Reading/Watching Log #10

Another month gone by, and I managed to get some reading/viewing done for material that has been on my waiting list for a long time. This includes Big Fat Historical Epics and Equally Big Fat Fantasy Sagas, as well as a new kiwi cult classic, the latest from Disney animation, ITV's bid to fill the void left by Downton Abbey, and an all-singing, occasionally-dancing television spectacular. 

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

I'm pretty sure you could kill someone with this book if you wanted to; a well-aimed blow to the head and they'd be done for. Yet despite its brick-like appearance, The Pillars of the Earth is eminently readable and I ended up racing through it in a matter of weeks.

Like all the most popular historical sagas (Gone with the Wind, War and Peace), it casts the domestic tribulations of a family against a backdrop of political/social upheaval – in this case, The Anarchy, concluding with the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Beckett at the very end of a hefty 1076 page novel. For the most part, the story is structured around the building of a cathedral at Kingsbridge, a complete invention by Follett, though he's meticulous when it comes to accurately portraying 12th century life.

Follett is what I would call a workmanlike writer, and though that sounds like damning with faint praise, it's meant to be a genuine compliment. Though the scope of the novel is sprawling (stretching from 1135 to 1174), the plot and characters are kept firmly under control, with a clear arc for each character and plot momentum sustained throughout. There was never a point in which I felt the pace was slagging.

Aliena in particular makes for a good heroine; a sharp and capable woman who has to work within the limiting confines of medieval society. I also really enjoyed Prior Phillip, the monk who oversees the construction of the cathedral and who is surprisingly cunning for a man of the cloth.

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

I have an odd relationship with Game of Thrones, and if I cared enough to engage in the fandom I'd probably be instantly labelled a fake geek girl, seeing as I have no interest in all the theories and family trees and world-building. So far I've read the first two books, and watched the sixth season in its entirety. Before that, I only viewed YouTube clips of the show's most important moments, in "greatest hits" sort of way.

But I'm fascinated by other people's opinions on the book/show, so every time there's a new episode I head to the message boards to read through the discussions: the meta, the controversies, the changes made from page to screen, the ongoing frustration with Martin's snail-like writing pace. I'm interested in it more as a phenomenon than a story, if that makes sense – and never more so than when the show overtook the novels.

So having read this, a lot of what I already knew became clear: the mishandling of Catelyn Stark for example, but also some of the shortcuts taken by the showrunners. Not all of them are bad – that they combined Edric and Gendry into a singular character, which in turn necessitated a meeting between Melisandre and Arya, worked in their favour.  

But for the most part, the greatest pleasure is just immersing yourself in a fantasy epic that's brimming with detail and history. This early on, Martin was clearly unfatigued, and you can almost see how much he's enjoying himself with the plot and characters.

Mastering the Game of Thrones edited by Jes Battis and Susan Johnston

So with all that in mind, I'm naturally going to enjoy critical essays on the franchise. This contains fourteen pieces of varying quality (or rather, of personal interest to me) which in broad terms focuses on topics such as history, philosophy, sex and storytelling. Interestingly enough, it was published before the release of the adaptation's sixth season, which – as you know – overtook the published material.

With that in mind, the most enjoyable essay is Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow's "Religion and Free Will from the Seven to the Faceless Men", which explores all the religions of Westeros/Essos and comes up with some predictions that veer surprisingly close to what the sixth season revealed about the White Walkers' origins. It means his ideas about R'hllor and the Great Other as representatives of civilisation and nature are worth paying attention to...

However, one thing that struck me while reading this is that apart from the annotations and the "respectability" of being contained within a published book, there's little to differentiate between the meta written by professionals and those written by fans on the internet.

Illuminating Torchwood edited by Andrew Ireland

Honestly, I didn't like Torchwood much. Most of the stories were rewritten Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes and the characters were unappealing – I only really liked Tosh, finding Jack smarmy, Gwen annoying, Ianto boring and Owen just plain odious. But hey, I'm always up for some decent pop-culture critique (yes, I got this out of the library at the same time I did the above Game of Thrones collection) and I was surprised by how much I actually remembered of this show, even though I watched it about ten years ago now.

There are eighteen essays in total, and unsurprisingly they focus a lot on sexuality – though thankfully there's at least some genuine criticism of the show's appalling issues with consent. That said, the huge amount of emphasis on exploring the episode They Keep Killing Suzie across nearly all the chapters pretty much confirms (as I thought at the time) that it was the only decent, original episode of the bunch. 

Except for Children of Earth, which I really enjoyed dammit!

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

The BBC adaptation is my absolute favourite Poirot episode – on one of my sick days I ended up watching it about five times in a row, though it was just as much the atmosphere as the story that enraptured me. I was well overdue to read the book that inspired it, which can basically be described as "Poirot does Rashomon."

A young woman approaches him to investigate the murder of her father and subsequent imprisonment of her mother that occurred over sixteen years ago. The trail is long since cold, but Poirot goes to visit five key witnesses that were at the country house at the time of Amyas Crale's death, asking each for a written account of their experiences leading up to the murder.

