A Bridge Too Far?

Cine Review: FINAL DESTINATION 5
15 – 92mins – 2011
Written by: Eric Heisserer
Based on characters created by: Jeffrey Reddick
Directed by: Steven Quale
Starring: Nicolas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Arlen Escarpeta, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, David Koechner, P.J. Byrne, Courtney B. Vance, Tony Todd
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[MINOR SPOILERS] “Death doesn’t like to be cheated,” cautions enigmatic coroner William Bludworth (Todd) to another batch of (un)fortunate coffin-dodging “survivors” in this follow-up to what was purportedly The Final Destination (and still kinda is... but I'll say no more). Graciously, the producers didn’t stick with this film’s atrocious working title 5nal Destination (Five-nal?! Really?), but I still had to question whether the death-cheating splatter-series really needed a fourth sequel?

After all, the Grim Reaper may very well not like to be cheated, but neither do cinema-goers; especially not when they are paying nearly ten quid a ticket for a 3D performance such as this. With the previous three Final films so stubbornly refusing to deviate from the original’s “you can’t cheat fate” formula, it sometimes felt like you were watching the same film ad infinitum. Would director Steven Quale's - the second unit director on James Cameron's Avatar, no less - effort have the guts to innovate like no sequel had done before?

Well it's certainly got bucket-loads of guts (quite literally), but for a chunk of its running time, Final Destination 5 does retain a crushing sense of déjà vu, albeit on a more monumental scale. A group of co-workers board a bus for a company retreat, only for Sam Lawton (D’Agosto) to have a morbid premonition of the under-construction suspension bridge they are driving over collapsing and taking everyone along with it. Persuading six co-workers and his smarmy boss (Anchorman’s Koechner) to alight the vehicle, the group get to safety just in time to see the disaster actually take place. Phew – right? But how long can the survivors stay alive now they have interrupted Death’s grand plan?

The opening suspension bridge collapse is ambitious and truly epic in scale, with a superb utilisation of the third dimension to really make the grotesque catastrophe jump off the screen and impale you through the cornea. It's gimmicky, true, but this is what 3D was made for. I am, however, ever so slightly concerned by a sadistic streak which the sensational deaths brought out in me, as I found myself laughing at the most twisted and brutal deaths – and there certainly were plenty on show! Throughout the film, writer Eric Heisserer employs numerous bluffs, double bluffs and red herrings to ramp up the tension as the future corpses unwittingly meet their maker in the most inventive and unpredictable ways.

The Candyman's all-too-brief return was a nice touch (Todd was last seen in FD2 and last heard in a voiceover in FD3), while his suggestion that to dodge Death’s diabolical design the coffin fodder could kill somebody else to replace the blood debt was an overdue, but welcome, attempt to resuscitate the exhausted concept – one which depressed and obsessed employee Peter (Fisher) goes to extreme lengths to implement. But Death doesn't take kindly to being fucked around... Finally, the epilogue’s climatic twist in the tale tied the series together well, even if a gymnastic banner did get me mighty suspicious early on.


In a CR@B Shell: Y'all know the score by now, and Final Destination 5 certainly doesn't disappoint, once again offering gore-gluttons plenty of blood for their buck in a number of sickeningly spectacular scenarios which demand muchio suspension of your disbelief for fright's sake. Belated shake-ups of the formula are welcome, but whether this truly is the final Final Destination is anyone's guess.
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Vampirate

Book Review: OCEAN OF BLOOD
Written by: Darren Shan
Published by: HarperCollins
Released: April 2011
231pages
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Buoyed by a courteous comment from Darren Shan himself posted beneath my review of the first novel in his latest vampiric series, Birth of a Killer (see HERE – I was well chuffed!), wherein he promised more carnage to come in the saga’s forthcoming instalments, I persisted through a rather weak opening to this recently released second adventure charting the (comparatively) early years in the afterlife of Larten Crepsley before I hit the juicy stuff.

