Book Review | The Woman in Black: Angel of Death by Martyn Waites

Autumn 1940, World War Two, the Blitz. Bombs are raining down, destroying the cities of Britain. In London, children are being removed from their families and taken to the country for safety.

Teacher Eve Parkins is in charge of one such group, and her destination is an empty and desolate house that appears to be sinking into the treacherous tidal marshes that surround it. Far from home and with no alternative, Eve and the children move in, but soon it becomes apparent that there is someone else in the house; someone who is far deadlier than any number of German bombs...

***

What a wonderful ghost story The Woman in Black was! Who, who has read the original 1983 novella, could possibly have forgotten the fate of Susan Hill's determined central character, the solicitor Arthur Kipps — not to mention his unfortunate family? Who, I ask you, slept soundly after having heard tell of the tragedy of Jennet Humfrye, the half-mad mother who saw her only son sucked into the murderous muck of the causeway connecting her home to the eerie village of Crythin Gifford? Who, in the end, could hold her haunting of Eel Marsh House against her?

Over the course of The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, I came to, I'm afraid. In this "fully authorised" sort-of-sequel, though it be blessedly brief, her "bleached-bone" features appear so frequently that she seemed little less chilling, not to mention sympathetic, than the wilting wallpaper which adorns the walls of the ancient estate where at the outset our hapless protagonist is dispatched.

Forty-odd years on from the events of the darkly fantastic classic this new book purports to take its cues from, the Blitz is in full swing. Eve Parkins, a trainee teacher, removes a class of children from the dangers of living in London — and from the comfort of their families, it follows — to a mouldering old mansion in the countryside where weird things start happening immediately.

Coming Attractions | The Abominable Mr. Simmons

Yesterday, Deadline reported that one of my favourite books of recent years is being turned into a TV series by AMC. The Terror is the incredible tale of two ships which were lost in the late 1840s whilst searching for a once-impassable route through the Arctic: the legendary Northwest Passage.

In Dan Simmons' awesome novel, the crew become frozen into the ice for a period of years: The Terror is the story of their survival in these extreme conditions, with limited supplies, fraying tempers, and—here's where it gets particularly interesting—an impossible monster with an appetite for people.

I've always had a soft spot for survival narratives. Also the Arctic. And boy, I do like me my monsters! Indeed, reading The Terror ticked all these boxes before I even realised they existed. So the news that AMC mean to make a TV series out of Simmons' alt-historical story leaves me with... mixed feelings. I'm sure it could be good. Hell, it could be really, really good. On the other hand, the way AMC have "dealt" with The Walking Dead, despite its surprising success, is dismaying.

(Side note: io9's most constructive comment about the announcement was that The Terror isn't The Thing. Well said, sirs! Or... wait. No. I take it back.)

Anyway, though Simmons has had the odd hit since The Terror—Drood was pretty good—by and large he's fallen out of favour again, so I wanted to draw your attention to his next novel, which I only discovered today. It's called The Abominable, and it sounds enticingly like a return to the territory of The Terror: 

In June 1924, famous British climber George Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine disappeared on the North East Ridge of Mount Everest. Most of the subsequent publicity did not mention that two other climbers were missing: the future Lord Wessex and an unnamed German support climber. 

A year later, climber, poet and war hero Richard David Deacon sees a way he and his friends can reach the heights of Mount Everest. He tells Lady Wessex that they will look for her son if she bankrolls the operation. Now the danger Deacon and his group face is not only from the treacherous conditions; they are also warned of the mythical 'man bear' demons of the mountain - which they dismiss until they hear roars so loud they drown out the 100 mile-per-hour wind that is tearing their canvas tent to shreds around them...

Amazon, however, seem to be doing their very best to garble the facts about the book. They're saying The Abominable will be out this April in the UK, weighing in at 432 pages, yet a quick trawl of the forums Simmons himself visits suggests we should be expecting another behemoth, at approximately 800 pages—and in October rather than a mere six weeks from Sunday.

Let me make no bones about it: whenever it's released, and however long it is, I can't wait to read The Abominable.

But after the ghastly Flashback, is anyone else willing to give Dan Simmons another chance?

You Tell Me | The Scotsman in the High Castle

In case you hadn't heard, this morning brought news of an adaptation of a classic genre novel. Via Variety:

Syfy is adapting Philip K. Dick's book The Man in the High Castle into a four-part miniseries, with Ridley Scott attached to exec produce. 

Dick's novel, set in 1962, depicts a world where Nazi Germany and Japan were the victors in WWII and occupy the U.S. 

The X-Files vet Frank Spotnitz will serve as primary scribe and as exec producer. Scott will exec produce through his shingle Scott Free Prods., alongside Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Prods. and FremantleMedia Intl., which will also distribute the mini globally.

"Alternate history stories are part of an amazing and intricate genre of sci-fi," said Mark Stern, president of original content at Syfy and co-head of original content at Universal Cable Prods. "When done well, there's nothing better; and I can't think of better creative talent to bring Philip K. Dick's fascinating alternate-history thriller to life than Ridley Scott and Frank Spotnitz."

Well, I can.

Be that as it may, I'll probably watch Syfy's adaptation anyway. But the announcement puts me in a particular position: though I've had a copy on my shelves for many years indeed—in large part because I bought all the original SF Masterworks I could—I haven't read The Man in the High Castle, and with this miniseries on the near to far horizon, it's become a case of now or never.

Why is that?

As I've touched on here on The Speculative Scotsman, I value surprise very highly. So highly that, if I'm honest, whether Syfy's series is awful or awesome, I am entirely unlikely to invest precious time in a tale I've already been told.

Long story short, should I read The Man in the High Castle before Syfy's adaptation airs? Or should I make like nothing's changed?

Before you offer your opinions one way or the other, know that the only the only Philip K. Dick I can recall reading is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I was young at the time—perhaps too young—and I didn't entirely dig it; I only persisted because of my undying adoration of Blade Runner.

But maybe the time has come to re-evaluate my stance. Maybe I should read this book before Syfy's miniseries spoils the experience for me.

You tell me!

