Late Night with the Devil

Directed by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes.  Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Ingrid Torelli, Rhys Auteri, Georgina Haig and Josh Quong Tart

Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) is a late-night talk show host whose show, Night Owls, competes with Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show for ratings. He has a great life but then his wife Madeline (Haig) dies of cancer. Delroy take a break but when he returns but the show begins to lose viewers. In desperation he plans a very special Halloween Special for October 31^st 1977. His guests include a psychic Christou (Bazzi) and a former magician turned debunker Carmichael (Bliss) but the stars of the show are planned to be Parapsychologist June (Gordon) and her teenage patient Lilly (Torelli) who June claims is possessed by a demon Lilly calls Mr Wriggles. When Delroy convinces June to conjure Mr Wriggles the stage is set for a Halloween no one will forget!

Some movies are just fun, some movies just capture your eye from start to finish. Late Night with the Devil IS one of those movies. While not perfect it’s an engaging and original found footage film (though as with many found footage films it can’t help but move outside of its scope on occasional, thankfully such detours are brief and don’t detract from the whole). And yes there is more than a hint of BBC’s Ghostwatch here, but that’s no bad thing.

The film looks incredible, the 1970s’ talk show aesthetic seems, to me at least, spot on, and the characters are so engrossing that this is one of those films I think I’d love, even if it didn’t head into the supernatural. I’d kinda like to watch some regular episodes of Night Owls.

At the heart of it all is Dastmalchian who plays Delroy to perfection. He’s ever so slightly sleezy, but never so much that you don’t like him, his love for his deceased wife seems genuine and sure, he’s desperate for ratings but what talk show host isn’t? Seriously without Dastmalchian this film wouldn’t be as good, and one hopes this is finally the breakthrough part for an actor who’s been around a while and always delivered interesting performances.

Fayssal Bazzi is good as ‘is he/isn’t he fake’ medium Christou, again nailing that 70s’ lounge lizard look, as does Ian Bliss as Carmichael who, given he’s a sceptic who wants to debunk the supernatural, actually doesn’t come across as remotely likeable, it seems less about the truth than it does about forging a new career. Laura Gordon is solid in perhaps the least interesting role, but someone has to play the straight man, and Ingrid Torelli switches between sweet and creepy eerily well. Special mention to Rhys Auteri as Jack’s comedy sidekick who really does feel like he’s stepped off the set of one of these shows.

Is it perfect? No. It isn’t as scary as I’d been led to believe it was, which is fine and I suspect my next viewing I’ll enjoy it even more knowing what I’m signing up for, and it doesn’t quite stick the landing, but frankly everything up to the final moments is so wonderful that this hardly matters.

A film I’ll be watching again, in fact I’m already planning on buying the Blu-Ray.

Looking Glass Sound

By Catriona Ward

In a remote cottage on the windswept Maine coast, a man named Wilder Harlow begins writing a book. It is the last book he’ll ever write. It is a story of his childhood companions and the adventures they had in the New England town where they spent their summers, a town menaced by the shadowy Daggerman and, as it turned out eventually, was menaced by something worse than the Daggerman.

It’s also the story of wilder’s college friend, Sky, who stole Wilder’s memoir and turned it into a lurid bestseller called The Sound and the Dagger.

The book Wilder is writing will finally allow him to get revenge on Sky, who was recently lost at sea and is presumed drowned. Except Wilder keeps finding notes in Sky’s handwriting, written using Sky’s signature green ink. Wilder has a degenerative disorder which means he’s slowly losing his sight, it causes hallucinations, but can that really explain the notes Sky seems to be leaving from beyond the grave, and can it explain the woman he sees drowning in the cove below, the woman no one else can see?

My third novel by Ward and on the whole I enjoyed it a lot, although things threatened to go off the rails later on. The first half of the book is excellent though, the story of Wilder’s summers spent in the bay, where he meets Nat and Harper. There’s a great coming of age story here, even before anything truly horrible happens. Wilder’s time at college where he meets Sky is also interesting.

But then things got…weird. For a time I wasn’t sure what was going on, and in fact began to worry that Ward was about to reuse a trick from another book, but thankfully this wasn’t the case, although there are twists and turns, and –as I think I’ve said about her work before—this is going to be a book that warrants a re-read one day.