As the orange-haired sunlight-dodger wades half-heartedly through his second “life” like a directionless graduate who isn’t sure what the future holds, drinking himself into oblivion while partying with as many of the opposite sex as he can, I couldn’t help but feel like the opening clutch of chapters in Ocean of Blood were meandering filler; taking a looooong time to say not very much at all. By the sixty-page mark years had passed and I was deep into the hardly mammoth read, yet it felt like the ground covered could have been summed up in a single killer chapter.

That said, it isn’t as if Shan’s nimble prose style is a struggle to read. Granted it isn’t as wickedly poetic as Chris Priestley’s similarly macabre delights (see my reviews HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE and prepare to be hooked), but Shan’s chapters are brisk and punchy and the content easily digestible, so I never considered it a chore to read, just lacking any substantial meat to sink my teeth (or should that be fangs?) into.

For personal reasons, I felt blurring reality and fiction with the inclusion of a cameo from a certain Abraham Stoker, a scribe researching a certain novel on the undead inspired by Vlad the Impaler, was a cheesy misstep. Less cringeworthy than Elvis – sorry, “Bub” – in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, but far too reminiscent of The Undead, the dire twenty-first century “official” Dracula sequel penned by Stocker’s descendant Dacre, which also utilizes the iconic author as a character inspired by “real” bloodsuckers.

Returning to the big picture, and mirroring my thoughts on Book 1 (which opened with a horrifyingly brutal punch which would forever shape young Larten’s afterlife), Ocean of Blood – which is rather tame in the horror department for the bulk of its length – accumulated all its firepower for a staggeringly ferocious climatic 30 pages aboard the high seas.

Prior to the finale I was beginning to question what relevance the book’s title had to the land-based narrative, but then Larten and his lovestruck apprentice Malora board the Pearly Tornado bound for Greenland with Larten sick with vampire flu, delirious and desperate for a feed… Much to my morbid delight, the voyage doesn’t end happily for the suspicious passengers or crew, but it certainly convinced me to stick around for book three, Palace of the Damned, set for release in September: There will be blood...


In a CR@B Shell: Still a flitting and narratively insubstantial beast which fails to remedy Birth of a Killer’s flaws, but much like its protagonist, Larten Crepsley’s sophomore adventure is flamboyant and gushing confidence; wearing its scars with pride. Reach the gruesome climax and your jaw will hit the floor; your perseverance justified.
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Drowning Their Sorrows

DVD Review: DON'T LOOK NOW
15 – 106mins – 1973
Screenplay by: Allan Scott and Chris Bryant
Based on the short story by: Daphne Du Maurier
Directed by: Nicholas Roeg
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Sharon Williams
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Savaged by grief at the loss of their young daughter (Williams) in a pond accident on their English estate, husband and wife John (Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Christie) pack their son off to boarding school and up sticks to Venice, a temporary haven for them to clear their heads, soothe their hearts and attempt to reclaim some semblance of a life after tragedy. But while John is working on the restoration of a historic church, Laura is baited by a pair of elderly sisters (Mason, Matania), one of whom claims to be psychic and alleges to have seen the spirit of their deceased daughter...

When I was but a nipper, I can remember switching on the TV late one night and being quite creeped out by the snippet of Nicholas Roeg's seminal meditation on grief which was playing before my innocent eyes. That image of the figure in the red mac has forever stuck with me, much like how some people are plagued by Dracula or Freddie Kruger. However, after catching up with the film as an adult and watching it from start to finish, what struck me most about this psychological horror is how unhorrifying it actually is. And that isn't a derision.

Eerie and disturbing, certainly, but this is no typical cheap-thrills genre flick. Brit director Roeg is skilled at using many artistic and unconventional editing techniques to accumulate an ever-growing feeling of disorientation, pulling the viewer in then losing them amid the labyrinthine Venice boulevards and back streets. It's a much richer and more rewarding sensation to the lazy jump-scares made pedestrian by today's less visionary scaremongers, and it makes that climatic revelation all the more staggeringly unpredictable; the thing of nightmares.

