Review of "The Hobbit: A Long Expected Journey"

I have a confession to make: I am Bilbo Baggins. That may be a strange statement for a tall lanky shoe-wearing ginger man to make, but the truth is in spite of the differences in height and foot-hairiness between Bilbo and myself, he is probably the literary character I have always empathised with the most ever since I first read the book in the late 1980s (yes, I have been waiting for this film for a very long time indeed!) Whilst his wimpier nephew Frodo seems to spend the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy wandering around finding ingenious new ways of getting himself stabbed, Bilbo, the ultimate bookish underdog turned unlikely hero of the hour, actually makes himself vaguely useful on his quest, more than earning his share of the dragon's treasure at the end of the day.

Moreover, if there was  Guinness Book of Records category for the tallest person ever to play Bilbo Baggins, I would probably win it. Although I was never a member of the Cambridge University Tolkien Society (I am only willing to allow my geekiness to get to a certain level) I did join forces with them when I took on four roles for the Cambridge University Tolkien Society's Charity Reading of the script of the BBC Radio 4 Adaptation of Lord of the Rings at Borders bookstore in Cambridge (sadly now closed for reasons which I can assure you are not connected to the quality of my performance) back in 2004.

I also played Gaffer Gamgee, in spite of the fact that at one point the two characters appeared in the same scene, meaning that any innocent customers walking into the bookshop at that point, hoping for a quiet afternoon of browsing, would have instead been greeted with the baffling sight of me wielding a microphone and interacting with myself in two different accents. Probably not the strangest thing I did during my university career, but it's up there!

In short, I am a fan, and feel extremely protective of all things Tolkien. Which means that I was getting increasingly concerned by the mixed nature of the reviews of the first in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, especially the complaints about the slow pace, not least because Julie and I had inadvertently booked a 10pm showing of the film last night after a long and tiring week at work, rather than the 8pm showing we had thought we were booking. Having waited the better part of a quarter of a century for this cinematic spectacle, was there a chance that I was going to end up falling asleep in the middle of it? This did happen to me fairly recently in the Russell Crowe version of Robin Hood (although that was in the middle of the afternoon, but I had better say no more about that cinematic travesty, even though I am sure Russell, being an amiable chap, would take the criticism in good spirit!)

As it turned out, there was no need for a power nap, even during the Rivendell scenes. I think the negative focus of a lot of the reviews stemmed from the fact that many critics were expecting a classic epic "magnificent octopus" (as Baldrick would put it) on the same level as Lord of the Rings. Quite why they had set their expectations so high is a mystery to me, bearing in mind how previous franchises that have sought to resurrect themselves after a gap of a decade or more (which is probably a fairer standard by which to judge the film) have fared. True, James Bond has managed to successfully reinvent himself twice now, but the longest period we have ever had between Bond films is six years.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not quite as good as any of Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. However, it is significantly better than any of the three Star Wars prequels, Terminator 3 or 4, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Bollocks, Richard Lester's Return of the Musketeers, whatever the name of that Brandon Routh Superman film was, or even The Godfather part III. Jackson managed to recapture the spirit of the previous films far more successfully after a gap of eleven years than the Wachowski Brothers managed with the Matrix after just four. And I absolutely loved it, in spite of its flaws.

Getting the negative stuff out of the way first, I will say that I will not be watching the next two films in 3D, nor will I be watching this one in 3D again. It added nothing, it irritated my eyes, and New Zealand/Middle Earth is just as attractive in 2D. I didn't see the film in 48 frames per second so can't comment on that, but I have to say that the number of different formats in which one can watch the film is now verging on the ridiculous (although my attempt to find a cinema that was showing it as a black and white silent movie with a smell-o-vision option was unsuccessful!)

The second major criticism of the film has been its length, and I do wonder whether instead of releasing an Extended Edition of the film on DVD as per the LOTR films it might be worth Jackson thinking about releasing a truncated version! When answering questions about the upcoming LOTR films back in 1999, Jackson commented that his rule was that every scene had to advance the plot in some way. It is something he seems to have since forgotten. Let's put it this way, if he was making LOTR now, he would not only have included Tom Bombadil, but would have included ten minutes of flashbacks to explain where he got his inspiration for his "brilliant" songs and rhymes (no doubt the track title for that scene on the DVD would have been "A Shortcut to Mushrooms"). I actually think that two films might have been the better way forward, and not just because I now have to wait another year to see my favourite character from the book (apart from Bilbo) - Beorn, the bear man (to be played by the suitably big, hairy and Swedish Mikael Persbrandt).

