I've been procrastinating writing this review of the latest SSPU album, and that's mainly because I'm struggling to know how to feel about it. Following on from most of their recent work I had very high hopes; Neck of the Woods I called a masterpiece when I reviewed it three years ago, Cannibal was a concise anthem, Nightlight and Circadian Rhythm seemed interesting enough. However on the first few listens I have to say I was underwhelmed, nothing leapt out like it had done with previous releases. I've had a practice in the past of avoiding listening to any new songs from a band until I can hear it with the rest of an album, so that it doesn't stand out because of my memory rather than its own merit. In this case I'm not sure it would have made much difference, I get the feeling they released Nightlight and Circadian Rhythm because they knew they were the better tracks on the album, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were written earlier.
Cradle (Better Nature)
The intro to the opener I think epitomises how this album misses the mark compared to Neck of the Woods, it feels hurried and almost done by checklist. For comparison's sake Neck of the Woods' opener Skin Graph takes 83 seconds whereas Cradle takes a mere 21 seconds. Altogether the guitar is carrying this song with a nice riff to introduce and later a cool solo while everything else was just being thrown at the speaker. The song builds to a chant of 'Better Nature' (at which point a certain amount of listeners would applaud and leave) but it doesn't seem to make any sense in the context of the song.
Connection, Pins and Needles, Friendly Fires
Tracks 2-4 bleed into one, and not in a good way; they're stand together as an indistinct blur, and whenever they build some momentum they shoot holes in their sails and take all but the vocals away. There is energy in these songs but it is wasted before it is used in a memorable way. Somewhere in the last year or so Brian Aubert has lost some of his knack for writing a good chorus, and that really hurts the song when everything drops out for you to sing it. For Pins and Needles the opposite is true where a good chorus doesn't have a good verse to back it up.
There might be a good song (possibly two) somewhere between these three tracks, but in their published state they are formulaic filler. They're fine to listen to, Brian's voice is still great as it is through the album, they get from A to B, but won't get many spins on their own at all.
Nightlight
It is when you hear the introduction to this fifth track that it suddenly dawns what has been missing, the tight basslines and drums that were the bread and butter of so much of their earlier work aren't being lost under a wall of synth and distortion. The anthemic chorus is one of the real highlights of the album and evokes the same uneasy, intenese air previous hits such as Panic Switch and Bloody Mary do.
Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)
Similar to the previous track, the bass and drums are holding everything together as they should be. It's very much a tight in-and-out job, and doesn't linger about, so much so it's almost a pop song. Apart from that the notable thing about the song is that it is a pleasant laid-back duet between Brian and bassist Nikki Monninger. I see Nikki in a similar to light to R.E.M.'s Mike Mills insofar as I can't for the life of me work out why you don't hear more of either on vocals when they seem so capable whenever such duties are passed to them.
Tapedeck
At this point the Pickups seem to go on a jaunt of emulating recent indie bands. For example, Tapedeck definitely has a Alt-J-ish edge to it with its vibraphone intro, quirky drum beat and nasal vocals. It's a really cool song, with more vocals from Nikki as well. It then proceeds to plod around for about a minute and a half in the middle, then suddenly rescues itself by picking up some tempo and rocking for a minute and a half in a climax that is oddly reminiscent of Muse's Knights of Cydonia.
Latchkey Kids
In the last three tracks the lyrics become quite adolescent in theme and it sounds almost like it was written by Win Butler for The Suburbs, a reference to learning to drive or utterance of the word 'Neighbourhood' would remove any doubt. It's a rocker that like Circadian Rhythm is a concise, sub-four minute track but is let down by having another dropout instead of kicking up a gear when it should do.
Ragamuffin
When you look over a track listing, there's some titles that just look uninspired, like they cannot result in a good song. I thought it of Gun-Shy Sunshine on the last LP and it turned out to be the weakest moment on the album, what could a phrase like that even mean? Likewise, you read a title like Ragamuffin and wonder how they could get to a point where you think 'Fair enough, I see why they did that.' It's dark, and a little sparse but the tension doesn't quite build into a fitting denouement, and on a six minute track you can't afford to simply finish back where you started.
