Even in the heat of my teenage comic collecting, I never found much to admire in Green Arrow.  Oh, I came across him when he was in team titles, such as Justice League of America, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to pick up any of his solo appearances.  What’s swung me around, and why I’ve recently bought a Green Arrow graphic novel, is the creative talent behind it: writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock.

Diggle and Jock were the British creative team behind the highly engaging political action thriller, The Losers, which is soon going to be a feature film and could well be a fine one in the right hands.  Diggle also had a knack for stripping down occult antihero John Constantine down to his essentials, making the character’s Hellblazer comic better than it had been for a long while.  So, put Diggle and Jock together again, and we’ll get to find out if the adage that there are no lousy characters, only unimaginative creators, is right.

The writer and artist have done a Year One with Green Arrow here, meaning they’ve gone back to the character’s roots with fresh eyes, as Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli did to devastating effect with their Batman: Year One way back when.  And the good news is, they’ve done a fine job.  Diggle takes his cues from action movies more than superhero comics, and spins a taut yarn about playboy Oliver Queen playing at extreme sports and having no concept of life until he comes across a drug-running scheme operating on a tropical island.

All a bit James Bond so far, and that’s fair enough, though Jock’s lean angular linework and David Baron’s simple but inventive colours give the pages a contemporary feel.  It’s expertly paced stuff, as Queen learns that his hired help is in league with gorgeous-but-deadly heroin smuggler China White, and seeks to parlay his extreme sports skills into the ability to survive long enough to triumph over the woman who has enslaved the island’s population to producing opium for the drugs trade.

So, Queen gets to find purpose in life, and hone his athleticism and combat skills, and there’s even a kind-of-credible explanation for his unlikely abilities with a bow: as a child, Oliver was introduced to the man who coached a screen Robin Hood in his archery skills, who reckoned that the youngster was the greatest natural bowman he’d encountered.  Now, with survival at stake, and social justice in the mix too, Oliver fulfils that early promise to become a lethal archer, picking off his opponents with improvised arrows.  Sure, it’s kind of hokey, but it works, and that’s what matters.

Green Arrow in this incarnation is to comics what Jack Reacher is to multi-million selling paperbacks: a hero you can drop into pretty much any kind of situation where fighting skills, a knack for survival, and a moral compass are what make the difference between the forces of evil triumphing and good enduring for another day.  So far it doesn’t seem that DC have followed up this Year One, which came out in individual issues in 2007, with a series that picks up where Diggle and Jock have left off — but maybe there’s hope for that in the future, or for a feature film that follows the template this collection establishes.

Andy Diggle is now working over at Marvel, and I’ve yet to be inclined to pick up any of his work there as the publisher seems determined to get creators to tie all their stories together in ways impenetrable to the casual audience.  I love the comics medium, but nothing kills it for me surer than ‘events’ which bring different titles together, and spawn new ones in their wake: I follow writers primarily, artists to a lesser extent, and I want to see them creating stories that make sense in their own right, rather than contributing their pieces to what amounts to a clumsily moving pulp format Rubik’s Cube that disintegrates when exposed to critical intelligence.

Good thing I chose to see Rudo Y Cursi today: with only two other people in the cinema, I have a horrible feeling this gem of a film isn’t going to make much of a showing on the multiplex circuit.  Let’s hope it fares better in its more natural home, the arthouse cinema.

I’m torn between being grateful that a Mexican comedy is there at a multiplex at all, and concerned that its poor box office take will mean whoever makes these decisions will say no to an equivalent film next time around.  If it wasn’t for those pesky subtitles, I’m sure it’d get a healthy audience, but reality is that for many people reading is not the easy and pleasant experience that it is for fans of arthouse flicks.

Tato and Beto live in rural Mexico, and both are good enough at football to attract the attention of a talent scout.  It’s Tato who gets selected, though in his dreams he wants to make it as a singer, and Tato duly heads off to Mexico City with his new agent.  A few weeks later, and he persuades the agent to give his goalkeeper brother a second chance, and soon the two of them are living the high life.

What’s striking is the stark brutality of how life functions in a society where economics shape choices more clearly than they do in the west.  Beto abandons his family without hesitation to go and live his dream, and no moral stance is taken on the drug dealers who get involved with their home town and family: they might be rough, but they bring wealth to the area, and ultimately the brothers come to depend on them when their footballing careers are over.

