The first two Harry Potter films, as directed by Chris Columbus, were perfectly adequate but uninspiring replicas of the novels. The third film felt like a real feature film, with all that an auteur’s vision can bring to a big-budget film franchise. The fourth film felt like a slight step back, but was propelled along by JK Rowling’s ever-expanding universe and ever complicated ongoing story.

The fifth film probably suffers the worst of all the translations from book to film – and probably the single book that should have been made into two films, no matter what you think of the final book getting that priveledge. A lot of information excised here would affect the rest of the movie franchise, at least for those of us who know the books pretty well. But it’s still a damn good movie.

Film six, like book six, feels like all set-up without pay-off and it is. Even now, the most I remember about The Half-Blood Prince is the ending and how well Rowling laid out the final moments – which is actually botched by David Yates’ direction in the film.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I was easily my favourite film in the franchise since Prisoner of Azkaban – especially because I couldn’t really see how the first half of the novel could be translated to the big screen. But sweeping visuals, moody music and some quite character moments allowed the lead three actors to shine in their roles like never before.

And all of a sudden, the idea of splitting the problematic final novel into two films started to make a lot of sense.

( Major spoilers, similar problems to the book... )

And so, the film franchise comes to an end in spectacular style. Not quite a great film on its own, but a satisfying final chapter for an eight film series that has lasted a decade.

Now, what do you think Rowling was getting at by making Severus Snape and Lily Potter’s patronus the same animal?

John Bailey's overview and critique of playwright Johanna Murray-Smith's career, Who's Afraid of..., suggests many parallels to David Williamson's work and career - particularly the recent criticism of his unchallenging plays about the middle-class, which continue to be programmed because the subscribers of main stage theatre companies seem to like them. And critics are criticised for disliking them by that same measure. Well, if people like them... how dare a critic not?

More clearly, for me, is that Williamson's work was once vital and engaging and rarely is these days, whereas Murray-Smith's recent works - Female of the Species, Rockabye and Ninety - have an energy to them that Williamson's work has lacked for a long time.

Word of mouth suggested that The Gift was problematic and I avoided in depth discussions of it until after I saw the show tonight. Putting aside whether Murray-Smith's career has been pandering to the masses, the other issue is whether she writes about the (upper-) middle-class in a challenging way. Certainly, I don't think this particular story could be written outside of the (upper-) middle-classes, since it stretches believability that even these people who have this much time on their hands could overthink their lives quite this much. Anyone who hasn't achieved these two couples' level of success surely don't have the opportunity for this kind of self-refelection.

Two couples meet on an island resort, waited on by their silent (voiceless?) dark-skinned waiter while they discuss their lives. The younger couple are an artist and his art writer wife. The older couple are positioned, quite bluntly, as non-artists - unable to create, unable to do much of anything other than exist in the world.

This is the false dichotomy of the piece that the rest of the play rests on. The idea that there is an invisible line between artists and "the rest" - as if this can be easily defined. Or, in more clear terms, the only valid artist is the one who is able to devote all of their lives to it and/or making a living at it. Maybe that's why the artist character feels like he is at the mercy of other people's tastes? Which seems to suggest he only creates for the sake of other people.

The older couple feel more real, if only because it's easy to imagine a couple like this - uninformed about art and ready to hate conceptual art as soon as the subject is raised. It is, in fact, like they have stepped out of a Williamson play themselves. I think it was called Let the Sunshine, which Melbourne Theatre Company produced last year. The predictable arguments fall out of the actors mouths - and it's difficult to believe Murray-Smith isn't pandering to the paying audience out there in the dark, since she might well be at the mercy of their tastes. Though it's impossible to forget the most public debate about Murray-Smith's work was when she called out then STC Artistic Director Robyn Nevin for not programming her in Sydney. She's at the mercy of everyone's tastes; so I guess she suffers like all good artists must - as this play so condescendingly suggests.