The Wild Kind
Again, it feels like they evoke Arcade Fire, almost imitating the wistful tone of Sprawl II, and the structure of Here Comes the Night Time to draw the album to a close. It's almost as if they're trying to telegraph where they think Arcade Fire will progress to post-Reflektor. It's a dreamy track that's a pleasant listen before building into a vivacious, electronic ending only to inexplicably return to square one for the album's final minute.
The most frustrating thing about it is you're a seasoned SSPU fan, you can hear what the songs could have been if they'd challenged themselves to go further off the beaten track instead of well-worn pop highways. By the same token maybe I was too generous on past albums and overlooked weak tracks, maybe my expectations were lower for their earlier albums. My two slightly optimistic takeaways from this, are that it's a fine album if you start at track five, and there is much to hope for coming after this transition record, it's the same band underneath after all, they just need to tidy up a little.
Sunday 11 October 2015
Monday 15 June 2015
GoT: Season 5 In Review
** SPOILER WARNING**
If you didn't glean from the title that this blog will have spoilers, you deserve everything you have coming to you and more.
My other disclaimer is that I'll try to avoid dwelling on differences between book and show, that's been dwelled on enough elsewhere.
Moreover some changes here and there are more than necessary for the sake of avoiding introducing more characters than necessary. On the other hand, what I think the show does suggest is that the books have far more detail and extraneous characters than necessary.
Sansa and Theon
I thought Theon saving Sansa in the end seemed inevitable, he needed a shot at redemption, and was bound to rebel somehow after being kept alive this long. What I liked is that his betrayal was believable as it wasn't in the presence of Ramsay or Roose as I don't think he could confront either. I'm hopeful of both surviving their fall, although what they can do from that position doesn't look promising even if they did land completely unscathed. It'd especially be a shame to lose Sansa as before her marriage to Ramsay she was one of the show's best-developed characters.
The other thing about this story arc was it certainly lacked the presence of Littlefinger, but I'd imagine the plot will dictate that he is biding his time while more battles and unrest eliminate the other power brokers of Westeros. I certainly didn't expect him to leave Sansa in such a hopeless state and I don't deem it likely that he'd underestimate Ramsay's insanity in this case either.
Arya
Meryn Trant is dead now (as I earlier had hoped) and in return Arya has gone blind, I'll take that as a trade. Although the way Meryn Trant was portrayed was so it became somewhat comical. So for the audience, if you don't remember him killing Syrio, beating up Sansa or generally being an essenceless dogsbody for Joffrey; you can see more cartoonish villainry when he walks into a brothel and demands a young girl, which we later see is so that he can beat her with a wooden cane. With Arya being practically the only noteworthy character in her city she was practically bulletproof, and as soon as Trant appeared there, it was clear he was only there as someone to be crossed off Arya's death list.
Cersei
From her emerging rivalry with Margaery at the start of the series, it looked like her walk of shame would be coming at some point sooner rather than later. It would have been better to see more dimension to this scene other than her humiliation, there was little sense of her wanting to see her son again, there was no prospect of revenge against her oppressors. It would've been good to see how Margaery and Tommen reacted to the scene as well; the King's mother had to walk through King's Landing naked, being molested by the hoi polloi and there's no sign of the King in all of this.
On the plus sign we sawGregor Clegane Robert Strong in the Red Keep. CleganeBowl some time next series. Get Hype.
Jon
It was also the long-awaited mutiny at Castle Black with Jon Snow being repeatedly stabbed 'for the watch', again there was little else to happen and the momentary suggestion of Benjen Stark's return was a beautiful bit of trolling.
There was no pink letter, although I think that may figure into Basil Exposition at the start of the next series. At any rate I don't think this is the end of Jon, as the series becomes more and more fantastic, there'll be some way that he will survive this, however contrived it may be.
