The Book Tower

At this time of year it’s refreshing to find good quality writing high on the bestseller lists. Stephen King’s Just After Sunset is his return to the short story form, and these thirteen stories go far beyond the boundaries of simple horror fiction; the jacket blurb promises twist-in-the-tale stories of suspense, terror and dark comedy and whilst there is a fair degree of this, King is a writer who has easily outgrown any easy classification.

The stories in Just After Sunset are all very different but share a common ground in considering themes important to King. Willa, the opening tale, finds ghostly travellers stranded at a railway station. It’s an archetypal tale of a group of lost and disjointed people who eventually turn out to be ghosts. There’s nothing startlingly original about this story – it’s just a good Twilight Zone – but it’s very well written and stands to ease the reader into the mood of the collection. And that’s the best thing about this book – like listening to a favourite album, you’ll fall into a comfortable and refreshing groove.

King goes on to offer his own post-twin towers meditation in The Things They Left Behind, one of the best things I’ve read about the after affects of 9/11. Here, a man who survived the disaster because he called in sick to work that day, finds objects belonging to his dead colleagues mysteriously turning up in his apartment.
Other tales tackle the significance of dreams; Harvey’s Dream is a well executed story, as is Rest Stop, which looks at crime and justice, where a writer stops at a motorway convenience to overhear an act of aggression and has to make an important decision. Mute, a confessional story, looks at the same subject from a different perpective. King also includes a story that dates back thirty years. The Cat From Hell is worthy of inclusion, but illustrates just how much he’s matured over the years as a writer.

But the longer and more complex stories are the best. The devil is really in the detail here. The Gingerbread Girl begins slowly, where a woman takes up running as a pastime whilst also deciding to leave her husband and move away. It’s beautifully composed but also decidedly non-horror, which makes it all the more compelling when the lady is question ends up chased along a beach by a scissor wielding maniac. Although this is more than just a slasher movie put to paper; King documents the whole uncomfortable episode with detail and precision. A Very Tight Space, about what happens to a man when he is locked inside a stinking and stiflingly hot portaloo by an insane and vengeful neighbour, revels equally in the details of the plight of a man literally … knee deep.

Best of all is N. It’s a superb short story, which contains all the right macabre elements to make it brilliantly scary. It’s also extremely clever, reminding just what a craftsman Stephen King is. It concerns a psychiatrist and his patient, a man fully immersed in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His OCD stems from a discovery of a weird stone circle, and the belief that something awful will be unleashed if he doesn’t continue with his pattern of counting and rearranging. The compulsions, the precise mathematics and the latent horror, becomes addictive to all who chance across his sorry tale. In his end notes, King reveals that this story was inpired by Arthur Machen. There’s also echoes of M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. He’s carrying on the tradition: it’s easily the best thing I’ve read this year.

Just After Sunset proves it’s possible to be both successful and extremely good. King also makes it look all too easy. The struggling writer in us all can only bow in deference. God, I’d hate the man if I didn’t respect him so much.

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Everybody loves The Wicker Man. The 1973 film, that is, and not the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage. From what I can gather, everyone hates that Wicker Man. But what exactly was wrong with it? Was it just another case of a bad remake of a classic film (just like with Psycho and Get Carter)? Is it really that bad? Against my better judgement, I recently spent an evening with the Cage Wicker Man.

According to its director Robin Hardy, the 1973 original was treated badly by its distributors. The film was edited fairly brutally and eventually released as a B-movie to support Don’t Look Now. Rumour has it that some of the deleted scenes were buried under the M4. The film drifted in obscurity for a while and then began to gain something of a cult following, receiving frequent tv showings, and eventually a director’s cut DVD release. Hardy can’t really say the film is ignored any more. It’s rightly cited as a classic and is possibly the only British film made in the 70s that continues to receive five star reviews in film guides and listing magazines. Its own star, Edward Woodward, is now always asked about the film in interviews and recently made a short documentary with the film critic Mark Kermode where they revisited the original locations. Christopher Lee, who also appeared in the film, says it is his best role and can’t stop talking about it.

“Oh God! Oh no!”

The Wicker Man sits awkwardly alongside the horror films being made in Britain at the time, and this is probably why it has endured so well. For the first half, it’s possible to be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t horror at all. Woodward plays a devoutly religious policeman who’s lured to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. He finds a cut off yet seemingly self sufficient pagan society, laughing at his Lord and indulging in sexual ritual (some of it looks fun, especially when Britt Ekland gets her kit off, but Woodward’s having none of it). The Wicker Man stands up to repeated late night viewings, both for its careful build up to a dreadful ending and for its most unusual and wonderful soundtrack. It’s the role of a lifetime for Woodward and probably Lee as well.

Surprisingly for a Hollywood movie, the new Wicker Man doesn’t change an awful lot, although what it does change leads to its ultimate downfall. Cage plays a cop (Edward) who’s called to a remote island … yes it’s the same. But the alteration is that the missing girl (Rowan Woodward – geddit?) is revealed as his daughter, thus altering the original premise that the policeman – a king-like, willing fool – was pure for sacrifice (a virgin). Director Neil LaBute also decides to make his island a feminist nightmare – run by women where the men are mute and dominated. This is one of the reasons why the film was slated, especially as Cage enjoys throwing a few punches, and it’s difficult to defend this plot change, although it was effective to have a woman (Ellen Burstyn) in the Lee role.