News Flashing | Under the Dome Goes Straight to Series

HBO's Game of Thrones may still be going strong, but with Fringe finishing in the not-too-distant, and my favourite new series from this season - namely Last Resort - dead in the water already, I've been wondering what the year 2013 holds for me in terms of TV.

Well, now I've an inkling. TV Guide is reporting that CBS have made a straight-to-season order of 13 episodes of Under the Dome: a series based on Stephen King's gargantuan 2009 novel of the same name, adapted by Brian K. Vaughan of Lost and Y The Last Man fame, and directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who helmed the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Under the Dome is set to hit home theatres sometime this coming Summer, and Simon & Schuster's re-release of the original book in April in the US seems telling; I'd expect to see it on this side of that window. 

Here's a smart-arsed synopsis of the show by TV Guide's Sadie Gennis, now with proper apostrophes:

"The serialized drama, which will be produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, tells the story of a small New England town that becomes sealed off from the world by an over-sized transparent dome — much like in The Simpsons Movie. But instead of running around with Spider Pig, the town's inhabitants are faced with dire and deadly circumstances due to the dome's arrival. Under the Dome will follow the citizens' survival as they try to learn more about the dome and how to get rid of it."

It's unknown as yet, however, whether Under the Dome will be a limited or a continuing series. I'd like to see CBS go limited with it - the premise might be able to sustain itself indefinitely, but the same can't be said about its characters - but no doubt if its first season does decently, Under the Dome will be back for another run in summer 2014 too.

Now that it's actually happening, officially and all, I'm cautiously optimistic about this adaptation. The talent certainly promises a lot. And though I didn't love the book, if the truth be told, as ever with the work of Stephen King, most of its missteps only became evident come the cruddy conclusion... so if Under the Dome goes and goes, that disappointment's a long, long way off, plus the showrunners will have to make such changes to the tale for television that perhaps the end will be better for the stretching of the rest.

It's not likely to be worse, is it?

So, will you all be watching? Or does Under the Dome still have its work cut out convincing you?

Coming Attractions | Two Adaptations To Rule Them All

From the outside looking in, 2012 seemed set to be an incredible year for speculative cinema, boasting promising prequels or super-sounding sequels to three of the most beloved genre film franchises in... ever, I guess.

Alas, from the inside looking out, 2012 has been substantially less impressive. Both Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises have divided audiences, and though they're very fine flicks, I think it's fair to say both... could have been better.

Of course, the year is only half over, and there's still The Hobbit to look forward to, but of the three aforementioned prequels and sequels, I expected - indeed I still do - the least of the first installment of Peter Jackson's fast-multiplying precursor to The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

We'll just have to wait and see if it, too, disappoints. Don't get me wrong: I may be primed for a mixed bag, but at the same time I'm sorely hoping for a pleasant surprise.

Even from here, however, the road to The Hobbit is awfully long, and for a second there I was idiot enough to think that there was precious little to look forward to before its release in mid-December. The recent release of two terrific trailers, for a pair of exciting adaptations, showed me just how wrong I was.

The first to hit cinemas is, of course, Cloud Atlas.

Based on the revolutionary novel of the same name by David Mitchell - author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I reviewed way back when on The Speculative Scotsman - Cloud Atlas looks to be one of the most ambitious adaptations of all time. The book takes in six separate yet connected narratives which occur throughout human history, and the Andy and Lana Wachowski, who are writing and directing alongside Run Lola Run's Tom Twyker, appear to be taking into account each and every one in in the forthcoming film.

Until recently, the rare presence of international treasure Tom Hanks in the star-studded cast was the most promising this about this potentially vast disaster, but late last week saw the release, or the leak, of the six minute trailer embedded above... and it very nearly blew my mind.

Cloud Atlas will be out at the end of October, and as of now, I'm optimistic.

Admittedly, I loved the second trailer we're looking at today a little less, yet Ang Lee is markedly more reliable behind the camera than the Wachowskis, and it does look like he's homed in on some of the most memorable moments of the book his new movie's based on.

Life of Pi is due to hit cinemas in late November, and I'll be there, in part because this book meant the world to me when I read it.

Ang Lee's long-in-gestation adaptation certainly does look lush... though it's a touch too cartoonish - melodramatic maybe - for my liking.

And another caveat: the screenplay is by one David Magee, whose most notable credit to date is the J. M. Barrie biopic Finding Neverland. Again, not a bad film, but very far from brilliant. I can't help but wonder if Magee is really the dude to do a wonderful novel like Life of Pi justice.

That's it from me today, but I want to know about you guys too. Do you think the adaptations discussed above are going to be awesome, or has 2012's track record left you wishing for greener grass?

Meanwhile, where are we all on The Hobbit now that Peter Jackson's announced his dark design to make a trilogy of it?

Me, I'm more concerned than ever, and I was worried anyway...

You Tell Me | Getting In On Outlander

Via Deadline, Dark Horizons - my go-to source for movie news and reviews - reports than Battlestar Galactica and Carnivale showrunner Ron Moore is set to adapt Diana Gabaldon's bestselling Outlander fantasy saga into a series for cable TV.

I first heard this news on Tuesday, but it came up again yesterday, and then for a third time today. So that's the charm, and I simply had to ask: should I be paying more attention to Diana Gabaldon than I am?

For once, I can tell you exactly why I've steered clear of her work before now, though I'd be the first to admit my reasons apply only to me. Quite simply, I've never read Diana Gabaldon because, for all the wrong reasons - at least from my particular position - my mum used to love these books. Given the chance, she'd go on and on about Claire and Jamie, long past the point that everyone had started idly pushing their cuticles, and I got the distinct sense that she was reading the Outlander saga for the romance, rather than the fantasy.

Which was - and is - perfectly fine, but not what I was interested in either then, or now.

Methinks reason number two is more damning. You see, at some point, my mum went from an attitude of undying devotion to the series to one of utter disinterest. I think A Breath of Snow and Ashes put her off her coffee, because she still hasn't read An Echo in the Bone, nor - and I've asked her - does she plan to. Presumably six books of will-they/won't-they sexual tension was as she had in her... which I can kind of get behind.