That lack of conventional morality adds a vividness to the story that’s there in the way it’s filmed too: the screen is a riot of colour and movement, whether capturing the greens of a banana plantation, the action on a football pitch, the chaos of urban Mexico, or a family wedding.  It’s a bombardment of the senses in the same way that Slumdog Millionaire was, an immersion in a culture where things just ain’t like we’re used to…except when they are, and are becoming more so.

Part of what’s captured is the growing Americanisation of Mexico.  The journey to the capital to make riches by playing sport is one familiar tale in that regard, and there are other narratives too.  Tato hooks up with a vacuous tv presenter and his life becomes a variation on that endured by Posh and Becks, until she dumps him for next season’s hotter player: easy come, easy go.  And Beto’s wife is reluctant to join her husband in Mexico City because she’s become a success selling health products through a multi level marketing scheme.

Carlos Cuaron writes and directs with aplomb in almost every respect.  I’d perhaps question the use of the scout as a narrator, and maybe the ending goes on a litte beyond where it could have stopped, but fundamentally this is fresh and strong filmmaking from a creator I’d like to see more of.  For now, I’ll have to work backwards, and see the same director’s much acclaimed Y Tu Mama Tambien.  He was thanked, too, on 21 Grams — which I don’t rate — and Amores Perros, which I do, suggesting that he’s one of the more influential voices in Mexican cinema and one I hope to be hearing from in years to come.

It’s disappointing when a film doesn’t live up to its potential, especially when you bring goodwill to it on the basis of previous experience.  In this case, I was inclined to give Sunshine Cleaning a pass on the basis of the delightful Little Miss Sunshine, which was the previous film the production team brought to the screen.  Sad to report then, that Sunshine Cleaning is a classic case of a missed opportunity, and despite a solid enough foundation failed to captivate me.

Rose and Emily are sisters, Rose the former cheerleader who bangs her high school boyfriend in a motel room in the half hope that he’ll abandon his wife; and Emily the kooky one who still lives with their dad, who is seemingly drafted in from a passing production of Death of  a Salesman in which he plays the haplesss lead.  Rose has an eight year old son, Oscar, and it’s his need to go to a school that will address his needs that drives the plot, which sees the sisters set up in business as crime scene cleaners.

So far, so good: it’s an engaging premise with strong performances all round.  Problem is, the script.  It’s functional enough, and hits all the beats a touching indie movie should, but rarely does it ever convince.  Which is a shame.  For instance, the business of crime scene cleaning is explored nowhere near enough, and it’s fascinating and unfamiliar territory.  My guess is screenwriter Megan Holley wanted the story to stay within specific emotional territory, rather than discovering something beyond what she had delineated as the parameters of her story.  So, we get some cutesy business wherein Emily finds some mementoes from a death scene and stalks the dead woman’s daughter to give them to her after some intense semi-sapphic stuff.  Which is, you know, OK in a soft focus way…but how about instead they’d been called to a crime scene a friend or lover was involved with; maybe the gruesome pregnant real estate agent who invites Rose to her baby shower?

But no, that’d be too full-on for a film which is trying awful hard to replicate the emotional beats of Little Miss Sunshine.  Trouble being, it lacks the goofy charm of its predecessor, and its producers would be advised to look into new directions rather than hoping lightning will strike twice.  To me, pretty much everything about Sunshine Cleaning comes across as anaemic, from a gutless soundtrack to some teethgrinding business wherein not only lickle Oscar, but his fully grown mother, use their company vehicle’s CB to attempt to communicate with the beyond.  Even writing that gives me the shivers, and gives you an indication of how the film again and again opts for the twee at the expense of true impact or insight.

One element in the film does just about survive the overall sense of the audience being put in a veal crate and deprived of protein.  There’s some delightful business concerning the sisters’ mum, who died some years ago, and whose appearance as a waitress in a tv movie is part of family mythology.  It starts with the sisters being seemingly amused by scenes where waitresses serve pie, and gains resonance when you realise that it’s their own mother they’re referencing, and not some generic all-American waitress.  In due course the film appears on tv, and the two sisters watch it in different places, and that forms a greater connection between them than much of the meaningful and predictable dialogue they share about their feelings, which came across like being at a party where a singer-songwriter touted by her record company as the next Joni Mitchell is being played too loud.