It also looks like Stannis has been concluded and that serves him right, he was pissing into a force ten gale since he sacrificed his daughter, and compared with when he captured Mance Rayder at the end of the last series it looked like he had lost way more than the half who had allegedly abandoned him. I'm not sure I've ever gone from liking to despising a character on one action like I did as The Mannis watched his daughter burn at the stake. His fall from grace was complete when he turned into Immanuel Kant and told Brienne of Tarth to do her duty before delivering an apparent coup de grace.
I think it was especially harrowing because even book-readers weren't expecting it. Readers were now experiencing the shock that non-readers had been getting for years. That and watching a child scream for a parent's help as she is burned to a crisp is never likely to be pleasant.
Tyrion
Tyrion and Varys is a risible combination as we know, and having the two of them running Meereen with Daenerys and the friendzone twins out of the picture, there shouldn't be much to detract from their scenes next time around.
I haven't a clue what Daenerys was trying to achieve by flying away on her dragon seeing as all of her friends made it out of the fighting pit alive, and now she's been rewarded by being dropped in the middle of nowhere. Suppose she just fell of Drogon and no-one found her, wouldn't that have been more fun?
Finally it's been said that this was the series when Game of Thrones jumped the proverbial shark. You could complain that the show was becoming silly but that would imply it wasn't in the first place. One of my pet peeves about the show I feel is emblematic of the silliness is the weird naming of the characters. There's names with the odd letter unnecessarily added or changed (Eddard, Robb, Margaery), there's foreign versions of English names (Jaime, Joffrey, Petyr), and some that just look like GRRM ran out of ideas and mashed his keyboard with his fist (Ygritte, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Hizdahr zo Loraq).
But I get the feeling that A Song of Ice and Fire (and by extension, Game of Thrones) is really just an awfully long-winded farce with added shock value: the more bizarre deaths that are added, the more characters can only be seen as two-dimensional caricatures, the more you begin to doubt that there will be a compelling resolution; and without a fitting denouement I don't foresee it being worth the effort. Having said that, as so much of the story line is catching up with the books, the unknown factor leaves it harder to see whether all the loose ends can be tied up in a satisfactory way, or the potentially character developing suffering could be to no end. In fact it's the combination of my time invested in the series along with said curiosity that's keeping me interested and somewhat annoyed that we're about a year away from any extensive addition to the series.
To some extent the show has become whimsical in the same way that the Saw film franchise has; insofar as there's only so many deaths and barbaric acts you can have before you reach the ne plus ultra as it either becomes prosaic or so farfetched that it becomes a reiteration of The Aristocrats joke, and concordantly the only way it can be seen is relatively light and almost humorous. For others it naturally has the opposite effect and just serves to alienate.
But not unlike the Saw films part of the appeal is the masochism of the viewer, and if people want to see uncanonical rape and brutality to the point it becomes a gimmick. Well to quote Jalen Rose: Got to give the people...
If you didn't glean from the title that this blog will have spoilers, you deserve everything you have coming to you and more.
My other disclaimer is that I'll try to avoid dwelling on differences between book and show, that's been dwelled on enough elsewhere.
Moreover some changes here and there are more than necessary for the sake of avoiding introducing more characters than necessary. On the other hand, what I think the show does suggest is that the books have far more detail and extraneous characters than necessary.
Sansa and Theon
I thought Theon saving Sansa in the end seemed inevitable, he needed a shot at redemption, and was bound to rebel somehow after being kept alive this long. What I liked is that his betrayal was believable as it wasn't in the presence of Ramsay or Roose as I don't think he could confront either. I'm hopeful of both surviving their fall, although what they can do from that position doesn't look promising even if they did land completely unscathed. It'd especially be a shame to lose Sansa as before her marriage to Ramsay she was one of the show's best-developed characters.
The other thing about this story arc was it certainly lacked the presence of Littlefinger, but I'd imagine the plot will dictate that he is biding his time while more battles and unrest eliminate the other power brokers of Westeros. I certainly didn't expect him to leave Sansa in such a hopeless state and I don't deem it likely that he'd underestimate Ramsay's insanity in this case either.