True, the Hobbit is shorter than any of the LOTR films, but it has more padding, only some of which really adds anything to the story. The Erebor-based prologue does a good job of setting the scene, and the new wizard Radagast the Brown manages to just about stay on the right side of that very thin line between eccentric and annoying, partly because former Dr Who Doctor Sylvester McCoy plays him with such enthusiasm. But then again, with a sledge driven by giant CGI rabbits (which Tolkien forgot to mention) as a prop, who wouldn't be enthusiastic? If David Tennant is starting to get sick of doing those godawful Virgin Media ads, he may be reassured by the fact that it could be worse, bearing in mind that McCoy appears to have spent the twenty odd years since he left the show living in the woods being crapped on by owls.

But the whole sub-plot involving Azog, an albino orc with a hook for an arm (Middle Earth's answer to Abu Hamza) could quite easily have been dropped, although I did enjoy Barry Humphries as the Goblin King. Yes, that's right, Dame Edna Everage is playing the Goblin King, although in fact he is more like Sir Les Patterson reincarnated as a giant, angry scrotum. And whilst Elijah Wood's cameo as Frodo is fun, it is screaming out as being something that would have been better saved up for the DVD edition.

Plus I think that Jackson has become overreliant on CGI this time round. Surprisingly for someone who is such a big fan of Ray Harryhausen, Jackson seems to have forgotten that CGI is not the only instrument in the filmmaking toolbox. The most profound thing that Simon Pegg has ever tweeted (ok...possibly the only profound thing that Simon Pegg has ever tweeted) was when he was talking about showing his daughter the Empire Strikes Back. It was the first time she had ever seen a puppet, non-CGI Yoda, and her immediate reaction was "oh...he's real"). Take as another example this scene from Jason and the Argonauts. This could be done more realistically today (as much as a fight involving skeletons can ever be described as realistic), but would it be as much fun?

But enough griping. I was transported back into Middle Earth, and quite frankly I loved almost every minute of it. Starting with the performances, I find it difficult to find fault with any of them. I had been touting Martin Freeman as the perfect younger Bilbo for almost a decade before he actually got cast, and I can totally understand why Jackson decided to reschedule filming to accommodate Freeman so that he could take time off to film the second series of BBC's Sherlock (as a devoted fan of both Sherlock Holmes and Tolkien, I am almost in despair that I will have to wait another whole year before seeing Martin Freeman's Bilbo interact with his Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch as the sinister dragon, Smaug).

Freeman is far better suited to this role than he was to Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, partly because to my mind no-one could ever displace Simon Jones in that role in my book, whilst although I loved Ian Holm as Bilbo in LOTR, he is not the only actor who has previously played the role well (and no, I am not thinking of me here, I actually had in mind Paul Daneman, who played him in the BBC Radio 4 version of the Hobbit, opposite the fantastically named and wonderfully malevolent looking Francis de Wolff as Smaug). Bilbo not only needed to be a good actor who could handle both comedy and drama (Freeman is gifted with a naturally funny face) but also needed to be able to pass for a young Ian Holm. The only other actor I can think of who might have managed it is Paul Giamatti.

I was a little more sceptical when I heard about Richard Armitage being cast as Thorin, the leader of the unruly pack of dwarves who accompany Bilbo on his quest (the handsome leading man was a fan favourite to be cast in the films, but most people were expecting him to be playing Bard the Bowman, rather than a character who, in his last cinematic incarnation, looked like this). Whilst the Lord of the Rings cast ended up being pretty much ideal, give or take an unnecessarily camp elf or two, having heard more since about who had previously been offered roles in the films (Nicolas Cage was offered Aragorn, which would have been about on a par with casting Ronnie Corbett as James Bond or Bruce Forsyth as the Godfather), I have come to the conclusion that this may have been due as much to luck as anything else.

I had always imagined Thorin as older and sturdier, and it seems that original director Guillermo Del Toro was thinking more along my lines, having been considering Ian McShane and even the legendary Brian Blessed for the role (Blessed seems to have been born to play Tolkienic roles, but the only one he has played to date is, aptly enough bearing in mind his bombastic style, Farmer Giles of Ham!) It is a shame we will probably never see Del Toro's vision of Middle Earth, but I suspect that if he had stayed on as director the critics would have been lamenting the fact that Jackson didn't come back. Truth to tell, my ideal Hobbit movie would have been made in the 1980s and directed by Terry Gilliam or Rob Reiner, but we can't always have what we want!

