Taken is all about what happen when Liam Neeson’s daughter Kim gets kidnapped, and if you ask me it’s Bono’s fault. Kim is following U2 round Europe with her Paris Hilton-lite gal pal, and when they hit Paris the two of them are fast talked by an Albanian smoothie. Next thing you know it the two American teens are captured, pumped full of junk, and you don’t want to know what happens next.

That said, would their fate have been any worse had they eschewed their European trip and gone to college for some all-American hazing? But the big fear here is what happens to American youngsters when they set foot on foreign soil. The surprise is that this meretricious and borderline racist tripe (wait till you meet the Arabs in the story…) was penned in part by the very French Luc Besson.

Liam Neeson took early retirement from doing something unspecified and dangerous to foreign nationals on behalf of the Bush administration to obsess about his daughter. She’s the product of his relationship with a very fetching ex, and genetics has resulted in Kim being quite a looker herself: had she been more of a moose, no way would the Albanian bad guys have wanted to pimp her out. Which is what they do with a seemingly limitless supply of comely foreign teens, who are laid out drugged up in tents for all the world like students at Glastonbury half-listening to Manic Street Preachers on a wet weekend.

Somehow, it hasn’t occurred to the Albanians that two American girls staying in a luxury apartment could be worth more as kidnap victims than hookers. Either the bad guys are none too bright, or the dollar really has taken a tumble against the Euro and I need to invest my script doctoring earnings in prostitution rackets and not kidnapping.

The fact that I was contemplating currency markets while watching this film tells you a good deal about how compelling it is. There is nothing remotely surprising about Taken, from its mechanical plotting to its stilted dialogue and direction by Pierre Morel. Interesting that the director is named after a mushroom: he should be able to identify with how I feel, having spent too long in the dark being subjected to his bullshit.

Honourable warrior takes on corrupt forces and triumphs because his heart is pure. It’s the template that launched a thousand films, many of them interchangeable yarns whether the specific genre is western, fantasy, or martial arts. In Redbelt, writer-director David Mamet applies his considerable talents to the theme with remarkable results.

Chewitel Ejiofor plays Jiu-jitsu instructor Mike Terry, a man whose firm principles result in financial problems and consequent stresses with his wife Sondra (Alice Braga). While fighters around him are profiting from involvement in mixed martial arts tournaments, Mike concentrates on running his school to the highest ethical standards. Those standards have a cost, and you know you’re in Mamet’s capable hands as he expertly sets about exploring what happens when the teacher’s world is put to the test on every front.

An improbable accident with a gun leads to catastrophic consequences as Mike and his blackbelts, sworn to uphold the honour of their dojo, uphold their morality in a world that’s seemingly too complex to deal with people wanting to do the right thing. But throughout it all, Mike sticks to his beliefs, and pursues them through to their ultimate test in line with a sentiment expressed early in the film: Mike doesn’t teach people to fight, he teaches them to prevail.

The good news is that Mamet is on fine form here. The plot hurtles down breakneck chicanes and doesn’t just zig when you think it’s going to zag: sometimes it takes you straight to zog instead. But Mamet’s hand is firmly on the tiller, and rather than baffle the audience with complexity for its own sake — see The Spanish Prisoner — here the twists are all in the service of a masterfully plotted and emotionally charged story.

At its heart this is a story as simple as the one outlined in the first sentence. But the execution is breathtaking, every new turn throwing up questions of morality and right action that Mike Terry must navigate expertly to even win the right to succeed, never mind actually accomplish what he sets out to do.

Not every plot element is convincingly resolved — for instance, what’s going on with the film star’s partner who orders a load of expensive fabrics from Mike’s wife; and Mamet regular Ricky Jay’s performance doesn’t convince on this occasion — but this really is first class filmmaking from a creator at the top of his game. Plus, perhaps unusually for Mamet, he knows when to shut up. As the film reached its conclusion, I was thinking ‘there’s absolutely nothing that can be said at this point’ and Mamet indeed chooses to say nothing, allowing the moment to have the breathing space it deserves.