But if I'm honest, I've never been able to determine if there's more to this series than that. So in light of the Ron Moore news, you tell me, good people: is the Outlander saga any good? Are its early novels self-contained and satisfying enough that I could read Diana Gabaldon's debut without feeling compelled to continue on, ad infinitum? Because that's what I'm inclined to do, assuming my mum isn't completely out of her wheelhouse on this one.

Meanwhile, who's keen to see a cable TV adaptation of the epic tale? And from the man behind the divisive modern-day interpretation of Battlestar Galactica, no less.

Is Ron Moore a good choice to bring this story into our living rooms, do you think, or are alarm bells ringing with anyone else?

Film Review | Hugo, dir. Martin Scorsese

I almost saw Hugo at the movies. Almost, but not quite. For one reason or another, I waited for the Blu-ray, and come the appointed day, as beautiful as the thing looked, here at home it felt... flat. And I think there's a reason for that. It's overgenerous in my estimation, but you could call Hugo a love letter to cinema, and maybe if I'd seen it on the big screen the experience would have been more memorable. As is, I almost liked it, but not quite.

In many ways the latest from Martin Scorsese marks an outlandish change of pace for the filmmaker. He's one of the greats, of course, and if we were in any danger of forgetting that fact, he's had rather a renaissance of late, with The Departed, Shutter Island and his involvement in HBO's Boardwalk Empire.

In such storied company, Hugo seems almost an aberration: it's an uplifting, Amelie-esque movie about movies, complete with cartoonish characters, a saccharine-sweet narrative, and that most romantic backdrop, classic Paris. It's about a little orphan boy who lives in the walls of an ornate train station in said city, and longs for one last message from his dearly departed father. This Hugo (Asa Butterfeld) hopes he'll have if he can just fix the broken automaton they were working on in advance of the accident that left him bereft.

However, were it so simple, he'd have done it already, but Hugo's life - hard enough as it is - is made still more miserable by Sacha Baron Cohen's nameless Station Inspector, meanwhile Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), the owner of a small magic shop, seems to have it in for him. When the monstrous Monseiur holds Hugo's precious notebook hostage, our little fellow's only hope is his adopted daughter, Hit-Girl. No! I mean Isabelle! In any case, Chloë Grace Moretz - who you might also recall from Let Me In - as a precocious creature desperate to have an adventure the equal of those from the stories. Together then, Hugo and Isabelle uncover a mystery involving the automaton, an early film long thought lost, and a strange, sad man haunted by his past.

Hugo is a no expenses spared adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: the 2007 Caldecott award-winner described by its author as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things." Whatever it is or is not, I'm afraid I haven't read the thing - poor show sir! - so I can't speak to where exactly the issues I had with Hugo originated, but at a glance, the filmmakers don't appear to have taken any great liberties with the source material.

Perhaps that's the problem, because Hugo is truly two movies, about an hour long each. The first is a meandering farce, featuring Cohen in Borat mode, whilst the second is a deeply human and moderately moving story, starring Ben Kingsley at his best, Helen McRory as his wistful wife, and a star-studded cast of bit-part players. The kids hardly factor into this latter half, and it's as well, because they're only ever so-so. As Isabelle, Moretz does her best Hermione, which is fine, but Butterfeld's moody Hugo is an accumulation of nervous energy and emo eyeliner. In his absence Hugo seems like it might just together; to wit, the older actors bear the lion's share of the movie's most powerful moments, in vignettes that have more heart than Hugo's whole story.

These asides are nice, but the entire enterprise is oriented around Hugo himself, and Butterfeld just isn't up to snuff. Nor is the narrative paced or structured in such a way as to take the onus off this miscast young actor. As I was saying, around the midpoint of the film, everything changes - for the better, from my perspective - but while children might be entertained by the first bit, they'll be bored to tears by the second, meanwhile older viewers are apt to appreciate the touching meta-movie with which Hugo concludes, though most everything before that point will drive them to distraction.

Were Hugo one thing or the other, I could simply say this isn't for me, and let that be that, or praise Scorsese for an affectionate celebration of cinema. As it is - which is to say a bit of this, and a bit of that - I honestly don't know who this film is for, and I doubt the director does either. Though the occasional 3D sequences stick out like sore thumbs, it certainly looks the part, and Howard Shore's score is a modest success as well, but beyond its incredible presentation, Hugo is oddly hollow; a beautiful, but broken automaton.

Comic Book Review | Stephen King's N.

Even before it was published in its original nested text format, Marvel had bought the rights to adapt Stephen King's 'N.' and put the project to a dream-team of comic book and television talent, including Marc Guggenheim - co-creator of the sadly short-lived series Eli Stone - on script duties, with art by the notorious Brian Michael Bendis collaborator Alex Maleev, whose greatest claim to fame has to be his long run on Daredevil.

What resulted - a half-hour motion comic released in 25 miniscule installments to mobile phone owners and certain internet users - was one of the very first instances of a format that's come to some prominence in the years since. I do not say regrettably; I've never been able to see the appeal myself - to me, the motion comic feels like a halfway house between one medium and another, consistently cheap if only intermittently cheerful - but this form of faux-animation has its fans, and that's fine.

In any case, I lost interest in the webisodes quickly. Not because they weren't winningly written, or brilliantly illustrated - to the best of my recollection they were indeed all that - but because I have a moth's memory, and these things were so brief and broken-up I kept forgetting what in God's name was going on. I never revisited the aforementioned motion comic thereafter, but I did see this deliciously twisted tale through eventually -- by way of the originating short story, which was one of the highlights of Stephen King's terrific 2008 collection Just After Sunset.

Whether rendered in words or pictures, or some eldrich accumulation of the pair, 'N.' concerns a journalist, Charlie, who hears from a long-lost friend about the strange suicide of her husband, the psychoanalyst John Bonsaint. Bonsaint, we soon learn, was driven to despair and inevitably death in the selfsame way as his last patient: a man with debilitating OCD, known only as N. as per the doctor's notes. For his part, N. had become obsessed with a circle of standing stones in Ackerman's Field, in rural Motton, Maine, which he was convinced acted as a doorway to another world, from where something wicked - namely the helmet-headed Lovecraftian creature Cthun - will this way come.

