Eye To Eye With Beowulf

You might recall the big heap of Beowulf images I posted here at film ick. They originally appeared online at Aint it Cool and, after they were quickly pushed into pulling them down, I hosted them for a week or so, until the legal quagmire got too deep. Until now, they were probably the best idea I had of how the film was shaping up. The billboard images from last week added a little too - including our first look at Grendel.

Just now, though, I've been reading Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman's script (excitingly, the script bears the name of the cast member it belonged to, but I won't reveal who in case they get into trouble) and I'm even more excited for the film than I already had been. And you probably already know I'm absolutely nuts for Zemeckis and Gaiman, not to mention 3D cinema.

Simply put, this script exceeded my every expectation. Not only is it a lean, vicious retelling of the story, but as it whips along it drips evocative images from every paragraph.

Be wary of spoilers as you read on...

So, here's a little from the opening to whet your appetite. We begin in Herot, the greatest mead hall in all the land as a rowdy crowd of thanes celebrate their victories. Hrothgar, "as fat a King as you are ever likely to see", is carried in on his portable throne, "draped in nothing more than haphazardly wrapped bed linen as if he just came from f*cking". He beats on his chest to be put down, and then proceeds to hand out treasures.

His first award is for Unferth his "wisest advisor, violator of virgins and boldest of brave brawlers" - but Unferth is busy at the 'p*ss pit' asking "So, if Christ Jesus and Odin got into a fight, who do you think would win?"

This raucous party, half drunken orgy, half celebratory ceremony is quickly cut short:

Suddenly THE GREAT DOOR EXPLODES as if something of tremendous force rammed into it, splintering the wooden frame and buckling the great iron hinges... but the door holds.

HROTHGAR'S eyes go from sleepily closed to wide as saucers. PEOPLE start sitting up, worried. Warriors reach for their swords and kinves and spears.

There is a pause. A BEAT OF SILENCE which goes on almost longer than we can bear and then...

There is a second EXPLOSIVE RAM to the frame of the massive door, breaking it free from its hinges and causing the wood to splinter.

For a brief moment, we see the SHADOW OF A MONSTER from behind the broken door.

Then it enters. Candles snuff out with the cold wind that accompanies it. HROTHGAR rises in his seat, terrified.

HROTHGAR
My sword! My sword!

Unferth and Aesher draw thier weapons. The horror on their faces hints to us the nature of the monster which has erupted into the mead hall. They stand frozen in astonishment.

THE GREAT FIREPIT suddenly ROARS larger and wilder than before, consuming the spit and pig in its flame. What was once a warm source of heat suddenly becomes dangerous and ominous.

We see the MONSTERS SHADOWS cast onto the heavy stone wall of the hall by the golden light of the firepit. It isn't just one shadow, it's many shadows overlapping eachother, dancing wildly together to composite a figure of massive size. The interloping shadows overtake the SHADOW OF A THANE... it lunges forward and lifts him up above it's head... there's a HORRIFYING RIPPING SOUND and the shadow thane is suddenly two shadows, a pair of legs and an upper torso.

And the destruction continues, until Hrothgar confronts the monster. It flees, still semmingly unafraid, just somehow done here. Hrothgar identifies the monster as Grendel.

Next:

GRENDEL, silhouetted by the cool light of the full moon, shambles into his lair - a cave mouth inside of which there
is a placid pool of clear water. He is dragging the bodies of TWO DEAD WARRIORS into the cavern.

Grendel drops the bodies of the dead warriors into a corner f the cave where the bones of mean, both bleached and fleshy, litter the floor. It is a strange and unnverving place.

A mask is dropped onto the floor. A mask constructed from the skulls of two baby whales and decorated with bits of human hair and bones... painted with mud. From its size we can imagine that Grendel likes to wear it.

Someone else is there...

GRENDEL'S MOTHER is sitting a little way away, in the shadows near the cave pool and swathed in a dark cloth. What we can see of her skin glitters, like gold.

Grendel's mother's VOICE is melodious and young.

GRENDEL'S MOTHER
Grendel? What have you done?

Grendel turns suddenly, surprised by her voice - like a boy who has been caught masturbating.

GRENDEL
Moth-er? Where are you?

GRENDEL'S MOTHER
Men? Grendel, we had an agreement. Fish and wolves and bear and sometimes a sheep or two. but not men.

GRENDEL
You like men.