But I found the reception to this Wicker Man far too unkind. There is an underlying creepiness to the film, and the end is almost as effective as the original (I was on the edge of my seat because I really thought they were going to fudge it and have Cage rescued). And really strangely, there are a few fleeting references to Don’t Look Now with Cage pursuing a small child in red. Perhaps they forgot at times which film in the original double bill they were remaking. Now this film has earned its place in late night tv slots, I suppose LaBute will take Hardy’s place in moaning about its treatment. Although I can’t see this one being hailed as a classic in 35 years. But everyone who loves The Wicker Man, the 1973 one, should give it a chance.

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Two years ago, my very first film review here was for Casino Royale, and I mused that Daniel Craig could possibly equal, if not supplant, Sean Connery as the best incarnation of James Bond. After seeing Quantum of Solace I’m still of my 2006 opinion. Craig is still very much the number two Bond almost ready to push aside Connery’s one, which is an unusual stance to take considering that the 22nd Bond film is generally very disappointing.

What I found a huge mistake was that Quantum of Solace follows directly on from its predecessor Casino Royale, the two movies effectively making one whole. So if you’ve not seen the previous film in the last 24 hours you’re stuck, and I don’t think I’m a rare example of having an only hazy memory of the last film. If I wasn’t so shy, I would have stood up, called the rest of my fellow audience aside and said “right – that’s Bond up there and Judi Dench is M. Other than that I have no idea of who these other characters are who they keep referring to. Do you?”

If Craig and Dench are my only terms of reference, I found the Judi Dench presence in this movie somewhat stifling. As M should really only be an incidental character, she’s given too much prominence in the role. M should never really threaten to overshadow Bond, and where Dame Judi should only be giving a cameo she has almost as much screen time as Craig. Dench is everywhere, turning up in hotel rooms, lobbys and lifts, even London East End tower blocks so she can berate our hero in her school mam way. I half expected Craig to open the fridge door at breakfast time to find Dench sitting beside the milk cartons, looking down her nose and muttering try not to make the tea too strong this time, Bond.

So picking up from where Casino Royale left off, Quantum of Solace finds Bond still in a state of unrest following the death of love interest Vesper Lynd. The man who he corners at the end of Royale is dragged in for questioning at the beginning of Solace, and the film begins with an impressive car chase (that would have been more impressive if I hadn’t already seen it on a recent South Bank Show). Just when we think we’re sitting down to some comfortable Bond chat there’s another chase sequence, which echoes the opening of Royale for speed and physicality. Here Bond chases a double agent across Italian roofs and ascending (and rapidly descending) a bell tower. It’s very well done, although looking back I think that director Marc Forster played all of his best cards far too early as what follows falls far from expectation.

Daniel Craig continues to excel in the role, which makes it all the more tragic that this film is so messy. He’s totally convincing as a man who, if you pick a fight with him then you’re going to lose. If he asks you a question then it’s best to respond clearly and loudly. If he’s sent to kill you then you’re going to die. Craig portrays the ruthless and competent assassin perfectly, best shown where he swiftly disposes of a man in a Haiti hotel room. This is a scene that stretches right back to Connery’s fight with Robert Shaw on the train in From Russia With Love and proving that we still don’t need gadgetry and special effects, just a well coreographed punch up. The only thing that spoilt it for me was the cynical product placement. No, I still don’t want an Omega watch.

The makers of this film have claimed that they wanted to dispense with the cartoonish Bond villains of old. Gone are the white cats, metal hands and teeth, and in their place, at least as the film sketches out at the beginning, is the allusion to the modern threat of terrorism, that anyone, however apparently benign, could be a menace – as M grows increasingly concerned that the enemy is buried within her ranks, ready to turn on her when given the signal. There is a watered down villain, and in this villainous role Mathieu Amalric makes the most of what he is given, but it’s obvious that he wants to be a classic Bond baddie, snarl, utter memorable lines and stroke an albino moggie. Small and weedy, he comes across as a greasier and nastier Roman Polanski, which is odd as buried in the mad plot of this film is a distant echo from Chinatown‘s theme of heat and drought. But, like the other themes in this movie, it isn’t explored thoroughly.

It’s the plot that ultimately ruins Quantum of Solace, both for the big headed belief that an audience will come with Casino Royale fresh in their minds and for the fact that, for a film that wants to be ground breaking, the storyline is hackneyed and unoriginal. And the stupid title. Seems to be that they only pick titles with a pair of words with o s – Casin o, R o yale, o f and bloody s o lace. Then they can string the two o s together in the title sequence to make 007. So you could equally call it Quantum of Booze or Expresso Bongo. Or Bored by Bond. At least the theme tune, written by Jack White, is very good – even though it uses a few token John Barry references. I still have high hopes for Bond, but Craig’s next outing requires a fresh story and a lot less Dench.

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