Mention the name Wolverine to many comics readers, and they’ll salivate as they start to expound on the clawed centenarian called Logan, a mutant savage whose adventures in the X-Men and beyond have been filling the coffers at Marvel for a couple of decades plus. Odds are, they almost certainly won’t be aware of one Joshua ‘Wolverine’ MacAlistaire, whose adventures were chronicled in Journey, a sublime comic written and drawn by William Messner-Loebs. And no wonder: Journey’s sales were a drop in the ocean compared to the tale of the other Wolverine and his chums. Besides, it was in black and white, and any fule kno that proper comics are in colour and have ads for Hostess Twinkies.

More’s the pity then, because Journey was a lyrical and literate delight, its 19th century frontiersman hero just as ornery and tough as the Marvel character. This Wolverine’s reference points are Will Eisner, Dave Sim, and Mark Twain to pick a few apparent influences, and his adventures have a picaresque quality. Which is to say the stories are kind of plotless, the pleasure of Journey being in, well, the journey itself.

Josh is a curious creation, one who tells a different tale about his father every time he’s asked about him. He’s a born survivor, a rough and tough brawler with a soft spot for Byron and a knack for coming up butter side up in his dealings with the challenges of the wilderness. Messner-Loebs has a knack for bringing places and their particular natures to life, gently folding in exposition about how his hero survives in different environments as an unfussed part of his almost folksy narrative. The pace is gentle at times, the rhythms those of speech rather than the cinematic action that comics are increasingly emulating. Make no mistake though, there’s plenty of action and tall tales, as Josh MacAlistaire runs from bears, gets revenge on those who’ve ripped him off, and gets caught up in whirlwinds and the unlikely plans of a British aristocrat.

Artwise, the series nods heavily to Will Eisner and Dave Sim. Indeed, some pages look like they could have come from the latter’s classic Cerebus, from the lettering and framing right down to the depiction of snow. This is classy cartooning, and Messner-Loebs has a knack for experimenting with page layouts, often running panels at angles to compress the action in the space available, an unusual but effective choice.

It’s delightful stuff, and I’ve not seen anything quite like it. Messner-Loebs wrote and drew much of it while waiting in the hospital to hear what was happening to his loved ones, and maybe that’s responsible for the ebullient escapism present on these pages. These are comics created purely for the joy of it, and that’s a rare and lovely thing to see.

If you want to see what can happen when one creator allows themselves to follow a fancy in words and images, and in the process creates a story that veers from historical adventure to magical realism, Journey is well worth your time checking out. Its 31 issues have recently been reprinted in two low price volumes by publisher IDW. Do yourself a favour and buy them.

I’d been a bit wary of Tropic Thunder based on the reviews I’d seen, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. I suspect that the reviews in question were written by slightly snooty types more concerned about what they think they should laugh at rather than people who were laughing as fully, as honestly, as the audience in the screening I saw.

That critical response reminds me of Alexei Sayle’s observation that in playing for left wing audiences (he played a lot of political benefits) there was often a lag before laughter as people assessed whether they were allowed to laugh at what they’d heard and seen. So, let’s be blunt: there is humour here that could cause offence to those with particularly precious attitudes to disability, and race. But the film’s makers — it’s helmed by co-writer/director/star Ben Stiller — are fully aware of those responses and incorporate them into the movie.

Anyone choosing to be offended is acting out of kneejerk response rather than considering the more complex messages that the film actually contains. For instance, disability groups are not happy about the way the film uses the word ‘retard’. A shame, since the script contains a hysterical and perceptive sequence about the portrayal of learning difficulties in Hollywood films. Oh, and that speech is delivered by Robert Downey Jr, who is blacked up for the bulk of the action — again, with genuinely hilarious consequences, as his portrayal of a Method-obsessed actor is mercilessly dissected by a co-star who really is black.

The film’s primary target is Hollywood itself. A group of actors are filming the war epic to end all war epics in Vietnam, and under director Steve Coogan find themselves a month behind schedule after five days of shooting. Coogan decides to abandon the grandiose approach he’d intended and instead opts for an improvised shoot, letting his stars loose in the jungle and filming the action from hidden cameras. Only, things go wrong of course. The actors are spotted by a violent drug gang and mistaken for operatives of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and dealt with accordingly.

