There were two films I was dying to see over Christmas, but what with all the social visits and tight deadlines, I couldn’t get out to the cinema until January. This was more alarming for me than many people could appreciate.
With the possibility that one or other of them might disappear from the cinemas before I saw them, it was a toss-up over which I should catch first. But I knew that of the two, ‘Avatar’ had to be seen on the big screen.
Luckily, I managed to catch ‘Sherlock Holmes’ last week too.
‘Avatar’ was everything it was promised to be, a stunning visual experience. Yes, the story was formulaic and predictable (‘Return of the Jedi’ meets ‘Dances With Wolves’), but I still had a great time. I went again last Sunday, taking my stepson this time . He absolutely loved it, but already the story had lost some of its grip on me. It was all about the spectacle. That said, I thought Stephen Lang made his character, Colonel Miles Quaritch, rise above the effects – he took what could have been a square part and gave it spikes, playing it with relish.
But I’m far more likely to watch ‘Sherlock Holmes’ again for pure, all-round entertainment. Fast-paced, sharply scripted, packed with action and gorgeous brooding visuals, this is what I look for in a good-time film. Guy Ritchie can blow hot and cold (let us not mention ‘Swept Away’), but when he’s on form, he produces bloody entertaining films.
I heard somewhere that more films have been made about Sherlock Holmes than any other character (about a hundred so far), so Ritchie had his work cut out for him. Taking an established Victorian format and turning it into a steampunk action film has really paid off (and not just ‘cos I’m a fan of steampunk). His kind of hard-bitten but burlesque style can lend itself to ham acting, but he carefully steered inside the line. And Robert Downey Junior may have another successful franchise on his hands as a result.
While in the cinema, I was delighted to see posters for a new film from one half of the Jeunet et Caro team. ‘Micmacs’ is the new offering from Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With his co-director/art director, Marc Caro, this French film-maker has brought us classics such as ‘Delicatessen’, ‘Amelie’ and ‘The City of Lost Children’. 
I love these films, with their offbeat humour and rich imagination, so I’m really looking forward to ‘Micmacs’.
I picked up ‘The City of Lost Children’ on DVD recently, and it was great to watch it again. Picture a blind cyborg cult, the hapless clones of the rubber-faced Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman’s dull-witted but earnest strong-man and the tough, streetwise orphan played by Judith Vittet, add in some wildly inventive devices and visuals and you have a trademark Jeunet et Caro headcase of a film. If you’ve never seen this, find it and treat yourself to some quality time.
On the subject of steampunk, I’m just finishing off ‘Fever Crumb’ by Philip Reeve. 
A prequel to the ‘Mortal Engines Quartet’ (brilliant books), it is every bit as good as the original four. I’d be very happy to see Reeve get another series out of this. I also loved his ‘Larklight’ trilogy, but felt they were bit too long for the younger age group they were aimed at. Instead, they probably appealed to people like me who grew up on Jules Verne and HG Wells.
It was a pity to see that they’ve dropped David Frankland’s covers for the quartet, but David Wyatt – illustrator of ‘Larklight’ – is a worthy successor. I’m really looking forward to seeing where Reeve takes the story from here.