From the colour red subtly haunting the screen and seeping into our subconscious, to juxtaposing scenes intertwined in a fragmentary orgy of time and sense, Roeg's experimental, playful camera work demands respect, truly brining to life Du Maurier's printed word. The uneasy atmosphere is also bolstered by the ingenious decision to not subtitle the native Venetian's natter; by Dino Donnagio's fabulously frantic stringwork on the score; and the growing paranoia of objects moving out of the corner of your eye.

The irony isn't lost on me that a couple wanting to escape the memories of a drowning incident would choose to move to a city which is half-flooded; it's no wonder the pair start to lose their grip on sanity as their vision lingers mournfully on the choppy and unfaithfully reflective water, their belief systems confused by the peculiar sister's comforting/creepy claims and their nerves heightened as a series of murders plague the gondola-strewn waterways. Logic or faith? Superstition or convenience? Acceptance or denial? Alive or dead? Sane or insane? What certainly isn't up for debate is Don't Look Now's status as a quintessential viewing experience for all lovers of the artform.


In a CR@B Shell: A cornucopia of filmic techniques are married together to spellbinding effect in this rich, macabre masterpiece of (dis)illusion, ambience and the fragility of human emotion. Even nearly 40 years on, today's film-makers will still gawp in awe at Roeg's sublime adaptation. Do look now!
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Televangelists

Blu Review: [REC]²
18 – 81mins – 2009
Written by: Juame Balageuró, Manu Díez and Paco Plaza
Directed by: Juame Balageuró and Paco Plaza
Starring: Jonathan Mellor, Óscar Sánchez Zafra, Ariel Casas, Alejandro Casaseca, Pablo Rosso, Pep Molina, Andrea Ros, Ális Batllori, Pau Poch, Juli Fábregas, Nico Baixas, Javier Botet, Carlos Olalla, Manuela Velasco
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[SPOILERS] I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I laud 2007 Spanish zombie horror [REC] as a modern day genre masterpiece. Tense, claustrophobic and pant-wettingly terrifying, the “found footage” method made for such an immersive experience that you became completely oblivious to the fact you were reading subtitles (which kinda makes the quick fire Hollywood cash-in – sorry: shot-for-shot remake, Quarantine, a wholly unnecessary experience).

Written and directed by the same team of filmmakers (always a good start), and following immediately on from the bleak and abrupt events which closed the shutter on the original, [REC]² delivers a similarly apprehensive atmosphere by returning to the quarantined apartment building in downtown Barcelona to once more face the dead-eyed hordes of rabid inhabitants.

We’re again in shaky-cam point of view mode as an unsuspecting team of SWAT-like GEO’s equipped with helmet-mounted cameras are led into the seemingly deserted hellhole by Ministry of Health official Dr. Owen (Mellor), who isn’t entirely honest about his intentions… It is here that [REC]² makes a daring departure from traditional zombie flicks – and you’ll either love its ingenuity or consider it a leap of faith too far; either way, the film loses none of its intensity or fury as the source of the epidemic is revealed.

There’s not a crashed space probe or leaking vat of nuclear waste in sight – these zombies (if, indeed, that classification even applies?) are possessed by demonic spawn, and “Dr.” Owen is in actuality a priest on a mission from the church to purge the Anti-Christ through the recitation of religious mantra and locating a vile of restorative blood from the original source; namely, the gangling Medeiros girl who dragged reporter Angela (Velasco, who returns here) into the darkness in the penthouse loft in [REC]’s unnerving final reel.

Swapping perspective between the dwindling team of GEO’s and a trio of dangerously curious teen pranksters (Ros, Batllori, Poch) who sneak into the building moments prior to quarantine via the sewer system, [REC]² pulls no punches in its unrestrained carnage as even small rage-infected children are not safe from a shotgun to the head. The speed with which the possessed attack may not be in keeping with George A. Romero’s shuffling corpses, but the heart-racing panic which grips you when the raging beasts surge is undeniably chilling. Watch out, also, for a ceiling-crawler who moves against gravity with spider-like agility.

From Exorcist-like conversations with the tricksy and deceptive devil to night vision-aided hunts in the dark for answers the light “blinds you from seeing”, this kinetic sequel is certainly not afraid to stalk new ground, which is a remarkable achievement when the cameras barely leave the confines of the tower block.


