellens Creek after four minutes and already my toes are losing feeling and my eyesight is slightly blurred. I glance right taking in the view towards the harbour where the waters have solidified into broad, white slabs which rear at odd angles, buckled by the tidal pressure. Ducks stand resolutely at their posts to wait out the freeze, shoulders hunched under puffed feathers.

 

Over the past six years I have grudgingly come to accept the severity of winter in my adopted country. At first I shunned hats and gloves and dressed more for a balmy British autumn than a harsh Canadian winter. I know I drew suspicious glances when I ran hatless in shorts and vest. A crazy foreigner. Today at least I am properly attired for my run, that’s if you consider running at minus fifteen proper at all, and if you do you might be in a minority of one.

 

Are these leggings verging on the effeminate? Not so long ago I would have guffawed at the notion of venturing out in daylight like this but if you want to be a runner in mid winter you have to dress like one. It’s what people expect. Beneath all this skin protection is a base layer, my hat and gloves are thermally insulated and the soles of my socks have copper thread. But I am cold.

 

I leap over a frozen snow heap and cross North River Road. As I try to hold my pace up the steep incline, cars crackle by on studded tyres their drivers wearing puffy jackets and sensible hats. I reach the lights at Belvedere and turn around, circling on the spot with dainty little steps befitting of my debatable leggings. I realise my thick coating of lip balm has reconstituted into a layer of dense wax.

 

Downhill I reach a slow gallop like a tall, black giraffe. I check my watch and I’m on schedule because no run is purely for fun, least of all today. I need to monitor my time and pace. The Island marathon is far away but a winter of lethargy would make for a hard summer of reconditioning.

 

This is a short outing, just twenty minutes. Not long enough to get into ‘the zone’ but a chance to get the heart pumping and to blow out the cobwebs. As I re-cross the bridge over the bleak Arctic tundra of the creek, the late afternoon sky is darkening and street lights are struggling to penetrate the gloom. Home and a steaming bath beckon.

the final days of steam

Lately I have been riding a wave of nostalgia. This should come as no surprise, bearing in mind my preference for looking to the past rather than the future. I believe I am in a minority there but a sizeable minority. After all, how glorious it is to bask in the warm glow of happy memories and uncomplicated times. Our brains cleverly filter the not so good and the plain awful leaving a sense that life used to be better.

 

In particular I have been wallowing in The Rank Organisation’s “Look at Life” series of documentary ‘shorts’ from the nineteen fifties and sixties. That bastion of the British film industry Rank, which blossomed from unlikely roots in flour milling, produced and distributed its own films and screened them in its own cinemas to fill slots between features. There is a store of some five hundred of these miniature ten-minute classics covering technology, culture, sport, transport and innovation, a showcase for all that was great about Great Britain.

 

Sixty years ago the Second World War was a very recent memory, there was unemployment, often poor sanitation, no central heating, and life was devoid of the luxuries we take for granted today. So, yes, life was harsh. But what shines through in these films is an indomitable spirit and an optimism which seems to have vanished from Britain today.

 

The narrator’s excitement when describing the launch of a new hovercraft on the Solent, or the introduction of Motorail, a miraculous new system for transporting cars on trains, is infectious. Progress happened because of decisive action. Plans were laid quickly but mostly carefully. This was all long before the arrival of decision by committee, when even the simplest idea becomes bogged down in endless enquiries and feasibility studies. It was an age of confidence and hopefulness. However it would not last.

 

Chill winds began to stir with publication of the first Beeching Report in 1963. Doctor Beeching took an axe to the British Railway system, hacking off four thousand miles of line and earmarking for closure, one third of the country’s seven thousand stations. This came at a time when the railways were already struggling to consolidate in a new era of diesel and electrification.

 

That brings me neatly though not consequently to the demise of the steam locomotive, still in the 1950s a technological wonder. In the glory days of steam entire families found jobs for life and shiny-faced schoolboys scampered along platforms clutching notebooks and pencils to record their sightings. Trains clanked into stations puffing and hissing like massive lungs while others streaked through non-stop whistle screaming and smoke flattened to its back. There is something elemental about steam power, the production of staggering forces of locomotion from the simple fusion of fire and water.

 

But all too quickly steam trains had become dinosaurs with their reliance on coal. Soot blackened hulks were shunted to the scrapyard like huge, gentle beasts to the slaughter. Steam trains continued to run on the Southern Railway, my own neck of the woods, until June 1967 when the final steam locomotive puffed out of Waterloo on its way to Weymouth. I am delighted that far-sighted souls have preserved the very best examples for posterity allowing ninety tons of steel and iron to thunder across countryside at one hundred miles per hour, steam and smoke billowing in its wake.

