SF Diplomat

And The Alternative Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form goes to...

This week sees Worldcon kick off in Denver and with it the final countdown to the announcement of this year’s Hugos.  For the past few weeks, the SF blogosphere’s coverage of the Hugos has built to a steady hum with people handicapping the awards, arguing for a particular winner or generally trying to second-guess the attendees and the people silly enough to pay in order to vote.

Today I want to focus attention on one particular award category, the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form.

While many grind their teeth over the winners of the best novel, arguing that people get by on name recognition (*cough* Vernor Vinge *cough*) and buzz instead of actual merit, I crack my knuckles and mutter over not just the winners of the BDP, LF but also the short lists.  While many great books have failed to make the best novel shortlist, the list nonetheless tends to have enough ‘right’ choices to allow the award to maintain some kind of credibility (unlike the Nebula).  However, the BDP, LF short list systematically fails to pick up upon most of the year’s best genre films.  Simply put, this is because while SF fans are willing to put the effort into looking beyond franchises for their reading material, when it comes to their trips to the cinema they are multiplex scum.

As evidence I give you this year’s shortlist :

•  Enchanted (Lima/Kelly)
• The Golden Compass (Weitz/Weitz)
• Heroes season 1 (Tim Kring)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Stardust (Vaughn/Goldman and Vaughn)

So that is one television series, three book adaptations and a Disney musical.  How quaint. 

Admittedly, I think that Stardust is a decent film and, because it is based upon a book by Neil Gaiman, I think it will probably do enough to see off Heroes which has suffered for the fact that series two allowed everyone to suddenly realise that it was terrible.

My problem with the list is not due to the list being made up of bad films, rather it is the fact that it suggests that Hugo voters have little interest in engaging with genre as a cinematic medium.  This explains why, by and large, the BDP, LF seldom moves away from franchises and big-budget American films.

However, rather than simply roll my eyes I have decided to do something about it and present an Alternative Hugo shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form.  As per the rules of the award, it is drawn exclusively from films that were “released” in 2007.  Furthermore, rather than indulge my inner snob and list five foreign-language horror films, I have made up the list of films that did actually get a proper release.

Enjoy.

REVIEW - The Dark Knight (2008)

Here is my review of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's The Dark Knight.

Ian Sales was kind enough to link to a critical reaction by the mystery author Andrew Klavan.  While I can see why he took what he did from the film (I can even point you to the scene he is thinking of in particular) I think that, interestingly, he's reacting to one of the blind alleys that the film wanders down in its search for a simple moral truth that would play well with summer blockbuster audiences, as opposed to the film's more central but admittedly subtle and transgressive theme.

The reason why I don't buy into Klavan's reading of Batman being George Bush is that the film concludes with Batman taking responsibility for the crimes of others.  If Batman were George Bush then presumably he would have spent the film telling Harvey Dent to murder people and then blaming him for everything in an effort to avoid prosecution.

Also, having just read it, I very much enjoyed Abigail Nussbaum's review of the film, which touches on some of the same ideas as mine but does so in different ways resulting in her seemingly being better disposed to the film than I.

On the whole, I think that The Dark Knight is a film 'for critics' in that it is a complete mess but it can be pieced together into something quite interesting if you're willing to go through it with the subtextual tweezers.

REVIEW - Iron Man (2008)

My review of Jon Favreau's Iron Man has gone live over at THE ZONE.

Elephant-memoried readers may well remember that I had a few things to say about the film and the character of Iron Man when the first trailers appeared (a few things that I felt needed *ahem* repeating).  Intriguingly, the film didn't answer the question I thought was going to prove tricky, preferring instead to leave it to the sequel.

Not the best of films, I think it will mostly be remembered as the first Hollywood adaptation of Geek media that did not feel the need to be "dark and gritty", a trend that is set to continue with the adaptation of Speed Racer, which looks like a cross between Wipe Out and Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun (a song I hated at the time and which, I am pleased to say, has not grown on me with age).