In a CR@B Shell: A fearlessly courageous diversion from subgenre tradition and inventive expansion of concepts only glimpsed in the first film, [REC]² also doesn’t disappoint on delivering yet another frantic and fraught first-person fright fest of frenzied flesh-feasters. Highly [REC]ommended.
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Groundhog Daydream

Cine Review: SOURCE CODE
12A – 93mins – 2011
Written by: Ben Ripley
Directed by: Duncan Jones
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Arden, Cas Anvar, Russell Peters
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[MAJOR SPOILERS] Harnessing the echo of electrical brain activity left behind after a person dies, radical scientists are able to plug a missionary into the last 8 minutes of a soon-to-be-dead person’s consciousness. This is the mind-bending situation Army helicopter pilot Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself in in Source Code, Duncan “Zowie Bowie” Jones’s much anticipated directorial follow up to his masterful debut Moon.

Under the blunt scrutiny of mission controller Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and project mastermind Dr. Routledge (Jeffrey Wright), Stevens is repeatedly transported into this brief capsule of memory left behind by teacher Sean Fentress, as he and a double-decker trainload of innocent commuters tragically lose their lives in a terrorist-planned explosion which took place earlier that day. It is up to Colter, so he is forcefully reminded, to use these 480 seconds to investigate the carriage and its passengers, to locate the phone detonated bomb and identify its sadistic maker.

There are obvious shades of Groundhog Day and Quantum Leap in the body-swapping, time-repeating, scientifically ludicrous concept, but this isn’t time travel (or, indeed, a comedy); the events have already taken place, so using the precious minutes to save individual passengers – such as Sean’s cute colleague Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) – is an exercise in futility. The “source code” must be utilised to analyse and investigate, so to avert any further attacks from the unapprehended bomber.

After the opening 8 minutes, as Colter jolts out of “death” for the first time only to reawaken in a darkened pod with just Goodwin’s face on a monitor for direction, it is clear that the understandably confused and disorientated former helicopter pilot is being lied to. Goodwin and Routledge’s evasive answers reveal only the sketchiest details of Colter’s mission; time is of the essence they keep reminding him, but there is much more to their ambiguity than efficiency…

Source Code was certainly a brave sophomore project for Jones to take on – its blockbusting set pieces, busy cast, jumpy editing and high tempo, race-against-the-clock structure are something of a departure from the reflective subtleties of Sam Rockwell pacing around a space station. Both this and Moon demand the audience take a leap of faith for creativities sake, but while Jones's first feature granted us emotional levity, Source Code’s overly complex internal logic took one too many risks for my liking and ended up falling flat on its overreaching face.

By the film’s third act, Colter has fallen in love with Christina (a woman he has only spent variations of the same 8 minutes with – 8 minutes in which he has had the overriding pressure of hunting out a bomb suspect!) and completely rewritten the laws of time and space, in severe discordance with the programme’s creator’s prior account of the source code’s limitations! I’m sure Jones and writer Ben Ripley could launch into a longwinded, jargonous explanation to verify Colter’s event-altering master plan, but this just screams “PLOT HOLE!” to me.

So, Colter gets closure in his relationship with his father (Scott Baluka) whilst still living happily ever after with the new-found love of his 8 minute (after-)life? But are we seriously meant to swallow that the pair are now living in an alternate dimension of reality where “Sean” foiled the bomber, saved everyone’s lives and is now destined to live out the rest of his days with an Army Captain’s conscience? Is Christina not even a *little* shocked that Sean is no longer Sean but Colter? Does Colter not mind looking in the mirror and seeing Sean’s face?? These are rather major qualms which remain wholly unanswered as the end credits roll...