But of course both Guillermo and I probably underestimate the proportion of LOTR's audience that was made up of swooning teenage girls desperate for another shot of Orlando Bloom surfing down the trunk of an Oliphant, and they needed to have someone good looking to keep them occupied until Bloom's return (a new still of Legolas from the next film has been released, which suggests that elves, whilst blessed with the gift of eternal life, are truly crap when it comes to Movember). Fortunately Armitage, as well as being a bit of a moody, broody hunk, is also a very fine actor (if eerily similar to LOTR's Sean Bean in his acting style - which is appropriate, since he is fulfilling a similar function in the new trilogy, as the token suspicious, morally ambiguous chuffer with the northern accent which every Tolkien adaptation needs). Armitage perfectly captures the essence of Thorin's personality (he is essentially the fantasy equivalent of the teacher who is assigned to play the role of bad cop on school trips and remind the children that they are "not there to have fun"!)

The rest of the dwarves do not get quite as much time for character development, although they provide much of the film's humour (the tone is markedly lighter this time round and the humour works better than in LOTR, in that Jackson finds other ways to relieve the tension without having to rely on dwarf burping every single time) and the scene with the dwarves invading Bilbo's home is genuinely hilarious - amazingly, the dwarves song about destroying Bilbo's crockery from the book actually makes it into the movie. In fairness Jackson does do better than Tolkien in differentiating the dwarves.

There's Balin, the gnarled, cautious one, played deftly by Ken Stott, exactly how I always imagined the character. Stott, who is evidently enjoying taking a break from playing VERY VERY ANGRY COPS, at times seems to be channeling the spirit of Finlay Currie, who played a lot of parts like this in 1950s epics and would no doubt have taken on this role in the Ray Harryhausen version (don't know who would have played Thorin, when I started thinking about it I couldn't get past the idea of Robert Newton lamenting the loss of the Aaaarghkenstone).

There are the younger, cheeky ones (Fili and Kili, filling in for Merry and Pippin).

There's the twinkly Irish one (Bofur, played James Nesbitt - presumably part leprechaun).

And I particularly liked the fussy, camomile tea loving, lettuce chomping one (Dori, played by Mark Hadlow).

The rest get less of a chance to stand out, but as there are thirteen of them that is not surprising, and they were never all going to be iconic movie characters in the way that all of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring were.

I would have liked to see more of the "fat dwarf", Bombur (aka Obelix), who I don't think got a single line. And while I am on the subject, I have never been one to plead anti-ginger prejudice at the drop of a hat, but I would just like to point out the following:

• literary characters who are described as red haired in the book but aren't in the film version: Edward Cullen in Twilight, Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey film (if Eddie Redmayne is cast, as rumoured);
• literary characters who aren't described as red haired in the book but are in the film version: Bombur.

I am not sure we ginger folk are getting the better side of that deal!

There are also plenty of actors making a welcome return from LOTR. Ian McKellen is clearly relishing being back as Gandalf the Grey (scruffier, wilier and more fun than Gandalf the White). Andy Serkis' scenes as Gollum are very true to the book and are a particular highlight of the second half of the film. Seeing him again was like coming across an old friend (which probably says a lot about the company I keep). And it was nice to see returns from Hugo Weaving (Elrond - less of a stroppybottom than he was in LOTR), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel - still an insufferable know it all telepath) and Christopher Lee (Saruman - already a bit of a sarcastic so-and-so but not yet the thoroughly evil old bastard he turns into later).

Howard Shore returns to do the score, which is terrific (at least as good as LOTR's was). Fortunately Peter Jackson seems to have resisted the urge to include this little gem from Leonard Nimoy on the soundtrack (a perfect illustration of why Vulcans should avoid going into popular music). I would have bought the soundtrack even if I had hated the movie - the dwarves "Far over the Misty Mountains Cold" is a haunting highlight. 

To sum up then, this is a very good film indeed. And in there somewhere, there is a great film. Imagine if Wizard of Oz had been released with all of the scenes which were actually in the film included, but with another hour of additional material including flashbacks, sub-plots, an extra wizard and a secondary villain. This is how The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey feels. Everything that is in the books (the bits with the dwarves at Bag End, Gollum, the trolls) are done exactly the way that I would have wanted. The additional stuff dilutes it a bit, but doesn't go as far as taking away the magic altogether. Peter Jackson ignoring the basic rules of filmmaking still makes a far better film than most filmmakers who adhere to it rigorously. If you didn't enjoy LOTR, you will hate this. If you did enjoy LOTR, you will find a lot more to love than to hate. Being back in Middle Earth is great. Can't wait for that pesky dragon to show up in 2013.