Why stick it to this film when I’ve recently given some braindead action movies a pass?  Well, it’s all about style and expectations.  I’d rather see an action movie that accomplishes its objectives with class than a film that wants to engage subtler emotions but fails to mine the emotional potential of its raw material.  And Sunshine Cleaning strikes me as being fey and malnourished, aiming for the right notes but failing to reach them for lack of conviction.

What do you know, this networking thing pays off.  A few years back, I attended the Gothenburg Film Festival and had a fine old time: the snow and the setting and the laid back culture made it a delightful experience, and on top of that I was attending a course and got talking to a producer.  That same producer is now assisting me in a big way with a couple of projects that I’m hoping will bear fruit in months to come, and other irons are in the fire.

Which is to say, you never know when you’ll come across someone who you get on with and can assist you in realising your goals.  In which case, treating people kindly in the assumption that they’ll reciprocate is not just polite, it’s a pragmatic stance to take.

Besides which, anxious and paranoid people are no fun to be around, so why join that tribe?  Well, arguably because they have access to drugs, but that brings us back to anxiety and paranoia again.  Nancy Reagan had it right when she said Just Say No, though you’d think a woman of her generation would get kids to append Thank You to that statement: no wonder street crime is in the news, when even First Ladies are contributing to moral decline.

Increasingly, people are using social networking sites to extend their tendrils and get across that they are wonderful people worth getting to know.  Sure, it smacks of desperation when every Twitter update is to promote something they’re selling, but there are people who get the balance right and communicate with you like a human being, and not a representative of a demographic.

One such worthy is William M. Akers, American author of Your Screenplay Sucks! .  William recently got in touch and asked if I’d be willing to promote a forthcoming London workshop he’s doing.  I agreed, so here is where you can find the details of that gig: I’d go myself if I hadn’t got other plans.  And, because I’m cheeky like that, I asked him for a copy of his book to review here.  So, I’ll clear my throat before doing just that.

Harrumph.

It has to be pointed out, I have not read the book in its entirety.  But, the nature of the text is such that you can skip about to areas of relevance to your own particular brand of suckitude.  Different sections cover concept, character, dialogue, scenes, and there are more nuts and bolts based pieces on format, enquiry letters, and so forth.

The advice is solid and good-humoured, with examples drawn from the writer’s extensive experience: he has had three films made from his scripts, and teaches screenwriting too.  I’d be pushed to quibble with most of what he says, except to suggest that he doesn’t challenge his own thinking: having come to a conclusion he underlines it rather than coming up with exceptions to the rule.  But this isn’t the sort of book where you want nuances and prevarication: it’s a very practical no-nonsense screenwriting text.

This is a book I’d heartily recommend, particularly for screenwriting novices and those interested in mainstream success.  Which seeing as that’s where the money is, includes most of us.  And suggests why Akers has staked his claim with a book of this nature: there’s a market for it, and he’s supplied an admirable book for that market.

You could probably guess that Your Screenplay Sucks! doesn’t have the grand paradigm approach that Robert McKee and John Truby have from the title alone.  And that’s fine.  There’s a place for books like those, and there’s equally a place for books like this one, which is more accessible and structured so that you can find advice relevant to your predicament with ease.

So, yesterday was xXx, which naturally means that today’s review is of The Transporter.  It makes a certain kind of sense, since they were certainly compared at the time, and Loaded described The Transporter as “The film xXx wishes it was”.  Which sounds like a right sausage-fest: lads mag comparing Vin Diesel and Jason Statham’s hot new releases (as of 2002).  So, what exactly is on offer here, and what does comparison with xXx tell us?

Where xXx is fundamentally an attempt to reinvent James Bond for people who drink Pepsi Max and know what a level boss is and how to take one down, The Transporter makes no particular assumptions of its viewers, other than that they enjoy a good bit of action.  The story is almost a fairy tale: Statham plays Frank, a man defined by his ability to drive a car extraordinarily well, and who wants no complication in his life.  He lives in a place that’s straight out of a fairy tale in fact, and things go well for him until he breaks one of his own rules and investigates one of the packages that he’s been paid to transport for some bad guys.  It contains a beautiful young Chinese woman, a princess in storybook terms, the daughter of an evil crime boss/bad king.