REVIEW - Transformers (2007)

Transformers, on paper, should have physically repulsed me.  Based on a toy from the 1980’s the intellectual property manages to combine empty-headed nostalgia with soul-less children’s TV in the shape of a Michael Bay-directed blockbuster.  That’s Michael Bay of Armageddon and Pearl Harbour fame.  The film is a ceaseless barrage of explosions, cheap sentimentality and directionless violence featuring giant robots.  However, despite all of these excellent reasons for hating Transformers, I can’t help but think it’s by far the best blockbuster that the weak summer of 2007 has thus far delivered.

REVIEW : Sunshine (2007)

Written by Alex Garland (The Beach) and directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), Sunshine is a sumptuously produced, special effects-ladened SF film from the creative team behind 28 Days Later....  Dismissed by many critics as pretty but derivative, Sunshine is not only a great example of genre film-making, it is also arguably the first great work of cinematic science fiction of the 21st Century.

The 2007 Nebula Award

According to Locus (and via Niall), the 2007 Nebula awards have been announced.

Best Novel : Seeker by Jack McDevitt

Best Novella : Burn by James Patrick Kelly

Novelette : "Two Hearts" by Peter S. Beagle

Short Story : "Echo" by Elizabeth Hand

Script : Howl's Moving Castle

Andre Norton Award : Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

Most of these awards I don't really have much of an opinion about. Jo Walton's Farthing is one of the better books I've read this year but for all I know this Seeker book might be decent. It's part of a franchise (Boo!) but it is SF rather than Fantasy (Hurrah!) and is a mystery rather than MilSF warporn (Hurrah!).

What did get my goat though is that the script to Howl's Moving Castle won an award. Admittedly the shortlist included Batman, Dr. Who's "Girl in the Fireplace" and some BSG episode. However, I'm so thoroughly bored with BSG that looking up which episode was nominated, let alone what happened in that particular episode would doubtless fill me with the kind of dull lethargy that can only be remedied through the application of a hot shower and vigorous masturbation.

I really enjoyed Howl's Moving Castle and I'm a huge Ghibli fan but if there was one thing that let that film down it was the script.

Firstly, the ending made absolutely no sense. The script writers fell into that trap of not knowing how to finish the film so they had something magical happen that somehow wrapped up all outstanding plot-lines such as the War, the little girl turned into an old lady and Howl being dead. This is not a new trick by any means. In fact, It's much favoured by Terry Pratchett, who is a fan of people stumbling around in a magical haze, and also Orson Scott Card who solved al the problems in his Ender Saga with a new kind of physics. However, it is a trick used by lazy writers who don't know how to end books and seeing as the Nebula is awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, I would have expected them to notice a film script that uses such a terrible bodge to get itself out of trouble.

Secondly, the script as a whole is rather weak. Full of nice set-pieces and some memorable characters, the interactions between the characters are more a matter of implication and suggestion than the confrontation demanded by good drama. In fact, the plot and the character arcs as a whole seem to melt into the background as the film very much about mood and visual impact and very little about telling a coherent story. Even by the standards of other Ghibli films (such as the endlessly beautiful My Neighbour Totoro and the breakthrough but equally incoherent Spirited Away).

Frankly, the idea that Howl's Moving Castle is the best written SF or Fantasy film or TV episode of the last two years is nothing short of laughable. Admittedly the short-list was not particularly inspiring (featuring the well-meaning but empty Batman Begins and the delicate "The Girl in the Fireplace") but if this is the best the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America can come up with then you really have to wonder what the point is in including an award for best script. They really aren't fooling anyone.

REVIEW - Immortal (2004) - 11/20 - Different visions of SF...

HERE is my review of Enki Bilal's Immortel.  The film itself is okay and has some nice moments despite being almost completely incoherent but writing the review brought to mind an interesting thought.

As I say in the review, Bilal's vision of Science Fiction is quite similar to that of Moebius and Jodorowsky in their Incal and Metabarons books.  Jodorowsky himself is well known to cinephiles for his weirdly mystical and psychedelic 1970's films El Topo and The Holy Mountain which are noted for their incredible visual styles and lack of coherent narratives.  As Jodo himself once said, "most directors make films with their eyes, I make films with my testicles".

