Eels!

It seems that this old copy of "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" has a couple of pages missing. That's a bit annoying. Maybe I should try and find another one.

In the meantime, here are some thoughts regarding Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, specifically the infamous banquet scene.

In the extra features on the DVD, we hear Lucas and Spielberg saying how they wanted the scene to be full of old-fashioned slapstick comedy. Meanwhile, the scriptwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz express their interest in Indian culture and Hindu religion. No-one suggests there's any sort of clash here, but I think there might be. Huyck and Katz wanted to make a film which takes place in 1930s India, while Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make a film which takes place in a fictional India which might be found in a 1930s film.

You ever seen this early draft of the script? It's discussed in this great article "Raiders of the Lost Drafts", but there's a few things the article doesn't mention but which I think are worth calling attention to. The banquet is there in all its glory, but it's followed by a scene with Indy and the English colonial officer. Indy reads the "bizarre choice of menu" as a clue that Pankot Palace is not what it seems, as "a devout Hindu would never touch meat". That may be a generalisation but if so it's a lot closer to the truth than the implication made in the film - that live eels served in the body of a snake, soup full of eyes and chilled monkey brains are representative of Indian cuisine.

Of course, this short scene doesn't appear in the film. My idea is that Lucas and Spielberg devised the banquet scene without really thinking about whether it was "accurate" or not, because they weren't really thinking of it as taking place in a real version of India. Huyck and Katz, with their genuine interest in India, tried to explain the strange food by calling attention to it as being a sign that Pankot Palace did not follow usual Hindu beliefs. But Lucas and Spielberg didn't feel that the banquet needed any explanation and so, with their powers as executive producer and director, they cut it.

(You'll note I refer to "Lucas and Spielberg" throughout this post, as I'm not sure which person was responsible for each decision)

So, who was "right" then? The writers or the producer/directors? Well, I've read posts on forums by a few people identifying themselves as Indian, some who like the finished film and some who feel offended by it. So I guess there's no one answer. But I think the portrayal of the Indian characters in any version of Temple of Doom is better than the portrayal of the African characters in the proposed "Monkey King" film, which contains an "ADORABLE" pygmy named Tiki, who is studied by a zoologist and lives in a zoo cage.

(Note: Although the online version of the script indicates it was written in 1995 as a potential fourth film, it was later found out that it was actually written some time earlier as a potential *third* film -- you can see some elements in the script which wound up in Last Crusade)

And if you'd prefer that I defended my own culture instead, well, I can do that too. I'm not from the Highlands myself but even I can tell that the supposedly Scottish characters in the opening scenes of Monkey King are not at all like anyone you might find in this country, bearing names such as "Seamus Seagrove" and "Bottomley", using expressions like "truer than an angel's kiss" and "like you've seen a screamin' banshee" and dropping their 'H's all over the place. The only positive thing I can say about these ridiculous Irish stereotypes is that they aren't supposed to be Irish characters...

Raiding memories

Watched Raiders of the Lost Ark again this evening, and, as I always am when I see it, I was reminded of the massive gap between the first and second time I saw it.

About five years ago I saw all the Indiana Jones films (well, all the Indiana Jones films so far) for the first time in ages. A lot of the details I saw just as I remembered them - for example, I remembered Indy climbing under the van and back in, then throwing the Nazi soldier out of the front, and the soldier trying to copy what Indy did, but failing.

However, a lot of things were different from the way I remembered them... and what's more, they're different from the way I *still* remember seeing them when I first saw the film. When I watched Raiders again in '04, I didn't just say "Oh, yes, of course, that's how it really went", I still remember the other version of the film. The one with different camera angles, some scenes in a different order... and the grand finale, where the villains open the ark and it causes them to melt (you know the scene if you know Indiana Jones) taking place inside a building, overgrown with weeds and creepers, with Indy and Marion nowhere near them.

About five years ago I saw Raiders for the first time in ages. It was great to see it again. But somehow I wish I could see that "other" Raiders again, the one that must only have existed inside my head, for some mysterious and unknown reason.

"Who's got a kiss for the pickety witch, the pickety witch, the pickety witch?"

On Monday, 21st April 2008 I finished my work for University. Later that same day I took part in a fellow student's film project.

It had been his plan to make a "Sweded" version of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow to enter into a competition -- he missed the competition but he decided to make the film anyway. And I was cast as the "Town Elder"... so my role was to say there's no such thing as a headless horseman and then be proved 1) wrong and 2) dead when the Horseman removes my own head.