In a CR@B Shell: An exhilarating and gripping action thriller which sadly unravels in a mess of mumbo-jumbo plot-holes and headache-inducing illogicalities for the sake of a sentimental conclusion. There are fragments of promise here, but ultimately, Source Code is one giant (quantum) leap back from the superior Moon.
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WKD Witches

DVD Review: OUTCAST
18 – 98mins – 2010
Written by: Colm McCarthy and Tom K. McCarthy
Directed by: Colm McCarthy
Starring: James Nesbitt, Kate Dickie, Niall Bruton, Hanna Stanbridge, Ciaran McMenanim, James Cosmo, Karen Gillan, Christine Tremarco
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If the cast of Shameless ever delved into the occult, Outcast would be the outcome. A pair of Irish travellers – introverted teen Fergal (Bruton) and his protective mother Mary (Dickie) – find temporary lodging in a deprived council estate in Edinburgh . They are in hiding from the inexorable Cathal (Nesbitt), a man who uses black magic to hunt his quarry. Meanwhile, the lowlife deadbeats wasting away in the concrete jungle are picked off by a mysterious beast with a taste for flesh…

Dark, visceral and lacking any cinematic gloss, Outcast adds a smattering of gritty social realism to its fantastical predator and prey plot. The Edinburgh estate is in a state of disrepute; a grey wasteland of smashed windows, graffiti-ed walls and uncouth chavs - among them Karen "Amy Pond" Gillan in a pre-Who supporting role - who doss about on the swings while their parents drink themselves into an early grave. It’s an unpleasant sight, but it at least makes a change from seeing all the prettiest young starlets getting picked off in their lush New York skyscrapers.

Much to his mother’s stern disapproval, emotionless Fergal starts an awkward romance with Petronella (Stanbridge), an independent girl from the estate with a sharp head on her shoulders. The pair have nothing in common and they seem to spend half their time together in awkward silence, but I can imagine these kind of desperate, chemistry-devoid unions take place all the time when there’s nothing better to do than hang at the park smoking.

Despite his star quality, Cold Feet’s Nesbitt delivers an unglamorous turn as the gruff and unlikeable Cathal, a mystically tattooed brute who snaps crows’ necks to work his wicca magic and locate Mary for a predictable climatic showdown which ties the film’s three key threads together: who is the monster, why is Cathal so intent on dispatching a woman long gone from his life, and what was the purpose of Mary keeping Fergal and Petronella apart?

The CGI beastie is often obscured in shadow (for budgetary reasons I’m sure), but when it does eventually grace the film in all its hideous supernatural glory, it looks like a long snouted, green-skinned werewolf. It’s too lanky to be particularly scary, but it does its job without being laughed off the screen. Elsewhere, Outcast goes all out to achieve a top shelf rating, splattering the pavement in as much gore as possible and even subjecting the game Dickie and Bruton to gratuitous nude shots. Blimey - these people really are Shameless!


In a CR@B Shell: Rough around the edges and not at all pretty, but Outcast is a gritty and atmospheric low budget effort which deserves more than the one star mauling genre fanboys SFX subjected it to.
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The Jig-Saw is Up

DVD Review: SAW – THE FINAL CHAPTER (EXTREME EDITION)
18 – 91mins – 2010
Written by: Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan
Directed by: Kevin Greutert
Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flanery, Chester Bennington , Cary Elwes
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[SPOILERS] Seven years and seven films after The Jigsaw Killer first shackled Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) to a *cough* cadaver in an abandoned bathroom and asked if he wanted to play a game, one of the most successful horror franchises of all time crawls to a long overdue close in Saw – The Final Chapter (aka Saw 3D if you saw it in cinemas; or Saw VII, if you’re keeping count).

Unlike other blatantly cheap cash-in sequels (The Butterfly Effect 2 and Revelations, for instance), I was always impressed by how the Saw series – despite being rush released on consecutive Halloweens – didn’t simply recycle cut-price clones of the original but kept feeding back into the enigmatic story of serial killer with a difference, Jonathan Kramer (Tobin Bell’s “Jigsaw”). Of course every follow up did offer another set of evermore sadistically inventive death traps, but a clever use of flashbacks and slick twists kept the interest factor high. What else would we discover about Jigsaw this time around?