It’s all cleverly set up by a bunch of mock-trailers for films that its cast of supposed heavyweights are involved with. Ben Stiller’s promotes his sixth outing as the star of the science fiction action Scorcher films. Jack Black is fatsuited in a sequel about a group of overweight ass-gas-passers, in which he plays every family member. And Downey Jr is a medieval priest, tormented by forbidden love for a fellow man of God. Every trailer is note-perfect, from music to product placement opportunities, and sets the audience up for the variety of what’s to come.

Tropic Thunder is the funniest film I have seen in a long time. Jack Black, Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise are among other big names joining Stiller and Downey Jr, and no opportunity is missed for a gag, whether it’s a joke on the vanity of actors, an observation about the portrayal of race, or splendid slapstick from a cast who are all strong physical performers.

People sometimes assume writers just have ideas come to them fully-fleshed and waiting to be written. And, sometimes, that’s the way it happens. More often though, there’s process and strategy involved: tricks that individual creators learn to kickstart their creativity. Which is why I pay attention to interviews with creative people, for insight into what they do and how they do it.

Case in point. Comics writer Ed Brubaker was recently interviewed by the Newsarama website to discuss his forthcoming series Incognito. Here are a couple of pieces that captured my attention:

“I was wondering what the flipside of that story (Sleeper) would be like, because you never know what you’ll find when you flip something around and look at it another way.”

“…as the story developed, it was influenced by what I was doing on Captain America as much as anything else…what could I do in Incognito that I could never do in Cap?”

There. Perfect. In a nutshell, two creative strategies that can be adopted for your own work. So, let’s have a go. Let’s take the premise of Eden Lake, reviewed in the last entry here, and apply Brubaker’s processes to it…

So, if Eden Lake is about good folk tormented by teens, how about we turn the tables and do a story about teens tormented by Middle Englanders? Works for me, and gives us two audiences: teens who like a good scare, and reactionaries looking for a vicarious thrill. What we need is a motivation. Perhaps the opening of a new school for kids with learning disabilities in a curtain-twitching suburb. Rumours that the kids have ASBOs, premarital sex, and speak Polish abound. But what triggers the action? Something innocuous and misunderstood. A Polish teen whose English is poor grabs a tea towel from a shop to bind a friend’s wound, who has been knocked down by a nearsighted OAP, and is accused of shoplifting. It’s enough to stir local residents to form a vigilante group, dusting off shotguns, sharpening bayonets, and revving up 4×4s. I’m liking this already.

OK, so that’s the inverse of Eden Lake. What about the second of Brubaker’s nuggets, doing in this version what you could never do in the original? Hmm, trickier territory here, given that Eden Lake is so free with its invective and violence. Maybe the answer is to take a different approach structurally and stylistically instead. Eden Lake is linear, so let’s make its oppo non-linear. Perhaps structured as a series of incidents from different perspectives that first make it appear that the teens are guilty, before it becomes apparent that the oldies are to blame for the escalating violence. And who are these different accounts related to? Why not the local police?

Right, so we now have a Rashomon style tale in which incoming teenagers are blamed for the disruption of life in a suburb, only for it to become apparent that conservative locals are the primary culprits, lashing out at behaviour that exists primarily in their imaginations. Sounds good to me.

If you want to get fancy about it, you could call Brubaker’s approaches heuristics, that is rules of thumb. And as you can see from how this little thought experiment has played out, keeping your eyes and ears open for useful heuristics can be a valuable way of expanding your repertoire of creative strategising.

Two years ago, it happened. Out the house to get the tram that would take me to the station for a train to London, and in my hurry I tripped over a stub of pipe poking out of the pavement. A couple of teenagers saw me do it and drew uncharitable conclusions. I responded in like kind, and next thing I knew it had turned all serious. Both the lads came up, and challenged me about what I’d said. The fact that they’d initiated the abuse didn’t seem to be worth reiterating, especially when one of them waved the word ‘knife’ around. I knew at that point that nothing would happen, that all I had to do was wait for them to do their macho thing to their satisfaction for thirty seconds or so before letting me on my way. Which they did.