 

Now, back to my Look at Life!

from the sublime to the ridiculous

The Tin Roof Blowdown *****
James Lee Burke (2007)

Set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Burke shows a different side to his beloved Southern Louisiana where now in New Orleans the majestic avenues of live oaks can only be navigated by boat; sanitation is crippled; and policing is sorely tested in a wave of lawlessness.

The plot sensitively handles rape, murder and deceit all spun into Burke’s customary and intricately woven web. The characters are rich and credible and as ever, the audio book is beautifully voiced by star narrator Will Patton. Larger than life Private Eye and bail bond agent Clete Purcel threatens to overshadow the more contemplative protagonist, Detective Dave Robicheaux but this unique pairing and their good-natured sparring are beacons of hope amid the flooding. Burke’s descriptions of the apocalyptic devastation are both tender and brutal. He manages to find natural beauty even in the face of catastrophe.

Action switches between Robicheaux’s home town of New Iberia to the west and New Orleans to the east. New Iberia was spared the wrath of Katrina and scenes there provide much needed respite from the horror. Burke tackles the tense issue of a white girl gang raped by a group of black youths. The shocking effect on the girl and her family exposes grim relationships and echoes the physical and emotional damage caused by the storm.

In an additional layer of tension, Robicheaux’s adopted daughter is stalked by an eerie character and the case becomes personal, culminating in one of Burke’s most gripping finales.

Bones Are Forever **
Kathy Reichs (2012)

An unappetising plot in which people who get in the way of a proposed new diamond mine and the ongoing rights to its profits mysteriously turn up dead. Apart from the vaguely interesting setting of Yellowknife and points even further north, there is nothing refreshing in this instalment.

Here are the perennial problems. Reichs’ disdain for the conventions of written English is intrusive: improper grammar, incomplete sentences, bullet points, seemingly random punctuation and made-up words. She probably thinks these come off as chic and trendy, and used sparingly they can convey a mood but when the book is drenched in examples it becomes tiresome.

The characters are stereotypes, each with a predictable flaw; the cliff-hangers are juvenile and the pace breathless; the dialogue is quite contrived North American slang; the heroine ludicrously takes over Police investigations. But it’s the made-up language that turns me off most. The following are routinely used as verbs (and I’ve added their objects where it might help): pocket-jammed (hands), palm-slapped (gear stick), palm-smacked (forehead), foot-hooked (chair leg), thumb-hooked (belt), finger-hooked (air quotes), chin-cocked, arm-wrapped, finger-wrapped, chest-crossed, eye-rolled, and numerous others.

I’ve listened to eight audio books in Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan series. All have come free from the library. I wouldn’t pay for one. I know what makes me listen to another even though I clearly find the experience mostly frustrating. Firstly it’s the choice of Linda Emond for narrator. Although she must feel queasy at giving voice to certain phrases, her exquisite diction and mastery of accents go some way towards saving the day. Secondly, it’s the compelling nature of the forensic details, the chilling work of the Pathologist. Doubtless Kathy Reichs is a world class Forensic Pathologist and her skills will always be in great demand. As to writing, she should stick to screenplays and an advisory role on Bones.

The Man in My Basement, Walter Mosley

 

Charles, a black man with no job and no future is approached by Anniston, a mysterious white man with a strange request. He wants to rent Charles's basement for four months and offers $50,000 which to Charles represents salvation from his creditors.

 

While straightening out the basement in preparation for his lodger, Charles discovers hundreds of items stored by his long dead ancestors, artefacts which an expert tells him are very valuable as they represent a significant period in Negro history.

 

Anniston moves in and takes up residence in the basement as a willing prisoner in a specially constructed metal cage. After selling some of his heirlooms Charles is no longer so financially dependent on Anniston and subtle changes take place in their relationship. The author introduces themes of race, sin and atonement and in a curious role reversal there are echoes of black slavery with Charles the black gaoler and Anniston his white prisoner.

 

This is a deceptively simple book yet is in fact multi-layered and dense with allegory. As a modern fable, the tale which unfolds is eerie and unsettling. Mosley's writing is precise and uncluttered and he has created memorable characters here.

making CD cases

These are downloads I burned to disc. The double discs required an adjustment to my patented homemade card cases. A few minutes tinkering with my template in MS Word and I printed a test copy. Good stuff, they work. Then I fiddled with RGB colour settings to match the album covers and filled the remainder of the design with the same colour. Finally I printed the resulting artwork on white card stock and the disc surfaces to match.

 

It’s quite a while since I listened to Hefner but inspired by recently getting back into front man Darren Hayman’s solo work I downloaded from DH’s site the latest incarnations of some of the band’s albums, double disc sets coming in at a whopping forty tracks each. So there are plenty of session outtakes, b-sides and acoustic versions etc.  The material is barely a decade old and has stood the test of time well. Darren Hayman is a hardworking Essex lad with an ear for melody and a lyrical turn of phrase that beautifully captures the minutiae of everyday life and the people who populate it.

 

Just need to find time to listen to them now!