Review of Skyfall, or "You Only Live Thrice"

Perverse though it may sound, part of me actually wanted to dislike this film. Bearing in mind what a massive Bond fan I am, add this to the shameful dearth of decent Bond films over the last fifteen years, and the fact that such an opinion would have put me in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with the Guardian, you may think that I have gone slightly mad by making such an admission. But the truth is that I have always held some controversial views when it comes to the world's greatest spy. For example:

• Roger Moore is a bit of a legend;
• Sheriff J W Pepper in Live and Let Die is hilarious;
• Goldeneye (although easily the best of the Brosnan era) isn't nearly as good as everyone thinks it is;
• Never Say Never Again was the best Bond movie of the 1980s (for example look at this amazing video game sequence...unfortunately I think their estimate of how much Spain was worth was eerily prescient). This was in spite of the best efforts of a young Rowan Atkinson, who had clearly not yet finished his training at clown school when he made the film, to ruin the whole thing with his 2 minute cameo. Watch Sean Connery's face during their scenes together. He is clearly giving serious thought to the prospect of repeatedly clubbing the rubber faced young goon round the back of the head with a golf club; and
• A View to a Kill was the second best Bond movie of the 1980s, even though the quiche baking, Werthers Originals chewing Roger Moore was so creaky by the time he made it that he would have been thrown out of the Expendables (or, if I am being brutally honest, the cast of Last of the Summer Wine) for being too decrepit.

My reason for hoping to dislike the film was that having long had the ambition of dusting off/resuscitating my dormant blog with a review (or rather a series of loosely connected tangential ramblings cunningly disguised as a review...which I promise will remain more or less spoiler free) of Skyfall, I thought that having a controversial take on the film might increase my readership more than if I simply went with the flow of extremely positive reviews. 

Besides, I did not want to be in the position of prematurely shooting my mouth off with fulsome praise and then changing my mind a few months down the line, as has so often happened to me in the past with Mr Bond. I vividly remember coming out of The World is Not Enough when I was fifteen and confidently declaring it the best Bond film ever made. But then again I think it is fair to say that back in those days I was not the sophisticated connisseur of cinema than I am today, as is evidenced by the fact that I went to see Will Smith's Wild Wild West (a film that I think is nowadays only shown in North Korean prisons as a form of torture) in the cinema...twice. 

Unfortunately my view of the film, which for once I am pretty confident that I won't row back from on a second viewing, is disappointingly conventional, although I think that some of the more hyperbolic comments from journalists might be overegging the cake somewhat, having recently encountered articles with titles such as "Is this the best Bond film ever?" (no, although it's probably in the top 5), "Has Daniel Craig eclipsed Sean Connery as 007?" (no, but he's now a solid and comfortable second...sorry Rog, Pierce, Tim and....well, I don't think any apology to George is really necessary, at least not until he apologises to me for the quality of his performance) "Is Javier Bardem the best Bond villain ever?" (actually...he might be). 

Skyfall is terrific, a high octane, witty, sophisticated blast from the pre-credits sequence to the very last scene (which the fans of "Classic Bond" will adore btw). The film opens in Istanbul, with a fantastic chase sequence complete with entertaining running commentary by Naomie Harris as Bond's fellow field agent Eve, who is communicating with M and co at MI6 HQ throughout the chase: "yes...007 is now chasing the assassin across the roofs of Istanbul with a motorbike...now he's ridden the motorbike off a bridge and onto the roof of a moving train (as one does)...yup, and now he's torn the train in half with a massive digger".

Then of course Bond is shot, marking the second time in the franchise's fifty year history that our hero is seemingly bumped off before the opening credits. This time, however, unlike in You Only Live Twice, he actually takes a bit of time to recover from what to most people would constitute quite a serious injury, amusing himself with bumming around in bars playing drinking games involving scorpions and watching Huw Edwards on the telly. You can tell he's supposed to be out of condition because he stops shaving, a state of affairs which persists for an unnerving amount of the film's hefty running time (come on man, you're James Bond, not Rab C Nesbitt).

Adele's "Skyfall" is a worthy addition to the canon of Bond's opening credit songs, even though it does seem to have been composed by Vitalstatistix the Gaul (special thanks are due to Shappi Khorsandi here, from whose cradle I snatched that joke before it was even twenty four hours old). After the drab excuses for music that we unfortunate viewers have been forced to endure in recent years (Madonna's Die Another Day is so ghastly that it could be used to curdle milk, while I can't even remember the theme to Quantum of Solace, as it was so instantly forgettable that I have managed to half persuade myself that it was in fact set to the theme tune for Dawn French's "Murder Most Horrid", with the words "Quantum of Solace" being substituted for "Murder Most Horrid", obviously), my expectations were not high, but it certainly holds its own with some of the classics of the Connery/Moore eras.

