United 93

United Airways Flight 93 was a civil aircraft making a regular passenger run from Newark Airport, New York City, to San Francisco on the morning of 11 September 2001. Members of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda seized control of four aircraft that morning, including United 93. The other three aircraft were crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The hijackers of United 93 were planning to crash their aircraft into the Capitol Building in Washington, but the plane was delayed for half an hour due to an overbooked departure window. By the time the aircraft was drawing close to Washington, news of the attacks on New York and Washington had reached the passengers on United 93. Realising that their aircraft was also going to be used as a weapon, the passengers and crew resolved to storm the cockpit and retake control of the aircraft.


United 93 is one of several films based on the events of 9/11, but is the one that is based most closely on the real events of that day. The script was assembled with close attention paid to the findings of the 9/11 Commission and countless interviews with people involved in the events of the day in air traffic control centres, airport towers and in the military. In fact, during the pre-production phase director Paul Greengrass made the decision to employ a large number of these consultants in the film as actors, playing themselves. The most prominent is Ben Sliney, National Operations Manager at the Federal Aviation Administration centre in Virginia. Sliney is credited as the person who gave the unprecedented order to ground every aircraft in American airspace - over four thousand of them - in the aftermath of the attacks. The American military gave their full cooperation to the film, allowing active personnel to portray themselves. The military were caught off-guard by 9/11, which exposed significant weaknesses in the American air defence system (namely that the hijacking of aircraft was not considered a realistic threat and that only four fighter jets were available for the defence of the entire Eastern Seaboard), but they allowed these problems to be shown in the film to convey the sheer unprecedented nature of the attacks.

As part of the quest for authenticity, all forty-four of the actors portraying the hijackers, passengers and crew were picked to match the real passengers as closely as possible. Many of them spent time with the families of the passengers they were portraying in an attempt to get as close as possible to their subjects. The result is a documentary-like feel to the events of the film, in stark contrast to the rather mawkish over-dramatic feel of the several other TV movies and 'docu-dramas' based on the events of the day. Performances are universally flawless, and the fact that so many of the performers in the military command post and the air traffic control centres are not professional actors is a real surprise.

Structurally, the film condenses some events at the beginning of the movie in order to fit the whole story in the running time. However, from the moment Flight 93 takes off, the movie switches to real-time. Greengrass is a superb director, as seen in his previous movies, and here paces events to perfection with the growing chaos of the situation and the increasingly futile attempts by the authorities to stay on top of it vividly depicted. The moment Sliney takes charge and shuts down American airspace is notable as it's the point at which control over the situation is, to some extent at least, regained. This is also significant as Greengrass cuts away from events on the ground at that point and the rest of the movie unfolds entirely within the aircraft.

Obviously, vast numbers of people watching this film will have vivid memories of 9/11 themselves, and each viewer will watch the film partially through the lens of their own experiences and feelings from that day. For this reason, Greengrass tries not to offer any kind of political or ideological commentary on events, as this would invariably skew the film and lose some of its impact. Events unfold starkly and with no attempt to interpret them. On the commentary Greengrass points out that the hijackers were devout Muslims and shows them praying before and during the hijacking, and reveals he wanted to convey a thematic idea that the terrorists were hijacking the religion to excuse their actions as well as literally hijacking the aircraft, but this idea can't come across very well in the film due to the stripping back of any kind of artistic elements in favour of the simple depiction of events. Similarly, the extraordinarily long delays in the military getting authorisation to shoot down hijacked aircraft and the collapse of many of the emergency procedures in place amongst the air controllers also passes without any kind of comment in the film. These things happened. Why they happened was up to the various post-9/11 committees and investigations to discover, and these events were outside the scope of the film, although references to the extreme length of time since the last hijacking over US airspace do convey somewhat that there were relatively few procedures in place to deal with the crisis, and none at all for the use of aircraft as suicide weapons.