Arya
Meryn Trant is dead now (as I earlier had hoped) and in return Arya has gone blind, I'll take that as a trade. Although the way Meryn Trant was portrayed was so it became somewhat comical. So for the audience, if you don't remember him killing Syrio, beating up Sansa or generally being an essenceless dogsbody for Joffrey; you can see more cartoonish villainry when he walks into a brothel and demands a young girl, which we later see is so that he can beat her with a wooden cane. With Arya being practically the only noteworthy character in her city she was practically bulletproof, and as soon as Trant appeared there, it was clear he was only there as someone to be crossed off Arya's death list.
Cersei
From her emerging rivalry with Margaery at the start of the series, it looked like her walk of shame would be coming at some point sooner rather than later. It would have been better to see more dimension to this scene other than her humiliation, there was little sense of her wanting to see her son again, there was no prospect of revenge against her oppressors. It would've been good to see how Margaery and Tommen reacted to the scene as well; the King's mother had to walk through King's Landing naked, being molested by the hoi polloi and there's no sign of the King in all of this.
On the plus sign we saw
Jon
It was also the long-awaited mutiny at Castle Black with Jon Snow being repeatedly stabbed 'for the watch', again there was little else to happen and the momentary suggestion of Benjen Stark's return was a beautiful bit of trolling.
There was no pink letter, although I think that may figure into Basil Exposition at the start of the next series. At any rate I don't think this is the end of Jon, as the series becomes more and more fantastic, there'll be some way that he will survive this, however contrived it may be.
It also looks like Stannis has been concluded and that serves him right, he was pissing into a force ten gale since he sacrificed his daughter, and compared with when he captured Mance Rayder at the end of the last series it looked like he had lost way more than the half who had allegedly abandoned him. I'm not sure I've ever gone from liking to despising a character on one action like I did as The Mannis watched his daughter burn at the stake. His fall from grace was complete when he turned into Immanuel Kant and told Brienne of Tarth to do her duty before delivering an apparent coup de grace.
I think it was especially harrowing because even book-readers weren't expecting it. Readers were now experiencing the shock that non-readers had been getting for years. That and watching a child scream for a parent's help as she is burned to a crisp is never likely to be pleasant.
Tyrion
Tyrion and Varys is a risible combination as we know, and having the two of them running Meereen with Daenerys and the friendzone twins out of the picture, there shouldn't be much to detract from their scenes next time around.
I haven't a clue what Daenerys was trying to achieve by flying away on her dragon seeing as all of her friends made it out of the fighting pit alive, and now she's been rewarded by being dropped in the middle of nowhere. Suppose she just fell of Drogon and no-one found her, wouldn't that have been more fun?
Finally it's been said that this was the series when Game of Thrones jumped the proverbial shark. You could complain that the show was becoming silly but that would imply it wasn't in the first place. One of my pet peeves about the show I feel is emblematic of the silliness is the weird naming of the characters. There's names with the odd letter unnecessarily added or changed (Eddard, Robb, Margaery), there's foreign versions of English names (Jaime, Joffrey, Petyr), and some that just look like GRRM ran out of ideas and mashed his keyboard with his fist (Ygritte, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Hizdahr zo Loraq).
But I get the feeling that A Song of Ice and Fire (and by extension, Game of Thrones) is really just an awfully long-winded farce with added shock value: the more bizarre deaths that are added, the more characters can only be seen as two-dimensional caricatures, the more you begin to doubt that there will be a compelling resolution; and without a fitting denouement I don't foresee it being worth the effort. Having said that, as so much of the story line is catching up with the books, the unknown factor leaves it harder to see whether all the loose ends can be tied up in a satisfactory way, or the potentially character developing suffering could be to no end. In fact it's the combination of my time invested in the series along with said curiosity that's keeping me interested and somewhat annoyed that we're about a year away from any extensive addition to the series.