It’s all presented with remarkable simplicity.  Perhaps I should say clarity.  And it’s done with elegant visual storytelling, immaculate photography and crisp edits: it really does look the business, perhaps no surprise given Luc Besson’s involvement (co-writing and co-producing), though the director is Cory Yuen.  That finesse follows throughout, and gives the film a rhythm and sheen that’s much more enticing than xXx’s, which is more straightforward by comparison — and that’s the film that positions itself as cutting edge.

The mythic elements of The Transporter are notable.  A stoic hero, and a princess, caught up in a plot that her father is significantly involved with.  Along the way, lots of extravagantly choreographed fights which demonstrate Statham’s prowess with fists, feet, and guns.  Each fight sequence offers something the last one didn’t, whether it’s Statham removing his jumper to not only reveal his torso but strangle bad guys with his knitwear; ice-rink slippiness when oil is spilled over the floor and our Jason’s cunning means he’s the only fighter standing; or a fight in the close confines of a bus where the hero deals with a bunch of mooks through gymnastics using the architecture of the bus interior.  This is virtuoso stuff, and Statham is clearly highly trained to be able to perform his stunts, where Vin Diesel is more reliant on fast edits and explosions to look impressive.

Another mythic aspect is the destruction of Statham’s lovely home.  The dwelling itself symbolises the life that the character Frank has created for himself, and that life is in jeapordy.  Specifically, it gets demolished by a bunch of missiles whizzing in its direction, sent by bad guys in reprisal for Frank breaking his own rule.  So, the rules of his existence don’t work: they constrain the truer version of Frank that’s waiting to be awakened through an experience of rebirth.  It’s the rubric for the Tarot card The Tower, all about the death of the false personality and the chance for starting again.  Sound over the top?  That’s exactly what happens when his home is trashed and Frank and the princess escape underwater (symbolism alert, in case you thought I was joking about rebirth).  By the time they surface, Frank cares about her and that creates a whole new outlook for him, complete with problems in the form of a psychotic father-in-law and the decidedly violent crew he hangs out with.

Bottom line?  xXx is a heap of fun, but really it’s just a sneaky way of getting Korn fans to watch action films without sneering.  The Transporter is a more satisfying experience, tapping as it does into mythic elements that enrich the narrative but don’t get in the way of some awesome car chases and fabulous fight scenes.  It’s quality fromage where xXx is pure cheese.

Rarely have I seen a film as focused on its demographic as xXx.  It kicks off with a spy modelled on James Bond who finds himself out of place at a Rammstein gig: so much so that the dinner jacketed misfit is killed there.  Whoops.  Time for another approach.  Which is where Vin Diesel comes in: a snowboarding, paragliding, jivetalking badass perfect for a generation wired into video games and with no attention span…he even has the film’s title tattooed into the back of his neck should you forget it in the excitement of communicating the rush of xXx to a pal.

Vin plays Xander Cage, who is, like, totally awesome: he even has a skateramp built into his loft apartment, and seems to make a living by thumbing his nose up to The Man with feats of derring-do that get streamed onto his website.  Only, for a film of this sort to work we need the conflict that comes from having him work for The Man, in the form of Samuel L Jackson, here representing the National Security Agency.

While the film is all kinetic energy and high-octane music it works well: you can imagine an audience moshing to it.  And if it maintained that momentum things would be fine — but that formula was perfected by The Bourne Trilogy.  Here, despite the tautness, there are still periods of slack, and the writing and performances aren’t enough to make those as compelling as the frenzied stuff.

Problem is, once xXx has got the thing with the target audience sussed, and reinforced with periodic references to punk lyrics and bad guys with dreadlocks, it’s a standard espionage thriller.  A group of Russian dudes called Anarchy 99 have nefarious plans involving a solar powered submarine and its lethal payload, our man Xander gets to stop them using his martial prowess and gravelly asides.

Along the way, Xander realises that there really is more to life than extreme sports and poledancers: maybe this patriotisim deal really means something, see?  Which is a shame; there was a touch of Michael Moore about Xander at the start of the film, and he’s more Roger Moore by the end.  Now there’s a thought: a radical action hero acting against big corporations and standing for social justice…hmm.