Unless someone takes it upon themselves to stop it, that is.

N. does, and dies, and I need not add that his terrible obsession does not end with him. Far from it. Like a virus, it spreads to Bonsaint. Then the doctor's wife catches the bug from her husband, and she, in turn, passes it on to a reporter who becomes fixated on investigating these curious claims. That'd be Charlie, in whose company 'N.' both begins and ends.

Several years later, however, I'd forgotten almost all of the story beats above - a blessing and a curse if ever there was one - so when I heard Marvel had pulled the team behind the webisodes together again, to adapt their own adaptation into a proper comic book, at long last, well... I got my wallet out.

Now I've made some terrible decisions in my time. Once, I voted for Tony Blair, and on another occasion, I bet against Apple, because I couldn't begin to imagine a world without the Walkman. More fool me.

On the other hand, buying into N. again may be one of the best decisions I've made in recent memory, because readers... it's incredible. Without a doubt, Stephen King's N. is the most discomfiting graphic narrative I've encountered since coming back to comic books; it's a real creepshow, chilling and sinister in equal measure.

In the first, that's thanks to Marc Guggenheim: a very fine writer indeed. There's little room in this story for the light touch he's become known for - Stephen King's N. is not sweet but sour - yet herein Guggenheim demonstrates himself equally adept at the darker half of the author's art. Admittedly, some of his script is lifted verbatim from King's short story, but the larger part of it is original, and I would go so far as to say the changes Guggenheim makes add far more to the narrative than they subtract. The pacing is certainly better; the plot, so literal before, comes across more naturally; and the characters - more than names on pages in the originating fiction, but not much more - seem alive at long last.

Nested texts often come across as exercises in look-at-me literary trickery - more about the performance than the performed - and though 'N.' in its first form is an excellent example of said mode of storytelling, I think the beats of its harrowing narrative are rather better served herein than anywhere else. By expanding on the strictly epistolary short with naturalistic flashbacks and a focus on showing instead of telling, Guggenheim fleshes out the bare bones of the original story more to my satisfaction than Stephen King could.

Meanwhile, Alex Maleev. I've never been the biggest fan of his sketchy pencils, but they serve the story so incredibly well in Stephen King's N. that it'd be mean-spirited of me to do anything less than champion Maleev's contribution to this collection's manifest success. Specifically I should applaud his impeccable sense of composition, and his striking use of colour, as illustrated in the images above: of rich reds and warm oranges receding before a palette of clinical blues and greens and greys. It's exemplary stuff.

Though the narrative of 'N.' has gone from nested text to motion comic to graphic novel, Stephen King's N. as adapted by Marc Guggenheim and Alex Maleev is not some admission of defeat. Rather, it is a pitch perfect sequential rendering of a story which remains every bit as thrilling, gripping and magnificently sinister as it was four years ago. In short, I'd still recommend the original short... but I'd recommend this comic book more.

Book Review | A Single Shot by Matthew F. Jones

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Anyone's life can change in an instant. In Matthew F. Jones's acclaimed novel, one man's world is overturned with a single shot.

Trespassing on what was once his family's land, John Moon hears a rustle in the brush and fires. But instead of the deer he was expecting, he finds the body of a young woman, killed by his stray bullet. A terrible dilemma is made worse when he stumbles upon her campground - and the piles of drugs and money concealed there.

Moon makes his choice: he hides the corpse, and takes the cash. His decision will have consequences he can neither predict or control.

***

"The buck should have died in the pines from a single shot," (p.11) opines former farmer John Moon, hunting illegally on the estate that would have been his had not his father squandered it away in his last days. But no such luck. John has only managed to wing the deer, and when it runs, fearful of what might happen if it's found, bled out, he gives chase, tracking the buck to an abandoned quarry, where a sudden noise and a flash of colour startles him into firing a second slug.

Only later does John understand what he's done. For the moment, he

...picks up his shotgun from the grass-and-weed-covered gravel, starts to cock it, then, changing his mind, wraps both hands around the barrel, hoists the butt like a post-hole digger above the deer's head, and brings it forcefully down. The deer's skull collapses like a rotten vegetable. The buck groans once, for several seconds twitches again, then lies still. Placing the gun on the ground, John thinks it shouldn't have come to this. (p.11)

Finally he turns to survey the unintended consequences of his second shot, laying splayed on the forest floor: the terrible wreckage of what was only moments ago a runaway taking refuge in the quarry. "She is maybe sixteen, with crystal-blue eyes, blossom-shaped clumps of freckles on both cheeks, a small space between her upper incisors where a piece of gum or chewable candy is lodged. The clump of blond hair is a ponytail. John looks up at the sky. It looks just as it did five minutes before. He can't figure out how that can be." (p.13)

Knowing full well that this is an accident he will not be able to explain to anyone's satisfaction - not even his own - John, ever the practical man, hides the girl's body. In so doing, he finds a sackful of cash; ill-gotten gains, he reasons. Money from a robbery or a drug deal. Why else would the girl have hidden out here in the sticks?

With nothing left to lose, John takes the money and runs. He will find, however, that he has a great deal left to lose. His health... his estranged wife and child... perhaps even his life. Because the girl may not have been alone in the forest after all.

So begins A Single Shot, a short, sharp shock of a country noir novel come at long last to the UK, fully fifteen years since its much ballyhooed-about publication in America. If anyone can explain to me why in the Sam hell it took so long for this harrowing yet elegant specimen to touch down, I'd be much obliged.

In any event, the shattering impact of A Single Shot - we might as well call it blunt force trauma - seems to me not at all diminished by the decade and a half it's spent in transit. A story very much in the mode of Deliverance, and reminiscent of the work of Daniel Woodrell (who wrote Winter's Bone, and not coincidentally introduces this text), A Single Shot is narrated entirely by its protagonist, the flustered, blustery murderer John Moon. Moreover, his is a tale told in the present tense from first to last, which bestows upon events such excruciating immediacy as to make the reader feel as anxious, as endangered, as this drunken hunter, now hunted.