The picture in your head you’ve made of those teenagers is almost certainly like that of the ones in Eden Lake, a canny offering from writer/director James Watkins. Teacher Jenny and boyfriend Steve get away from it all by the titular body of water. They encounter a bunch of feral teenagers who don’t take kindly to being asked to turn their music down. And things go down hill. Rapidly. Violently. Terminally.

It’s a very well executed shocker that plays perfectly into Middle England’s fears of youth culture. Perfectly pitched, it’s living proof of my theory that filmmakers could do worse than take inspiration from the anxieties that the Daily Mail expresses so well. No, it’s not massively original, but there’s a wealth of telling social detail here that demonstrates how well Watkins knows his territory. The teens look, act, and sound like real teenagers. Their parents are perfectly credible too. This is horror that emerges from everyday life, and is all the more powerful for it.

Eden Lake stands in stark contrast to recent American shocker The Strangers, which lacked any convincing social or psychological aspect to its unpleasantness, or even interest in those areas. The Strangers was a remake of superior French horror Ils, where the reveal of the antagonists packed a powerful punch, like Eden Lake one with a socially relevant angle.

Execution is everything, and Watkins doesn’t put a foot wrong, other than in maybe making teacher Jenny a bit too nice when we first meet her. The edits are sharp and crisply timed, and the story is told in strong visual beats, carrying you forward with its momentum. Sure, there’s an implicit nod to a whole bunch of other films along the way, but inevitably so: this is quality genre filmmaking.

One element particularly interested me, when Jenny hides in a truly appalling bin to hide from her youthful pursuers. The reek of the bin is so corrupt that even the teens are wary of it. When she emerges from this unholy resting place, Jenny is reborn as a vengeful killer. Intentionally or not, it reminds me of a corresponding scene in The Descent, when one of the women is symbolically reborn from the waters of the cave to become a goddess of death.

It’s a remorseless film that doesn’t let up for a minute, cleverly plotted and executed in every respect. Its climax could apparently go either way, it seems, and Watkins’ choice of unremitting but tragically plausible grimness left me with a very dark feeling as I left the cinema.

Oh Superman.  First of the superheroes, and all too often the dullest.  Being the most powerful being on the planet doesn’t make you the most interesting (just one of the reasons George Bush is low on most peoples’ fantasy dinner party lists).  It’s a conundrum that’s faced comics writers for decades now, and as time has gone on audiences have demanded more sophisticated answers.  Way back when, a flying alien who could zap bank robbers with his eye beams was all people wanted.  Today, the discriminating reader has probably read Watchmen and wants a side order of insight into the protagonist’s psyche along with the requisite fisticuffs.

That’s assuming the prospective reader is aware of comics at all.  Sales have plummeted over the last 20 years, and there’s a generation of kids more familiar with Superman through his appearance in cartoons and on t-shirts than in comics, which have grown more expensive and often inaccessible with it, serving the existing market of men over 30 rather than the kids that superheroes were first designed to entertain.

Faced with a diminishing market for one of its key properties, DC Comics opted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century, turning to established writer and Superman afficionado Mark Waid to do the job.  His new take on the man from Krypton is contained in Superman: Birthright, and he does an engrossing job at getting under the skin of his red-caped hero assisted by excellent art from penciller Leinil Francis Yu, inker Gerry Alanguilan, and colourist Dave McCaig.

Key to Waid’s take on the Man of Steel is the realisation that Clark Kent is the mask that Superman wears in the absence of an actual mask.  But getting to that point happens only in a masterful opening featuring Kent as an itinerant journalist in Ghana, who befriends a political leader offering hope to his tribe, only to be gunned down by powerful enemies.  The genius of this opening issue is the way it relates African tribalism and symbols to Clark’s own alien origins, inspiring the young journalist to take up a heroic role wearing the colours of his people, who were united under the flag that we read as an S on Superman’s chest.

After that master stroke, things feel slightly more calculated, especially where the rivalry between Kent and his arch enemy Lex Luthor is concerned.  It’s still cleverly done though, and owes as much to the Smallville tv series as to the comic’s history.  In fact, the whole story would make an excellent feature film, certainly after the utterly unimpressive Superman Returns.  Let’s hope that the creative talent behind the next Superman film takes a cue from this excellent series rather, as rumoured, than taking a darker turn in the wake of the success of Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman sequel.