GRENDEL'S MOTHER
These men are too fragile, Grendel. They do me little good. And you must be more crafty. Bring them to me alive, at least... with their seed intact. You see, they will hurt us if they can. They have killed so many of us, the Giant-breed, the Dragon-kind.

As you can see, Gaiman's up to his usual tricks with folklore in the greater context - Dragons alongside Giants alongside Grendel.

Months later, Grendel attacks again. Hrothgar despairs:

HROTHGAR
When I was young, I killed a dragon, in the Northern Moors. But I'm too old for dragon-slaying now. We need a hero, a Siegfried, to rid us of this curse upon our hall.

UNFERTH
I say we trap the beast. Brute strength fails against such a brute. Let us use cunning.

HROTHGAR
These creatures know cunnng, Unferth. They are cunning.

UNFERTH
Our people wait for deliverance, my King. Some of them pray to the Christ Jesus to lift this affliction. Other sacrifice goats or sheep to Odin or Heimdall.

They need a hero and, of course, that's where Beowulf comes in. He journeys across a tempestuous sea to find Hrothgar, and to pledge to kill Grendel.

After his first meeting with the King, they immediately spark up a banquet in Herot, knowing it will lure the monster in...

This first confrontation occurs around the fourty five minutes mark - so you know it won't be the last. But it is fought as though it is. Bloody, relentless and absolutely without restraint they set about each other with everything they have, and anything they can grab. Smashing, punching, headbutting, kicking, biting, slashing, throttling... the repeating, resounding slam of viscera on viscera again and again and again.

There is no out-and-out victor this time, but one side does far more than draw first blood and the stakes are set even higher for their future confrontations.

What we have, in essence, is a bloody, sweaty dragonslaying story but at full scale, visually and narratively. The mythology is suitably epic, the images make the saga resonate at every turn, the ideas are teased out subtly, exposing the depth of the story in ways that, perhaps, we care about far more than most of the poem's original audiences would ever have even dreamt of. This is the Beowulf that makes sense for a 21st Century audience without perverting or denying the truth of the original tale.

A few years back, Zemeckis had recruited Gaiman to write another screenplay for him, adapted from Nicholson Baker's The Fermata. Like the original book, that script full of upfront sexuality and featured a protagonist of dubious morality, to say the least. Zemeckis was looking to make a resolutely adult film, away from the all-ages fare he was best known for. He just has: Beowulf will satisfy that desire also, without a doubt.

As such, I think Beowulf might be quite a hard sell to casual audiences - a motion capture film, released widely in 3D is something we might assume to be family fare, not a lusty, grimy epic. Another marketing problem might be that the characters' outlooks are also a little alien, in some respects, though truly universal in most. I don't the numerous references to incest will help much either.

Where I have no doubt it wil succeed, however, is with critics and movie lovers. This is the bareknuckle version of The Lord of the Rings and I think people will honestly be knocked onto their behinds. On the page, it is hard, fast and perfectly under control and with Zemeckis in charge, I think we can expect a bullseye that splits the target.

On page 110 of the script, Gaiman and Avery have noted 'We are utterly convinced of it: this is where our budget is going'. They've certainly got a point - though I won't tell you just what incredible, but hellish, spectacle they have invented. But I might note on every page 'this bit won't be cheap either' - and that, I suppose, is one of the amazing assets of the performance capture technique. Fashinoning an epic battle between man and winged beast above the moors (just for example - hint hint) would take, relatively speaking, little more resource than creating a small, intimate scene in the King's chamber. In making Beowulf in this fashion, Gaiman, Avary and Zemeckis have been able to imagine whatever it was they wanted, knowing that their only limitation was the vision of Zemeckis, the cast and crew - and if you ask me, that's no kind of limitation at all.

Bewoulf opens in the US in November. Go see it.

All The Hellboy 2 You Can Handle (For One Night, Anyway)

Hellboy 2 is currently filming in and around Budapest - as any Maddy Gaiman fan will tell you. I've had the good fortune to be able to read a copy of the script and, putting that together with the on-set snaps that have appeared so far, and the little bits and pieces to have popped up in the news, I'm getting quite a clear idea of how this one is going. This post might have some failry heavy spoilers in it, so go forward carefully.

Neil Gaiman has been shadowing Guillermo del Toro on this set, to get pointers for when he directs Death and Me later this year (why not remind yourself of my script review of that one?) and, really, the plan seems perfect. This is quite easily the most Gaimanesque of Del Toro's projects, he'll understand just what's going on, probably be able to look past the specifics, which will seem so natural to him, and see how Guillermo handles this kind of material.

