Fat Pigeons

Let it be said here and now: I have a deep and abiding love for the Republic Serials.

Republic serials (and those of other companies too, but Republic is the best-known name) were shown in 20-minute instalments at the cinema. A serial would last perhaps twelve or fifteen weeks, sandwiched somewhere between the A-movie, B-movie, newsreel and cartoons. Each episode finished with a cliff-hanger ending, to ensure the kids came back next week.

Then they invented television. Without a steady supply of regulars at the cinema, the economics stopped holding up. Cinema serials died in the mid-fifties.

During school holidays in the UK, they’d often run these serials during the daytime. An episode a day in the late morning, sometimes two.

Tales of daring, brave heroes, with ray-guns. And spaceships. Fighting evil, against the odds, each and every week, because it was the right thing to do.

It’s no wonder I turned out the way I did, really.

The best of them all was Flash Gordon.

I loved those Flash Gordon serials. So in the 1980s, when I heard there was a Flash Gordon film, I was desperate to see it.

And what happened? It was as camp as bottled coffee-and-chicory essence. I walked out of that theatre bitterly disappointed. Where was the hero of my younger days?

(In the late 70s, George Lucas attempted to get the rights to Flash Gordon. He couldn’t, and was forced to make up his own SF action-adventure serial films instead. Didn’t work out too badly for him.)

So I’ve been waiting for decades, waiting for someone to do Flash Gordon right.

Last week, there was a huge ad on the cover of Variety. In big type across the front – “Flash Gordon – A hero then, A hero now.”

No more information. A URL to RHI Films. As of this writing, there’s no information at that URL. There’s no news in Variety or the Hollywood reporter. Nothing.

And yet, somewhere out there, Flash Gordon is waiting.

Gordon’s alive…

I was recently asked “What’s your all-time favourite moment in a TV show?”

Spoilers for Ultraviolet follow. That’s the 6-episode TV series written and directed by Joe Ahearne, not the film of the same name.

There are vampires. You can’t record a vampire on video or audio tape. An elite team has been set up to stop them.

Michael was a detective.
Vaughan was a soldier.
Pearse was a priest.
Angie was a doctor.

Pearse has been diagnosed with cancer by Angie, and the prognosis isn’t good. He hasn’t told anyone. A prisoner has surrendered and is being interrogated – someone who also had cancer and crossed over.

Michael is in love with Kirsty. She’s hiding out with Jacob, a vampire, and believes Michael to be part of a death squad. Jacob blackmails Michael to smuggle out vampire remains from the HQ. Otherwise Kirsty will be killed – or worse.

Vaughan confronts Pearse, who dismissed the guards from the cell and spent 45 minutes talking to the vampire. Pearse won’t tell Vaughan what they discussed.

And off we go:

The music kicks in, strong in the background as Vaughan leaves the office and walks to the interrogation room. Observes the prisoner through the one-way mirror. Gets the tapes out and listens to them.

Pearse leaves the office. He walks down a dark street, alone with his thoughts.

Vaughan goes to Pearse’s office. Starts searching it.

Angie cuts open the prisoner. He’s still undead – and aware. Michael watches through one-way glass.

Michael enters the vault where they store the dust of neutralised vampires. Searches the database and starts over-riding the security system.

Vaughan continues to go through Pearse’s office, taking it apart, throwing files and papers everywhere.

Pearse enters a church. The confession box is full, and there’s a queue. He takes a seat and waits.

Michael opens a tube in the vault. Fetches the dust of a neutralised vampire from it.

Vaughan finds the drugs for Pearse’s cancer. The label shows they were prescribed by Angie.

The confessional box. The other side slides open and Pearse says “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

Cut to commercial break. Two minutes and fifty-four seconds without a word of dialogue other than the beginning of Pearse’s confession.

And yet at every single point in this sequence, we know what’s going through the mind of each character.

Sue Hewitt’s fantastic music drives the piece – echoing the main theme with an organ for a few moments as Pearse sits in church, contemplating the things he’s talked about and waiting for the confession box to come free.