It’s all crystallised in the line that signals the end of the second act: “I’ve risked my life for a lot of stupid reasons: this is the first one that makes sense to me.”  Cue Xander rallying the troops for a full-on assault on a castle: what fun!  Leaping out of a plane on a snowboard to a nu-metal soundtrack has never seemed so meaningful: no wonder the American Army is enthused about video games as a means of propaganda.

It’s all such fun that I was laughing aloud, and sometimes applauding, what happened onscreen.  There are times when cinema is all about adrenalin,and xXx is one of the more successful films at delivering that heightened state, not as gleefully self-aware as Crank but livelier than Mr Bond’s recent outings.  Judge whether that’s a good thing or not by your mood: each provides the Recommended Daily Allowance of high-action hokum.

My first run-in with DC Comics was when I was maybe 9 years old, and got ill while staying with my gran in Devon.  To keep me occupied while I recovered, she dug out a box of comics that one of my uncles had collected, and I was soon immersed in a Justice League/Justice Society team-up.  I didn’t have a clue what was happening, but I found it captivating all the same, as brightly coloured characters run and flew around.

For some reason, some of the characters existed as two versions: the Flash for instance had one incarnation in which he wore a tin hat, while another version of him was helmet-free.  Apparently, the two Justice teams inhabited parallel worlds, and I latched on to the idea that people had alternate versions of themselves.  Maybe in another universe, there was a young Adrian who also wore a helmet.

This notion of a multiverse in which superheroes from different realities duked it out with cosmic evil sat pretty well with me, gorged as I already was on mythical characters from different cultures who in some ways seemed to be versions of each other.  The Greeks and Romans had gods and heroes who were comparable, so why wouldn’t there be more than one version of Superman?

And while my tastes in comics have grown more sophisticated over the years, it’s good to report that there are still creators who can tap into that kind of primal chaos and pull out new stories from it.  Grant Morrison is a master of this kind of stuff, and he has sussed that the trick to this kind of writing isn’t to pit good against evil and resolve it with zaps and thumps, but to create vast tapestries of ideas that only mighty heroes have the stature to play a part in.  Which is just what Final Crisis is all about.

There’s a breathless urgency to the writing: Morrison chooses to cut between different groups of players and not make the connective tissue as clear as some would prefer it.  A brave choice, and one that works for me: I want to be dazzled and mystified and not have everything spelled out for me in this kind of writing.  It’s absolutely appropriate for larger than life fiction that the concepts are too big to fit into your head the first time round.

I couldn’t begin to tell you who all the characters are who turn up for this adventure.  But plenty are needed, because the deadly deity Darkseid is recreating himself in every human on Earth through high tech villainy, and that surely calls for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to get all their pals involved in the fight back against his tyrrany.

It’s mindboggling stuff, and thankfully the art team, headed by J.G. Jones and Doug Mankhe, are up to the task of conveying the multi-dimensional scale of what unfolds.  Just don’t ask me to explain it to you at this point: we’re a million miles away from credibly plotted linear tales at this point.  Instead we’re sailing close to the edge of comprehensibility, on a voyage of the imagination that’s only possible because of Morrison’s sure hand at the tiller.  He likes it here, in this heady space where men become gods and time and space buckle in response to the epic deeds that are done.

What grounds the story, for all its hi-falutin conceptual and linguistic/artistic fireworks, is Morrison’s ability to convey characters with recognisable emotions amid the stuff of legend.  You want to cheer on both the characters you’re familiar with, and you’re led to empathise with a character who’s used to being a bad guy but who joins the goodies given the scale of what’s at stake: his journey is convincing, involving, and that gives you an investment in the story.

I can’t pretend I get all of what’s in Final Crisis, but I was thoroughly entertained in reading it, and really that’s what counts.  Grant Morrison is an exceptional writer whose love for the comics form has provided some of the best reads in the last twenty years.  His ability to handle both epic and personal material with equal flair is unusual, and a mark of just how talented a creator he is.

It makes a pleasant change to come across a book on film that treats popular cinema as something to be celebrated.  Even rarer for that book to treat its subject with intelligence.  But that’s exactly what Tom Shone’s Blockbuster does, and its subtitle How the Jaws and Jedi generation turned Hollywood into a boom-town makes its focus clear.

