As a child, the books I loved more than any others were Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. When I finally came to see Gosford Park — a film involving a murder at a British country manor — a month or so back, I really enjoyed it. But interestingly, these two facts are completely unrelated.

From what I hear, director Robert Altman likes to choose a genre of film, then turn it on it’s head. That’s what he does here, at any rate. Your average murder mystery shows the creepy intrigues of the aristocracy — Gosford Park by contrast is all about the servants. We’re taken into the last few years of the dying culture of service in Britain — as well as seeing through Morris Wiessman and Ivor Novello the birth of the new celebrity culture.

Gosford Park is an extraordinarily well-done character piece — a character piece spanning about 30 different characters. Altman is a director who gives free reign to his actors, each of whom place a strong investment in their character. There are no extras in the film — in any given scene, everyone you see has a motivation and a reason for being there. While this isn’t immediately noticable on first viewing, it does contribute to a rich layer of realism that envelops the film. This also comes of course from an insane amount of attention to detail. There’s brilliant dialogue on offer, as well as superb acting, and a heartfelt narrative.

Most of the actors here are decently famous, some to the point of near godhood — so it seems useless to add my paltry praises to them here. The least known of the cast however gets the main role of Mary MacEachran, maid to Maggie Smith’s ever so snobbish Lady Trentham. Kelly MacDonald proves herself no slouch though, and is an adorable identification point for the viewer. There are no weak links here, but I was particularly impressed by Emily Watson, Helen Mirren, and Clive Owen.

Having waffled on so enthusiastically, you may now be thinking “Good gracious! Why have I never seen this movie? Quickly, to the video store!”. Well, you probably wouldn’t say “Good gracious”, but the point stands. However don’t watch Gosford Park expecting it to knock your socks off. It’s quiet, subtle (with the exception of the wonderful Stephen Fry), and endearing, and it excels in it’s way, but it’s no thrill-ride, and not particularly suspenseful. For best results, curl up in front of it on a lonely night by yourself and get lost in the world Altman has created so deftly.

Oh, and press ‘Play’. That’ll help.

DVD Review

If I’ve sounded even remotely knowledgable about Robert Altman’s directorial style in this review, it’s only because I had it all explained to me in a very informative director’s commentary and documentary extras. There are two documentaries — one on ‘The Authenticity of Gosford Park‘ and one general ‘Making Of’ feature. Both are quite interesting and completely free of any irritating cheesy American voice-overs. There’s also footage of a Q&A session with journalists after the film’s premiere — this seems oddly short, but is still interesting.

The commentary itself is of course interesting. Altman comes across as very clever, though a little forgetful, explaining one or two concepts twice. I’m always amused in commentaries with more than one person by who takes charge, and Altman is very much at the top of the pecking order with this one. His lackeys (producers) are helpful in reminding him what he should be talking about though.

In short, a worthwhile DVD if you enjoyed the film. And even if you’d never seen it before, like me. After all, I told you it was good.

A weekend without the ability to speak properly does not a happy Tom make. Pah.

In keeping with tradition, I have avoided doing any useful work, and instead spent my time updating and publishing the new St Crispin’s News layout that we initially made about 3 months ago, and finding a new exciting way to do the rollover images at the top of grapefruit with NO JavaScript whatsoever!

What’s that? You don’t care? They still work exactly the same as they used to? I don’t want to hear it.

We’re waaaay behind on Alias reviews. In fact, we’re waaaay behind on everything. I promise to do some more things soon. My music reviewer protests that he can’t do anything for weeks until he’s made sure he passes his exams.

I’d give this excuse a lot more weight if the person in question had ever even vaguely come close to failing anything before. You haven’t really lived until you’ve scored an exact 50%.

Anyhow, it’s getting late and if I could just finish one physics question I’d be happy.

Bad luck comes in threes, or so they say. So here I am at home, waiting paranoid for the final terrible event to occur…

This website that Shannon’s uncle wants made… well, the sort of website he wants isn’t exactly the sort of website we know how to make. One word sums up our strife.

Flash.

So we may have to, er, decline that plan. As we don’t really have time to learn it. Which means less money…

And then, to add insult to injury, KFC no longer sell Zinger Tower Burgers.

I know. You thought the Prince William thing was bad. So, come on bad luck number three. Is there a time limit on these pieces of bad luck? And where’s my iPod, dammit???