There were a few setbacks during filming -- for example, a *real* horse showed up (although its rider was a woman, and she had a head) who was a bit scared by us all -- and it wasn't even like we had a headless *horse* prop!

But the biggest setback was the fact that it turned out afterwards that the camera we were using no longer worked. So we had to film again a couple of days later. This time the guy who was going to play the Mayor-type person (Katrina's father) dropped out so I became the Mayor instead and someone else became the Town Elder.

However, it turned out that this time the *tape* was faulty, so it had to be filmed all over again... on the following Monday. This time I didn't have enough time to be the Mayor (for some reason I'm not really sure about) so I was back to being the Town Elder again.



Oh well. It's not as if I'm all that familiar with the Sleepy Hollow story, and what I do know about it involves a character named "Brom Bones" who doesn't appear to be in Burton's version.

Oh, note the extra "E" in Sleeepy Hollow, presumably to distinguish it from the original film. I guess it's like the clones in Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" books.

Saccharine?

While in general I think that Bryan Talbot's "Alice in Sunderland" is great, there's one claim he makes in it which I take issue with. He says that some people only know the Alice story through "the saccharine Disney version."

It's the use of the word "saccharine" which I object to. The term, when used metaphorically like this, would normally refer to an over-concentration on cuteness or lightness in tone, and when, as in this case, describing an adaptation of another work, suggests that the harsher elements of the original have been downplayed or removed entirely.

Is this really the case with Disney's "Alice in Wonderland"? Well, one of the most famous omissions from the film is the "Pig and Pepper" sequence where a small boy is shaken violently and eventually turns into a pig, but on the other hand, the Disney version does make some of the other scenes a little crueller than Carroll wrote them.

One such scene is where Alice has turned into a giant (one of many times) and is stuck inside the White Rabbit's house. The Rabbit sends a lizard named Bill down the chimney. In the book, Alice gives the chimney a kick and Bill shoots out and lands in the garden, to be promptly nursed to health and appear later in the story. In the film, Alice sneezes, causing Bill to soar into the sky... and never be seen again!

Maybe it's "saccharine" that film-Alice is not intentionally responsible for what she does to Bill, unlike book-Alice? On the other hand, it seems perfectly in-character for book-Alice to behave the way she does in the film, and not desire to cause Bill any harm.

Later in the film, some of the card painters are seen being dragged away to be executed following the Queen of Hearts' famous "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" command, and we are to assume that her orders were carried out. Carroll makes it clear that they are not beheaded -- Alice hides them out of harms way, and later is told that the Queen "never executes nobody" (although this double-negative may be one of Carroll's semantic jokes -- she doesn't execute *nobody*, she executes *somebody*.).

One fairly morbid incident occurs in both versions - the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter, who lure oysters away from their homes and eat them. It's a different sort of case though, I guess, as even within the book or film it features as a fictional story, less "real" than the other events.

The animal characters in the film are also distinctly lacking the huge eyes and long eyelashes which characterize many of the studio's animals.

If Disney's Alice film is to be criticized (and it's a film I've always loved since before I can remember) then I don't think "saccharine" is the right criticism to make. Maybe "dumbed-down" might be a little more appropriate... Carroll includes a lot of clever verbal humour which is Disney and his writers leave out, and the book-Alice never, unlike her film counterpart, says that she would rather that books contain "nothing but pictures"!

Although I like the film considerably better than he seems to, I would say a more valid objection would be the one expressed by John Grant in "Masters of Animation", where he uses terms like "wackiness" and "zaniness" to describe what Disney made of the story.

The problem is, though, only an expert can citicize a Disney film for being "wacky" or "zany" -- to the casual person, Disney is never wacky or zany, it is twee and cutesy, while "everyone knows" that Warner Brothers had the racket on madcap humour.

As a general rule, that might well be true, but Talbot isn't talking about talking about general rules, he's talking about Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" film. And it seems like his only reason for calling it "saccharine" is because, well, it's a Disney film. And you don't need to actually watch a Disney film to form an opinion on it.

Kind of a shame really. It's obviously not as big a deal as forming prejudiced opinions about people because of the colour of their skin, the place they come from, their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) etc., but it's still kind of a shame.

Any thoughts or opinions?