The script picks up with a dazzling magical robbery at an auction house. The film's chief villain is a scheming elven prince, in this scene shown as just a 'shadowy figure'. He's after a piece of an ancient Crown and has some amazing tricks to help him nab it:

A darkened corridor where other STEWARDS wheel auction lots to and from a sales room.

The STEWARD notices an open window at the end of the corridor. He leans out and looks down. Ten stories below - a snow-covered alley.

Suddenly, he sees the SHADOWY FIGURE above the window frame, clinging to the smooth granite wall!

STEWARD
What the h-

Quick as lightning, the SHADOWY FIGURE covers the steward's mouth. When he withdraws his hand, the steward's mouth has VANISHED!

The Shadowy figure grabs the hapless man by the lapels, hauling him outside and dangling him over the void.

Far below: a spiked wrought-iron fence.

The Prince has enlisted some rather creepy creatures to help him out with this crown heist - a thuggish Troll called Wink, eight foot tall and "with grey skin and a huge scar over his left, empty, eye socket. His right hand is missing and he sports a heavy iron mace instead"; and a horde of horrible, scrabbling, flesh-gnawing... well, I won't spoil the surprise. But they are famous creatures of folklore given a new, sinister spin. And they like to feed on calcium. Brrrrr.

This huge army of tiny terrors create chaos, and while the BPRD arrive at the auction house after the Prince appears to have fled, they still have a lot of havoc to control. Their personal spin master Tom Manning is in too, to try and shield them, to force a positive media profile and to keep Hellboy, Abe and Liz top secret.

The twist this time is... he fails completely. Liz goes absolutely supernova - quite necessarily - but the resulting explosion blows Hellboy flying through the air:

Like a cannonball, HB flies out of the upper floor window.

A ball of flame, he arcs downward.

Below, the onlookers scatter as the massive Red Giant lands in their midst, cracking the pavement.

Liz and Abe go to the window and look down. A TV CAMERA LENS ZOOMS IN ON THEM BOTH.

Liz (into her radio)
HB? HB?? Are you alright?

The scene ends with:

Manning hurries forward, witness to his worst nightmare. A sea of camera flashes explodes on a grinning Hellboy.

And the opening credits roll...

This plot this time picks up with Liz and Hellboy deep into a relationship. In fact, as we're introduced to them, they're in the middle of a superpowered domestic disupute. Like last time, their romance is a key strand to the film, if not, indeed, its heart. And it definitely provides a very sweet conclusion (which some might see as a cliffhanger).

Threaded in with that twine of plot are two more spinning directly out of this opening sequence: the Elven Prince has an epic, deadly plan that will spell disaster for the human world; the public become aware of the BPRD and their 'freaks'; and a third that doesn't so much: ectoplasmic man Johan Krauss becomes the new head of the BPRD field team. Kraus is brilliantly conceived and portrayed - he's like a movie adaptation of something from Nintendo's Geist game and gets some brilliant moments in the action set-pieces as well as many crackling verbal confrontations with Hellboy.

Along the way, we meet the Elven Princess, who shares a link with her twin brother that verges on all that Skeksis/Mystic business; Abe Sapien falls in love enough to start listening to Barry Manilow records; there's a massive, massive, massive (think Ghostbusters... or even Ghostbusters 2) confrontation with a tree elemental on the streets of New York; Hellboy ruins a Bowling Alley; a very Gaimanesque (there's that silly word again) expedition occurs to a secret Troll Market; Del Toro proves several more times just how much of a clockwork fetishist he is; the Tonight Show turns nasty; and there's a dragon on the loose in Russia, an army coming to life in Ireland and a very strikingly described Angel of Death.

Here's the biggest spoiler material maybe, so be warned once more: there are brief cameos for two deceased characters from the first film. Professor Broom appears in an origin flashback for Johan Krauss, while a post-credits sequence (legal issues permitting - this film is coming from a different studio) will resurrect Kroenen, apparently in set-up for a third chapter.

All of this is to say, frankly, there's so much incident packed into this episode that any issues you may have had with the first film's pacing will surely be forgotten. This is a bigger story, on a more epic canvas, but the intimate, intense heart still beats bright red.