That orientation is refreshing.  So many books on film are sniffy about those that make money, elevating the likes of Chinatown and Cassavetes far above their worth because their stance on life is somehow more ‘realistic’ than, say, Close Encounters.  Which is sad, because as a viewer and a writer I have equal time for mainstream cinema and arthouse movies, and feel that the difference is often only in the amount of money involved in a picture, which in turn dictates casting and marketing.  Budget is not a guarantor of quality, and neither is lack of it.

Shone articulates perceptions I’d not come across before, and which mark him out as a singularly astute commentator.  He’s fascinating on the distinctions between Spielberg and Lucas, for instance, contrasting the former’s ability to conjure a certain kind of relaxed Americana in his films with the latter’s fascination with speed.  His suggestion that Lucas is all about recreating the buzz he got from souping up fast cars to whizz round town in his youth, seen directly in American Graffiti and implicit in the restlessness of everything he’s done since, accelerating narrative at the expense of character, is fascinating.

Shone is a big fan of Spielberg, portraying him as the unwitting father of the blockbuster through the unexpected success of Jaws.  The phenomenon unleashed by the film got other studios thinking about how they could rule the box office, and it wasn’t too long before a second film confirmed that all the rules had changed in the form of Star Wars.  Those two between them created the notion of the weird beast we now know as the tentpole movie, which every studio thinks they know the mad science behind, and which is an ever-bigger gamble every summer as hundreds of millions of dollars are spent making and marketing the things.

One area that’s particularly interesting in Blockbuster is Shone’s account of the top films there’ve ever been.  We’re used as consumers to reading that the latest hyped up movie has overtaken all others in securing its place at the pinnacle of money generated, and Shone’s inflation-adjusted version makes interesting reading, putting Gone With The Wind back at the top, and including a bunch of Disney animated classics too.  Next time you read someone pimping their movie as being the biggest ever, take a look at Shone’s list and see if it still stacks up.

Some of the business strategies examined make fascinating reading, too.  When Lucas finally came to deliver the first of his new Star Wars films, inspired to do so on the basis of the continued health of merchandising sales, a very canny trick was played.  Rather than book it onto every screen going, as many big films were doing, the number of cinemas showing it was restricted.  Result?  A replay of what happened first time Star Wars came around: audiences queuing to see the film, which was a rewind to what happened first time round in 1977.  Cue media coverage of the resurrected phenomenon, which helps account for the fact that the marketing budget for the Star Wars relaunch was surprisingly small: the media was gagging to tell the story anyway.

Altogether, Blockbuster is an excellent book, comprising film criticism, interviews with people who were there when it all happened, insights into the industry, and more besides.  It chronicles a fascinating period, when the megahit went from being an out-of-the-blue event to one that filmmakers thought they could scientifically engineer.  There might be some truth in that, as the success of Michael Bay’s glorious monsters demonstrates.  But just as often, those genetically modified movies turn out to be lousy and tank with audiences.  Which is reassuring, suggesting as it does that as long as receipts bear no relation to expenditure, that the business will continue to back new talent from unexpected places, in the hope that this new batch of creators has cracked the formula for box office gold.

So, out of all the unwatched DVDs I have scattered around the house, including everything from all five seasons of The Wire to much-lauded French thriller L’Appartement, what did I settle down to watch earlier?  Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

The first outing for these two amiable ethnic stoners featured their efforts to buy cheap and nasty burgers, and you could easily look at teen comedies of this nature as being the cinematic equivalent of greasy fast food.  So what am I doing watching trash like this when I haven’t even smoked a joint for years pretty much equal to the target age of the audience?

Answer is, that Harold and Kumar, despite being in formulaic comedies that have an execrable attitude to the portrayal of women, still stand out for a certain freewheeling anarchic attitude I find attractive.  And that outlook I find is a refreshing contrast to the machismo of much American cinema.

I’m also interested in seeing how America itself responds to the kind of noxious crap that the country is known for in headlines the world over.  And a film that ridicules Guantanamo Bay through the antics of a pair of students; one Indian, one Korean, both thoroughly American, counts as a fascinating response.

The two heroes even meet up with George Bush Jr, and – sharing a joint and listening to Hendrix — empathise with his problems living up to George Sr’s expectations.  OK, maybe not very nuanced, but as an example of young America it’s got a lot more going for it than Hannah Montana.