To some extent the show has become whimsical in the same way that the Saw film franchise has; insofar as there's only so many deaths and barbaric acts you can have before you reach the ne plus ultra as it either becomes prosaic or so farfetched that it becomes a reiteration of The Aristocrats joke, and concordantly the only way it can be seen is relatively light and almost humorous. For others it naturally has the opposite effect and just serves to alienate.
But not unlike the Saw films part of the appeal is the masochism of the viewer, and if people want to see uncanonical rape and brutality to the point it becomes a gimmick. Well to quote Jalen Rose: Got to give the people...
Sunday 12 April 2015
Game of Thrones Characters I Want To See Die
Disclaimer: While I'm aware that the books are still ahead, I'm pretending for the purpose of this blog that only the television series has happened.
As much as people make a big deal about people dying left, right and centre, with four seasons down it's not stretching out ahead of other well-esteemed HBO dramas (I'm looking at you Boardwalk Empire, Oz and The Wire), nonetheless, for entertainment's sake these are the characters I'm hoping to see concluded in this upcoming series.
Arya
Irritatingly has no awareness of her surroundings throughout the first series so seeing her on the road separated from her family serves this brat right in my book.
More broadly I see no reason to be interested in her. Apart from her time with the Hound which is now over, she's never near any other compelling or consequential characters. She comes across as a one-dimensional character that is completely bereft of any profundity. Who does she think she is with an enemies list, Richard Nixon?
Even putting her characteristics to one side, her end goal amounts to nothing much apart from her own revenge. I know I come across all Count of Monte Cristo saying this but just suppose by the end of the series she murders everyone on her kill list, which looks seemingly unlikely now that she's in Braavos. Then what?
Robin Arryn
In all honesty, it's probably the fault of his psychotic mother that Robin behaves like such a muppet; in fact it was almost like watching that David Walliams character in Little Britain:
Still, only seems to exist in the plot as an obstacle, rather than someone who is a genuine antagonist. Does anyone really think he has the wherewithal to survive and flourish? Can he make any contribution that isn't impetuously churlish?
Pycelle
You could probably say it of any Maester, but he is a complete and total toady. If he's not spending his time bumbling on about how noble Aerys was, or later how noble Joffrey was, he's providing the sycophantic laughter and support for Tywin, Joffrey or Cersei, characters with far too much dignity to require such malarkey. Why does he choose to walk with a hunch slowly, what advantage does it give him to appear as a bumbling fool?
Meryn Trant
Similar to Pycelle, he's a jobsworth of the highest order with no character of his own and according to both Barristan and the Hound, is not even a respectable swordsman. He especially made me cross when he beat up Sansa in front of Joffrey, what kind of oik do you have to be to wail on a teenage girl?
Gregor Clegane
It might be a little early for Season 5, but I want to see him lose to the Hound in the highly-anticipated CleganeBowl. #GETHYPE
Daenerys
It's safe to say that Daenerys is insufferable to watch. Reading her chapters in the books is annoying enough with most Essosi characters being one-dimensional and having ludicrous names. She wasn't too interesting to begin with, and then watches as her brother is gruesomely murdered by her oafish husband; then at the end of the second series she locks a man and her former in a vault to die; then she's careless enough to let her dragons fly around causing havoc.
To be honest I'm fine with her making mistakes and even acting completely heartlessly, the problem is at the same time she is at the centre of some preposterous Mary-Sue morality play against slavery, maintaining an inane winsome smirk all the while. Somehow she is rewarded by jammily escaping any attempt on her life; unfortunately Barristan Selmy drops out of the sky to save her from a manticore.
To be honest, I don't care if you're going to show O Shizzl Ghizzngar no mercy because he oughtn't keep slaves anymore, it'd be nice to see an attempt to get to Westeros instead of dilly-dallying in the hope that some character development will take place before that happens, if at all.
What makes it worse is just how badly Emilia Clarke delivers some of the horrid lines she's given, it makes for a storm of cringeworthiness at once; the whole 'Break the wheel' monologue that she gives on this series' trailer perfectly exemplifies it.