Unfortunately, fatigue did begin to set in, somewhere around Saw IV or V, not aided by the premature decision to kill off the iconic trap-setter in III but keep his legacy alive through surrogate lunatics – such as his apprentice, Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) – thus relying upon a deluge of newly recorded “flashbacks” to keep Bell in the picture. You could say they were squeezing blood from a stone-Saw *boom tish*.

Genre hounds and gore fans will still find plenty of grotesque set-pieces to marvel at (while their other halves hide behind their hands), but an over-reliance on cut-aways to the past does give The Final Chapter’s narrative a rather rough, staccato feel – it’ll take you a while to work out where, when and who you are watching before you can settle into a scene, only for another chronological jump to leave you none the wiser! Writer’s Melton and Dunstan have clearly put a lot of effort into the timeline, but Saw is popular for the torture porn and in my opinion they’ve over thought it.

Kudos, however, for the ruthless indictment of fame hungry wannabes, as Jigsaw survivor turned self help guru Bobby Dagen’s (Sean Patrick Flanery) tales of courage are put to the test in a hazardously renovated insane asylum, but main stars Bell and Elwes – the latter returning to the saga for only the second time – are criminally wasted, while any “shocking” revelations are minimal, making this final piece of the Jigsaw puzzle a rather muted and anti-climatic sensation.


In a CR@B Shell: Jigsaw can finally rest in piece (!!) as this increasingly rusty saga finally slams shut. The traps are as brutally creative as ever, but a fragmented, overly complicated narrative saps the sadistic fun out of the thrills. Game over.
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Ghost Writer

Book Review: THE THIRTEENTH TALE
Written by: Diane Setterfield
456pages
Published by: Orion
Released: 2006
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Devouring this novel’s last 250 pages in one mammoth session is probably the fastest I have ever read a book. Faster even than I read The Book Thief or The Girl with the Dagon Tattoo, two works I couldn’t consume fast enough and would unquestionably ordain as modern classics. I cannot proclaim quite the same level of adulation for debut author Diane Setterfield’s fragmented and revelatory gothic mystery, but I had a book club deadline to keep to and was determined to make it.

Of course any novel which holds your attention for that length of uninterrupted time must be doing something right; I was certainly never bored by the valiant tale-within-a-tale structure, with Setterfield building suspense by drip-feeding the story through a strict authorial narrator. The Thirteenth Tale introduces us to bookish amateur biographer Margaret Lea, hired by reclusive and secretive author Vida Winter to write a biography of the novelist’s extraordinary upbringing.

The novel drifts between Miss Winter’s vivid recounting of her family’s past and modern-day research Margaret undertakes to determine whether her storytelling interviewee is actually – finally – telling the truth, or merely spinning her scribe another yarn. The gravely ill Miss Winter has handpicked Margaret for a particular reason, and soon the author’s tale is impacting and intertwining with Margaret’s present.

Miss Winter’s storytelling expertise lends a masterful gloss to her history lesson. She knows when to end each session to tease a future plotline. You find yourself determined to read on to uncover every last detail of her story. But the fact that it is her story is the concept around which the entire novel wobbles: Margaret reacts to what she hears, guiding our reactions, and were Miss Winter more open with Margaret, the skill of the exposure would be lost and the truth too plainly – and painfully – laid bare. Vida Winter understands this because Setterfield understands this, which is why there is a beginning, middle and end to all good stories, even true ones.

This guiding of our reactions is laid on a little thick with a few too many nods and winks towards “ghosts”, “mists”, “twins” and classic novels with analogous themes – it is an attempt to endow the everyday with a supernatural quality which is hardly necessary given the complexity of the plot. We, the reader, can already ascertain that something is amiss (the fact that Vida has countless times previous told reporters a pack of lies about her past; her reluctance to say “I” when referring to herself; etcetera), so any further efforts to mystify the mysterious are completely superfluous.

Given the span of time covered by Miss Winter’s life story, there are a depressing number of deaths and disappearances in and around the catalytic Angelfield/March homestead (March being Vida’s christened name). Nobody is introduced who doesn’t have an impact upon the story, so their spirits may linger long after their corporeal shell expires, but the shadow of death does lend the novel a cheerless and morbid edge when practically every character you are introduced to grows old, loses their mind and dies – in astonishingly swift succession.