The second act is about the titular gift and there's an extended sequence of getting to the point which is rather frustrating, since it was so drawn out everyone in the audience must have figured what was coming because A) nobody is that stupid and B) the artist couple are so singularly defined by their position as "artists" they only have one other aspect to their lives.

And it's at that point the play becomes both alive with possibility and strangled by everything that has come before. And a false parallel comes into play - the idea that creating art is the same as creating/raising children. And it's impossible to know if Murray-Smith wants this to be satire, when she also tries to imbue it with sentimentality. And it's impossible to care, because all of her characters are mouthpieces who rarely, if ever, seem like human beings.

It's entirely too fitting to have Steven Speilberg's Amblin Entertainment logo at the top of this film, since this is an homage to him and the golden era of his blockbuster/family films. And there was something really great about the Bad Robot logo following, since JJ Abrams company has carved out its own reputation - mostly in television - in an era of filmmakers who would have grown up with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extraterrstrial and My Sharona.

And I come to the film with a similar childhood in mind - suburbia, riding bikes and Speilberg movies. I think the super 8 movie thing bypassed Australia, somehow. We don't really have a history of old home movies, though I'm sure real film buffs or young filmmakers here found some way of recording their early efforts. Early VHS, perhaps?

But there is something inherently comforting about watching flickery super 8 movies even on film, something film and television has grown us accustomed, too. It's a benchmark of a day gone by, but watching this film it's almost like the end of that era. Video is just around the corner. Or, as the film reminds us, in a humorous way - the walkman was the slippery slop to the iPod.

And as much as this is a Speilberg film (it's influenced as much by films he produced as those he directed), as the film unfolds it tackles themes close to JJ Abrams heart as well - though I don't want to say too much, since some of the delight in watching Super 8 is not exactly knowing where it's headed. Suffice it to say, Abrams isn't thrilled with the military industrial complex, loves a scientist willing to stand up to the establishment and loves a hero with a dead mother.

The real delight of this movie, apart from poking at my nostalgia buttons, is to watch great child actors be great children. The writing of the core group of kids is spot on - and I love the fact the adults bicker in similar ways. Where Speilberg's adults are often silent or faceless, Abrams adults are grown children. Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning are particular standouts, as well as Riley Griffiths as the manic director of "The Case". Make sure you stay for the end credits!

Kyle Chandler and Ron Eldard are the best of the adult bunch, but those aren't really of concern in Super 8 - a triumphant family film where the kids save the day. No wonder it's set in 1979, nostalgia makes a lot of that sentiment work.

I'm going to talk about four shows, but I'm going to pair them up.

Nurse Jackie and United States of Tara.

You know, I've never loved these shows like I loved Weeds once upon a time. They are way better than Weeds has become, but that show has fallen from a great height and can never recover. For me, Jackie and Tara never quite worked; for similar reasons to each other.

Jackie is a facinating character, but the supporting cast are just not that interesting. Sometimes they feel like they are in a different show altogether, particularly in this third season. It's like this tragic addict character has been dropped into a better-than-average sitcom cast that isn't really that funny. I mean, I love the wry (and sometimes absurdist) humour, but it's sometimes hard to enjoy it when Jackie is such a fucked up central character. (At least Nancy in Weeds felt like she was in a show that needed her.)

Conversely, Tara is the least interesting character in United States of Tara, which is fine since a lot of the show is how the ensemble cast deal with Tara's DID/MPD - and Toni Collette just gets to do some great character acting in the middle of it all. This year, the inverse seems to have happened - Tara has finally gotten interesting and the rest of the characters have turned into the worst kind of Diablo Cody construction - the ranting hipster that is all me, me, me at the expense of their relationship to everyone else. (Cody has had that accusation leveled at her since day one, but it hasn't struck me as true until now, though admittedly I never saw Jennifer's Body.)

So my problem is I can watch Jackie but am getting disappointed in the lack of change with the central character and I can't watch Tara because I basically can't stand to listen to any of them any longer. Maybe I can just download and watch the Eddie Izzard scenes.