There are unreliable narrators a plenty, and stories within stories. But then this is a book about stories. The true kind, but also the stories we tell ourselves to process the trauma we might have undergone, the tales we use to get by, the lies we tell so we can sleep at night, and after I was wavering slightly, Ward pulled me back in towards the end. I’m still not 100% sure I know exactly what was going on at all times, but I have a pretty good idea.

And the final page, with a code to unlock, is a doozy that, yes, did see a shiver run along my spine.

Her prose, as always is a delight to read, and I was heavily engrossed in the book, even when the plot began to spiral in numerous different directions.

It isn’t quite as good as The Last House on Needless Street, but I enjoyed it more than Sundial and she continues to be an author I enjoy reading and I’m already looking forward to the next book by her. Recommended.

Dune: Part Two

Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux,  Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem.

Following the destruction of House Atreides on Arrakis, Paul (Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Ferguson) travel with the Fremen to one of their cities. Many of the Fremen there are suspicious of Paul and Lady Jessica, believing them to be spies, but Stilgar (Bardem) vouches for them. He implies that they are the fulfilment of a long held prophesy that a mother and son from the outer world will liberate Arrakis, and even encourages Jessica to take the place of their Reverend Mother, who is close to death. To do this Jessica must drink and survive the poisonous Water of Life. No one realises she is pregnant however, and the poison prematurely awakens the mind of Jessica’s unborn daughter.

Chani (Zendaya) doesn’t believe in the prophesy, correctly realising that the legends were seeded by the Bene Gesserit hundreds of years before in order to manipulate the Fremen. She learns to respect Paul despite this, and the two fall in love. Jessica pressures Paul to assume his place as the Freman Messiah but he resists.

Meanwhile the Harkonnen are struggling to keep up spice production due to attacks by the Fremen, and eventually Baron Harkonnen (Skarsgård) decides to replace his nephew Rabban (Bautista) with another nephew, the psychotic Feyd.

Paul is faced with an impossible choice, in order to defeat the Harkonnens he will have to lean into the legends and drink the Water of Life himself, even though he knows this will instigate a religious jihad that will kill billions.

Having missed part 1 when it originally came out at the cinema (in part due to Covid) there was no way I was waiting until I could get the Blu-ray when part 2 came out. I saw it a week after it opened, in IMAX, which is probably the best way to see it.

It was difficult to imagine that Villeneuve, having given us a great first part, would screw up the conclusion, still you never know…

I needn’t have worried. Dune part 2 is everything part 1 was. It’s epic and glorious. It looks and sounds incredible, and it’s filled with standout performances from a magnificent cast (with one notable exception.) Is it actually better than part 1? It’s hard to say at the moment, repeat viewings will decide that, but it’s hard to imagine either part existing without the other. Villeneuve has created a spectacular cinematic event, and given how successfully it’s performed at the box office one can only hope that he will get to make Dune Messiah now.

It’s hard to say who gives the best performance in the film, because so many are at the top of their game. Without Chalamet of course it all potentially falls apart, and he essays the shift from a cocky yet naïve young man into a leader and a warrior effortlessly, and his resistance to who he knows he needs to become is heartbreaking at times. Zendaya matches him well as Chani, and it’s good that Villeneuve has changed the story to give Chani some actual agency. Zendaya really is a great actor.

As is Rebecca Ferguson (I mean first off, she convincingly plays mother to a guy only 12 years younger than her). I adored Francesca Annis in Lynch’s Dune, but Ferguson is probably better, and the conversations she has with her unborn child (yes that is Anya Taylor-Joy) are nicely done.

Bardem is always good value and the shift in Stigar from leader and friend to devoted underling and religious fanatic is wonderfully tragic.  Skarsgård remains great as the Baron, though you wish he got more to do, similarly Bautista, but in Harkonnen terms it’s Butler who shines. He’s come a long way from Elvis and he’s truly terrifying.

Always nice to see Seydoux and Pugh, even if sadly neither has quite enough screen time. Hopefully one or both of them will be back for Messiah. Pugh yet again effortlessly shows what a magnificent actor she is. The look in her eyes when she realises Paul will always love Chani and never love her is practically Oscar worthy on its own. The only misstep is Walken who feels like he isn’t sure which film he’s supposed to be in (I’m happy to accept this was maybe intentional).