On the subject of death, Margaret’s deceased twin – a source of much uneasiness between herself and her selfish, absent mother – feels like an unnecessary addition. Sure, it gives Miss Winter – herself a twin – a connection with her “amputee” (as Margaret refers to herself; incomplete since losing her other “half”) transcriber, but it feels bolted on and never really embeds itself completely into the narrative, standing on the periphery until a flimsy and implausible post-script resolution undermines the previous 450 pages in a page and a half.

The same can also be said about the mystery surrounding the title: The Thirteenth Tale – a missing story from one of Vida Winter’s most popular publications which randomly gets mentioned throughout the modern day passages as a way of justifying the novel’s title. It enforces an importance on what would otherwise be little more than a fleeting query, so you expect its exposure to be monumental. When, many years later, Margaret finally reads the lost tale, its autobiographical nature seems to be the only reason for its omission, which is something of an anticlimax; all of the juicy revelations exposed many chapters prior.


In a CR@B Shell: Never stagnant, The Thirteenth Tale is easy to read but hard to love, given the austere and transitory nature of its ever-changing cast. But Setterfield certainly knows how to hook you in by tantalising many clues and half-truths throughout Vida Winter’s florid account of life as a twin, making for a curious and absorbing gothic unravelling.
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Graveyard Slot

Book Review: THE NEWS WHERE YOU ARE
Written by: Catherine O’Flynn
309 pages
Published by: Penguin Books
Released: 2010
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Never judge a book by its cover; perhaps the most well known piece of advice, and yet one which I never fail to ignore. Looking at the bright colours and twee portrait of a man and his daughter walking hand-in-hand through a blossoming park as a city spreads out in the distance, I was convinced The News Where You Are would be a light-hearted novel from an “awesomely talented” (so writes Tatler) “comic genius” (Daily Mail) I would enjoy. Indeed, Scotland on Sunday was positively gushing in their grab line:

“Seriously uplifting, hilarious. A funny, moving, acutely observed story about
family and loss. A pleasurable, satisfying gem of a novel”

Of course I’m not so easily swayed that I didn’t read the synopsis, too. The quirky blurb – outlining how a pun-machine of a regional TV news presenter becomes something of an amateur detective, investigating the mysterious hit-and-run death of his predecessor – reminded me of Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother (in tone more than plot, I must elucidate). A funny and moving study of mortality, family and friendship? I’m in!

O’Flynn’s prose is enrapturing in its precision, her dialogue free-flowing and naturalistic, but what quickly struck me about her sophomore release was how achingly depressing it is. Granted, there are flashes of comedy, particularly from protagonist Frank’s eight year old daughter Mo, but her aside every other character is so weighed down by melancholy worries that you wonder how any of the applauding publications could focus so narrow-mindedly on the “laugh-out-loud satire” (Independent on Sunday).

Frank’s aforementioned predecessor, Phil – his story gradually unfolded through intermittent flashbacks prior to his death – is a celebrity who is adored by his public and promoted to nationwide entertainments shows, but he is so consumed with vanity and his public appearance that he never seemed happy with his lot. Phil’s lifelong best friend, Michael Church, a lonely near-hermitised old man who fell out of contact with the local celeb for many years, has also recently passed, and Frank is saddened by the lack of fanfare for this passing life.

Closer to home, Frank’s female co-host is apathetic to the frivolous nature of their show, “Heart of England Reports”, while Frank’s mother is lonely and bitter and refuses to acknowledge any hint of joy to her loyal son, even when a care home friendship with a man called Walter flourishes, while Frank and his wife Andrea spend time educating Mo in the quickly disappearing legacy of Frank’s deceased architect father, who’s creations are being knocked down faster than anyone had hoped.

O’Flynn’s short, sharp chapters feel so contained that it is over halfway through the novel that the various character strands start to feel like they are leading somewhere climatic. Car journeys to destinations we never progress to and walks down corridors to rooms we never enter form fleeting venues for discussion but can’t disguise a random sensation when the following chapter jumps to another location, character or even year entirely.