Pity she wasn't killed early on like her brother.
Hodor
He adds absolutely nothing to the story and is now the cause of what must now be millions of irritating comments of 'Hodor' on anything to do with GoT. Thankfully Kristian Nairn confirmed he won't be in the show this time around, so at least we don't have to see him, but neither do we get to see him suffer for the time he has cost us all.
Theon
I liked Theon up until his capture by Ramsay and conversion into the pusillanimous Reek. He's been SOLJWF for far too long now, and needs to be put out of his misery, it's fairly unforeseeable that he will return to his former likeable self. He won't even be able to return to his bedroom and smoke weed all day.
As much as people make a big deal about people dying left, right and centre, with four seasons down it's not stretching out ahead of other well-esteemed HBO dramas (I'm looking at you Boardwalk Empire, Oz and The Wire), nonetheless, for entertainment's sake these are the characters I'm hoping to see concluded in this upcoming series.
Arya
Irritatingly has no awareness of her surroundings throughout the first series so seeing her on the road separated from her family serves this brat right in my book.
More broadly I see no reason to be interested in her. Apart from her time with the Hound which is now over, she's never near any other compelling or consequential characters. She comes across as a one-dimensional character that is completely bereft of any profundity. Who does she think she is with an enemies list, Richard Nixon?
Even putting her characteristics to one side, her end goal amounts to nothing much apart from her own revenge. I know I come across all Count of Monte Cristo saying this but just suppose by the end of the series she murders everyone on her kill list, which looks seemingly unlikely now that she's in Braavos. Then what?
Robin Arryn
In all honesty, it's probably the fault of his psychotic mother that Robin behaves like such a muppet; in fact it was almost like watching that David Walliams character in Little Britain:
Still, only seems to exist in the plot as an obstacle, rather than someone who is a genuine antagonist. Does anyone really think he has the wherewithal to survive and flourish? Can he make any contribution that isn't impetuously churlish?
Pycelle
You could probably say it of any Maester, but he is a complete and total toady. If he's not spending his time bumbling on about how noble Aerys was, or later how noble Joffrey was, he's providing the sycophantic laughter and support for Tywin, Joffrey or Cersei, characters with far too much dignity to require such malarkey. Why does he choose to walk with a hunch slowly, what advantage does it give him to appear as a bumbling fool?
Meryn Trant
Similar to Pycelle, he's a jobsworth of the highest order with no character of his own and according to both Barristan and the Hound, is not even a respectable swordsman. He especially made me cross when he beat up Sansa in front of Joffrey, what kind of oik do you have to be to wail on a teenage girl?
Gregor Clegane
It might be a little early for Season 5, but I want to see him lose to the Hound in the highly-anticipated CleganeBowl. #GETHYPE
Daenerys
It's safe to say that Daenerys is insufferable to watch. Reading her chapters in the books is annoying enough with most Essosi characters being one-dimensional and having ludicrous names. She wasn't too interesting to begin with, and then watches as her brother is gruesomely murdered by her oafish husband; then at the end of the second series she locks a man and her former in a vault to die; then she's careless enough to let her dragons fly around causing havoc.
To be honest I'm fine with her making mistakes and even acting completely heartlessly, the problem is at the same time she is at the centre of some preposterous Mary-Sue morality play against slavery, maintaining an inane winsome smirk all the while. Somehow she is rewarded by jammily escaping any attempt on her life; unfortunately Barristan Selmy drops out of the sky to save her from a manticore.
To be honest, I don't care if you're going to show O Shizzl Ghizzngar no mercy because he oughtn't keep slaves anymore, it'd be nice to see an attempt to get to Westeros instead of dilly-dallying in the hope that some character development will take place before that happens, if at all.
What makes it worse is just how badly Emilia Clarke delivers some of the horrid lines she's given, it makes for a storm of cringeworthiness at once; the whole 'Break the wheel' monologue that she gives on this series' trailer perfectly exemplifies it.