At a level deeper than conscious comprehension, John is thinking that the apparent palpability of words, acts, the whole process of human interchange, is a sham. He is mindful, though, only of his physical distress. His trembling extremities. His palpitating heart. (p.171)

Matthew F. Jones' belated third novel is an unbearably tense affair, at times, and all piss and vinegar and pornography - to wit: be warned that there's a whole lot of sex herein - when on rare occasion lives (innocent or otherwise) are not knowingly at stake. A Single Shot is not in truth a very likeable book, but from the first of its seven chapters - each of which corresponds to a single day of a single week in the life of poor, put-upon Moon - one becomes so swept up in the heady momentum of things, which go from bad to worse to oh-God-made-it-stop in short order, that there is nary a moment to stop and consider the withered lilies: the disgust and deep discomfort that are A Single Shot's stock in trade.

Black as pitch but beautiful in its terrible, wondrous way, A Single Shot is a distressing but unputdownable evening's reading sure to stay with one long after the lights have gone out. The movie is of course due sometime in 2012, and I expect it'll be tremendous. Thanks be that we have this chance to see what all the fuss has been about before then.

***

A Single Shot

by Matthew F. Jones

UK and US Publication: September 2011, Mulholland Books

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Film Review | Captain America: The First Avenger, dir. Joe Johnston

Do I love my country?

I don't know that I do. Maybe that's because I'm Scottish. Maybe that's because Scotland isn't from the inside - or the outside - a very loveable country; we highlanders are a violent and violently unhealthly people. Some of the sights hereabouts sure are pretty to look at, but wherever there are large numbers of people? If you can possibly avoid it, you probably don't want to go there. I know I don't.

In a larger sense, though, I think a country, and all the concept of country entails, is a difficult thing to feel for with such intensity... such unquestioning acceptance.

But Steve Rogers? Boy oh boy does he love his country! The Second World War is in full swing, and Steve wants nothing more than to take to the front-lines with his best buddy Bucky. But the military won't have him, no matter how often he applies - and he applies often. Alas, he's a lanky young man, physically a complete and total weakling with a long and sordid history of chronic conditions to boot.

So on the eve of his best friend's departure, when a doctor in charge of a top secret research project offers Steve another way to play some part in the ongoing war effort, the little fella - God bless him - jumps at the chance. Several vials of super-serum later, Captain America is born. All too soon, sadly, the doctor dies, and when it transpires that his super-serum can't be reproduced, Steve's only option is to help sell war bonds. In a year he has becomes an icon of purity and patriotism to the people at home, but abroad, where it actually matters a damn, he remains an object of ridicule: a man in tights, if he's any sort of man at all.

Oddly, Joe Johnston - the director who gave us Jumanji, The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III amongst many other fondly-remembered Hollywood movies, not least Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! - Joe Johnston takes, I'm afraid, an awfully long time to tell this origin story that needn't (truth be told) have been told at all, given how intimately familiar it is... even to me, and I haven't read a Captain America comic book in my life.

Thus the first hour of Captain America: The First Avenger is an at-times excruciatingly slow build-up to a second hour that seems relentless by comparison. Indeed it is: one elaborate set-piece picks up where the last left off, and the next is always hot on its overheated heels. By the end you're basically dazed, if not confused, for this is after all an exceedingly simple film.

Simplicity is no slight in itself, of course. Often the best stories can be reduced down to one of a few boilerplate premises; it is in how a story is told that it can become exceptional, or else. But there's not a lot of nuance in Captain America: The First Avenger either. At one point, as the worm turns, Hugo Weaving as the only other person besides Steve Rogers to have survived the super-serum - so it should come as no surprise that Johann Schmidt is the bad nasty apple to Steve Rogers' delicious and nutritious orange - anyway, Hugo Weaving, somewhere around the halfway mark of the movie, actually tears off his face, to reveal the evil red skull beneath!

If you can swallow that - that, and swear an oath that you won't take anything in this film in the least seriously, up to and including a few objectionable moments - there's actually a fair bit of fun to be had with Captain America: The First Avenger. It's compromised in almost every sense, yet there's a certain purity to it. It's dated already, but right down to some horrendous special effects, it looks the part. Needless to say, none of the characters are anything resembling interesting, but an impressive cast put forth some solid performances in any event: Hugo Weaving hams it up marvelously, mostly, I expect Billie Piper fans will watch to watch the charming Hayley Atwell closely, and there is just enough humility to Chris Evans' performance that his Steve Rogers is every bit as credible as his Captain America is incredible.

So. Patriotic shenanigans, decently done if you can overlook the vast imbalance between the first half and the last, and some dodginess here and there. Fun for the whole family; that is, assuming the whole family is doing something else at the time.

I'd recommend a comic book!

Comic Book Review | Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight Vol. 1 - The Long Way Home

Some among you may recall that I went cold turkey on comic books for a good long while there. Among the many and various reasons I came back to the fold, with my tail between my legs, yes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight. Which is to say the continuation of the television series that pretty much made my teenage years.

I adored Buffy all those bygone days ago, and my passion for it, half a lifetime on, remains largely unfettered. I love the series still... though I'll admit I've not dared to rewatch it since its misfiring final season aired in 2003. What if the (arguably) more adult me thinks it ridiculous, in retrospect? What then?

That's an eventuality I needn't fear for the moment, because I have Season Eight to take me back. And what a terrific trip down memory lane it is!

The Long Way Home picks up a year on from the events of season seven of the series in its original iteration. Buffy Summers has raised an army, and having quite exploded Sunnydale and its surrounding area, she and the surviving Scoobies - so Xander with an eye-patch, and Willow and Giles, though they've both AWOL at the outset - have taken up residence in a citadel in Scotland, the better to train their legions of baby slayers in peace and quiet. Or so they hope.

Oh, and Dawn - Buffy's little sister - is a giant. So not so little any longer.

This first collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, which ran for forty issues between 2007 and 2011, contains two stories, one short and one long; Joss Whedon writes both. The longer of the two stories - that is the titular tale, "The Long Way Home" - serves to demonstrate that here in the Buffyverse, it's business as usual. Familiar old enemies return, if only to be handily dispatched by this older and in many senses wiser ensemble of idiots as Whedon refamiliarises his reader with the way things are.