I think Hellboy 2 stands every chance of being far, far better than the first film - which, to be clear, I loved, particularly in its longer cut. The same character abounds, despite the upshift in scale, and the essential elements are all intact. I contemplated giving you some of Hellboy's best wisecracks - his insults and cruel names for Johann Kraus are often laugh out loud funny on the page - but there's no way the typed word will do them justice the way Ron Perlman will.

This is what adventure films should be like and, perversely, Neil Gaiman is really the last filmmaker who needs to be taking notes.

[EDIT: And (spoiler alert still standing) how did I forget to mention that the very explicit homage to American Werewolf in London is followed directly by a tribute to Q, The Winged Serpent? It was one of the sweetest moments in the whole script]

Seems Like We Know How Beowulf Is Going To Begin

TheBeat are reporting that IDW will be publishing a Beowulf comic book adaptation, and published the first page which you can see below. It seems to suggest how the film will begin, don't you think? I'm actually really excited by this sort-of-glimpse-type-hint.

Chris Ryall will write, Gabriel Rodriguez will... er... art.

Neil Gaiman And Michael Reeves' Interworld Coming To Dreamworks

In between 1996 and 98, Michael Reeves and Neil Gaiman pitched a film around the studios called Interworld. According to Gaiman, their first port of call was Dreamworks. Nobody took the chance, however, so as 98 became 99, Gaiman and Reeves turned their treatment into a novel.

The full story of what happened next is up at Gaiman's blog - but the punchline, I'll tell you now.

Dreamworks have just optioned the novel with an eye to turn it into a feature film - an animated feature film so, according to Dreamworks policy, it will be in 3D. Hurrah.

Well, they took their time but they got there eventually. Why anything and everything with Gaiman involved wasn't being snapped up as late as 1999 I'll never guess.

Gaiman Gabs

There's an interview over at Aint It Cool in which Neil Gaiman discusses all of the many upcoming movies he's involved in. Interestingly, he reveals that Matthew Vaughan was originally only to produce Stardust, with Terry Gilliam directing. Gilliam turned it down at the time, apparently as he'd recently completed Brothers Grimm and needed a different tone, a completely different world to step into.

Gaiman also mentions me, of all people, though not by name:

My jaw dropped recently when I discovered that a version of the script (for Death) that I had done for budgeting purposes… somebody had gotten a hold of it and was reviewing it online and it was never actually meant to be… because it was originally set in New York and we were looking at it like “How would it work if we moved it to London?” and we needed to budget it for London, so I did an incredibly quick (draft)… you know the kind of draft where you actually fail to notice Crater Park becomes Central Park and goes back a few times.

That kind of thing, but it was really a “OK, let’s just spit on its face and move it to London…” and then someone was reviewing that… it was like “No…” It was to see what kind of numbers we came up with. But I’m really very hopeful. What’s nice, I think, with Death is it sort of seems to be… well everything is moving in the right direction for it and that leaves me happier.

Nows, as I said in the review, the localisation changes were quite superficial, and the actual meat and bones of the script wouldn't have been changed at all, so I know that the pages I read were quite indicative of the film - or at least as currently planned. There could well be another draft, but that would be quite separate of any localisation issues.

I'm also quite sure that the shoot is still planned for London, later this year.

Read the full interview. It really is packed with interesting stuff.

Script Review: Death And Me By Neil Gaiman

This story doesn't really begin on Saturday, May 26th 2007 but if we pick up there, it will seems like a beginning and you can fathom out all of the years of beforehands for yourself.

I wrote a post for film ick called Want To Know Who Is Going To Play Neil Gaiman's Death? Don't We All and in it I said "Later this year - if all goes well - Neil Gaiman will be directing his first feature film. It's an adaptation of his Death: The High Cost of Living mini-series, and - of course - he's scripted it" and also "I really want to read this one - the original comic is one of my very few favourites, as was true of We3 and you know how head-over-heels I ended up with that screenplay adaptation. If anybody out there has a copy, you know where to send it".

And somebody did send it. And I read it. And now I'm going to tell you about it.

What I have appears to be a draft designed to relocate the story from New York to London. There's still the odd reference to Central Park or Manhattan amongst the mentions of Baker Street and 'the muddy expanse of the Thames'. In fact, Hyde Park gets called Central Park at one point (or, I suppose, vice versa).

But not all of the film takes place in this one big city, however. In fact, the first two scenes take place far, far away.