The plot is more focussed on MI6 and its personnel themselves than any of the films have been before, with Judi Dench, having come more and more into her own as M over the years with an increasingly meaty role in the proceedings as befits an actress of her status, taking centre stage as never before. This time the hitherto infallible spymistress is in deep trouble, having lost a hard drive with the names and secret identities of undercover agents around the world. Enquiries have been set up, and M is being urged to take early retirement by Mallory, who is played by a terrific Ralph Fiennes, mastering the admittedly somewhat predictable transition during the film from "stuffed shirt bureaucrat" to "a bit of a legend" (the one that pretty much all of Jack Bauer's bosses went through at some point during the series, usually over the course of a couple of hours) with characteristic aplomb - I especially enjoyed one particularly scathing putdown to Helen McCrory's smug, pen pushing minister, the smoothest and politest variation of "shut the f**k up" that I have heard for a long while. It has fallen into the hands of former agent turned full blown psycho Silva (Bardem, sporting a set of false teeth so disgusting that even my late grandfather would have been appalled), who has taken over a deserted island off the coast of Shanghai. 

Silva means business, MI6 is blown up, Q branch (now run by a mellifluous voiced Ben Whishaw, channelling the spirit of Moss from the IT Crowd) is forced to relocate, and Bond sobers up and gets himself back on the case. Having a Q who is significantly younger than Bond is a new direction for the series, but it works, especially in the context of one of the film's core themes, namely "is there a place for old fashioned field agents like Bond in the 21st century world of sophisticated IT"...you may be able to guess what conclusion the film comes to on this. The first encounter between Bond and Q is extremely entertaining, with both Craig and Whishaw enjoying some nice one liners involving exploding pens and the like (you can tell the poor little lamb hasn't been working there very long in that he actually asks Bond to bring back his equipment undamaged...obviously the late Desmond Llewelyn's handover notes left something to be desired).

One liners, and wit in general, is something Skyfall has in spades, which is most welcome. I am not suggesting that the franchise should return to the double taking pigeon shenanigans of the Moore era, but after the gloomy, Bournesque tone of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, a lighter touch was clearly required. Sam Mendes and the writers clearly have a better sense of what Bond is than the franchise's creative teams have had for a while. Don't get me wrong, I liked Casino Royale and thought it was exactly the breath of fresh air that the franchise needed at the time (it's just a shame that it was followed up by the turgid blast of public lavatory stench that was Quantum of Solace). I just thought that it might have been nice if Craig cracked a smile every once in a while. He's not Jack Bauer, after all, dammit! Craig may be the first Bond since Connery who looks like he could actually handle himself in a fight, and I think it's no bad thing that he has chosen to emphasise the thuggish bruiser side of Bond rather than the debonair louche aspect that Moore and Brosnan chose to emphasise, but he can DO humour, albeit perhaps not quite as well as Sean or Roger. It's just than up until now, the writers haven't really let him. 

But it's not just him. The film has unquestionably got the most talented cast ever gathered together for a Bond film (the possible exception being the original 1967 Casino Royale, which nevertheless ended up being one of the most garishly edited train wrecks ever committed to celluloid). Ironically though, it is not Craig, Bardem, Fiennes, Dench, Harris, Whishaw or Albert Finney who has the best line in the film, although all of them get at least a couple of zingers. No, for my money, the best line is saved up for a random old geezer watching Bond leap onto the back of a moving tube train during a particularly exhilarating chase sequence. "He's in a hurry to go home" he remarks to his wife.

And interestingly enough Bond does go home soon enough, taking his old Aston Martin (which got a massive cheer at the cinema) and heading north for the film's climax (think Home Alone cross-bred with Monarch of the Glen, directed by Michael Bay) set in the Bond family's ancestral Scottish home, which is, of course, called "Skyfall". In JB's absence the old pile has been looked after by an elderly, bearded, sarcastic scottish retainer, Kincade. Kincade is in fact played by the fabulous Albert Finney, but I rather shushpect that the role was offered to shomeone elshe firsht. We can only dream of how amazing that would have been, but if you can't get Connery, who better to hire instead than the man who once interrogated him in Murder on the Orient Express (I suspect that the antipathy between Finney's Poirot and Connery's Colonel Arbuthnot in that film had less to do with the murdered man in the next cabin and more to do with straightforward moustache envy!)

I will give no more away about how the film ends, but although it stays true to the series formula, unusually for Bond, there is more than one surprise in store. The whole thing from beginning to end feels like a Bond film made by Bond fans, for Bond fans. I don't mean that it is inaccessible to newcomers to the franchise, but it shows an understanding of the character's history which delighted me. I think that the Broccolis could do worse than lock Sam Mendes in for another few films, and Craig certainly has enough vim and verve in him for at least another two or three films (he may be craggy faced but he still has a few years in him before he turns into Sid James). His banter with Naomie Harris' Eve is particularly sparkling (the other Bond girl, Berenice Marlohe, was also perfectly fine but somewhat underused...to be honest at some points in the film I felt that the "real" Bond girl was Dame Judi). 