Given the film's excellent direction and acting, not to mention its powerful impact and intensity, I strongly considered giving it the 'classic' appreciation. However, I chose not to due to several problems that would be considered minor in other films, but in one based so closely on real events could not pass unnoticed. The most notable is the extremely questionable decision to depict German passenger Christian Adams as an 'appeaser' who urgently counsels against the decision to storm the cockpit and at one point freaks out when all of the other passengers are shown as resolute or upset, but not actually having a breakdown. Given that there is no evidence that the real Adams did any of these things, Greengrass' decision to depict him as doing them is rather unfair and possibly damaging (a somewhat similar dubious decision to the depiction of William Murdoch, the first officer of the Titanic shown gunning down panicking passengers in the Cameron movie when in fact he did no such thing). The other problem is one outside of the film producers' control. At the time of shooting the cockpit voice recordings from the plane had not been publicly released, and there were no signs they were going to be. The recordings actually were released before the movie came out, revealing that several key events in the film are erroneous (the most notable being that the passengers failed to gain access to the cockpit at all). Both of these problems would be to some extent excusable in a full work of fiction, but given the movie's extreme fidelity to the truth elsewhere, they introduce elements of doubt and misdirection to the narrative which are regrettable.

Despite these issues, United 93 (****½) is a powerful and affecting film. It is not easy viewing but it is certainly worth watching to get a good sense of the chaos and confusion of that day as people struggled to react to the unthinkable. The movie is available now on DVD (UK, USA).

Thirteen Days

October, 1962. President John F. Kennedy is still politically smarting from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a CIA-backed attempt by Cuban nationalists to invade their homeland and retake control of the island from the Communist government under Fidel Castro. A U-2 spy plane flying over Cuba photographs new military installations being built across the island. US military intelligence concludes that medium-range, nuclear-armed missiles are being installed on Cuba to give the Soviet Union a devastating first strike capability and gain a major military advantage over the United States.


With the missiles still days from becoming operational and the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, unaware that the USA has discovered the missiles, the United States have the advantage of surprise. The US military urges a surprise attack using overwhelming air power to destroy the missiles. However, the only way to permanently deny the Soviet Union the use of Cuba as a forward base off the American coast is to invade Cuba and remove its government by military force. Kennedy and his advisors know that this will trigger a Soviet retaliatory assault on West Berlin, which will inevitably lead to World War III. Kennedy needs another option, and Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara gives it to him: a blockade of Cuba to prevent additional military materials reaching the island but will give the Soviets a chance to come to diplomatic terms. So begins a high-stakes exchange of diplomacy, the failure of which could very well result in nuclear war.

Given that vast numbers of books and films depict a 'high-stakes' scenario where the fate of the world (real or imagined) hangs in the balance, it is interesting that relatively little attention has been paid in recent years to the one time when the fate of our world really did hang in the balance. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is the closest that the Cold War ever came to heating up (certainly the closest moment that was known about at the time; a Soviet computer malfunction in 1983 was extremely dangerous but not widely known until years later), when the United States and the Soviet Union stared one another down and the most careful diplomacy had to be used to defuse the crisis. The diplomatic resolution over the crisis was considerably complicated by the lack of any direct methods of communication between the White House and the Kremlin, with messages having to be sent by back channels and feelers extended through the media and the United Nations. In fact, the crisis resulted in the installation of the Washington-Moscow hotline to avoid such problems in the future.

Roger Donaldson's film, released in late 2000, attempts to chronicle the crisis exclusively from the point-of-view of the United States government. There are no scenes set in Havana or Moscow, and the only scenes in Cuba are transition-based ones showing the progress of the missiles being set up and fuelled. This approach is highly effective, as it means the viewer is as blind to what is going on in the USSR and Cuba as the President and his advisors are, and this heightens dramatic moments near the end of the film where important decisions have to be made almost by guesswork: has Khrushchev been deposed in a military coup or not? Is a peace offer genuine or simply an attempt to stall for time? Just as the President and his inner circle had no way of knowing in 1962, so the viewer has no way of knowing in the film.

The film makes the interesting choice to have the action seen from the perspective of Kennedy's appointments secretary (and effective chief of staff), Kenneth O'Donnell, who had no formal policy or advisory role but was a close and old friend of both JFK and his brother Robert. This is an interesting and wise choice, as many of the other characters involved in the crisis are politicians or generals of fairly grand stature themselves, such as General Le May, McNamara, Adlai Stevenson and so on, and using them as the main POV would make the film more about them than the crisis. The relatively unknown O'Donnell, played very well by the surprisingly good Kevin Costner (struggling manfully with a bad accent), carries less baggage and the film isn't so much about him (despite a few half-hearted family scenes) as about the Kennedy brothers and the crisis itself.