The battles are nicely handled, the sandworms portrayed as true leviathans, and the cinematography stunning. The Harkonnen home world under its black sun is simply magnificent. 

Is it a tad too long, perhaps, although you could just as easily complain that the story rushes too fast, but maybe that’s just because you don’t want the story to end, don’t want to leave this world.

Frankly Denis Villeneuve is probably my favourite modern director. A visual treat for the senses.

Long live the fighters!

Blakes 7. Series D, Episode 13: Blake

Scorpio takes off from Xenon base for the last time (and as an aside what great model work we’ve had for the hero ship) and once in orbit, explosions tear through the base, destroying what they left behind. Vila says he never liked the place anyway, Soolin adds the caveat that he never liked it once the wine ran out. They don’t know if Zukan revealed the location to the Federation but they’re taking no chances, if he didn’t it’s possible one of the other members of the nascent alliance will, sooner or later.

The question is what do they do next? Vila, unsurprisingly, is all for running away but Avon has other ideas, he says they can find a new figurehead to unify the anti-Federation alliance (nimbly forgetting that Zukan wasn’t really a figurehead, he could just provide the raw materials for the antidote to Pylene-50) and that this person is strongly identified with rebels, and very popular with rabbles.

Avon strings the reveal out, but in the end Vila works it out.

Avon thinks he’s found Blake.

Blake is on Gauda Prime, a frontier world, working as a bounty hunter, which seems like a very un-Blake thing to do. One of Scorpio’s crew has personal experience of Gauda Prime. Soolin grew up there. Once it was a peaceful faming colony until valuable minerals were discovered under the surface and the rule of law was suspended. The rule of law is back now, hence the bounty hunters.

They set a course for Gauda Prime, but is their luck about to run out?

And so we reach the end, and I really don’t want us to. This rewatch has only served to remind me how much I love this show, and I wish there’d been series E, F and G. I wish it was still going now, however improbable that idea is. And sure, to borrow from another franchise, all good things must come to an end (but then when Next Gen ended it was hard to get too upset because they immediately started filming Generations, and hell, the Next Gen crew were back on our screens just last year!) and so it is with Blakes 7.

On the plus side, at least I can go back to watching random episodes in no particular order as the mood takes me again now, although watching it in sequence has been quite rewarding, and has forced me to return to those episodes I had a less favourable opinion on and, as a result, I have reappraised my opinion of some episodes I thought were duds.

Though is any episode of Blakes 7 ever a complete dud? Even Animals has the hilarity of Vila in the bilge tank after all.

Enough chit chat, let’s crack on with talking about Blake.

I think I had a very specific opinion of this episode, that the ending was genuinely iconic but that what led up to it was a tad ropey. I don’t think that was a fair assessment because in truth this is a very good episode. Would I rank it as highly as say Star One? Perhaps not, but then Star One is phenomenal. There’s great dialogue (“The fire was stupid. Putting Vila on guard was suicidal. What’s the matter, is staying alive too complicated for you?”) and a fantastic scene as Scorpio crashes. There’s also an overriding sense of mortality overshadowing everything. From Xenon base being destroyed to the dialogue:

Vila: “Sooner or later we’re going to drop into one of these holes in the ground and never come out.

Avon: “Sooner or later, everyone does that.”

There’s also a sense of things coming full circle. Blake returns. We get mention of Jenna, and we’re  told she’s dead. Cally is referenced, only Gan and Travis don’t warrant a mention, and reference to Servalan is brief. Soolin’s characterisation may be wafer thin at the best of times, but there’s a certain synchronicity to her dying on the planet she grew up on.

If you think about it a lot about the episode doesn’t make sense, and its somewhat dishonest to the audience, trying to make us think that maybe Blake has gone bad. I was talking to someone about the moment when SPOILER Avon shoots Blake, and said it seemed a little contrived, but as my friend pointed out, Avon’s pretty paranoid by this point.

That Blake returns is wonderful. I’ll never be the biggest fan of the character, but he is the central focus of the show for much of its run, and the show retains his name even after he leaves. Servalan said she’d seen his body, but as Avon points out, she does lie a lot. Of course, she might have been telling the truth, there was a Blake clone running about don’t forget, maybe it was his body she saw.