Mark Waid clearly delineates credible relationships between Clark Kent, his adoptive parents, feisty reporter Lois Lane and Lex Luthor.  Whether succeeding writers have taken Waid’s lead I have no idea: I follow comic creators, almost always writers, rather than characters.  Which is why I’m looking forward to picking up the forthcoming anthology of Grant Morrison’s recent take on the hero from Krypton in his All Star Superman collaboration with art by fellow Scot Frank Quitely.  Rather than come up with a Superman for followers of the likes of Buffy, which is essentially what Waid has done with aplomb, Morrison has immersed himself in the sheer epic capacity of the character to tell truly fabulous tales, fantastic myths that are larger than life in every respect.  For anyone interested in the potential of this fascinating archetype, I’d recommend reading Waid’s take for a grounded approach to Superman, before losing yourself in the imaginative worlds that Morrison conjures.

So, Casualty is back, and I swear Charlie Fairhead (Derek Thompson) has been there since the days of Florence Nightingale. And the BBC seem to think he’s equally emblematic of nursing in the nation’s consciousness, giving him a starring role in a video being made about healthcare at Holby General that gave him and other characters the chance to pontificate about the state of the nation with specific regard to the business of putting people back together again. It wasn’t altogether convincing, but it served a purpose.

This is the 23rd season of Casualty, and they’ve come back with a bang this time. The video device was cleverly used in this evening’s returning episode to provide potential new viewers with a perspective on the different tribes of the NHS: doctors, nurses, and paramedics. And the video crew were also caught up in the episode’s main story, featuring an excellently executed towerblock blaze.

This time round the show’s makers have gone for hardhitting, and for the most part it worked. A sense of Holby’s teenage underclass was developed, and the blaze storyline started with a white girl being heckled by black ones getting her own back by letting off a firework rocket inside their high rise building. One way to deal with bullying, I guess.

The girl in question turned out to come from a racist family, and left a swastika and a turd in the office of a black nurse she didn’t like. Looking for her, the nurse — Tess Bateman (Suzanne Packer) — ended up getting impaled on a piece of metal by the blazing flats. You couldn’t accuse the show of lacking stakes, in this case a big rusty one through Tess’s chest.

Inside the flats, things were just as intense. The video crew had accompanied a team of paramedics accompanied by a doctor, and while they were seeing to an elderly woman and her learning disabled grandson, the man in the flat below was in danger of immolation from the rapidly spreading fire.

The script and direction were pacy and urgent, and though it maybe moved a bit too fast at times it was good to see that the show’s makers have clearly thought about how they’d like Casualty to look and feel. Here’s hoping they can pull it off: this is clever and well-executed popular drama that I’ll be checking out again, if only tomorrow so I can see how this particular storyline resolves.

You’re going to have to trust me when I tell you that you wouldn’t have liked it at my secondary school. Here’s a snippet of the school song:
‘Where the iron heart of England throbs
Beneath its sombre robe
Stands a school whose sons have made her
Great and famous round the globe’
Note the word ’sombre’, an important clue as to the school’s values and character. Oh, and where the ‘iron heart of England’ throbbed was Birmingham.

An institution designed for turning out interchangeable middle managers, the school was nevertheless troubled by a few creative souls who didn’t quite fit in. Often, these kids blossomed under the guidance of a brilliant art teacher, Mr Appleby. One of them had a thing for painting rock band logos: this was back in the 70s, when bands like Rainbow and Whitesnake had proper logos.

Anyway, one day my rucksack went missing, and I didn’t find it until it was time to go home. Only, now it was emblazoned with a vibrant flame-coloured Kiss logo. I hadn’t heard any Kiss at that point, and haven’t heard much since, but damn if those guys don’t have the visual side of their act down to a fine art. Seeing their red-yellow name writ large on my dull blue-grey rucksack gave me a thrill of sorts, but at the same time I wondered what the point of it all was, and whether I’d be in some sort of trouble.