Bruce Greenwood plays JFK and Steven Culp his brother Robert, and both are excellent, really inhabiting their characters. Greenwood in particular delivers real gravitas as the President, but also lets slip a few moments of annoyance and contempt for some of his advisors, reflecting some of the tensions that dogged the Kennedy presidency. The lack of faith that Kennedy can deal with the crisis is almost palpable among the senior military figures, and the stress this inflects on the President is well-depicted by Greenwood.

The movie makes several interesting historical points. Whilst some elements, such as the worth of O'Donnell's counsel (Kennedy is seen consulting with O'Donnell and apparently heeding his advice more than the experts, which is questionable), are historically dubious, the idea that Kennedy considered the fates of Cuba and Berlin to be entwined and a US attack on Cuba would trigger a Soviet attack on Berlin is strongly pushed in the film. Kennedy's deep concern over Berlin, heightened by the recent construction of the Berlin Wall, would lead him to a historically famous visit to the city just a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Less successful is its depiction of the military. The movie starts off by presenting a pretty credible case for military action. A swift and massive US aerial assault on Cuba is portrayed as not leading automatically to war (whilst an invasion would), but could destroy the USA's moral authority in a future conflict. Nevertheless, the strong advantages of the aerial assault are initially fairly presented. However, from then on the military option is consistently presented as the 'wrong' one and some of the senior admirals and generals, such as Le May, are presented almost as villains who even sidestep around Kennedy to try to trigger a conflict. This simplification of the military's actions during the crisis is the movie's key weak point and muddles the issues involved somewhat as well as coming across as a needless attempt to introduce more drama to the script.

This weakness is a shame as the rest of the movie is very good. The dramatic tension of the military build-up and the politicians' mounting confusion during the fog of diplomacy as they attempt to second-guess the Soviet motives at the end of the film are handled superbly. The performances in the movie has pretty much first-rate across the board (Costner's accent issues aside), and the few special effects sequences showing spy planes overflying Cuba and so far are effective, if inexplicably expensive; the movie had a budget of $80 million, higher than Independence Day, and is totally bereft of comparable action or effects sequences.

Thirteen Days (****½) is a very solid film. It shows the stresses of government and effectively depicts a period in the history of the world that should never be forgotten. The film is available now on DVD (UK, USA).

Happy 20th Birthday to The Wheel of Time

The Eye of the World, the first novel in The Wheel of Time sequence by Robert Jordan, was published in January 1990, making this month the twentieth anniversary of the series.


James Oliver Rigney, Jr. conceived of the series in the late 1970s, whilst working on some historical novels. He expanded his ideas for the series whilst working on the Conan books under the pen name 'Robert Jordan' (henceforth used in this article as that was the name his fans knew him best by) in the early 1980s, and formally proposed the series to Tom Doherty of Tor Books in 1984. Doherty loved the idea, but was sceptical that the story outline Jordan had given him could be contained in just three books. He signed the series for six instead, and Jordan set to work on The Eye of the World that year.

It took five years to write the first book in the series. Jordan's concepts and ideas kept changing. His original thought was to make the series' central character an old, grizzled veteran who is summoned back to war and discovers he is the chosen one with the destiny of saving the world. Jordan later reconsidered, deciding that a younger protagonist would be easier to empathise with, and recast the veteran as Tam al'Thor, the adoptive father of the Dragon Reborn, Rand. Writing at a time when fantasy was dominated by Tolkien-lite trilogies, he also grew concerned that his series was too different from the glut of other works out there to win an audience, so rewrote portions of the first book to adopt a more Tolkien-esque feel. As it stands, by the time the book was published the market was already starting to tentatively move away from Tolkien-esque fantasy and The Eye of the World would be long criticised for a somewhat derivative first half before taking the story in a completely different direction.

By the time he delivered the final version of The Eye of the World, Jordan was on a roll with the story and wrote The Great Hunt at breakneck speed, delivering the book at the same time The Eye of the World went on sale in January 1990 and starting work on the third book, The Dragon Reborn, immediately. Work on the series proceeded at an impressive rate, with seven large volumes published in just six years and three months. After suffering exhaustion problems coming off A Crown of Swords, Jordan relaxed his pace to one book every two years. The series entered a long period of considerably harsher criticism, easing in 2005 after the eleventh book in the series, Knife of Dreams, was applauded for getting the story back on track and resolving several major plot threads.