And that isn't to do a disservice to the way things were. The Long Way Home is very faithful to the television series in that sense. The experience of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is intermittently thrilling and winningly quick-witted: it's fresh, funny, exciting, and good to look at, too... as ever, except now we've the art of Georges Jeanty to thank for that. I should say his pencils are a little too rounded for my tastes - all soft curves with nary an angle in sight - but he does the Scoobies real good, all growed-up as they are now, and frankly that's what matters.

The only issue I'd raised with regards to this fantastic first installment of Buffy the Vampire: Season Eight is that it relies perhaps a little too heavily on the reader. Evidently the author assumes readers will have a detailed knowledge of the littlest things in the Buffyverse as it was, and though I am, as aforementioned, a dyed-in-the-wool devotee of Whedon's wonderful worlds, and this one in particular, it's been a while, and several story points - not to mention one of the little big bads who kicks off in the introductory arc - completely passed me by. So it goes without saying that complete newcomers need not even apply. 

Then again, I have an awful memory, a quick look at the Wikipedia page wouldn't have been such a horrendous hardship, and once I'd gotten back into the swing of things... well, The Long Way Home felt to me a lot like coming home.

Besides the fact that this show I adore is now a comic book I can learn to love all over again, the best thing about Buffy the Vampire: Season Eight is evidenced in the last story of this first collection. In "The Chain" - penciled by Paul Lee, who did fill-ins on Conan - Whedon is belatedly, brilliantly unbound. Able now to focus on characters other than the staples who make up the central cast, he explores the life and times of a potential new to the canon: an impromptu Buffy body double, not long for this world if certain dastardly dark forces have it their way. "The Chain" might be the most impressive single issue of any comic book I've read all year.

With such incredible new avenues for the series to explore, as it surely should, and Whedon in fine form - and moreover seemingly in control of where Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight goes, now that it needn't be about the same old Scoobies year in and year out - The Long Way Home makes for a fantastic start to an alarmingly smart comic book based on an alarmingly smart television series. 

Welcome home, folks!

Film Review | Never Let Me Go, dir. Mark Romanek

Never Let Me Go should be a brilliant film.

From One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek to screenwriter Alex Garland, who originated the scripts of such genre touchstones as Sunshine and 28 Days Later, all the pieces appear arrayed in readiness for something truly transcendent. And of course the cast - led by the thinking man's crumpet Carey Mulligan (late of Drive and An Education) and ably supported by Academy Award-nominee Kiera Knightley and Spider-man to be Andrew Garfield - the cast is marvelous.

Never mind that Never Let Me Go is based on a contemporary classic if ever there was one; the book by Kazuo Ishiguro stands among the new century's most celebrated - "the best of the decade" according to Time Magazine - and Garland's painstaking adaptation is fairly faithful to it. In fact the single biggest difference between the estimable source material and the film is the revelation that the three characters at the heart of Never Let Me Go's narrative are clones - Donors - bred from test tubes specifically for their organs. This harrowing circumstance only becomes apparent to the reader around the midpoint of Ishiguro's novel; in the adaptation, however, the audience knows from the get-go... though Kathy, Tommy and Ruth remain woefully unaware.

 

Now change is never easy, nor easily received, but in this instance, I think, it's a change for the good of all involved, at least in theory, because Never Let Me Go has had such a wide reach that few viewers are likely to see the film of it, six years on, without some precognition of the twist, such as it is. Romanek and Garland are wise to cast aside such pointless obfuscation, and the decision to let us in on the terrible truth of these characters' lives implicates the audience in an interesting way.

Otherwise, Never Let Me Go the movie is in narrative and thematic terms much of a muchness with Never Let Me Go the book. It is the tale of three Donors coming to terms with what they are, yes - and sooner rather than later - but also who they are. In the face of utter nonchalance on the part of those people whose lives they have been bred to extend, and those institutions which have arisen to supervise the system, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth long to find love and live life in what little time they have left to them.

They needn't look far. But though Kathy and Tommy seem born to be with one another, Ruth - a sociopath of sorts played with pitch-perfect hysteria by the oft-underrated Kiera Knightley - Ruth cannily beats Kathy to the punch, winning Tommy's lust, if not his love, before quiet little Kathy can tell him how she feels. It's this heartbreaking love triangle that carries the viewer through the lives of these three star-cross'd Donors, from the austere boarding school at Hailsham where they spend their formative years to the homes and hospitals they each end up in, as they edge ever closer to "completion."

As aforementioned, Knightley equips herself very well as Ruth, and Andrew Garfield is an acceptable Tommy, but it's the two young actresses who portray Kathy at various stages of her short life that really steal the show. It doesn't hurt that Isobel Mielke-Small and Carey Mulligan actually look quite alike, yet the correspondence between their respective performances - all nervous energy and thousand-yard stares - runs much deeper, lending a real sense of continuity to Kathy's character that the other leads lack in comparison.

Nor does Mark Romanek disappoint. A director only occasionally given to come outside his comfort zone - which is to say the music video - Romanek's first feature since One Hour Photo seems somewhat removed from the clinical imagery of that Robin Williams vehicle, but not entirely: here however the filmmaker's sterile sensibilities are filtered through the necessarily more naturalistic lens of rural England in the 60s and 70s. In feeling and appearance, then, Never Let Me Go is a bleak, bleached thing - windswept, you sense, and bitterly, bitterly cold - yet it is beautiful, too.

So what's the problem? Because there is a problem. Never Let Me Go should be a brilliant film - all the parts are in place - but in the end it is no more than a faithful but unremarkable adaptation of a remarkable novel. The fault, I think, lies with the decision to arrive at the revelation that our characters are clones early on. Much as I understand the reasons for it in principle, in practice this gloss of the period during which the three Donors wonder what in God's name is going on comes at a cost: namely the development of a halfway heartfelt dynamic between Ruth and Kathy and Tommy. Lacking that, the betrayals of fate and friendship that Never Let Me Go turns on feel not exactly empty, but inevitable.

Film Review | Green Lantern, dir. Martin Campbell

I don't get it.