Particular praise has to be reserved for Javier Bardem's villain though. The last few Bond villains have been lacklustre, to say the least. C'mon, Oddjob used to kill people with a steel rimmed bowler hat, Jaws used to bite people to death with his steel teeth and Le Chiffre...cries blood. Not quite in the same league, is it? Nor was Jonathan Pryce's slightly less evil version of Rupert Murdoch in Tomorrow Never Dies or that Korean bloke who plastic surgerifies himself into Toby Stephens in the risible Die Another Day. But Bardem as Silva is a revelation, playing a hypnotically charismatic, wickedly funny and extremely complex chessmaster who is constantly at least two steps ahead of Bond for most of the film in the same way that Blofeld and Goldfinger used to be. As viewers, we are simultaneously charmed by him and terrified of him. And he is also outrageously camp, taking the unconventional step of flirting with Bond rather than torturing him. Even more remarkably, Bond responds in kind. "What makes you think this is my first time?" he quips. One can only conclude that the two henchmen in Diamonds are Forever got closer to Bond than we thought. "If at first you don't succeed, Mr Kidd..." "Try, try, try again, Mr Wint!"

The film is not perfect. It is a little overlong for one thing, and for another, where did all that swearing suddenly come from? I am no prude, in fact my main criticism of the fourth Die Hard was that it didn't have enough swearing in it (as an aside, how can they keep making films in that franchise without taking the opportunity to call one of them "Old Habits Die Hard"...perhaps that one could be set in a nunnery with the tagline "Yippee Kiy Yay Mother Superior" and Bruce exchanging quips with rogue nun Miriam Margolyes...I'd watch it). 

But this isn't Die Hard, it's Bond. I don't mind a bit of mild cursing here and there (Timothy Dalton used to snarl "bloody bastards" at random moments every once in a while, it was obviously something he needed to get out of his system and that was fine). I appreciate that it was about time that someone pointed out that Bond is in fact a "jumped up little shit" (because he is), and that Judi Dench dropping the F-bomb is always entertaining. As swearers go Dame Judi is up there with the best of them, and when she really gets going it is almost as good as Angela Lansbury's Tarantino-esque four letter rant in the uncut version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. If you think Joe Pesci's "You think I'm funny" speech in Goodfellas was well delivered, just imagine Dench doing it. But I grew up watching the Sean/Roger films on ITV on a Sunday afternoon (there's nothing better than a good piece of family entertainment with a nice high bodycount). I just can't see the broadcasters allowing any of the Craig era Bond films to show pre-watershed, which is a shame. Of course this is nothing a bit of clever editing can't sort out (see here how they handled the swearing in The Big Lebowski for TV audiences), and if this is the worst I can find to say about the film I think it is an unequivocal sign of a job well done. I liked it. And I'm glad I liked it!

Right, that is all I have to say on that, but I quite enjoyed writing it, so the blog is officially back up and running. Reviews of The Hobbit and Les Mis will follow in due course, and there will be more posts in between if I can think of anything suitably interesting to ramble on about.

Review of Hamlet/The Iron Lady

What a cultural weekend we have had. Yesterday evening we went to see Michael Sheen star as Hamlet at the Young Vic, then today we went to see Meryl Streep's tour de force as Mrs Thatcher in The Iron Lady at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton. I had always had it in mind to review the two productions together because of the obvious, stark contrast between central characters in each. Hamlet is the ultimate embodiment of indecisiveness, an unlikely hero in so many respects (you can certainly see why he was not made king of Denmark after his father's death but was passed over in favour of his ruthless but effective uncle Claudius).  Hamlet is not a natural leader. As Mitt Romney, the probable Republican nominee for president in this year's elections, has fumed, "We don't want Hamlet in the White House", his target being, of course, President Obama (if he was a true Shakespeare aficionado he might have realised that comparing Vice President Biden to Polonius might have been more apposite). Romney presumably sees himself as more of a courageous, Frenchie-bashing Henry V type, although I have a feeling that he may turn out to be Malvolio instead.

Margaret Thatcher, meanwhile, has faced many criticisms over the years from other parties, hostile foreign leaders and disgruntled members of her own party - but I don't think any of her enemies or opponents would ever have tried that one! As Mrs Thatcher famously said herself, "The lady's not for turning!", an approach aped by Tony Blair a quarter of a century later when he, equally famously, stated that "I've got no reverse gear", (thereby seeking to reassure voters that he was a safe person to have in charge of the nation's well being by...er...comparing oneself to an unroadworthy car). But no political figure in my lifetime, not even Blair, has really been able to compete with Mrs T when it comes to forthrightness and firmness of purpose. One suspects that if our Maggie had found out that Claudius had bumped off her father he would have found himself bludgeoned to death with a blunt handbag by the middle of Act Two.