What will be interesting is seeing if Harold & Kumar can stretch to another film in the Obama presidency.  How will the two heroes get on in an America led by a man who seems to share their liberal outlook, never mind their non-white colouring?  Let’s hope they still find room to fall out – Harold and Kumar deferring to someone just because he’s a president with something in common with them would stick in the throat.

It’s possible that Obama could even become a third member of this double act, if his shouldn’t-have-said-that comments about the Special Olympics are anything to go by.  And wouldn’t that be something?  A President finding fraternity with a pair of witless substance abusers – it’ll be like the Kennedys all over again.

In the absence of Bill Hicks and his searingly intelligent comedy, you’ve got to settle for what you can get.  And Hicks was a one off.  What makes Harold & Kumar interesting is that a lot of people need to get together to agree a concept like this and put money into it.  The fact that it went well enough first time to justify another outing counts as a small victory in my eyes, a counterblast — or at least a fart gag — in response to much of what’s out there that people associate with America.

I’d like to know why we don’t have similar films being made in Britain.  Perhaps the nearest is Tormented, which I reviewed recently, and provides a twisted look at school bullying.  For the most part, British movie comedies are made by people associated with being funny on television, and it’d be satisfying to see younger and more diverse faces get involved in the act than the same old names that keep cropping up in dismal film outings.

Just for a change, I went and saw a documentary the other day.  Sleep Furiously is a lyrical portrait of a Welsh farming community viewed through the eyes of filmmaker Gideon Koppel.  It commences with a town cryer wandering somewhere out of town with a dog, and the images and narrative fragments that follow stack up to create a collage highlighting different aspects of the ebb and flow of rural life.

The overall effect is not unlike a dream.  There’s not really the kind of figure and ground relationship that happens when a camera points at a scene in a drama, where there’s purpose to the piece within a whole narrative, and the need to reveal elements of plot or character.  Instead, the feel is of a series of life studies done in an art class by a perceptive student: each choice creates another layer, and those layers combine in more or less coherent ways to produce an overall impression.  Musically, the analogy would be the distinction between a well-crafted pop song and an ambient mood piece; quite apt since the film’s music is culled from Aphex Twin recordings.

Given my immersion in the world of narrative, I was interested in how methods used within film of this kind could be used to the advantage of more story-based pieces.  Robert Altman had a flair for creating a documentary feel with much of his work: what choices are necessary to produce such an effect?  Part of it, alluded to already, is the suspension of a figure/ground relationship: rather than a particular character being the focus of the camera’s attention, a whole scene is captured, and the moves of the camera follow the rhythms of that scene rather than the purposeful actions of an individual.  Each element of what is seen is equal to the others: you choose what to highlight, rather than being led.

To introduce narrative into that approach, you might as well start at script stage.  So set up scenarios where the interest comes from anything other than the narrative thrust of the story.  Instead, allude to the narrative in metaphorical ways perhaps: have a romantic comedy start at a cattle auction, say.  Or a thriller that will become violent in an abattoir.  And use that setting to captivate the viewer at an unconscious level before doing the bit they’re expecting of introducing the protagonist.  Why not even have the protagonist present as one of several people amid what’s going on before concentrating on them further?

The oft-referenced barn building scene in Witness could be an inspiration here.  How about having such a scene early on in a film where your protagonist is participating in communal activity before leaving it to individuate?  Imagine: you have a scene where a whole bunch of people are mending the village’s fishing nets.  It’s  a group activity, good-humoured jibes exchanged as the task is undertaken.  Then there’s a cry from the nearby beach.  A child is in danger of drowning.  And one of the villagers is quicker onto his heels to save the kid than the others: this is our hero.  The other end of the tale, child rescued, misdeeds thwarted, etc, the returning hero once again gets absorbed in communal activities, balance in the world restored.

In Sleep Furiously, one particular communal activity helped get across what’s different: the choir, singing harmoniously together in Welsh, a beautiful otherworldly sound that was of the villages and the people who’d lived there for centuries and longer.  And dramatically speaking, that’s something to bear in mind when thinking about communities: what is it that distinguishes this group of people here from those there?  Your hero is going to be away from their people for the bulk of the film: make clear what it is they’re going to miss, to make more apparent the things they learn and change through, before their probable return to the fold, the same but different from the person they started the story as.