I mean, someone's got to be pulling my leg, right? In a summer bookended by big-budget comic book movies, the first, Thor, was supposed to be awesome; so awesome that I was sad to have missed it at the cinema, so when the Blu-ray release rolled around, I gobbled it up.

And I thought it was silly nonsense. Daft but largely harmless.

Green Lantern, meanwhile... well, I only watched Green Lantern out of some misplaced sense of duty to a medium I dearly adore - the comic book, of course - so unanimously dire were the pronouncements about this particular superhero vehicle. But you know what? I actually enjoyed it.

Now I'm neither so fool nor so full of myself as to think expectations, or indeed a lack thereof, played no part in my experience of these two similar-but-different films: that Thor had come so highly recommended rather raised the bar in terms of my idea of it, I don't doubt, and perhaps the presumption that Green Lantern would be wall-to-wall terrible left me easily impressed. Nevertheless, I think there's a case to be made for Casino Royale director Martin Campbell's return to men in tights six years on from The Legend of Zorro. It's an unabashedly popcorn-friendly film, with markedly more interest in low entertainment than high art -- and what in all the quadrants is the problem with that?

Nothing, is what. And Green Lantern makes no claims to the contrary: in fact from the get-go - a clunky pre-credits VO explaining the origins of the Green Lantern Corps, as if it'd be an affront to let us figure these things out on our own - you know what this film will be. It will be ridiculous. It will be overwrought. It will pander, and indulge, and embarrass.

And, so it seems to me, you will either love every minute of it - unlikely though that may be if you're in your double digits - or despise this harmless bit of sci-fi eye candy for what it is.

I'm coming around to thinking that critics seem to see the superhero movie as something of an all or nothing proposition. Either it can be brilliant, basically because it transcends the trappings of its origins in the funny pages - a la Sam Raimi's Spider-man, or Bryan Singer's take on The X-Men - or it's some despicable thing because it doesn't.

Green Lantern certainly doesn't; to a fault, it seems subservient to the sixty-some years of comic books from which Hal Jordan, space cop, springs, not at all fully-formed. But between the masterclass and the amateur hour, film critics tend to afford the superhero movie precious little middle ground, and I would argue that - of all the genres there are in cinema - the superhero movie needs as much or more middle ground as any other. Were there such a space, Green Lantern would sit squarely in the middle of it. On an ornate throne fashioned solely from force of will. 

Yes, it's ridiculous. Yes, it's overwrought. Green Lantern is pretty much all the things it's been called - and it's been called a lot of mean-spirited things, I do declare - but it is all of these things so very inoffensively, innocently even, that the hate seems to me way out of proportion. Sure, there's some cheap-looking CG, but there are too some beautiful visual effects.

Actually, by and large, Green Lantern is spectacular to look at, up to and including the lovely Blake Lively as the Ryan Reynolds' love interest. Reynolds is for his part dopey but endearing, and his character's counterpart - Peter Sarsgaard on fine form as insidious supervillain Hector Hammond - is a good match. I did however shed an imaginary tear to see how far Tim Robbins has fallen.

In any case, Green Lantern is good looking, well cast, ably acted, and it sounds the part, too, thanks to a tense orchestral score from M. Night Shyamalan collaborator James Newton Howard, who just so happened to work with Hans Zimmer on the superhero movie soundtrack to end all superhero movie soundtracks: for The Dark Knight, needless to say.

The plot is of course a bit of a mess - better, as Fleetwood Mac might say, that comic book movies go their own way - and a more liberated script would have made a great deal of difference, but as it is, Green Lantern remains a mildly exciting, if not exactly thrilling way to spend two hours, and though it never quite comes together as some more optimistic souls than I had hoped it might, still it is leagues better than the abhorrent nonsense it's been made out as.

Film Review | Thor, dir. Kenneth Branagh

"From the studio that brought you Iron Man" comes a blockbuster adaptation variously described as "the best comic book movie of the year" and "the next great superhero franchise," amongst other such acclaim. So of course I had to see it. I mean, I'm all for a bit of fun... and I like comic books, superheroes, and at least the first Iron Man movie. Thus the high hopes.

The hype didn't hurt, either; nor the not-a-little surprising crossover between it and what collective critical opinion arose as regards Marvel Studios' latest tentpole. Most everyone seemed to agree: Thor was "thunderously good fun."

Lies. All lies.

Thor might not be utter drivel, but it's only a hammer's breadth away. Fans of empty-headed, anonymous action may come away from it happy - and more power to 'em - but I truly struggle to see how so many critics whose opinions tend to tally with mine think Thor in any sense worthy of such praise as was lavished upon it.

To be sure, Thor is, if not quite a minor-league superhero, then still a ways away from the comic book franchises the medium lies and dies by: namely Batman, Spider-man, Superman, The X-Men and so on and so forth. Drawn of course from Norse mythology, though much diluted, Thor is the son of Odin, ruler of Asgard - a magnificent alien world far from Earth - and half-brother to Loki, the trickster God.

Needless to say, in the 50 years Thor and Thor's extended family have been a mainstay in the Marvel universe, more has happened to him and his than an origin story, and though this adaptation lays some of the groundwork for what will surely come (in 2012 in The Avengers, and the summer after in Thor 2), by and large esteemed Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh's adaptation hones close to the very beginnings of this character, content to establish the people, the powers, and the place of the God of Thunder in the larger Marvel canon.

In Asgard, King Odin (Anthony Hopkins spinning his wheels) ails, and each in their way, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) vie for the crown: Thor through brute force and general brattishness, by attacking Asgard's ancient enemy - the Frost Giants of Jotunheim - and so starting a war to end all wars (or not), meanwhile Loki... well sure, Loki has a few tricks up his sleeve, too. In short order, anyway, Odin strips Thor of his powers, and banishes the entitled idiot to Earth to learn a lesson in humility. Not a moment too soon, I'd say. 

However, while Thor's coming to grips with a trio of scientists who might be able to help him get his mojo back - among them an enthusiastic Natalie Portman as comic book mainstay Jane Foster (a nurse in the comic books, as I recall), daddy Skarsgård doing a passable daddy Skarsgård, and a completely wasted Kat Dennings out of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - in Asgard, Loki scares Odin into a space coma and takes the throne. He's a right baddie, that Loki!