Every image tells you what’s going on, without a word being said.

And that’s why it’s so good.

Andrew Stanton is a writer at Pixar. At this year’s Screen Expo he gave a keynote talk. Fortunately, someone in the audience was taking notes. And putting them on the Internet.

Part One and Part Two.

Have a read – there’s loads of good stuff.

Let’s talk about The Outsiders. 90 minutes long, and a backdoor pilot if ever I saw one.

The whole thing was done with a gusto and brio that I haven’t seen in an ITV drama since – well, since the 1970s, truth be told. What we had here was a production that echoed the classic ATV action-adventure shows. Even the series logo had a distinctively blocky, 70s vibe. (The hole in the O is formed from two characters running.)

Acting from leads Nigel Harman and Anna Madeley is competent enough, but the real stars here are the character actors in the background. Brian Cox. Colin Salmon. Anton Lesser.

Finally, an ITV drama that isn’t fluff for old people. This is fluff for the young. And great fluff at that.

The plot’s straight out of Action-Adventure 101. The formula for eternal life has been stolen by a nutter and hidden on his evil island. Our Heroes must retrieve it.

So closely did they hew to the basics, that one of the leads needed to get silently from one end of the Lair to another without being spotted. She drops into a storeroom.

“Please,” I shouted at the television, “Let there be ventilation ducts!”

I was not disappointed.

To be sure, it didn’t have a great deal of depth – and I wasn’t convinced by the male lead being saved from being blown up by a hallucination of his lost daughter – but when any kind of pilot goes to series you’ll see changes to emphasize what worked and de-emphasize what didn’t.

The Outsiders was big, brash entertainment in all the right ways.

I hope it gets its series.

Japanese poem
Five syllables, then seven
Then five at the last

To be true haiku
A season must be invoked
Use a metaphor

Kigo, season word
Cherry blossom used for spring
Snow stands for winter

Now use a cutting
Haiku should be two pieces
Complementary

For english haiku
Merely form will be enough
Five, seven, then five

Never Forget.

MaryAn Batchellor has a problem with the ending of Snakes On A Plane. Specifically the fact that Eddie Kim, the man who put the Snakes on the Plane in the first place, doesn’t get brought to messy justice on-screen.

One of the things I loved about SoaP is the fact that it *isn’t about Eddie Kim*.

He’s irrelevant. It’s all about the snakes, baby. When the snakes are off the plane, that movie is over.

Eddie Kim is not the villain of the piece – just a catalyst. He’s a one-man inciting incident. And that’s why we don’t need to see him die.

(Sure, you’re saying, tell that to piñata-guy.)

I absolutely did not need or require Sam Jackson or SurfDude to go after Eddie Kim and shoot him in the head with a big gun. Because that always and only happens in action films.

The Mighty Bill Martell states in his marvellous wee book The Secrets of Action Screenwriting that “The audience that’s screaming for vengeance doesn’t want the villain to go to jail. They don’t want to see him sustain critical wounds and die later in the hospital. They want to see him annihilated.”

And dispatching the villain effectively can make a great end to a movie. Going back to the Daddy, Hans Gruber in Die Hard has a very satisfying end.

But it shouldn’t always happen.

Take for example Bad Boys II. At the end of the film, the bad guy has been captured. He’s guilty as hell. That man is going down for life. He’s being held at gunpoint by our two heroes.

So he then pulls a hidden gun out purely so that they have an excuse to shoot him dead.

I mean, really.

What the hell kind of plan is that?

It’s simply so that he can die on-screen for the benefit of the audience. He’s got no motivation to do that. It’s a stupid thing to do.

And, you know, sometimes sending a guy to jail for the rest of his natural is enough.

Even in films, justice doesn’t always have to come from the barrel of a gun.

Sean Collins blogged about his experiences last year. We can all count ourselves lucky it never got that bad here in the UK. Shit, if I hadn’t moved away from the West Coast… Doesn’t bear thinking about.

I’d like to take a moment to point out the gaping plot hole at the heart of Superman Returns.