The novel's central conceit is that the witnesses (each pertaining to one of the five piggies – Christie loved building mysteries around nursery rhymes) has a vastly different opinion of the victim and the convicted murderess, and yet it's through those very incongruities that Poirot can deduce what really happened.

If anything, the novel gave me added appreciation for the adaptation, for although it meddles with the motivation of one supporting character in a way that makes little sense, it does a fantastic job of taking each separate eyewitness account and streamlining them into a single flashback sequence – eliminating the repetitive quality of the original text.

See, now I really want to watch it again.

Spy (2015)

Before Ghostbusters, this was Paul Feig's most popular film, so I was looking forward to seeing it, especially after watching The Heat. It's also the film that elevated Melissa McCarthy to Hollywood star status, and it's easy to see why: her Susan Cooper is a perfect blend of comedic timing and earnest sweetness – with the ability to spontaneously shift into a foul-mouthed persona to protect her true identity when the need arises.

The whole thing is a send-up of the spy genre, with Feig's trademark ribbing of hyper-masculinity (Jason Statham plays a character so pumped up on alpha-male intensity that it renders him utterly ineffective at his job) though it doesn't really contribute anything to the genre that hasn't already been covered in similar parodies like Johnny English and Austin Powers.

It's by concentrating on the woman-centric angle that the film succeeds, with an emphasis on Susan's competency that's never in dispute (at least not by the audience) and a reaffirmation that her most important relationship isn't with the man she's unrequitedly in love with, but Miranda Hart's Nancy Artingstall. But the standout performance is from Rose Byrne as villainess Rayna Boyanov, playing the character as the Meanest of Mean Girls: a choice that's all the more hilarious given that her shallow high-school Alpha Bitch personality belongs to a woman planning to sell a nuclear weapon to the highest bidder. She's Regina George as an international crime lord.

All that said: it didn't make me laugh as much as The Heat did (which had me in tears at some points), so take from that what you will.  

Zootopia (2016)

I didn't have much interest in the initial announcement of Zootopia, or any of the trailers that outlined its premise. There's just something about anthropomorphism that doesn't appeal to me, and since I wasn't paying any attention to the publicity, I was mostly just left with the impression that the furries were really excited about it.

But then the good reviews started pouring in, and I made the effort to watch – and what do you know, it's completely charming. This is perhaps a miracle considering some of the BTS stories I've heard: such as the fact it was deep in development before the writers/creators realized that Judy (and not Nick) was the film's logical protagonist, requiring an extensive shift in perspective. I would not have liked have been in the production room when they came to that conclusion.

It ends up being surprisingly loaded for a kid's movie, revolving entirely around issues of tolerance and bigotry, which could possibly fall under the term Fantastic Racism (much like the Mudblood slur in the Harry Potter books) what with the division between predators (carnivores) and prey (herbivores) who ostensibly live together in peaceful coexistence in the sprawling city of Zootopia.

Often it veers surprisingly close to real-world racial politics, but in such a way that it's impossible to draw clear analogies. Given that the predators are initially treated with suspicion and often refused the benefit of the doubt in any given situation, one might think they represent racial minorities – yet there's a scene in which Nick (a predator) is scolded for touching a sheep's fleece without her permission, which seems a direct equivalence to the ongoing frustration of black people in having complete strangers touch their hair. They even touch on gender stereotypes, as when Nick tells Judy: "you bunnies are so emotional."

Comparisons to Frozen are inevitable, but despite the Tumblr prediction that fandom would inevitably turn on Zootopia the same way it did its fairytale predecessor – it hasn't. For my money, it's simply because Zootopia has a stronger storyline, one that works with its characters and world-building. There's really nothing to seriously critique here.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

After so many recommendations from viewers living outside New Zealand, I finally set an evening free for Taika Waititi's latest comedy/drama/adventure, which was everything I hoped and expected it would be.

Ricky Baker is a thirteen year old delinquent who has come to the end of his chances. His final stop before getting tossed into juvie is the remote home of Hector and Bella Faulker, who are only half-happy to see him (that is, Bella is delighted and Hector just wants to be left alone). There's nowhere to run when you're surrounded by New Zealand bush, but Ricky eventually warms to the place.

Cue the BUT. After a string of bad luck and bad decisions, Hector and Ricky find themselves at the centre of a nation-wide manhunt, forcing the two of them to take to the wilderness to evade authorities.  Pursued with particular zeal by his Child Services monitor, Ricky is determined not to get apprehended, and (as you might expect) his relationship with Hector goes from mutual dislike to one of trust and affection.