Pity she wasn't killed early on like her brother.
Hodor
He adds absolutely nothing to the story and is now the cause of what must now be millions of irritating comments of 'Hodor' on anything to do with GoT. Thankfully Kristian Nairn confirmed he won't be in the show this time around, so at least we don't have to see him, but neither do we get to see him suffer for the time he has cost us all.
Theon
I liked Theon up until his capture by Ramsay and conversion into the pusillanimous Reek. He's been SOLJWF for far too long now, and needs to be put out of his misery, it's fairly unforeseeable that he will return to his former likeable self. He won't even be able to return to his bedroom and smoke weed all day.
Saturday 31 January 2015
Reviewed: Fortitude - Episode 1
So after a barrage of marketing we finally get to see the beginning of the new Sky Atlantic drama in a feature length episode.
On paper, going in, this looked like it had all the ingredients to keep me entertained: a potentially stygian drama set in frozen Svalbard (Scandinavia being one of the only parts of the world I'd actually want to visit) in the vein of other slightly surreal dramas set in the extreme North; namely Christopher Nolan's Insomnia. It features Christopher Eccleston (who I still think could be the best Doctor), Michael Gambon and Luke Treadaway (who allegedly frequented Ashbee's wine bar in Earls Court as I did as a student in London). Disappointingly however, Eccleston and Gambon, two of the most recognisable names on the cast, who were focussed upon heavily in advertising, don't play major roles in the show.
To begin, if there was a theme tune (which I'm not sure there was), it was a mess and was completely indistinct. Otherwise there is no theme song and maybe every week they'll just offer landscape shots while showing the actor's names, which would be fine if vista shots weren't so frequently used to show passage of time. I was surprised with how prosaic I found the Nordic scenery by the end of show.
As for the storytelling, it was made very difficult by the dialogue, which was characterised by abrupt declaratives with minimal intonation and awkward silences (something I find irritatingly common in British drama); so very few conversations sounded spontaneous and fluent. To be honest it sounded as bad as a Tarantino movie, where everyone sounds like Quentin speaking himself, trying to sound cool and quotable, but coming off as surly and pretentious. This meant a good majority of the characters (and there are a lot) seemed standoffish and almost robotic, as if they were fed up with socialising, bereft of any joie de vivre. That might explain how they ended up in isolated Northern Norway: they couldn't put with the amount social interaction that comes with living in a city. Maybe the climate is an allegory for how frigid the characters feel on the inside and I just wasn't as satisfied by this fact as I should have been. On top of this, the sparse soundtrack did very little to supplement the long pauses and could've done a lot more to build an atmosphere of tension, something which is meant to be one of this show's main selling points.
The next problem is that because of this lack of character interaction and development, the lack of any remarkable events for the first fifty minutes means that it was a really turgid watch, and minute by minute you have to wonder when it's going to kick in with the real premise for the show. Filling that time with very simple plotlines such as a very sick child who I'm sure somebody out there felt sorry for and a tepid sexual affair, left what should be a hard-hitting drama working with material that seemed to have come out of a soap. Unfortunately the catalyst for the storyline is the death of Eccleston's Professor Stoddart character, who is one of the few compelling characters on the show (despite being a scientist); bizarrely the IMDB says he's signed up for 12 episodes, how he appears from here on out is anyone's guess. The other interesting character, who rescued the show in my opinion, is Sheriff Dan Anderssen played by Richard Dormer, who seems to be an unnecessary maverick for a lawman in a village with no crime. He takes no nonsense, kills a wild dog and appears to have a really troubled, dark edge as well. To me, this is someone who I want to watch go about his day, in a town where there is little going on, and as sheriff has potentially little to do, he makes things interesting just by being there. I'm also guessing Stanley Tucci's DCI Morton will be worth watching in the coming weeks but he only arrives in the last portion of the show, so I shall reserve my judgement.