House and Supernatural.

Okay, these two shows don't sit together so nicely as a pair but the central thing they both have in common - I think this was the year they both went one season too long and they have both been renewed again.

Supernatural was designed, at some stage, by creator Eric Kripke to go five seasons. Five seasons would have been great. Five seasons where each year the writing got better and better. Where the stories meant more. Where the characters grew and changed and so did their relationships to each other and the world. And then the show got renewed. And warning bells went off. And Kripke was leaving, though he only really half left. And we were essentially left watching the aftermath of an Apocalypse that never really happened. What might have made the show good was if they hadn't stopped the Apocalypse and the series became post-Apocalyptic. But, okay, never going to happen.

Now, to be fair, the show never got terrible. It came back with a semi-interesting premise, but the ongoing story never really gelled. And by the end of the season, they were pulling out tired tropes like "the Western episode", which reminded me that I was watching the sixth season of a show that had never stooped so low before. Now, the show always did off-the-wall funny episodes, but in the back end of this season, every episode was high concept. I mean, I loved the episode where they shattered the fourth wall and Sam and Dean were Jared and Jensen working on a show called Supernatural. But there was too much of the show making us laugh and forgetting that the show really worked when it was melodrama and pathos - and the real wacky stuff was rare.

House also had a Western episode this season. Actually, it was just a sequence inside an off-the-wall episode filled with delusions and hallucinations - which have been a sparingly used part of the show since the season one finale. But, again, the show was relying too much on broader humour and without really finding a way to explore these characters anew.

The show originally started out with painfully predictable formula and it's not too hard to spot that formula still in there. But that was quite true of the original Law & Order, too. You can't have discovered the answer too early, you have to leave it until the last act. If you have interesting cases and complicated character interactions, this formula can still work. Once we knew all the players in this drama, the viewer could enjoy the show by watching them interact.

The character of Dr Gregory House has always been an addict, which probably stems from his origins as a modern day Sherlock Holmes figure. And over six seasons, the show did shake things up again with moving casts around, changing relationships and tackling House's addiction from different angles. Some seasons he was actually clean. Some seasons his need for the drugs seemed to affect him in different ways for different reasons.

But he never grew. Or after seasons of growing, this year he took a decidedly big step back even though it seemed like he was changing. Now, yes, an addiction narrative might require one step forward, two steps back plot progression - but the show has done that too many times before. Now it's the formula of each season that is getting repetitive. And the character of Gregory House is almost unwatchable. Even his supporting cast is harder to enjoy after they've spent so many years with him.

*

Tara is almost gone and I want to finish, but I'm not sure I can.

Jackie is hanging in there - this week's story about her oldest daughter made me like the show a little more.

Supernatural will be a chore, but I don't think I can throw it away.

House might be down for the count with me.

The first thing that struck me about Matt Scholten's production of Chris Summers' Crossed was the transformation of the La Mama Courthouse space. In nearly twenty years of seeing performances there, Scholten had created a new space, a new way of watching a show there. Once the play began, with actors moving up and down the length of the theatre, the audience is compelled to keep moving their heads, keep thinking and keep up. The audience isn't watching passively through the proscenium, but actively engaged by the writing, the actors and the production itself.

Crossed is about five strangers bound together by one event - about which the less you know, the better. I attended the play based solely on the fact Matt Scholten directed it, after being so thrilled by his production of Daniel Keene's The Nightwatchman at Theatreworks last year (which will get a new lease on life in 2012, I believe). Going in knowing as little about this production is the best way to see it.

What I can say is that the five characters are extremely well drawn and beautifully realised by the cast. These people are all marginalised in some way: a girl rebelling from her Muslim family, a gay teen drawn back and back to the internet for pleasure and a reaction, a Greek boy from a working-class background, a mother who has pushed her son away and an proud-to-be-Aussie white supremacist.

The one event they all witness, from different places and their own unique points of view, also draws a portrait of a sixth character - perfectly realising a story that is at once straightforward and horrifying, but also difficult to make sense of in the aftermath.