Ergh. I felt a vague sore throat coming on 8 at lunch time, and now it’s spread to wooziness and a headache. In case you don’t understand the severity of the illness — I’ll be taping the season premiere of Six Feet Under rather than watching it immediately. It’s that bad.

I’d consider reviewing Six Feet if I wasn’t worried I’d just spend the whole time gushing. Perhaps some one-offs.

I’ve got a contract — it seems — to make a website for a paint company with Shannon. This will take up a considerable amount of time for the next month or so so don’t whinge about lack of updates. Not that anyone ever has.

Is anyone listening to me?

Hello?

I’ll just go and cough in the corner then.

I managed to get the top of grapefruit to stay still in IE today, which is of course a vaguely impressive achievement. To get the shadow working may take somewhat longer. Perhaps I should take Hayko’s advice and just make a really small one that isn’t transparent, and hope no one notices.

But at this point, I really don’t care. My whole world has been shaken.

Prince William is in favour of hunting.

This may not seem such a big thing, but I always identified with him, ever since I heard he was roughly my age and had the same sort of gumboots as me (green ones with grinning red mouths on the toes). This was when I was quite young obviously…

And now I find he enjoys killing animals. Bother. Not that a non-vegetarian can really take the high moral ground, but still.

I’m deeply upset.

Reviews are peculiar things. I think it’s time to expand their definition somewhat, especially when it comes to the larger items like books and films. Less of trying to summarise every damn thing about the object in question and more about just writing things related to it, and responses to it. I don’t know. I’ll try to experiment a bit more. Apart from just pastiching Andy’s style in my Alias reviews…

Uni trundles on as always. I’m still of course not even remotely managing to summarise my physics subject as I go. And my darned iPod hasn’t turned up yet. It had better come before the weekend, I want to take it to EMS camp.

Although if I have the big car, I’m not sure how I’ll listen to it. I might have to buy one of these FM transmitter things. There appears to be no port whatsoever on Dad’s CD player.

I know if I were googling for Buffy reviews, I’d pop in a random fruit name as well, to liven things up.

There’s two types of season finales in this world. The sort that wrap everything up that’s been going on all season, and the sort that throw a curve ball at you and leave you wondering what’s going to happen next season. Well, alright, there’s a few more than that, but these two do happen a lot. At the end of Angel‘s last season, we had the beautiful images of Angel and Cordy sinking into the sea and rising into the air respectively.

Well, beautiful as long as you didn’t think too hard about how or why it was happening. This time round, things are left moving in intriguing new directions.

‘Home’ was a breath of fresh air after the over arcing plot we’ve had to suffer and enjoy in roughly equal measure this season. Suddenly, everyone’s allowed to have a sense of humour again. We’re allowed to see the cast interact in more casual ways, rather than just responding to another apocalyptic threat. Quite frankly, after Angel and Buffy this season, I could go quite a while without an apocalyptic threat. They’re getting just a tad lame. Especially if I get some more lovely moments like Lorne and Fred dancing in the Wolfram and Hart foyer.

What I could get a lot more of is anything involving Wesley and Lilah — though I get the impression that their story could well be over at this point. Wesley’s attempt to destroy her perpetuity contract was a great touch. I do hope though that if Wesley uses this marvellous library system in the future, that he doesn’t have to hold his lips right next to the book to speak the desired name. It looks rather daggy, and to just walk in, say the name and have the correct book fly towards you would be much much cooler.

Fred, Gunn and Lorne probably had the least to do this episode — yet their threads did allow some intriguing possibilities for next season. Well, OK, not so much with Lorne. Having watched season 2 again recently, I’d love to see a return to the wiser, in tune with the higher-powers Lorne that dispensed good advice, rather than the more hedonistic creature he’s become. Or at least an acknowledgement that he’s made this change. Gunn and the Panther got on better than I expected, but there seems a bit of danger in linking one’s self too deeply with something at the centre of Wolfram and Hart. Fred now has a cool lab and a geeky scientist to help her — and luckily, this one can string sentences together and talks at a reasonable speed, unlike Sydney Bristow’s pet nerd on Alias.

I haven’t mentioned the issues with Angel and Connor yet. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Has he done the right thing? Will we ever see Connor again? Has he made a mistake dealing with Wolfram and Hart? Sadly, due to the irritating wrangling of Connor’s character, viewers are only likely to care about the final question. I’m not convinced this was the best way to get him out of the way, but given their track record with him, I’m glad he IS out of the way. And to be fair, this plotline did revisit some of the themes that the show touched on all through the season.