For all of my criticisms, the book’s gloomy outlook does lend the motivating murder/mystery element an insightful and reflective edge. Should we mourn loss and fear progression or should we become obsessed with leaving a concrete mark of our existence? Does it matter? Will we be missed? However, such profound questions obscure any wit in a sentimental mist, leaving a bittersweet feeling which doesn’t prohibit me appreciating the prose, but does hinder me taking pleasure from it.


In a CR@B Shell: An acutely written polemic on existence with a host of well-rounded folks all contributing to the melancholic discussion, but O’Flynn’s satire will leave you unsure whether to laugh or cry. The News Where You Are simply wasn’t the “uplifting, hilarious” book I was lead to expect.
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Survival of the Sickest

DVD Review: THE TOURNAMENT
18 – 91mins – 2009
Written by: Gary Young, Jonathan Frank, Nick Rowntree
Directed by: Scott Mann
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Kelly Hu, Ian Somerhalder, Liam Cunningham, Ving Rhames, Sebastien Foucan, Andy Nyman, Iddo Goldberg
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“Thirty contenders.
Twenty four hours.
One rule: Kill or be killed”

Every seven years, under the watchful surveillance of the world's richest and most unethical gamblers, the deadliest assassins on the planet converge on one unsuspecting town to take part in a brutal game of cat and corpse: elimination by death, only one will survive. The last man (or woman) standing will walk away with the $10,000,000 cash prize and the title of world's number one contract killer.

Think Death Race on foot; think Smoking Aces meets Battle Royale in a literal monster's ball – set in, ahem, Middlesbrough. The Tournament may not have the most original concept, but that doesn't stop it going out all guns raging in a blaze of visceral glory. The characters aren't as kooky as they could have been (Casino Royale's free running Sebastien Foucan and Lost's Ian Somerhalder as a finger-slicing Texan being the wildest cards), but they are bad-ass, and there's plenty of exploding heads, broken bones and executed strippers to keep the most demanding sadist cheering.

Middesborough doesn't exactly come out of the film favourably: represented as a grubby and sleepy backwater hovel dominated by sugar beet factories and a non-existent police force. There is *some* interaction with the city's population – a pair of footballing youngster's in the park, an iPod playing petrol station attendant, a bus full of dozing passengers – but the main contrast between the innocent and the immoral is provided by Robert Carlyle's drunken disgrace of a priest, Father MacAvoy, who is dragged into the mayhem when he inadvertently swallows Foucan's tracking device.

Little is made of this fretful Father's introduction into the tournament; he scarcely gets involved in any of the duals or gets his quivering hands dirty as he is continually protected by Kelly Hu's Lai Lai Zhen. Furthermore, his reprieve from certain death with mere minutes on the clock is disappointingly muted and – epilogue flash-forward aside – his character doesn't seem to grow at all throughout his incomprehensibly horrific trial by (gun) fire. How ironic that this lapsed man of the cloth is feeling lost and without purpose.

The film's emotional core is implemented by returning champion (and horror B-movie regular) Ving Rhames, out for revenge on the hit man who just four months previous murdered his pregnant wife. I liked the curveball direction this subplot took, gradually shining ever more light on the events surrounding this slaying of an innocent, however, The Tournament's two prominent and parallel stories (vicar's virtue and Ving's vengenance) do rather dominate the entire film, leaving little time for any other characters to get a look in.

The DVD cover lists the four main players, and all other bounty hunters are dispatched with so quickly that you barely remember their faces, much less their names – there's even a time-saving montage in the run-up to the third act to take the numbers from eighteen down to six! – while the CCTV-scanning gamblers remain little more than faceless entities who never even try to bride or influence the tournament's outcome, which seems unlikely given their somewhat skewed moral compasses and the make-or-break fortunes they are dealing in.


In a CR@B Shell: A brutal and relentless spraying of bullets and blood: The Tournament will turn as many stomachs as it flips, but for those twisted souls who don't mind getting their hands dirty, Scott Mann's battle royale really hits its mark, even if the story isn't as sharp as it could have been.
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