This is a strong play by a young writer, who captures the conflicts in multi-cultural Australia through well drawn characters inside a mostly non-naturalistic play - where the voices of a generation are loud and echoed but not always heard or understood. It takes a little while to get a handle on the characters and the endings for one or two characters might feel a little pat, Crossed finishes on a devastating moment for one of the young characters which will stay with me for a while.

Crossed plays at the La Mama Courthouse until June 19.

It is tempting to write 22 short reviews about David Finnigan's 22 short plays, since I loved some, hated others and was wildly entertained by most. But it's the rapid fire collection of 22 concentrated bits of comedy that make this another MKA show worth seeing.

Short play seasons and festivals have sprung up all over the place, but presenting a collection from one playwright is almost a fresh idea - particularly a collection like this, which presumably was conceived as a piece in its entirety. How/where else would Finnigan expect the shortest of his short pieces to ever be staged?

In fact, there's only a few pieces I would hesitate to actually call plays. Mostly they are sketches and in some cases they feel like acted out jokes. But when they are this entertaining, why not? From the satirical Communist Anthem to the parodic Dune. From a bit about Medusa's daughter in Quarter Snake to Sitcom x3 - which is about creating a sitcom that people you don't want watching will actually watch... and I actually wanted to watch it!

Three cast members, Connor Gallacher, Paul Blenheim and Ellen Grimshaw bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm to their many, many parts. I think Grimshaw almost stole the show a couple of times - particularly as a lusty, thrusty teenage boy in Friction, but as is inherent in a night like this, even the best actors have the show stolen back from them by another piece coming along.

22 Short Plays lasts just over an hour. It's uneven, but perhaps that's just the nature of a collection like this. Director Tobias Manderson-Galvin keeps everything moving, so even when one play doesn't work, the next one comes along and hip-and-shoulders its way on stage and the crowd is laughing again.

22 Short Plays runs until June 18th at MKA Theatre in Prahran.

After the X-Men trilogy went off the rails with The Last Stand and the underwhelming Wolverine movie, I knew the studio would try to find some way to extend the franchise's life - there has been nearly fifty years of comic history for Marvel Studios to mine after all. But I wasn't sure that I'd be that interested to see what came next. Even the idea of a Magento origin story film didn't intrigue me that much, since I think the opening sequence of Bryan Singer's original X-Men told us a lot about his origin, without requiring a whole film to get to the heart of his character. If mutants are subtextually the "other", I felt like it was enough that Erik Lensherr watched his mother get dragged away before his eyes - a victim of the Holocaust.

Of course, in introducing all the characters in Singer's 2000 film, their origins required a deftness and brevity in storytelling. It's not surprising, however, that in this prequel to that film - which tells the origin stories of more than a handful of mutants - we begin again in the camps with Erik buckling a gate, his grief for his mother driving his mutant ability. And aside from First Class telling us more about Erik/Magneto's origins, it is also a tale of Charles/Professor X's origins, as well as the X-Men themselves. It's heart, though, is the tale of Erik and Charles' close frienship, which was even potently alluded to in Singer's film, due to the depth of performance of both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan.

And with the ongoing movement of the series faltering - no X-Men 4 in sight just yet, the idea of a prequel is a strong one. There's a rich history to be sure, plus there's the added bonus of the film being a period piece. So if I was ever hesitant about this idea, I was on board once I saw the trailer, the costumes, the 60s-era sets and knowing it was set within the Marvel-verses version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Seriously, if you put a JFK speech over a trailer of anything, I'm pretty much on board just to see how the film works.

As Charles and Erik in this film, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender bring to life the complicated early versions of these characters who were boldly drawn in the original movie series. Making these two characters friends and pulling apart how their views of Mutants and mutant life differ is key for First Class to work. We are so used to superhero films being black and white - even in the murky world of Christopher Nolan's Batman universe, we know Batman is the hero and the Joker is the villain. And while Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw is the villain of this piece, it's not really about him or his motivations at all; it's about the crucible Charles and Erik endure together - and how different they come out at the other end.