The series was a major commercial success. Tom Doherty had been so impressed he sent out advance reader copies to every bookstore in the United States and ordered a first hardcover print run of 40,000 books, an immense amount for a relatively unknown author. He also published a small preview book containing a large chunk of the novel in late 1989, whetting the appetite of many fantasy fans. These marketing ploys worked and the novel sold out of its first hardcover printing. The print runs for the books increased with each volume, until Knife of Dreams' hardcover run in 2005 would pass one million copies, considerably more than even contemporary works by Stephen King. By late 2007 the series had sold 44 million copies, making it the biggest-selling work of epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings.


Robert Jordan passed away in September 2007 whilst working on the final book in the series. The novel, which was too big to fit into one volume, was split into three and is now being completed by Brandon Sanderson. The first volume, The Gathering Storm, was published in October 2009 to the biggest critical acclaim the series has seen in many years. Sanderson currently hopes to deliver the second part, Towers of Midnight, this year for an early 2011 publication, and for the final part, A Memory of Light, to be published in late 2012.

The Wheel of Time is a confounding series that will no doubt divide opinions for many generations to come. But it is also an immense and impressive work of the imagination, and may well be the last word in the high fantasy subgenre. Nothing else published since 1990 has really come close to equalling its success in that field, and the rest of the epic fantasy has moved in an altogether different, darker and grittier direction ever since.

The series has spawned a so-so computer game and a decent pen-and-paper roleplaying game, whilst Universal has been developing a Wheel of Time movie series for the last two years.

The All-For-Noughts: Films of the Decade

SF&F movies had a bit of a mixed bag in the 2000s, with the emergence of CG-drenched giga-blockbusters that eschewed intelligence and logical coherence in favour of massive explosions. Whilst some of these films remained nonetheless entertaining on a superficial level (Star Trek XI, Transformers), rather more just degenerated into somewhat befuddled messes (Terminator Salvation, Transformers II).


This coincided with the recurrence of an odd phenomenon where a single, decent SF or fantasy flick would be successful and followed by two increasingly lame sequels which threw out the very things that made the first film great (usually good pacing and a running time not measured in interglacial epochs) in favour of over-indulgence, lack of writing discipline and general crappiness. Here's hoping that the already-planned Avatar franchise can learn a lesson from the bloated Star Wars (although the first film in that case was more 'crushingly mediocre'), Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies (as well as the Chronicles of Riddick, although that seems to have stalled after just one disappointing sequel).

Elsewhere, things were healthier. Pixar delivered one superb animated movie after another, whilst British director Christopher Nolan revitalised the Batman franchise and gave us several startlingly good original movies as well, namely Memento and Insomnia, as well as his superb adaptation of Christopher Priest's The Prestige. Original, intelligent SF&F cinema was also present in the form of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I haven't actually watched all the way through yet, hence its non-appearance on the main list below), Donnie Darko, Moon and a number of foreign-language films, such as Let the Right One In and Pan's Labyrinth. Danny Boyle gave us the splendid 28 Days Later and Sunshine (as well as the non-genre Slumdog Millionaire), the former of which sort-of inspired the excellent horror spoof Shaun of the Dead (whose makers went on to make the superior but non-genre Hot Fuzz). SF-related comedies were also around this decade, with the amusing Galaxy Quest (technically released right at the end of 1999 but on general release in the 2000s) and the Star Wars-riffing Fanboys being quite entertaining.

Of course, the 2000s were dominated by superhero movies, ranging from the very good (X-Men 2) through the middling (Batman Begins, Spiderman 2, Iron Man) to the downright godawful (Elektra, Ghost Rider). Unfortunately, as the decade closes there is no sign of the rush to adapt comic books to the screen abating in favour of more original properties. Another trend this decade was for cinema to employ special effects to bring both vast fantastical and historical armies to the screen, through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Narnia movies, the extremely dull Eragon and several huge historical epics, namely Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy and the remarkably bad Alexander. Cinema's experience with fantasy this decade proved rather mixed, with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter's massive box office presence not being replicated elsewhere, with The Golden Compass and the second Narnia movie relying on foreign sales for much of their profit.


The All-For-Noughts SF&F Movie of the Decade


After much thought, this choice goes to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the opening movie in Peter Jackson's hugely successful three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel. Jackson successfully captures much of the spirit of Tolkien's book with a perfectly-cast movie that moves with a relentless pace. Whilst The Two Towers and The Return of the King were both still accomplished adaptations, significant problems crept into their scripts that become more obvious on later rewatches (some solved but others exasperated by the extended editions), whilst the first movie in the sequence remains a strong, compelling and indeed visionary film.