We open in a Tibetan Monestary. We're told it is January. While a narrator gives us a little exposition, we see monks roll up a scroll, and on this scroll is "a dark haired girl with an ankh around her neck". That's the whole scene - a croll being rolled by Tibetan Monks, an announcement that it is January and exposition delivered in voice over. What's more, this is the only scene with a narrator.

This isn't the best of beginnings. This first scene is entirely made of exposition and, I would hope, on screen, atmosphere. If it wasn't so early and so brief and, as a result of this so easy to file away and only remember much later when you're reminded of it, it would seem quite shockingly redundant.

If I reproduce it here, however, it will be very useful in getting the premise of the film across, so I will. But I really don't think the script needs some kind of upfront explanation at all, much less one so blatant. It reminds me, in a way, of the opening narration to Dark City which virtually undermines the entire third act of the film. Here it is:

They say that once every hundred years she takes on human form, the better to understand what the lives she takes must feel like, to know the bitter taste of mortality. And this is a price she must pay for being the divider of all that has lived from all that must come after.

...But on to the second scene, and the second location. There's more exposition (of course there is, we're so early in the story) yet this time it's delivered in a much more suitable, and cinematic fashion and it feels much more like a real story, not like the set-up for one, or the blurb on the back of a book, or the hype for a TV show in the Radio Times.

It's February this time, and we're in Alaska. I'll let Neil Gaiman himself introduce the first of our main characters:

A man we will come to know as THE EREMITE comes stumbling toward us, through the snow, through the blizzard. He is dressed in rags and tatters, no longer young, and -- although we will not see this immediately, quite blind. A mane of leonine hair, he hasn’t shaved for a week, and he could be an Old Testament prophet coming out of the wilderness. He is singing to himself, loudly, over the sound of howl of the wind. The wind is such that he can barely keep on his feet.

He reaches a town sign stuck in the ground: WELCOME TO NOWHERE, Pop 63. His hand touches it, and he holds on to it fr a moment, getting his breath back. Then he walks on, leaving a bloody handprint on the sign.

We see the town as he would see it if he could see: a bar and grill is the only source of life, with company housing around it. Big, mean SUVs and snowmobiles in the parking lot, along with one 18-wheeler rig.

(I can tell you, I found the typos oddly comforting)

The Eremite is looking to get to London, and he asks the patrons of the bar for a ride. Yep - all the way to London. Obviously, nobody seems too keen. I think I spotted another insufficiently localised line in the script here too:

WORKER #1
And London’s thousands of miles away!

New York is thousands of miles away. Wouldn't London be... er... "on the other side of the world" or something like that?

Our introduction to The Eremite is a very telling one, a darkly funny one and, ultimately, a surprising one. It seems like he's doing a really bad job of convincing the patrons to chauffeur him half way round the world - peeing on the bar
probably didn't help - but, ultimately he gets his way and everybody else gets a nasty shock.

It's not until the third scene (London in April) that we're into material familiar from the original comics. Perhaps the most interesting about that however, is how scene two seems like it completely and utterly belongs. Indeed, almost all of the new material seems like it should have been there all along. Instead of the story seeming expanded upon or spread out, what we have seems like the full, original version of events and the comics were simply a digest. Indeed, it's entirely possible that this is not a job of expansion, but repairs, returning the story to an originally conceived outline. Or, on the other hand, Gaiman might simply be a genius for creating new material on an old framework.

Anway... London in April, under the underpass. This is where we meet the next of our major characters. Again, Neil can do the introductions:

Filthy hands are shuffling an even filthier pack of cards. Now they deal. It’s a dog-eared spread of cards, face down. The hands belong to MAD HETTIE. A finger runs over the cards, back and forth. She’s looking for one card.

MAD HETTIE (O.S.)
Up she goes and down she goes and where she stops nobody knows.

The finger picks a card, and turns it over. It’s the Death card -- the Queen of Spades. She hisses. She shuffles it back into the pack, muttering to herself. Turns over another card. It’s the Queen of Spades again. She fans it back into the pack -- we can see there are lots of different cards. She shuffles once more, turns over one more card, and, yes, for the third time, she pulls out the Queen of Spades.

We pull back now, to reveal Mad Hettie. Her age is hard to tell beneath the layers of grime and street dirt. She lives on the streets. She sits by a small fire. She wears an aged hat with an artificial flower in it at a jaunty angle. She is muttering to herself.