Their friendship is put through some deep hardships, but in the end it's not about Shaw trying to get the US and Russia to destroy each other, but about how Charles and Erik think mutants should be treated and how they will live their lives to that end. In fact, it's a classic tragedy in a lot of ways - which is the strength of a prequel in this instance, we know where these characters end up but watching the details of how they arrive there utterly compelling. McAvoy and Fassbender shine and their relationship is played as more than friendship, as almost like a relationship - particularly with how close they become due to their abilities.

The other stand out characters in the film are that of Mystique and Beast, or Raven and Hank - whose origins are also tightly bound together, and whose opposition at the end is almost as heartbreaking as the central duo. In fact, some of the details are so perfect - particularly surrounding the cure and Raven's DNA, that I wonder if their mutual origin story has always been like this. In any case, First Class tells us a lot more about both of these characters than we have ever understood before.

We get a few other mutants on both sides that are fun to see, though we don't get to know them too well. Bacon's Shaw is marvellously wicked and January Jones' Emma Frost is certainly cold, but I wonder if Jones' acting ability is just that limited.

I get a visceral thrill out of a well made comic book movie and I have great affection for Singer's X-Men movies - since they really go to the core of the concept and play it to the hilt. But I can't think of another superhero movie that had me so emotionally involved, so moved and touched by the character's plights. I felt for Marie/Rogue in the original film, but I was almost in tears at the heartbreaking movements in the early lives of Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr.

First Class in every sense of the phrase.

Let's go back in time for a moment. Let's go back three years, almost to the day, when Steven Moffat's Silence in the Library aired. A story of mysteries and spoilers. The introduction of River Song, future companion and something else. And, in a way, the introduction of Steven Moffat, new showrunner.

Presumably he wrote Silence of the Library/Forest of the Dead knowing he'd be taking over from Russell T Davies. Certainly, when those episodes aired his new position was public knowledge. Now I'm not suggesting he knew the final revelation in this week's A Good Man Goes to War all those years ago - but he's certainly been playing a long game and this was the week we were priviledged enough to get an answer.

An eloquent, poetic, single answer that resonates through three series and three years - but doesn't leave us on the dreaded cliffhanger we might have been expecting. In fact, last week's reveal was much more in need of an immediate follow-up than this week's episode.

( Hello... )

There's something special about watching the pieces of an ongoing narrative fall into place. The last time Doctor Who made me feel quite this way was during Utopia, though I think the fobwatch/Master revelation was both more and less of a surprise than this final reveal. Let's say, I wasn't expecting the fobwatch, but I was - from early in this episode - sure of what was happening, but thrilled to watch it all come together so beautifully. And, of course, even though this isn't the season finale, it is the climax to a story that began three years ago. And still hasn't answered every question we have.

But I don't feel cliffhung, which makes me love the episode even more.

Also, on that next episode title...

( The Doctor will return in... )

After thoroughly enjoying The Rebel Flesh, its follow up is a sastifactory but not brilliant conclusion to its set-up. But on a whole other level, it contains some brilliant forward progression of the season arc - including a genius bait-and-switch that I only caught on to as Rory did.

Discussion below a cut...

( Read more... )

Jesus christ, Steven Moffat. What are you trying to do to your audience? Thrill them, I suspect. Frustrate them, too, probably. Can't wait to see what's in store.

For a series which was originally conceived around multi-episode stories, over the five/six seasons of New Who, the multi-part stories mostly haven't worked, except when written by Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell or were Russell T Davies' multi-part season finales.

( Trust me... )

Now it's true that some of the other non-Moffat/Cornell/Davies' two-parters began well and ended anywhere from acceptable to terrible, but I think the premise of this concept is strong enough to carry off whatever story Graham has planned for The Almost People, next week's conclusion. But, in any case, this episode was very strong and enjoyable on every level.