Other Major Movies of the Noughts


Koushun Takami's powerful novel - a hyped-up Lord of the Flies with added grenades and machine guns - would seem essentially filmic, but the potential for the film adaptation missing the point and turning into just a violent splatterfest was quite high. Luckily, director Kinji Fukasaku seemed to 'get' the novel of Battle Royale and captured its spirit splendidly in his compelling, brilliantly-acted and quite shockingly violent movie released in 2000. Occasionally it is rumoured that there will be an American remake, but thankfully the notion seems to pass.


Also debuting in 2000 was Pitch Black, an accomplished, small-scale SF thriller about a bunch of interstellar passengers crashing on a remote planet. Vin Diesel plays the ambiguous protagonist Riddick to growling perfection whilst the threat of the nocturnal creatures who only come out during the eclipse is developed through a taut pace and some astonishing visuals. The overblown and rather silly sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, is not without merit (its visual design is impressive, at least) but's intriguingly the tie-in computer games (Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena, both featuring Diesel's voice work) which develop Riddick's character and story impressively.


If you want to go see a film that leaves you scraping your brain off the ceiling in confused bewilderment, David Lynch is your man. Mulholland Drive, which nearly won the top spot, is an intellectual and emotional puzzle box that you have to interpret, deconstruct and build back up to work out what the heck it was that you just saw. Intense, visually impressive and features, with Naomi Watts' character(s), a blistering barnstorming performance that she has never quite equalled since.


At the other end of the entertainment spectrum lies Bryan Singer's X-Men 2 (which apparently has the horrific title X-Men United in the USA, which thankfully we didn't get landed with here). Proving that in the first movie he was just clearing his throat, here he delivers high-octane thrills as well as a strong central relationship between Ian McKellen's Magneto and Patrick Stewart's Professor X, whilst Hugh Jackman kicks quite a lot of ass whilst Brian Cox does some more of his brilliant scenery-devouring villain schtick (see also his magnificent bad guy turn in Troy). One of the better comic book movies of the decade, although it arguably never quite replicates the balletic genius of the opening one-mutant assault on the White House.


Zombies were big in the 2000s, but Spaced's Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright were on hand to see them off with cricket bats and Batman vinyl soundtracks. Punctuated by moments of extreme gore and ultraviolence, Shaun of the Dead is simply a very funny take on the cliches of the genre with a bit of real emotion to it as well. The same team reunited three years later for Hot Fuzz, which may be non-genre but is so fantastic it's going to get a mention anyway (along with Timothy Dalton's quite mind-bogglingly evil turn as the villain). Their third film is apparently in the planning for a 2011 or 2012 release.


Sticking with the funny, Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave the US a new theme tune in 2004 with Team America: World Police, a seemingly never-ending mickey-take of everyone and everything in sight. People on the left and the right of the political spectrum alike were torn apart (in Michael Moore's case, literally) as the Thunderbirds-inspired 'Team America' set out to stop the terrorists (allied to North Korea!) from blowing up the Western world. Quite remarkably entertaining.


Returning to the serious side of things, 2006 gave us Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron's adaptation of the PD James novel. Set in a future where no children have been born for years and Britain is being ripped apart by civil strife, Clive Owen is superb as the man who is tasked with protecting the first pregnant woman in decades. A powerful, intense movie with some of the most intense action and combat sequences since Saving Private Ryan, with sterling support from Michael Caine and Chiwetel Ejiofor.


The same year gave us Christopher Nolan's take on Christopher Priest's The Prestige. The movie is slightly less powerful than the novel, dropping as it does the books' remarkable framing structure and haunting ending, but it is certainly more focused as a result. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are on top form, as is Michael Caine in a supporting role (Caine definitely had a career renaissance this decade) and Nolan's direction is impressive.


Another very close candidate for film of the decade was Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Almost flawlessly entertaining, well-acted, with a light and genuinely witty touch that makes it the modern answer to The Princess Bride, and every bit as good. Especially notable for Robert De Niro's turn as a ruthless pirate captain yearning to come out of the closet.