But actually shoving the two reviews in together is even more fitting than I might have expected, because I essentially ended coming away from both productions with much the same feelings - great acting (and I mean really great), but I wasn't too keen on the area that each of them decided to focus on.

Hamlet, first of all, was set in a mental hospital. I can see why they did it, the idea is superficially quite attractive - madness is one of the central concepts of the play - Hamlet feigns madness (or does he?), Ophelia genuinely goes bonkers, and with Shakespeare being performed so often (and this play more than most) I can understand (although I do not completely agree with it) the desire for directors to try to go for a new take on the play. But ultimately it didn't quite work for me.

However, the director just about got away with it because he resisted the urge to ram it down the audience's throat too much. Julie tells me that she decided to just completely ignore the whole hospital idea and enjoy the play for its own sake - I was not quite able to do that, but the fact that she was able to do so was telling - at the start there was one worrying moment where we both thought that they were going to do the whole play as a "therapy session". Which would have been rubbish (not to mention undynamic). They got a bit more carried away in the second half, with reappearances from Polonius and Ophelia that the Bard (or the Earl of Oxford, if you believe that eminent Elizabethan historian Roland Emmerich) somehow forgot to mention. The scene with Osric, for example, was done with Ophelia's ghost assuming Osric's role - for those amongst my reader(s) who enjoyed Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film of Hamlet - this is essentially the equivalent of Kate Winslet and Robin Williams morphing into one person (which presumably would end up as some sort of bizarre younger south-of-the-border version of Mrs Doubtfire!)

But ultimately it was considerably less annoying than, for example, Rupert Goold's production of Merchant of Venice that we saw in Stratford-upon-Avon last year (set in Vegas, obviously, because Vegas is famous for its problems with anti-semitism!) That production caused Julie and I, for the first time in our lives, to walk out of a stage production at half time, so incensed were we by the ludicrously offensive American stereotypes, the lazy "ooh, what gimmick can we throw at this scene" thinking, and appalling waste of Sir Patrick Stewart's considerable talents. This production avoided such embarrassing lows, but did nevertheless slightly hold back what could have been a superb evening's entertainment bearing in mind the calibre of the cast and director (yes his concept was a bit dodgy but he coaxed wonderful performances from literally everyone in the cast). And the writer was no slouch either.

Michael Sheen is someone I always enjoy watching on film and TV, but those performances are as nothing compared to what he can do on stage. It really is his medium, and he is hypnotically compelling (in terms of sheer stage presence he is in the top three actors I have ever seen in action, along with Peter O'Toole and, interestingly, Martin Shaw). Ideal for the Dane, at the age of 42 he was running out of time to take on the role on stage (he previously did it on radio), so I remain pleased that he decided to join this production whatever its other shortcomings. Veering between being ferociously active and cautiously contemplative (sometimes changing from one to the other every few seconds) he really threw himself into the role with magnificent energy, exploring multiple facets of this endlessly complex role and owning it. He was even better than David Tennant who I saw take on the role a couple of years ago (although to be fairness the good Doctor had a bad back at the time). Sheen also played the Ghost, and, quite frankly, scared the willies out of me.

Powerful and eyecatching though Sheen was, the other actors in the production also got an opportunity to shine, from Sally Dexter's twitchy, vulnerable, pill popping Gertrude to Michael Gould's hilariously befuddled Polonius (one gag, where he presents Laertes with the same jumper worn by Sarah Lund in the Danish series "The Killing" - what with this being Denmark an' all - completely passed me by until Julie pointed it out to me in spite of the fact that we are currently working our way through the series! As Sherlock Holmes famously said "You see, Watson, but you do not observe"!) James Clyde was also a fine Claudius despite one of his finer monologues being stripped out. He is a bastard, but he is not completely without a heart, and his death scene (he goes willingly to be stabbed by Hamlet after realising that he has killed the woman he loves) was subtly effective in a way that Branagh's version, for example, wasn't (DEATH BY CHANDELIER!)

I also liked the sandpit in the second half!

On to The Iron Lady, then, I guess that my main problem with this film was that it just wasn't the film I expected to see, nor was it really the film I wanted to see. For what it's worth, whilst I voted for her party (and I use the phrase "her party" deliberately, as her influence is still very much felt) at the last two elections, I suspect that Lady Thatcher would regard me as one of the "wets". I am not a Thatcherite, but I don't regard her as the root of all evil either (whilst others go for Che Guevara tattoos, if I were forced to get a tattoo of a political figure on my arm I would probably end up going for someone like Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Note to my friends - never let me get that drunk!)