Thomas puts a lot into his performance, partly because he was a true professional, but also, I suspect because, one way or another, this was going to be the last time he would ever play Blake. Hence why he got the special effects bods to make his gunshot wounds as gaudy as possible. The scar suits him, and he’s definitely not the clean cut hero we met four years ago, it’s safe to say that this is a far more interesting Blake than we’ve seen before. What might have been. I can see why they considered giving him an eye patch, but I think the scar works much better.

His plan doesn’t make a lot of sense though, and how does Arlen wind up working for his new rebel army when she clearly tried to dob Blake in to Deva? Surely that’s exactly the kind of person you couldn’t trust? Even setting aside that she’s a Federation OFFICER! She’s great, though I can see why Boucher and co were a tad disappointed that she wasn’t a bit less RP before the turn.

There’s a lot going on around the periphery of the story, mention of a lot more transports than usual. They think it’s maybe the Federation representatives, and I suppose it is, just not the ones they were expecting. I guess the only mitigation to Avon killing Blake is that the Federation were onto his nest of rebels, so chances are Blake didn’t have long left anyway.

After intentionally destroying the base, our crew now unintentionally destroy Scorpio. The moment where Tarrant points out it takes talent to fly a dead ship (even when he’s being noble Del can’t help bigging himself up) and Avon’s farewell lacks warmth, but I like to think contains a touch of respect at least.

Maybe.

It is interesting how concerned Vila suddenly is about Tarrant, but after Orbit I suppose he’s a little warier of Avon and half suspects he might have murdered him.

Given the financial restrictions they were operating under, the crash landing is nicely done, as is the internal destruction as the ship comes to rest. Much as in Terminal we have a section of flooring rising and a hapless individual sliding down it. That’s what you get when you hire the same director for both episodes, but Mary Ridge does a good job.

Tarrant’s survival is a touch miraculous, but it would have been a bit underwhelming if he died in the crash. We get a nice riff on Zen’s “I have failed you” from Terminal with Slave calling Tarrant by name. I guess if they had got the greenlight for another series, then the ship isn’t completely destroyed, and they might be able to salvage Slave, the teleport and maybe even the Photonic Drive. That would have made more sense than chancing across another ship with teleport capability.

Is it just contrivance that Blake finds Tarrant, or has he been hoping a Wanderer class planet hopper might drop by? I’d like to assume the latter.

Pacey and Thomas have some nice scenes together, again you wonder what might have been, and Tarrant does well out of the final episode, in fact most of them do to some extent, except Dayna. It’s noticeable that neither woman gets any dialogue once they reach the base. At least Soolin gets to kill a Federation trooper in the final battle, which is more than Dayna gets.

Vila gets some decent moments, a last cowardly huzzah.

Soolin: “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark?”

Vila: “Only when its unilluminated.”

 But also a last heroic huzzah as well, avenging Dayna’s death, and his apology to Arlen after knocking her out is very on point for a character who, despite his dishonesty, drunkenness and occasional lechery, was never really a killer. When he says he was just along for the ride, and that he’s harmless, he has a point.

There are a hundred ways you could have ended the show, but a Wild Bunch/Butch and Sundance shootout works on several levels. Rationally it was unlikely Blake or Avon were ever going to topple the Federation, it draws a line under the show (though clearly any one of them outside of Blake could have just been stunned) and it feeds into Darrow’s love of westerns. One final showdown that none of them will walk away from.

In Terminal Avon told Servalan that he always thought his and Blakes deaths might be linked in some way, he probably never imagined he’d be the one to kill him, but in those final few seconds Avon does two things that feel very genuine for the character. There’s the half smile just before the screen cuts to black, even on the cusp of death he’s amused rather than fearful, but just before this Avon stands over Blake, quite protectively for a man he just killed. The inference is clear. If you want Blake, you have to go through me.

Any number of get outs would have enabled the show to carry on, but maybe this is the best way. You can’t fight city hall, and The Man (or rather The Servalan) always wins.

Talking of which, it might be blasphemous to say this, but I think if Servalan showed up it might have been overdoing things.

A truly iconic ending to a truly iconic show.

Next time…

Oh yes, there’s a next time, I haven’t quite finished with Blakes 7 yet…

Blakes 7. Series D, Episode 12: Warlord

On Xenon base Avon is showing some video footage to some potential allies. It shows the planet Zondor, its populace subjugated by Pylene-50. Federation guards absently shoot people, and no one seems to notice, they just go about their business, drugged up zombies.

