Wild Palms (1993)

So, as in my recent excursus to the Southland, I find myself again in a Los Angelean world of sur/hyper/realism, set almost but not quite in the present (WP is in fact set in 2007, then fourteen years or so in the future) in a techno-magical-realist world in which plots are convoluted, costumes are outrageous, and seeing is definitely not believing.

WP, a mini-series written by Bruce Wagner, is based on a comic strip of his, which I haven't read (Oliver Stone was an executive producer, but he was using his powers for good, not for evil). Wagner described the comic strip as a 'tone poem' and there's definitely an element of that to the TV series. The plot follows Harry Wyckoff (Jim Belushi), a patent attorney and family man living 'the dream' (including the element of the dream where things would always be more satisfying if you just had that much more material wealth) in Los Angeles. Harry's been having strange dreams about finding a rhinoceros in his empty pool; and he's about to run into an old flame, Paige Katz (Kim Cattrall). Meanwhile, technology has just given birth to interactive, 'virtual reality' television, embodied in the new series Church Windows, spearheaded by Senatoir Anton Kreutzer (Robert Loggia), head of Channel Three, founder of the Synthiotics religion and champion of New Realism. Oh, and there's an ongoing conflict between two shadowy underground groups, which nonetheless seem to have conspiracyesque connections to the corridors of political power. lost yet? You should be...

Wild Palms is a treat. It has a very filmic and decadent quality, and visually it's gorgeous - I'd say, more of a late eighties than a nineties sensibility, with a strong Japanese thematic, post-modernised fifties elegance, and some post-apocalyptic post-punk thrown in for good measure. The casting is inspired - I particularly enjoyed Ben Savage (for those of us of an age to cherish fond childhood memories of The Wonder Years, he's Fred Savage's brother) as a child who's definitely not what he first appears to be...

Thematically, there's a definite problematisation of the role of television as a form of 'brainwashing' (with more than a nod to Christianity), and the pleasures and dangers of a virtualised reality, without being heavy-handed or anti-technology in that tiresomely common way which suggests that we'd be a healthier society if we were to sit around playing parlour games, or (worse still) playing sport; while Senator Kreutzer seems to be at least in part a satire on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology (though in the present-day context, both in terms of media dominance and conspiracy, I'd also think of Italian prime minister and monopolistic media mogul with the daytime soapstar looks, Silvio Berlusconi). The series itself, with the soap-opera quality of the interactions between characters (Angie Dickinson, as Wyckoff's scheming mother-in-law, is particularly effective), reflects the glossy surfaces which the series itself takes as its subject. Throughout, the influence of Philip K. Dick is very much in evidence.

As a viewer, every time you think you've got a grip on what's going on, even if only in relation to one character or plotline, your expectations are suddenly confounded, mirroring Wyckoff's experience. Particular phrases and symbols echo through the narrative like reverb-drenched samples - indeed, there's very much a 'remix' aesthetic to this work; all the elements of a traditional narrative are there, but they've been taken apart and stuck back together in a very decentreing way. Points of comparison would be Twin Peaks, another early nineties show playing deep games with appearance and reality; and works like Existenz or Videodrome which use science-fiction futurism to blur and interpenetrate the line between appearance and reality, between flesh and technology.

Richard Kelly - Southland Tales (2007)

Given that Richard Kelly is the director of Donnie Darko, a film I enjoyed a great deal, I had high expectations of Southland Tales - and it reached them in spades. DD is the more coherent work, but ST is much more interesting.

The film is set in an alternate-history 2008, in which the USA was bombed by nuclear weapons in 2005, and the Bush government has invaded Syria, Iran, and North Korea, reinstalled the draft, and emplaced other Fascistic security measures under the aegis of the Patriot Act. One of these, US-Ident, is a totalising surveillance system. Due to security measures, the states have, in effect, become separate administrative realms, nations within a nation. Meanwhile, a Neo-Marxist underground is becoming increasingly militant, and fast-dwindling fossil fuels are in the contested process of being replaced by an energy system harnessing the tidal power of the ocean. The action takes place on the eve of the 2008 election, in California, possession of which is vital for victory. We follow Boxer Santaros (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson), an amnesiac action film star and the Californian candidate's son-in-law; Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star trying to launch reality TV show; and the twin brothers Taverner (Seann William Scott); as they become embroiled in this heady mix of politics, science, and violence, and the world careers toward an apocalyptic cataclysm, as presaged in Revelations...

As will be evident from this description, political satire is omnipresent in the film and vital to the plot, but it's done very well, and is never heavy-handed. Indeed, at times this is an hilarious ride; Krysta Now's single, Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime is a highlight. Anyone who's concerned with the authoritarian tendencies of US politics, with international aggression, or with global warming will appreciate this aspect of the plot.