I bring this to mind having seen the latest installment of the adventures of Hellboy. Under the guidance of Guillermo del Toro, the first part was a fantastic romp, that brought Mike Mignola’s sparky comic creation to ebullient screen life. OK, so it was just a lark, without the depth of imagination that del Toro demonstrated in the truly beautiful Pan’s Labyrinth, but it was heaps of fun and showed real vitality up to an underwhelming ending — the clockwork Nazi was much more interesting than the characterless CGI beast at the film’s climax.

Hellboy 2, sadly, is a real disappointment. And the responsibility is clearly in del Toro’s court. In much the same way that my rucksack was vandalised by an artist with no real focus for his talents, Hellboy 2 is spoiled by a tiresomely abundant display of del Toro’s visual talents, and loses any sense of the leaner style Mike Mignola brings to Hellboy. Let’s remember, Hellboy is Mignola’s creation. A bit of artistic licence is fine, but del Toro has frankly spraypainted the world that Mignola devised, overpainting it with stuff that has no place there.

We know that del Toro has an amazing visual imagination. But much of Hellboy 2 is a peacock display of that flair with no sense of discipline, restraint, or appropriateness. If I see a monster with its eyes somewhere other than its head once more I swear I shall scream: del Toro’s imagination is compulsive, with tics that become tiresome on repetition. Used judiciously — see Pan’s Labyrinth once again — his fertile visual flair is astonishing; here it’s like being assaulted by someone with an arty form of Tourette’s.

You’ll note I haven’t said much about the story. There is a good reason for this. The story functions basically as a means of the characters progressing from Location A to Location B, there to pick up a Plot Token that will enable them to proceed to Location C, each location peopled by beings more fabulous than the ones before. No emotional engagement, just visual fireworks. And like the firework displays that your uncle had, when he’d been paid a bonus and wanted to impress the neighbours, there’s only so much pyrotechnics you can take.

Earlier this evening I sat outside a pub with a friend. At the next table, two men in their early 20s sat and sparked up cigars. Nothing special about that, except it became pretty clear that one of the cigar smokers wasn’t enjoying the experience at all. He pretended to, maintaining face in front of his friend and their female companions, but his non-verbal signals made his discomfort apparent.

I thought it would make an interesting bit of colour in a screenplay, and thinking about why that was so realised that it contained what so many people claim is the essence of drama: conflict. He was smoking the cigar in an attempt to project an image that was at odds with his actual feelings about the coils of smoke he was inhaling. In his head, a sophisticate enjoying an experience that marked him out from those around him with mere cigarettes. In his throat, foul smelling gases that he didn’t want anywhere near him.

Conflict is found in the tiniest places in our lives. Granny likes Mario Lanza, grandad swears by Glen Miller. Vernon likes Tabasco, Herbie prefers Reggae Reggae sauce. You say po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to. At some level, we invest ourselves in these distinctions, trivial as they are, because they ensure that we are not as others. What seems a stylistic tic, an apparently superficial choice, can run pretty deep: there are a whole bunch of magazines that devote considerable number of pages to applauding or penalising the outfits that female celebrities wear.

The good news is, the more distinctions you can find, the more dramatic potential you’ve come across. Interesting the way that people respond to that. When people want to be friends, the biggest differences are no obstacle. If animosity appears, every distinction is magnified and becomes evidence of vile perfidy.

There’s no differences like the ones that separate allies. Anyone who’s been around political pundits will realise that: minor differences of doctrine can place people on different sides of the fence forever. I remember a story about Islamic clerics in Afghanistan who had held a meeting to decide what to do about the question of homosexuals. After much weighty debate, the conclave divided (of course) into two, err, camps. One faction favoured dropping gays off buildings to kill them. The other proposed putting them in pits and burying them alive. Naturally, each group thought the other’s solution was wrong.

It’s at this point that I’m reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s dictum that ‘We are living on the Planet of the Apes’. And while we’re here, one way to make the best of the situation is to make dramas, so that at least people won’t get killed as they express differences of opinion, but instead make entertainment from them. Or would that be art? Anyone care to dispute with me on which it would be..?