Danny Boyle's underrated Sunshine is one of the most visually impressive SF movies since Blade Runner. Sunshine's premise is a bit dubious, but the astonishing visuals of the mission to the Sun, a fantastic soundtrack (courtesy of a collaboration between British dance band Underworld and composer John Murphy) and some remarkable performances by the likes of Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh combine to make this a great film. The 'twist' in the final act was probably a big mistake though.


Rounding off the decade, Zack Snyder's take on Watchmen was a solid adaptation, although in retrospect perhaps a little too respectful to the movie (although the new ending actually makes more sense than the comic book's), and Ozymandias is miscast. Outside of that, it packs most of the story of the graphic novel successfully into two hours with some striking visuals and a great soundtrack (the use of Cohen's 'Hallelujah' aside). District 9 was also very good and Avatar was solid, but since I only reviewed them recently I won't mention them again here.


Brief Mentions

Other films of interest released in the 2000s: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Bubba Ho-Tep, Frequency, AI, From Hell, Monsters Inc., Spirited Away, 28 Days Later, Minority Report, Equilibrium, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Hellboy, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Batman Begins, Serenity, War of the Worlds, Curse of the Golden Flower, Pan's Labyrinth, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, 300, The Simpsons Movie, Transformers, Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, Avatar, The Incredibles and the splendid ultra-low budget effort The Gamers II: Dorkness Rising.

Worst SF&F movie of the 2000s: I want to say Battlefield Earth, but I can't in good conscience as I haven't seen it. So I'll plump for Dungeons and Dragons II: Wrath of the Dragon God, which me and my friends had to physically endure for an hour and a half and only got to the end of by refusing to admit defeat and plighing ourselves with beer. That it managed to be comprehensively worse than the original movie is an astonishing feat, one that I thought no film could achieve, thus this managed it, which is nothing short of astonishing.

Most Disappointing Movies of the Decade: This has to be the treble going to George Lucas for Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, none of which lived up to their forebears or achieved their potential.

GAME OF THRONES TV series update

It's been a little while since the last news. As previously related, HBO completed filming of the pilot for Game of Thrones in late November 2009. The pilot has been undergoing post-production since then, with news emerging that HBO are planning to make a formal announcement on the project being picked up or not by the end of March 2010.

At the Television Critic Association press tour today, HBO were full of news and announcements regarding their big 2010 shows, namely the returning True Blood, new ongoing series Treme and Boardwalk Empire, and the major mini-series event The Pacific (the follow-up to Band of Brothers). They also let slip a tidbit about Game of Thrones, revealing that they expect the completed pilot to be delivered in two weeks (around the end of January/start of February). If they really like the pilot it's not impossible that there will be an earlier decision to pick up the show. However, quite a few sources seem adamant that the news, positive or negative, will not be announced before March.

If they do pick up the show, it is likely that production will resume in the late spring or summer. We already know that the production will last for 30 weeks, taking us up to the end of the year, making a spring or early 2011 air date quite likely. However, it's worth reiterating at this point that the series has not been picked up yet and although the vibes are positive, it isn't in the bag yet.

Update update: The Hollywood Reporter is now reporting that, according to HBO, the series they've seen so far 'looks fantastic' and that, barring a catastrophe, the series will be picked up in March for a March or April 2011 premiere. It's still not the final green light, but a huge statement of confidence in the show.

Pratchett becomes the first novelist to give the Dimbleby Lecture

Sir Terry Pratchett will become the first-ever novelist to give the prestigious annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture on 1 February 2010. The lecture, named for the immensely well-respected BBC broadcaster (and father of Question Time host David Dimbleby), is given every year by a different figure. Past lecturers have included Prince Charles, Prince Philip, Richard Dawkins and Bill Clinton.

Pratchett's lecture will be entitled 'Shaking Hands With Death' and will explore how society needs to adjust to confront the needs of an increasingly large population of elderly people, many of whom will have health problems and all of whom are living longer than ever before. This is a subject dear to Pratchett's heart, as he was diagnosed with a variant form of Alzheimer's two years ago and admits it would have been difficult to pursue the treatments he has done without the financial back-up from the success of his Discworld series of novels.

Newly-discovered GORMENGHAST novel to be published

British writer and artist Mervyn Peake penned his three classic Gormenghast novels in the 1940s and 1950s. Often called a trilogy and frequently published in an omnibus labelled as such, the series was actually incomplete. At various times Peake spoke of a number of books chronicling the adventures of Titus Groan from birth to death, and sometimes hinted at ten volumes in total.