Therefore I label ‘Home’ as the most enjoyable episode of Angel, season four. Others were better, but the vitality of a few completely new ideas being thrown into the mix — coupled with losing a whole bunch of ideas that weren’t working so well — seems to be giving this show a new beginning. And I like beginnings.

When we last saw our heroine, she was trapped under the ice, ready to freeze to death, with an irritating European spy waiting above to kill her if she tried anything. Having seen the cliffhanger and the resolution in the wrong order, it’s hard to say if her escape was a cop out or not. Am I right to assume machine guns work underwater? I know I’d want them to. Sydney’s still on top form this week. I particularly enjoyed her Russian military uniform. I don’t know what that says about me.

Meanwhile, back at Vaughn and Sydney’s exciting fence, Vaughn’s very upset. “I certainly didn’t join the CIA looking for fairness,” he exclaims in surprise. Oh. It must have been to meet hot chicks then. On this front he’s doing alright, but frankly, he deserved a snog at one point and Syd’s a meanie for not giving him one. But then, she has issues too. Having divorced parents is never easy, and it makes it even more difficult if they’ve been going around killing people. Her mum seems quite a sweetie. I’m not so sure about her dad though. His eyes are very close together and his mouth is teeny weeny. These can’t be good signs.

Ah. And he’s taken to booby trapping cottages with explosives. Anti-social tendencies like this won’t help anyone. Least of all Sydney. Mr Bristow seems a fairly sensible man but frankly if my daughter were a super spy who’d been running rings around a highly dangerous weapon smuggling operation for over a year, I’d be just a little more nervous about attempting to hoodwink her. You could see him feeling a bit guilty when everyone told him how cool he was though. His mouth got that extra bit smaller.

I have my doubts about this SD-6 business actually. Surely Sloane must be getting just a little suspicious that all the missions he sends Sydney on result in near failures, or meaningless data. One would think that every now and then they’d have to let them have SOMETHING. But right now Sloane’s a bit distracted by some creepy goings-on concerning his wife. It’s nice when the bad guys don’t get away with naughty things like spoucicide.[ftn] Still, I reckon one simple ‘trailing’ operation on one or both of the Bristows would reveal some valuable information.

And lastly — good on Will. Often in these shows, the normal people are forced to act dumb to prove to us just how clever the super heroes are. Will appears to have escaped this fate. He’s not fooled by cute chicks who want his SD-6 knowledge.

Footnotes

1. This may not be a real word.

A detailed study of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.

Well, I don’t agree with everything here, but my god, someone had a lot of time on his/her hands. The induction that Wesley made a pass at Gunn at some point seems a bit flawed…

I’m finding it difficult to watch television now, without mentally drafting reviews in my head. It’s getting a little stressful. I should probably start reviewing one more show apart from Alias, but I’m not sure which. MDA is good, but pointless for anyone outside Australia who’ll never see it. Stargate is a possibility, but I feel that there are others who love it more than I who deserve the … honour? Irritation perhaps.

Anyhow, I’m enjoying all three of the above shows. Alias packs more plot into one episode than Buffy puts in five, and still manages to service all its characters with interesting plots. Well, except her roommate with the restaurant.

MDA continues to explore the problems of legal liability when applied to doctors. The show has improved now that all the characters are well defined, and there’s a bit more sparkle to it. Besides, I love watching Australian drama (or stuff from HBO in the US) just for the possibility of someone saying ‘fuck’ when they get really irritated. It often pulls me out of the moment in shows like Angel when something terrible happens and the worst anyone can say is “Oh, damn”.

I like Stargate too. Although Daniel needs more lines. Last episode you could count them on two hands. Though in fairness the actor does wiggle his eyebrows and twich his face enough to almost make up for it when he’s been dumped in a scene with nothing to do. Michael Shanks is good, but could probably take lessons from Seth Green on quietness.

And isn’t Jackson’s weblog exciting? I can’t wait for the next one, where no doubt he’ll tell us to stop reading straight away, and then swear at us as we leave… I can only assume he’s faking insane boredom in order to get much sympathy when we see him again.

Or, perhaps, he’s shit bored truly.