Actually, no. No, he's not. He's an absolute nothing. He's no more menacing than Thor's silly blonde neckbeard. Nor do the Frost Giants ever seem a real threat. And though there are many, many problems with Thor - among them a formulaic and deeply disinterested cast; cheap-looking, unconvincing costuming and to a lesser extent set-dressing; an uninspired script at odds with nothing so much as itself; and a director who, despite his estimable reputation, seems sure that dutching a couple of camera angles amounts to a "style" - this laughable attempt at imbuing events with some sense of jeopardy stands uppermost among them. For what is a hero without a villain? An alpha without an omega? Salt without pepper, except an accessory to vinegar?

Thor does have its moments: a few of the money-shot set-pieces the script tries and fails to stitch together are at least visually astonishing, The Wire's Irdis Elba proves commanding even in a supporting role, and as the God of Thunder, Chris Hemsworth equips himself as well in comedic moments - of which there are a few - as he does with Mjolnir in his hand. But given the mindless, camp-as-can-be nonsense that this adaptation is at even the best of times, I am surprised - shocked if not appalled - that Thor has left so many seemingly sensible opinion-makers insensible.

How far the mighty have fallen...

Film Review | Water for Elephants, dir. Francis Lawrence

 

I'll not be the first reviewer to point this out, I'm sure, but Water for Elephants' framing narrative - which has a dear old soul escape the clutches of his care home long enough to tell a skeptical young man all about this one time he ran away with the circus - is for all intents and purposes a direct lift from James Cameron's Titanic. And that very much sets the scene for Francis Lawrence's latest piece of popcorn-fodder; very much a move towards the good and true and pure after the gaudy grime of Constantine and I Am Legend... yet Water for Elephants too has its darkness.

Least, it does if you squint a bit.

Based on Sara Gruen's pop-lit smash hit - a gritter, greyer thing by far, as I understand it - Water for Elephants is the story of the best days of one Jacob Jankowski's life: a Polish veterinary student who, when his parents pass in a tragic car wreck - leaving Jacob with nothing but his half-completed Ivy League education - jumps the first train heading anywhere but here and never looks back. The train, as it happens, turns out to belong to the Benzini Brothers' Circus, upon which discovery Jacob begs a job from the ringleader, August Rozenbluth. August, in a bid to outdo his great rivals the Wringling Brothers, is only too happy to offer Jacob temporary employment tending the animals.

Which is all very well, of course, and fodder for a fair to fine narrative right there, I don't doubt, but only when Jacob lays eyes on the lovely Marlena, August's wife and star attraction - for she too has a way with the animals - does Water for Elephants reveal its true intent: a forbidden love story set against the backdrop, rather than the fact, of a circus on its last legs in the deeply depressed 30s.

This is where Water for Elephants began to go pear-shaped, for me. I just did not - could not, no matter how hard I tried - buy into the romance between Twilight's Robert Pattinson as, ironically, Jacob, and Reese Witherspoon (last little-seen in one of 2010's biggest flops) as Marlena. What chemistry there is between the leads, if there is truly any at all, seems more an accident of mad science than any natural or even smartly manufactured reaction. At least they look the part - as most everything does in this lavishly produced and ornately set-dressed adaptation - but neither Pattinson nor Witherspoon feel as if they're at home in these particular roles... and so much of Water for Elephants hinges on the viewer coming to care for their characters, which come across as little more than barely-contained impulses in bodily form, that if one cannot easily get on side, then one is likely to find oneself utterly unconvinced by much of what follows.

That said, I was not in fact "utterly unconvinced" by Water for Elephants; only the central characters left me feeling cold and old. Far more worthwhile, as both actor and character and character actor, was Inglorious Basterds' Colonel Hans Landa: Christopher Waltz as August, who has loved Marlena ever since he lifted her up from nothing, and who, as an intelligent and essentially decent man, hires Jacob as much for decent dinnertime conversation as for his, uh... elephant-whispering skills. To my surprise my sympathies were with August first and foremost, until of course the broad-strokes script from Richard LaGravenese - that would be he of The Bridges of Madison County and The Fisher King - requires that August morph into the Bad Nasty Man of the piece, the better to rationalise away Jacob and Marlena's illicit affair.

I was not, needless to say, best pleased with this abrupt transformation, nor at all surprised by it. In fact I'd be interested to hear how August is portrayed in the original novel: is he as clear-cut a monster in the end, or essentially a decent human being, maddened by a broken heart? In any event, in Francis Lawrence's lamentably uncomplicated adaptation, August's development takes a predictable nose-dive towards the melodramatic, even the monstrous, in the last act.

No other actor really gets a look-in on Water for Elephants, I'm afraid, though I'd have looked back on this film rather more fondly if it had had time for dearly-beloved supporting characters like Camel and Charlie and Kinko the Clown, as I gather the book does. Instead, Lawrence introduces the lot, only to abandon them somewhere around the outer circle of the big top he builds evidently for no other reason than to set the stage for a tepid love triangle.

Water for Elephants, then, is schmaltzy, saccharine-sweet, sentimental storytelling, laser-focused where a little range would have done it the world of good, widening its scope and cloying tone a great deal... and I dare say it could have made more of the encroaching darkness about it, rather than merely allude in its direction from time to time. One senses sharp edges here and there - carried over from the book if I'm not mistaken - but I fear former MTV-man Francis Lawrence is more interested in smoothing them over to make way for his shiny happy people to hold hands than for a moment exploring these untold depths. Water for Elephants could have been a far greater thing than the attractive but empty sideshow it is, ultimately: a family-friendly period romance with added tassels and the occasional animal.

Speaking of which, there is at least one undeniable attraction to this film. The hell with the dude what was in the Twilight flicks, Reese Witherspoon and even my man Christopher Waltz: if you're going to watch Water for Elephants for any reason - and it's alright, really; all my objections aside, it makes for a perfectly pleasant evening's entertainment - watch it for a star-making performance from Rosie... the elephant!