Those potential allies are sympathetic, and afraid, but they also have no armies, unlike Zukan—who isn’t there—who it seems has quite lethal armed forced, and who none of these potential allies seem to like.

In another room the others are watching via CCTV. Dayna says it’s not going well, of course it isn’t, says Vila. “Avon’s idea of diplomacy is like breaking someone’s leg then saying, “Lean on me.”

Avon is offering the potential allies total immunity from Pylene-50, he has the antidote, he just doesn’t have the necessary ingredients or the manufacturing capability to mass produce it. These potential allies have the means, only Zukan has the raw material, which makes the whole idea null and void…until Zukan turns up out of the blue offering an alliance against the Federation. The others are wary, but Avon says they have no choice.

There was a stowaway on Zukan’s ship however, his daughter Zeeona, it seems when Avon and friends visited their home planet of Betafarl(?) she became rather enamoured of one of Avon’s friends (quick clue, it wasn’t Vila).

Zeeona is on the level but is her father? Soon love and betrayal are going to collide.

It’s safe to say the first half of Series D is a tad ropey (much as I love parts of it) but the latter run of episodes is superb, all the way from Games to Blake is pure (ahem) Gold…or it would be, if it wasn’t for Warlord.

Don’t get me wrong, its heart’s in the right place, it continues the Pylene-50 story arc and will eventually give our heroes the necessary push to abandon Xenon base and go looking for…ah, getting ahead of myself here.

The trouble, as is so often the case, is the execution. Take Avon’s potential allies, what a rag tag bunch. Sometimes raiding the BBC’s costume department can work (take Gambit) and other times it really doesn’t (take Assassin). Warlord falls into the latter category. A group of actors are dressed up like fools and given some woeful dialogue to boot. Kudos to Rick James who puts his all into the line “But words are no more than … words.” This is even before they all toast their alliance which involves lightning for some reason.

And then we have the sappy romance between Tarrant and Zeeona, and between her wig and some cheesy staging, makes it looks like you’re watching the video for The Rah Band’s Clouds Across the Moon (Google it, it’s a stone cold classic of the 80s).

And this is before we even get to the Federation’s crack gymnastic assault squad.

It’s not even so bad it’s good in the way something like Assassins or Stardrive is, in fact it’s not really bad at all, it’s just…well it’s just a bit meh.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have its moments. The opening footage of Federation troopers murdering people because they’re bored is genuinely chilling and feels like a long overdue callback to the show’s opening episode. Soolin shoving her gun in Avon’s face and pretending to be Zeeona is nicely done, showing how smart the character is, and Roy Boyd does his utmost to imbue Zukan with a kind of twisted nobility, and occasionally the script helps with this;

“Betafarl has perpetual day — did you know?… It never sleeps. Perpetual light. All that energy. There are times when I miss the darkness. It is hard to live always in the light.”

Sadly such moments are few and far between and the fact that this supposedly switched on warlord believes he can trust Servalan doesn’t imply he’s the sharpest tool in the box.

And we get Jacqui’s last hurrah, little more than an extended cameo. She won’t be in the finale and frankly she deserved a better end (although I’m guessing that without Avon and co spoiling her ridiculous schemes she’ll probably end up President again soon, especially if she finds Orac.)

It’s odd, she’s been a big part of the season, yet she’s too often felt wasted, slipped in for a few minutes just to provide a recognisable foe. You can see why she loved Sand so much, the best episode of the season for her by far.

Vila gets to be drunk and a bit of a dick, Avon gets to be sober and a bit of a dick (His “Oh let him go” with regard to Tarrant near the end is so cruel. Soolin gets to be smart and not remotely a dick and Tarrant gets to be smoochy and heartbroken. And Dayna is just kinda there.

One question. Why does Zeeona take her glove off? Accident? It seems unlikely, she’s an intelligent woman. Guilt? Is she sacrificing herself to atone for her father’s betrayal? Or is it just that they needed her out of the way and couldn’t have Tarrant scurrying off with her with one episode left? Whichever it is, it’s a bit of a crummy end for the character.

Ok two questions. Why do those Federation troopers somersault over the ridge?

Next time. Is the last time, and I’m not ready to say goodbye!!!