Sam Neill is clearly the biggest name present here, but Julian Dennison nails every aspect of Ricky (the vulnerability, the surliness, the naivety, the anxiety) and Rachel House (one of my long-time favourites) is both funny and a little frightening as the obsessive child-aid worker.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople seems to have made quite a splash overseas, and if I could pinpoint a reason why, I'd say it’s because the film's sense of innocence is inextricably bound up with the portrayal of kiwi culture. Whether they're the hunters or the hunted, every character here has a sense of purity about them that feels like a natural extension to their innate kiwi-ness. (And make no mistake, this is a New Zealand film, with plenty of jokes only kiwis will get – like the inclusion of the Flake advert or John Campbell describing the hunt as "marvellous!")

The film unfolds in chapters, rather like a storybook, and Waititi is on record for saying he simply wanted to make a fun movie with a happy ending. God knows we needed it this year, and he delivered.

The Pillars of the Earth (2010)

I actually had this downloaded onto my computer long before reading (or even tracking down) a copy of the novel, but I'm glad I waited to read the text first. The expected abridgements take place, and the mystery surrounding the death of Tom's father turned into a fully-fledged conspiracy subplot against Queen Maud, but for the most part it's about as faithful an adaptation as you could expect.

There are some inspired casting choices: Matthew Macfadyen as Prior Phillip; a genuinely pious and chaste monk who comes up with bright ideas but has difficulty articulating them, and Natalia Wörner as Ellen; who perfectly embodies the alluring, fascinating forest woman. Poor David Oakes though – once again he's stuck playing the exact same character he did (or will) in The Borgias and The White Queen: the sadistic, entitled, violent son of privilege.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing is that it features Hayley Atwell, Eddie Redmayne and Sam Claflin just a year or so before they made bigger names for themselves in Hollywood – rubbing shoulders here with the likes of Matthew Macfadyen, Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland, who must have been far more recognizable names at the time.

Galavant (2015 – 2016)

The world really needed this show, not because it was particularly clever or creative or wonderful, but because it simply existed to be cute and funny. I suppose it's enough of a miracle that it even lasted two seasons, but in its brief time it had no greater ambitions than to make people laugh (even with fart jokes if need be).

The setting is Generic Medieval Fantasy Land, but it compensates with lots of diversity (actual line: "we're a young, attractive, ethnically diverse group") and plenty of decent female characters. Each season deals with a particular quest narrative: the first with Galavant's attempt to rescue his lady-love from the tyrannical King Richard (unaware that the whole thing is a trap) and the second seeing Galavant and Richard trudging their way across the countryside in a bid to save Galavant's true lady-love from imprisonment and win back the kingdom.

And if you didn't know already – it's a musical. The actors are a little awkward about it at first, but quickly get into the groove of bursting into song at a moment's notice. But the best part is the show's fairytale subversions, which work not by ridiculing chivalry and kindness and true love, but simply by casting them in a more realistic light – for instance, Galavant and Isabella start a song about how perfect their First Kiss was, only to end with the acknowledgment that it was actually pretty bad ... though it doesn't stop them from wanting another.

One thing bothered me though: Timothy Ormundson as King Richard was inarguably the show's funniest character (largely thanks to Ormundson's performance) but it can't be denied that in the second season he nudges aside ALL the other characters to become the new protagonist. It's a little unfair on everyone else, especially when you consider the very last episode: the opening scene is a flashback to his sad childhood, and the last scene is a vindication of his belief in dragons. Heck, he's the one who gets to pull the magical sword out of the stone and defeat the final bad guy.

Okay, but the show is called GALAVANT.

Other than that, I'd also like to say that Luke Youngblood is severely unappreciated (and not just in the show) as Sid. That guy has fantastic comic-timing, and manages to do so much with what is a pretty unwritten part. Here's my favourite bit, when Madalena comes to the end of pointing out the entire cast to her new ally:

Victoria (2016)

It's hard not to be reminded of Emily Blunt's Young Victoria when watching ITV's period drama on the same subject – both cover the same years of Victoria's life, and both inadvertently demonstrate that as an historical figure, she wasn't really all that interesting. I don't think it's an accident that a significant portion of the show is devoted to a wholly fictional subplot concerning the servants downstairs.

In fact, the more I learn about her life and times, the more I'm convinced that it was her husband Albert who had the more interesting story. Imagine having to leave your own country for one that treats you with relentless suspicion, to be required to move in the highest social circles despite being quiet and reserved, to have a forward-thinking mind at a time of significant technological change, to be a man who wields significantly less power than your wife (even today there are some who act appalled at the thought of a woman earning higher wages than her husband). Altogether, the second half of the show feels like it belongs to him, so much more dynamic and interesting is his position in the narrative.

However, all I ask from my period dramas is that they be well acted and beautiful to look at. Victoria is both those things, with Jenna Coleman being the standout. I had thought her acting quite limited when she appeared as Clara on Doctor Who, but there's not a trace of that character in her portrayal of Victoria: at times vulnerable, tempestuous, frightened, steadfast, imperious and humble.

Also noteworthy is Tom Hughes as Albert and David Oakes as his brother Ernest – for the first time ever playing decent men instead of murderers, rapists, serial killers or other assorted assholes. (Which means I can also appreciate how good-looking David Oakes is without being utterly repulsed by his character).