Overall it's an inefficient first ninety minutes for Fortitude but it has bought itself some time to get me gripped. There is a lot of potential and it's a possible heir apparent to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, fitting the same template of an offbeat detective from far away coming to investigate an unusual death in an odd small town. Moreover the broad suspicion that hangs over most characters for involvement in the Professor's death, along with inexplicable moments such as a pig being found in a tube in a hospital serve to build the story's intrigue. We'll see if it lives up to the pastiche and the investment put behind it, but it ought to get its act together quickly after such a slow start.
On paper, going in, this looked like it had all the ingredients to keep me entertained: a potentially stygian drama set in frozen Svalbard (Scandinavia being one of the only parts of the world I'd actually want to visit) in the vein of other slightly surreal dramas set in the extreme North; namely Christopher Nolan's Insomnia. It features Christopher Eccleston (who I still think could be the best Doctor), Michael Gambon and Luke Treadaway (who allegedly frequented Ashbee's wine bar in Earls Court as I did as a student in London). Disappointingly however, Eccleston and Gambon, two of the most recognisable names on the cast, who were focussed upon heavily in advertising, don't play major roles in the show.
To begin, if there was a theme tune (which I'm not sure there was), it was a mess and was completely indistinct. Otherwise there is no theme song and maybe every week they'll just offer landscape shots while showing the actor's names, which would be fine if vista shots weren't so frequently used to show passage of time. I was surprised with how prosaic I found the Nordic scenery by the end of show.
As for the storytelling, it was made very difficult by the dialogue, which was characterised by abrupt declaratives with minimal intonation and awkward silences (something I find irritatingly common in British drama); so very few conversations sounded spontaneous and fluent. To be honest it sounded as bad as a Tarantino movie, where everyone sounds like Quentin speaking himself, trying to sound cool and quotable, but coming off as surly and pretentious. This meant a good majority of the characters (and there are a lot) seemed standoffish and almost robotic, as if they were fed up with socialising, bereft of any joie de vivre. That might explain how they ended up in isolated Northern Norway: they couldn't put with the amount social interaction that comes with living in a city. Maybe the climate is an allegory for how frigid the characters feel on the inside and I just wasn't as satisfied by this fact as I should have been. On top of this, the sparse soundtrack did very little to supplement the long pauses and could've done a lot more to build an atmosphere of tension, something which is meant to be one of this show's main selling points.
The next problem is that because of this lack of character interaction and development, the lack of any remarkable events for the first fifty minutes means that it was a really turgid watch, and minute by minute you have to wonder when it's going to kick in with the real premise for the show. Filling that time with very simple plotlines such as a very sick child who I'm sure somebody out there felt sorry for and a tepid sexual affair, left what should be a hard-hitting drama working with material that seemed to have come out of a soap. Unfortunately the catalyst for the storyline is the death of Eccleston's Professor Stoddart character, who is one of the few compelling characters on the show (despite being a scientist); bizarrely the IMDB says he's signed up for 12 episodes, how he appears from here on out is anyone's guess. The other interesting character, who rescued the show in my opinion, is Sheriff Dan Anderssen played by Richard Dormer, who seems to be an unnecessary maverick for a lawman in a village with no crime. He takes no nonsense, kills a wild dog and appears to have a really troubled, dark edge as well. To me, this is someone who I want to watch go about his day, in a town where there is little going on, and as sheriff has potentially little to do, he makes things interesting just by being there. I'm also guessing Stanley Tucci's DCI Morton will be worth watching in the coming weeks but he only arrives in the last portion of the show, so I shall reserve my judgement.
Overall it's an inefficient first ninety minutes for Fortitude but it has bought itself some time to get me gripped. There is a lot of potential and it's a possible heir apparent to David Lynch's Twin Peaks, fitting the same template of an offbeat detective from far away coming to investigate an unusual death in an odd small town. Moreover the broad suspicion that hangs over most characters for involvement in the Professor's death, along with inexplicable moments such as a pig being found in a tube in a hospital serve to build the story's intrigue. We'll see if it lives up to the pastiche and the investment put behind it, but it ought to get its act together quickly after such a slow start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)