Anyway, after thinking about Jodorowsky's films (my brother James having just hooked me up with copies), it suddenly dawned on me how, as a sci-fi fan I've internalised the rules of genre.  Science Fiction itself isn't so much a genre as a genre of genres as all the various sub-genres within it operate with different sets of rules.  This is why you can have the likes of Greg Egan and Star Wars and have them both be sci-fi despite their really not having very much in common.  Now, if looked at through traditional genre expectations, Immortel and The Incal are incoherent messes as neither of them have proper stories or explore any ideas.  Instead they try to impact the less rational parts of the brain by firing weird imagery and funny ideas at it.  Why is this not a recognised sub-genre?  Sci-fi as art?

Obviously, you can say this about any genre and the truth is that Immortel and The Incal aren't really sci-fi.  Instead they're like the work of Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguru, they aren't genre but they cloak themselves in the trappings of genre.  When a genre writer creates, he does so knowing the rules but when the likes of Jodorowsky or Atwood write, they impose no such limitations of themselves.

So the question should really be can having no genre conventions be the characteristic of a genre?  I think that's one for my friends who stayed on in philosophy.

REVIEW - Primer (2004) - 16/20

This is a Repost from Videovista, go and read their reviews!

Primer appeared in the US in 2004 and has now finally received a DVD release in the UK (despite this being a region 0 release and the film winning the 2004 Grandy Jury Prize at Sundance).  Made for around $7,000 by Writer/Director/Jack of all trades Shane Carruth, Primer proves that you don’t need special effects to do Sci-fi as long as you’ve got a decent script.

Aaron and Abe are engineers.  Working from their garage in their spare time, they stumble across a new form of technology.  Initially this technology seems to possess some strange characteristics such as being able to work without an external energy supply and it seems to lower the mass of anything it enters into contact with.  Immediately the boys realise that they’re onto something, but they don’t realise quite what that something is until they work out that they’ve managed to build a kind of time machine that allows whatever it touches to travel back in time instead of forwards.  Abe builds himself a machine and travels back in time, only revealing this fact to Aaron when he takes him to some storage facilities and shows Aaron a second Abe leaving the building.  The two set about working out how to exploit the technology and start generating money by day-trading on the stock market.  Despite Abe and Aaron having clear differences of opinion as to how the technology should be used, they work happily together until one day they see a friend in two places at once.  Who told him about the technology? When did he use it?  As this point all hell breaks lose.

In the final act, the well ordered business plan of the two engineers comes apart as they begin to plot against each other and spawn multiple machines, multiple timelines and multiples copies of themselves as they struggle to stop each other from manipulating the timeline for their own purposes.  Quite how many timelines and copies of the engineers are in play at the time is a topic for debate.  I have seen explanations list as few as three copies and as many as nine.  In this last act, Carruth effectively turns the film from a low-budget Sci-Fi piece to a jigsaw thriller that makes the likes of The Usual Suspects seem crystal clear and easy to follow and concludes with a similarly fantastic image of a version of Aaron explaining in French how to make a room-sized time machine.

This film is undeniably a fantastic achievement.  It is literally shot in some bloke’s garage but despite this it has more ideas than any mainstream Sci-Fi film of recent times.  Primer is true sci-fi in the sense that it really is all about the ideas.  The acting is also excellent considering the fact that the cast aren’t big name actors… or even actors at all in some cases.

Ultimately, how much you’ll like this film is dependent upon how much you enjoy jigsaw-style plotting.  As with films like Donnie Darko and The Usual Suspects, you will walk away from Primer scratching your head and asking questions about what it is that actually happened.  However, these types of films always leave me feeling uncomfortable.  Carruth has remained steadfastly silent as to what the film’s actual timeline is and like Donnie Darko and The Blair Witch Project this leaves me wondering whether the film is actually internally coherent at all or whether Carruth has simply remained silent, leaving the audience to try and make sense of what is a inaccessible and incomplete plot.