As will also be evident, the plot itself, which like DD involves weird time shifts, is heavily convoluted - I found it difficult to follow, though that's a tendency of mine, but although the narrative sprawls uncontrollably and is quite complicated, I didn't actually find this too serious a problem - the film is visually absolutely gorgeous, and you can kick back and enjoy the ride. The casting is also inspired; don't let the inclusion of actors like 'The Rock' put you off - Kelly knows exactly what he's doing. Other favourites of mine who appear here include Miranda Richardson, and Wallace Shawn (Vizzini from The Princess Bride, and his character here seems a conscious reference to that role).

As a work, I thought of various points of reference - Strange Days, Buffy, The Chumscrubber, A Scanner Darkly, Existenz, even Inland Empire in the sprawling lack of directorial self-discipline and welcome disconnect from 'realism' - but there's a lightness of touch here which gives the work a deft touch, particularly as a satire, while Kelly is obviously no intellectual lightweight, given the various references, credited and otherwise, to poets and artists that pepper the work. It's films like Southland Tales that the term 'post-modern' was invented for - so you can forget linearity and enjoy the glossy surfaces, which at the same time reveal their own sterility, but never in a way that's less than ecstatically playful...

Philip Reeve - Larklight (2006)

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series was one of the most impressive works of childrens' literature I'd read for quite some time, so I was very much looking forward to Larklight, the first book in his new series.

Larklight is a Victorian steampunk/space opera work - genres which I'm fond of in childrens', though not in adult, literature - and it's certainly a rip-roaring adventure. The story follows Arthur Mumby's adventures saving the known universe from a race of intergalactic spiders, with lashings of alien exotica and space piracy on the way. The Victorian detail is not quite perfect, and someties verges into cliche, but is generally well done - we find, ultimately, alternate-history as well as strictly fantasy aspects to the tale; and the book is sprinkled with historical and Victorian in-jokes for those with a passing knowledge of the period.

Larklight is aimed at a slightly younger readership than the ME series, so it's much less dark, with less moral ambiguity (though it's not entirely absent), the characters are less developed and psychologically drawn, and we're more focussed entirely on action. Indeed, I found the somewhat convoluted, but also action-packed, plot left me a little exhausted as the narrative switched back and forth from Arthur's POV to his sister Mabel's diary, and leapt from one bizarre situation to the next.

Larklight was a lot of fun, and the Victoriana aspects really made it for me, but nonetheless, if it had been Reeves' first work I'm not sure I'd be following him closely as an author in the way that I followed ME, which was admittedly a hard act to follow. Nonetheless, I am planning to read Starcross, the next instalment in the series, so I won't protest too much...

Matt Reeves – Cloverfield (2008)

If I said to you, imagine a cross between Godzilla, Eight Legged Freaks and The Blair Witch Project, that wouldn't be a film you'd be running to see, right? That's why I'm not going to say that about Cloverfield.

I was skeptical. But although I'm generally far from a fan of the 'hand held camera=extra, arty, reality' style that became so prevalent after BWP, it really works in this film (as it has in others, such as Series Seven). The conceit is that the film, recovered by the Department of Defense, was the digital camerawork of 'Hud' Platt, filming a friend's going-away party when monster/alien disaster strikes New York. The action is intercut with previous sequences involving the group of friends and their relationships.

This isn't at all a typical monster film, however - although towards the end it comes closer to what we'd expect from the genre, with a strong narrative pull, and does so very effectively in genre terms, without overplaying its hand. In terms of atmosphere, it reminded me more of works like Cube where the psychology of a pressure situation is the focus and the event is the framing device in which it occurs. Again, I didn't initially feel sympathy for the main characters as a fairly film-standard bunch of young, rich, vacuous New Yorkers, but this really changed over the course of the work.

There's also another point of interest here, in that in the light of September 11 it seems to me quite a daring choice to make a very 'real' feeling creature feature flick about an attack on New York. Perhaps that also added to the fact that the trauma, poignancy and tragedy really worked, for this viewer at least. I also admired the fact that the film wasn't delivering on our genre expectations of heroism, and on the meaningfulness of action in terms of its resolution.

While there are a lot of similarities with BWP (including a viral marketing campaign, and the release of a 'mix-tape' soundtrack to a film with no musical score, though the tracks are played in the original party sequence), I enjoyed this film more, given that, in comparison to the aforementioned film, the genre/subject Cloverfield was working with is much less adapted to the mood it so successfully created, giving this work a real originality, which, combined with narrative and emotional drive, and the successful use of the genre conventions without exploiting them or simply setting up the cliches and knocking 'em down, made for a film that I have a lot of time for.