As it happened, Peake began to suffer from Parkinson's Disease and struggled to complete the third book, Titus Alone, and was unable to satisfactorily work on revisions and edits for the novel. It was published in a somewhat unsatisfying form in 1959, although later, more complete editions were eventually issued. Some of these also included the first few pages of the planned fourth novel, Titus Awakes, which Peake had started working on before his condition rendered him unable to write. Peake sketched an outline of the rest of the book in 1960 with suggestions on how it could continue. His wife Maeve then completed the rest of the book, but curiously appears to have made no move to having it published before Peake's death in 1968, or her own in 1983.

Peake's granddaughter Christian discovered the manuscript at the Peake family home, handwritten in brown ink in four exercise books. The Peake family are now making plans to have the book published.

The Gormenghast books are some of the most beloved and highly-praised in the history of fantasy, often cited as formative works of the modern genre alongside the likes of The Lord of the Rings. The first two books, Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950) were also made into a successful BBC mini-series in 1999 starring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike.

First reviews coming in for the new SoIaF novella

The Mystery Knight, the third Song of Ice and Fire prequel novella, will be published in the USA on 2 March in the Warriors anthology from Tor Books. Following on from the events of The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword, it once again features Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg as they travel the Seven Kingdoms engaging in various adventures, roughly eighty-five years before the events of A Game of Thrones. Not much is known about the new novella save it won't be the occasionally-hinted-at Winterfell adventure featuring the 'She-Wolves'.


Larry from OF Blog of the Fallen has a very brief and spoiler-lite quasi-review of the novella here. I expect to see some more cropping up in the next few weeks as more ARCs are sent out.

Particularly interesting is the news that the novella features significant expansion on backstory and historical elements for the Dance of Dragons (the first Targaryen civil war in Westeros) and some other details. This reflects The Hedge Knight, which established the start of Dunk and Egg's adventures before we learned how they ended in A Storm of Swords, and The Sworn Sword, which established the Faith Militant, the Blackfyre Rebellion and Bloodraven, several elements mentioned several times in A Feast for Crows.

In other news, GRRM has also reported the delivery of Songs of Love and Death to the publishers. No publication date yet, but he confirms that there is a new Dresden Files story by Jim Butcher, a new Kushiel tale by Jacqueline Carey and a new Outlander story by Diana Gabaldon, along with new stories by Peter S. Beagle, Tanith Lee, Robin Hobb and Neil Gaiman, among others.

District 9

In 1982, an immense alien spaceship appears in the skies over Johannesburg, South Africa. After several weeks of inaction, the South African government works up the nerve to cut its way into the ship and discovers a million insectoid 'worker' aliens in a state of malnourishment. They are shipped down to an aid camp, but with the spacecraft inactive and not capable of supporting the aliens, the camp rapidly turns into their permanent home: District 9.


Twenty-eight years later, District 9 is a huge, run-down slum where the aliens live, ostracized from human society apart from the gangs who seek to exploit them. Alien technology, particularly weapons technology, is eagerly seized upon and exploited, but is generally coded to alien DNA and will not work for humans, leading to frustration. With the residents of Johannesburg becoming increasingly unhappy with the aliens living on their doorsteps and their increasing numbers (almost doubling since their arrival), the South African government decides to move them 200km away to a new camp in the countryside, District 10. Multinational United, a private company investigating and exploiting alien technology, is assigned to handle the move and one of their employees, Wikus van de Merwe, is ordered to lead the serving of eviction notices to the aliens. During this Wikus is 'infected' by some kind of alien fluid and begins experiencing mutations, leading MNU to experiment on him. Wikus realises that he must enlist the help of the aliens in learning what has happened to him, and in the process discovers what their experiences living in District 9 are like.

District 9 was one of several big 'sleeper' hits in 2009. Made on a relatively modest budget of $30 million, it made more than six times its money back at the box office (a success that even the mighty Avatar has not yet quite replicated), despite featuring no star names and being made and set in South Africa with a large amount of subtitles. The movie's origins are also unusual. Director Neill Blomkamp had previously been hired by producer Peter Jackson to work on the Halo move adaptation after producing several imaginative short adverts for the Halo 3 promotional treadmill. Blomkamp and Jackson's work on the film was at a fairly advanced stage when the movie was put on hold due to concerns over its immense budget. Having enjoyed collaborating together, Jackson and Blomkamp decided to fill in the spare time with a new project, a (relatively) low-budget expansion of Blomkamp's earlier short film Alive in Joburg. Given the film's immense number of high-quality effects shots and the heavily action-driven last act, it is even more impressive that the movie was made for such a small amount of money (only a little more than 10% of the budget of Avatar, for example).