Undeniably a triumph for low-budget filmmaking and for the frequently overlooked fact that science fiction is about ideas rather than explosions, Primer will enchant and challenge those who enjoy working out “what really happened”.  However, those viewers who view film as a passive medium or who think that a plot that is difficult to follow is a sign of poor writing would do well to stay well clear.

Serenity (2005) - A

Serenity (2005)

Directed By Joss Whedon

Grade: A

One of the things that are funny about being a geek (or indeed a member of any sub-culture) is how your sense of scale differs from that of the mainstream of your culture.  As a fan of Firefly practically from day one, it’s easy for me to forget how much of a cult phenomenon it was.  Here was a series that tanked, it was so unpopular that several episodes were made but never screened on TV.  Let’s think about that for a second.  That means that despite paying to make several hours of new TV, Fox were happy to swallow the cost and not screen it rather than deal with the lower advertising revenue.  But firefly didn’t die; a loyal band of Browncoats from every area of geekdom sang its praises, converting friends and family to the church of Firefly.  I can think of no better recruitment film to the ranks of Firefly fans than this film.  It is simply stunning.

Set six months after the final episode of the series, the film shows the crew of the Firefly-class ship Serenity struggling to survive as they continue to hide Simon and his Sister River from the forces of the authoritarian Alliance.  Internal strife has caused two members of the crew to leave the ship and River and Simon are about to leave too when River’s conditioning is triggered and she decides to take on an entire bar.  River is psychic and she knows the truth about a planet called Miranda.  This truth would be so damaging for the Alliance that they have decided to kill River.  Still affected by his side’s losing the civil war and angered by the actions of the Alliance, captain Mal Reynolds decides to get to the bottom of why the Alliance want River dead and this means going through space inhabited by the murderous cannibals known as the Reavers. 

The plot is your basic McGuffin-hunt as the crew of Serenity evade capture as they hunt for the truth about why the Alliance wants River dead.  This allows some wonderful action scenes and space battles and the pace is beautifully managed right up to the very Trekian climax.  But the beauty of this film, as with the series, lies not with the action or that main plot but in the drama of the characters.  Fillion again does a wonderful job with Reynolds, who is arguably Whedon’s finest creation as a writer.  As complex and as satisfying as Hamlet, Reynolds is erroneously compared by some in the mainstream media to Han Solo.  But where Solo was an archetypal anti-hero and a rogue with a heart of gold, Reynolds is far more protean.  Reynolds is a cynic and a romantic, a loner and a social creature, a true believer and a man who just wants to live.  As the film itself points out, if you think Mal is one thing then he’s likely to go out of his way to be the other out of spite and sheer contrariness.  Serenity is mainly about finding out who Mal really is and what he believes, but Whedon subverts even this old chestnut by lambasting people who are True Believers and showing only glimpses of Mal as an idealist.  Regardless of whether there is a sequel or not, Whedon makes the right call in refusing to explain why Mal is the way he is or even to tell us who he really is.  Mal is an enigma and an intriguing one at that.

While the dramatic heart of the film is Mal, Whedon again shows his skill as a writer by embedding this drama in what is actually a cracking action film.  The pacing is wonderful and the dialogue is as sumptuous and enchanting as any of Whedon’s previous pieces.  The blending of English and Cantonese continues to make the world of Firefly and Serenity seem alien and new despite many of its cosmetic similarities to standard space opera and western worlds.  The action scenes are beautifully directed, in particular the River combat scenes where she reveals herself to be a true creature of grace.  Whedon refuses to go down the past of quick editing as he follows River fighting Reavers or River taking out an entire bar.  Whedon understands what many modern action directors fail to: what’s the point of choreographing fight scenes if you then make them impossible to follow?  The cast are superb and it is frankly breath-taking that this film cost only $40 million dollars whereas The Island cost somewhere near $150 million. 

This is without a doubt the best science-fiction film I’ve seen in a long time.  Whedon continues to enchant us with his writing and proves to be a most capable director keeping the action and plot flowing freely and prompting some beautiful performances from his cast of virtual unknowns. This film is simply stunning, even if you haven’t seen the series.  If you haven’t seen the series go and buy that too because it is amazingly good.