But in going in to see this film, one's political opinions are largely irrelevant. Love her or loathe her (and believe it or not, there are actually a fair number of people who are equivocal about her nowadays, willing to both praise her successes and criticise her failures, something that would have been thought implausible about this highly polarising PM when she was in power), most people would agree about this at least - Margaret Thatcher is a remarkable woman, and there are many extraordinary things about her. My problem with the film is that having dementia is not one of them.

Sadly dementia is an affliction that affects millions of people, in the UK and worldwide, and I have no objections to films being made about it (indeed many great films have been made about it, most of them seemingly starring Jim Broadbent as the sufferer's husband). Nor, provided that the filmmakers did their research properly, do I have a problem with Thatcher being presented in this way, even whilst she is still alive (from what little I know, I suspect that unfortunately if anything her condition may actually be slightly worse now than it is portrayed in the film). Dementia is something that should be addressed, talked about, not swept under the carpet. And I think that this was a convincing, if slightly laboured, portrayal of dementia (although I don't think that it worked particularly well in terms of a cinematic arc - she is seeing Denis, then he is gone, then she spends ages clearing out his closet, then he is back, then he is gone again - I thought it lacked focus).

As ever, Julie put it more brilliantly than I could - with Hamlet she kept thinking "this will be good, I can't wait to see them do it in proper costumes", whilst with The Iron Lady she said it was like watching extracts of a really good film through a window and then missing bits, so never getting a coherent whole.

Anyway, whilst I knew that this sad end to The Lady's career would feature in the film before going to see it, I had not thought that it would be the dominant feature of the film. And it is. Almost half of the film, in fact, with the rest being a breathless paced canter through her career in a series flashbacks, which never pause to cover the various stages of her rise and fall in sufficient detail to satisfy.

I discussed this with my mum on the phone an hour or so ago and she made the extremely cogent point that showing someone "Great" or "Powerful" suffering from this most ordinary of diseases and thereby humanising them is in fact a very valuable exercise. Maybe in wanting a bit more of the "meat" of politics, I am missing the point. I am a bit of a political junkie, perhaps this film is not aimed at me. If it was, it probably would not have done as well as it appears to be doing (the cinema was packed!) Insofar as it does handle the politics, it plays it pretty safe and I would rank it as broadly neutral - she is portrayed as clearly being a remarkable leader but it does also cover her increasingly erratic behaviour in the run up to her fall from power, and also the havoc that resulted from the poll tax. This was probably a wise approach: either a hatchet job or an adulatory paean of praise would have alienated large swathes of the film's potential audience.

Had I been unwisely entrusted with the funds to make this film, I would have focused more on her rise to power - that was the really remarkable story, of how she made it as the first woman to the "top of the pile" not only in the UK but in the whole of the Western world (I haven't checked this btw...do correct me if there were others first!) The story of "The First Woman Prime Minister" would have been something both the Thatcherites and the Thatcher haters could have got behind. And insofar as they cover this aspect, they cover it reasonably well (with some stylish cinematography showing her arrival at the House of Commons, voting in amongst a huge crowd of indistinguishable middle aged grey men in suits). But I was left wanting more. And judging by the comments I overheard on coming out of the cinema, thankfully none of which were "This franchise has really gone downhill now that Robert Downey Jr's not in it!", I was not alone.

Having said that, Meryl Streep was absolutely brilliant (narrowly beating out the marvellous Patricia Hodge in the excellent "Falklands Play" from a few years ago as the best Maggie ever) and certainly Oscar worthy (it would be her third, but her first since 1982 - as one of the best actors/actresses/performers/whatever working in the world if not THE best, I would suggest that it is about time she picked up another one). The rest of the cast was also pretty good, although none of them were quite as close a match for their real life counterpart as she was (I kept forgetting I was not watching the real Maggie tbh). Olivia Colman was superb casting for her daughter Carol (mark my words, she won't just be Sophie from Peep Show for long), and I was particularly pleased to spot our Assistant Vicar from St Paul's Covent Garden (also a very fine bit part actor) as the Speaker of the House of Commons (an avuncular but very left wing fellow, he was probably roped into it because he thought it was the Oliver Stone version that was once mooted!) I am afraid that I let myself down and yelped with excitement when I saw him in the cinema, much to my embarrassment. But then again, it is quite something to know a genuine bona fide film star (and by the standards of my own brief film career, Rev Richard Syms is practically Marlon Brando).

Anyway, enough of this - I am now going to watch the next episode of Sherlock - The Hounds of Baskerville! Let us hope that this will be my first viewing experience of the weekend that is 100% satisfactory.