District 9 is a curious beast. Much of its opening half is filmed from the POV of various camera crews, news footage, documentaries and so on, introducing the aliens, their spaceship, MNU and Wikus himself. After the incident in the slums when Wikus is infected this approach is scaled back in favour of following the action in a more traditional manner. This transition is a little awkward (with Wikus asking someone to shut off a camera after a good 15-20 minutes of the story being completely told using the documentary approach and then the action continues to unfold) but aside from that this mix of approaches does work quite well. With Sharlto Copley as Wikus being on screen for pretty much the entire movie, his performance is key to making the movie work, and fortunately he is an excellent actor. He improvised most of his dialogue to keep the film feeling authentic and real despite its SF premise, and he is aided by some great prosthetic and make-up work. Jason Cope takes on the role of 'Christopher', an alien plotting to escape Earth who becomes Wikus' only ally as the story proceeds, and like Andy Serkis in The Lord of the Rings trilogy performed his role in-camera only to be replaced by CGI later on. Cope does a fantastic job, giving Christopher (clearly some kind of technician or higher-caste creature than the other, rather unintelligent aliens) real character and presence.

Broadly, District 9 is a successful and 'different' SF movie, with a clear parallel being drawn between the treatment of the aliens by humans (black and white alike) and the treatment of the black population of South Africa during apartheid. The movie's title and premise are based on the 'District Six' situation of the 1970s, when an area of Johannesburg was declared 'whites only' and the black population was forcibly moved to another location. The South African setting gives rise to a very different SF movie to what you may have expected in an American or European film. Violence is commonplace, the killing of aliens by MNU personnel or humans by the aliens is largely unremarked on (shrugged off as one of the dangers of the job) and corruption of the MNU and the law enforcement company they have hired is endemic. This bleakness is present throughout the film, and although occasionally wearying, does make the film feel authentic. The fact that the aliens have been around for twenty years and no-one is really shocked by them any more also gives the film an interesting air of realism in spite of is highly fantastical premise.


The CGI is excellent throughout. Not quite as breathtaking as Avatar, obviously, but the constant integration of the CG aliens with real human actors in real locations is clearly challenging and they pull it off pretty much flawlessly. It's so good, in fact, that you forget that these creatures, weapons and in a couple of cases weapons are not actually there at all, which is of course the point of good visual effects, supporting the story without diverting attention away from it.

One flaw I've seen noted by critics is that the movie's intelligent side, notably the exploration of the apartheid-like relationship between the aliens and humans and possible further exploration of the aliens' backstory, is largely abandoned in the third act in favour of an extended running action sequence. I didn't have a huge problem with this, as Blomkamp was clearly uninterested in making a vast epic and wanted to get in, say some interesting things, deliver an entertaining picture, and then get out again, which is fairly laudable in an age of needlessly swollen running times. Whilst there's some logic problems in the final act (the alien mecha suit that plays a large role in the climax seems to go from being invulnerable, heavily-armoured and sporting powerful weapons to being fairly fragile and unable to take down a small number of opponents in the space of a couple of scenes) it's also fairly compelling, with some great moments building up to a somewhat ambiguous ending. The movie is left open-ended for a possible sequel or follow-up, but the movie as it stands has enough closure to be satisfying.

District 9 (****½) is a short, sharp and clever motion picture combining great visuals and some interesting thematic elements with excellent performances. The film is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

The David Gemmell Awards 2010: voting open

After last year's successful inaugural ceremony, the Gemmell Awards are back for a second year. There has been some expansion of the voting and there are now three categories. Joining the Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel there is also the Ravenheart Award for Best Book Cover/Artist and the Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer.

To vote, go to this address and click on 'Legend', 'Ravenheart' or 'Morningstar' to access the voting buttons. Note that as of this time of posting the 'Ravenheart' voting has not started, but the other two have.

My choices for this year were for Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold for the Legend and Pierre Pevel's The Cardinal's Blades for the Morningstar (a very competitive field this year). My selection for the Ravenheart when the voting opens will be Stephan Martiniere for his gorgeous cover to Chris Wooding's Retribution Falls.