Sunday, April 24, 2005
Depression is no fun. I think I can state this without fear of contradiction, so why the media thinks stories with various flavours of depressed people are going to be interesting. Take Minority Report. Actually a fairly decent sci-fi movie but almost sunk by the focal point of the movie, played by Tom Cruise, is a depressive on the point of complete breakdown. Having him scowling and skulking around the movie makes it a struggle to just reach the point where the story really kicks in and he turns into 'stumpy hero guy'. Buffy series six. Brrr. And Troy. Who's bright idea was it that the story would best be served if it concentrates on muscled pouting Achilles? They would have been better served if they talked to Tony Robinson and bought the rights to Odysseus, The Greatest Hero of Them All instead, which would have made a better story.
We have some two and a half hours of Brad Pitt walking round a beach. Achilles doesn't want to fight any more we are told, though we are not given any reason why. Yet he agrees to go with the Greeks to retrieve Helen, because supposedly he knows that if he does so his name will resonate down the centuries. The Trojans are waiting for the Greeks at the beach outside the city of Troy and, in a half-hearted lift of the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan Achilles leads a near suicide mission to take the beach. But the writers don't seem to know what Achilles problem is. After the Greeks take the beach he refuses to take part in the next battle and watches from the sidelines. Does he think that his name will be immortalised forever just because he goes to Troy? As though the bards would sing of 'Bold Achilles, who sat in a deck-chair and watched as Hector killed Menelaus'? Then he decides to pack up and go home which makes you wonder why he left there in the first place?
The simple fact is that Achilles, as portrayed here, is a deeply boring person and any film around him will suck the more he's on screen. The battles are lovely, I can't be bothered to watch the extras to find out so I don't know whether they are done by the same people who did the battle scenes for Lord of the Rings or were meant torip them off recall them. But really, this film would have been a lot better if the script were inverted, much less of Brad Pitt and much much more of Brian Cox, Peter O'Toole, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, well heck, everyone. There's a doomed attempt to portray the society of Troy as being more worthy of survival than the Greeks, Bana's Hector is wonderful, it's almost as though there was a script written in which the Trojans were heroes and the tragedy was that they were destroyed but the Hollywood machine managed to completely negate the point of the story by forcing it to be about one man dealing with the awful tragedy of being so good at fighting and looking so good when oily instead.
And I also got around to watching Point Pleasant. In which producer Marti 'last two seasons of Buffy' Noxon produces a dazzling new bit of fantasy drama set in a small (but this time it would seem actually real) seaside town in to which drifts a young, blonde teenage girl with supernatural powers around which strange events seem to occur. In no time at all she's made friends with the devastatingly attractive girl who's a loner and outcast at school who no-one understands and... Yes, it's Buffy with a hint of American Gothic and maybe as time goes by Twin Peaks will be added to the brew too. The pilot isn't offensively bad, it's just dull except for the two money scenes. But is Buffy without any of the things that made that show interesting going to capture the viewer's interest?
We have some two and a half hours of Brad Pitt walking round a beach. Achilles doesn't want to fight any more we are told, though we are not given any reason why. Yet he agrees to go with the Greeks to retrieve Helen, because supposedly he knows that if he does so his name will resonate down the centuries. The Trojans are waiting for the Greeks at the beach outside the city of Troy and, in a half-hearted lift of the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan Achilles leads a near suicide mission to take the beach. But the writers don't seem to know what Achilles problem is. After the Greeks take the beach he refuses to take part in the next battle and watches from the sidelines. Does he think that his name will be immortalised forever just because he goes to Troy? As though the bards would sing of 'Bold Achilles, who sat in a deck-chair and watched as Hector killed Menelaus'? Then he decides to pack up and go home which makes you wonder why he left there in the first place?
The simple fact is that Achilles, as portrayed here, is a deeply boring person and any film around him will suck the more he's on screen. The battles are lovely, I can't be bothered to watch the extras to find out so I don't know whether they are done by the same people who did the battle scenes for Lord of the Rings or were meant to
And I also got around to watching Point Pleasant. In which producer Marti 'last two seasons of Buffy' Noxon produces a dazzling new bit of fantasy drama set in a small (but this time it would seem actually real) seaside town in to which drifts a young, blonde teenage girl with supernatural powers around which strange events seem to occur. In no time at all she's made friends with the devastatingly attractive girl who's a loner and outcast at school who no-one understands and... Yes, it's Buffy with a hint of American Gothic and maybe as time goes by Twin Peaks will be added to the brew too. The pilot isn't offensively bad, it's just dull except for the two money scenes. But is Buffy without any of the things that made that show interesting going to capture the viewer's interest?
