Sunday

I have now finally finished the first season of Heroes (I haven't seen many movies at all recently, sorry). I don't know if it's a modern phenomenon or not that shows are aired before they have finished shooting the series, but it seems to be happening more and more frequently. This is especially the case with the long twenty-two or so episodes of American dramas. The advantage for the production company is that they can get an idea of what the audience does or doesn't like about the show. For example, in the series Vanished, the main character is killed off about half-way through the series and replaced with someone else. The show became popular and the company wanted a better actor in the lead role. Pretty astonishing, you have to admit, but little things like this are always happening. I'm sure changes were made to Heroes for the second half of the series after they realised they had a hit on their hands. The overall plot, surely, must change when the writers are told they are going to get another series. This definitely happened with Vanished, Heroes, and Prison Break, and is quite frustrating for the viewer. Things seem to be coming to a nice conclusion, but then something will come out of nowhere in the last episode to keep things propelling onwards.

Saturday

Finally Day Watch, the sequel to Night Watch, is out in cinemas. But the reviews so far have been mediocre, sometimes bad and sometimes ok. This is disappointing. Perhaps I was lulled by the Russian production and the sense of something different, when really these films are quite ordinary. I don't know. They're trying something unashamedly epic and original (although these movies are developed from novels), which is what Hollywood is increasingly not brave enough to do anymore. The style is glamorous, but the content is ugly - again something America is afraid of. Aside from this, there are still far too many other films out that I need to see. The Kingdom, whose premiere I accidentally walked into on Thursday, seems overrated, as does The Brave One. I'm interested in the westerns, but they've almost disappeared already. Several people have told me Run, Fat Boy, Run is good, but I remain unconvinced. I did see a good review for what looks appalling (and you can tell from the title): Hatchet. Maybe...

Friday

Perhaps the question you want to ask me is, is Death Proof a return to the early form of Reservoir Dogs for Tarantino or is it a mainly stylistic exercise like Kill Bill? I have to say the stylistics weren't actually that intrusive - only at the beginning, then the black and white reel halfway through, and the occasional strange cut (made to look like mistakes). Overall, it was much less than I thought it'd be. Perhaps in the shorter Grindhouse version the effect was more intense, and perhaps that would be better? Anyway, as you'd expect, this movie is relentlessly cool. The dialogue is not quite top notch, not polished enough and some conversations go on too long - like it was someone trying to imitate Tarantino, rather than the man himself. Not much really happens in the movie. The image of 70s cars driving in and out of contemporary traffic, listening to 70s music with people having strained artificial conversations, made me think that was perhaps Tarantino himself - out of place and time. But I don't know. Some of the stunts seemed to have been worked backwards: they come up with the idea for it, then created a preposterous plot and characters in order for them to achieve it. Nonetheless, it really picks up towards the end, and the conclusion is great fun. You really leave the cinema thinking: this is a film by one of greatest directors alive, and everyone should see it.

Thursday

You may have heard recently that this summer has been the best summer for movies in 40 years. Sadly, this was not because the films were particularly good, but because the weather has been miserable here (although, as you'd expect, I enjoy seeing films in sunny weather too). We were apparently up by 27% on last year, which is fairly incredible. Some of this also has to do with the amount of franchises we've seen - Bourne, Bond, Shrek, Spider-Man, Pirates. As Alex pointed out, these are 'pre-sold'. You get people in the door for your first week easily, and even if people subsequently hear bad reviews, they'll probably still go to see the movie because they liked the previous ones and they want to know how it all ends. Conversely, however, this summer can only have been bad for the burgeoning business of showing films outside, in parks, on large screens. This sort of viewing was becoming increasingly popular, but now may have taken a battering. What's coming next year? Indiana Jones, Narnia, and The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan's latest) so far...

Wednesday

Yesterday a film crew were set up outside, opposite the entrance to Birkbeck college. It was possibly the largest crew, with the most amount of equipment, I've ever seen. They had a swinging crane, a big white screen, and a large lamp, as well as a lot of other stuff in-between. There were lots of people in orange jackets, but I didn't see any actors - not that I examined anything carefully. Every time I walked past (I use that walkway perhaps six times a day) they tried to usher us in a certain direction. It seemed a futile effort - directing thousands of unpredictable students. I think they wanted some as extras, but not everyone. Anyway, once whilst walking past with a friend, we did hear the director shout 'roll video', and so we may have got ourselves into a movie. You never know.

Tuesday

I don't know about you, but I feel fully refreshed after Alex's postings. Now I'm only two days behind, which is easily recoverable. Sometime in the near future, I may be able to tell you the reason why I let things slip, but not yet... Anyway, as he said, it was a bit strange commenting on my own blog, but it was all good fun. I haven't been to the cinema in the last week, but I have been watching the entire series of Heroes. I think I'm near the finish now. It got a little bit weak somewhere in the middle, but quickly picked up again to become fascinating. Nonetheless, tonight I should be going to see Tarantino's Death Proof. I've had people tell me that it's the last movie they'd want to see at the moment, which is interesting. Like Alex, however, I'm going to see it purely because it says Tarantino on the poster. He himself is a franchise - all the merchandising calls it 'Tarantino's 5th film' (although of course we know it isn't, and it shouldn't count as his film because it's been split from Grindhouse). I hope someday they'll realise their mistake and give us Grindhouse in the cinema. Anyway, you'll have my review tomorrow.

Monday

[The final part of Alex's examination of film adaptations.]

So if you're still reading four days in you'll know that we are in a situation where we as writers know that the medium is inexorably linked to the story and so we shouldn't adapt the work, but on the other hand we know that it's commercially lucrative to do so. How do we reconcile the two?

Well I'll tell you how most people do it, they fudge it. Most adaptations simply go through the book looking for bits where they talk about where people are and put that in square brackets. And then look for the bits where people are speaking and turn that into dialogue. Everything else gets thrown away and that’s how you get your movie running time. These are generally the worst kind of movies that there are. This, for example, is exactly what they did with the The Da Vinci Code.

The best method seems to be to throw away the actual words and just listen to the story. We've recently learned that this is exactly what happened in the first Bourne film. The director wrote a 25 page short story treatment of the book and demanded that the author not look at the whole book, he had to work simply from those pages. It worked very well and it's difficult to imagine Bourne as a novel while you're watching the film - surely the best compliment we can give.

Finally this is the crux of excellent adaptation, there must be a "re-imagining" of the original. It's difficult because fans of the original, the very fans who are pre-sold on this franchise don't like it when you change their source material. This was a key problem for The Lord of the Rings. In the end I felt they were too respectful of the original, but the fans were widespread and militant so they certainly made the correct commercial decision. Usually it's the other way around. It's always safer to abuse the fans, they'll turn up anyway. On the other hand, if you forget to write a good film everyone else will stay away.