MAD HETTIE
Three times. Three times is the charm. Three times a lady. Lady, baby, gypsy, thief... Queen of Spades, we know what you mean. Oh yes. Now what about one for me, eh? What about a card for Mad Hettie?

She flicks a card out of the deck. Then she turns it over. It’s the ace of hearts. A smile spreads over her face.

MAD HETTIE
There we go. A heart. My one little heart. I knew it. Everythingoin’ to be loverly!

And now we've met two of our four leads. These are the two who admit that they want something - really want it - and will go to great lengths to get it.

If I were to recommend casting, simply off the top of my head, I'd offer Bill Nighy and Miriam Margolyes.

Let's skip forward a bit, to June, and introduce the leading lady in all of this. Again, over to Mr. Gaiman:

DIDI is asleep. She wears an oversized black tee shirt as a nightdress. Her hair is long and dark. Even in sleep, she is heart-stoppingly beautiful. She’s in a one bedroom apartment decorated fairly plainly, as if on a real budget. There’s a bowl of goldfish in one corner.

An alarm clock shrills, and Didi’s eyes open wide. Then she smiles...

And she starts to EXAMINE HERSELF, looking at her hands in wonder, as if she’s not had hands -- or a face, or a nose -- in a long time. She is utterly delighted with what she sees. Then she stretches like a cat.

DIDI
Yes!

She gets out of bed. She JUMPS a few inches, experimentally. She sticks out her tongue at herself in the mirror. She’s acting like someone who hasn’t had a living, breathing body for a hundred years or so, and has forgotten what it felt like.

She walks over to the window and looks outside. The sun is in her eyes. She looks happy. And then, for a moment, she looks puzzled and concerned -- then her gaze lights on a silver ANKH. She picks it up, and it CATCHES THE SUNLIGHT.

She looks at a clock.

DIDI (to herself)
Going to be a busy day.

Then she picks up the ankh and puts it around her neck.

If you're not familair with the comics, let me explain what viewers soon come to learn about Didi. Either she is the mortal personification of Death - a somewhat perkier version than the dusty guy with the scythe - or she is a teenage girl that lost her entire family in a tragic accident rather recently. Or - and this is the answer, I believe, if you can get your head around it - she's both. The universe has accomodated this day on earth for Death by just sort of shifting around a little and creating Didi, her dead family, her entire history. Not entirely unlike how Dawn just sort of came to be in Buffy, I suppose.

Didi is the character who can give The Eremite and Mad Hettie each what they are looking for, and as a result, they are making their ways to see her in New Yo... sorry, London.

The character who doesn't admit he's looking for something is our male lead - the Me of the new Death and Me title. The thing he doesn't admit he's looking for is something Didi can, and will, give him too.

Here's his introduction, and into the bargain, the intro of a supporting character too:

SEXTON FURNIVAL is at high school. He needs a haircut.

He has holes in the knees of his jeans because he likes them there. He’s unlocking his locker... And someone is shouting... and charging down the corridor at him.

THEO
Sex Bomb! Sex BOMBBB! SEXXXX BOOMMBBBBBBBBBBB!

Sexton closes his eyes as someone (THEO) crashes into him, sending him sprawling, painfully, against the lockers. Sexton looks up at Theo -- tall, cool, attractive, nasty.

That's Sexton (Me) and Theo (not Me). A few pages later, Sexton gives us a better idea of who he is by firing up his camcorder and recording a video diary in his bedroom. This is going to be the last big excerpt, but it is a big one, so hold tight:

He gets into a pose, so he can see himself on the miniscreen, and he starts to talk.

SEXTON
Okay. My name is Sexton Furnival but I’m pretty much over it by now, and this is the last ever installment of my video diary. This is because... (pause) Okay. I figure, I’m mature enough to know what I think. I’m seventeen. Almost seventeen and a half. And what do I have to show for it? For a start I’ve got nobody to love. Which is fine. I think love is bullshit anyway. I think the best that people ever get is horny and scared. And when they find someone who makes them horny and they’re sacred of losing them, they call it love.

Now he picks up the video camera, and points it at the mirror as he talks. Then he starts to swivel, so he is slowly taking in his room, his crumpled bedding, his books (big, solid, depressing things), finally a photo of Sexton and his parents taken when he was ten and they were all one big happy family. A guitar gathering dust.

SEXTON (cont’d)
Now, you may not think this is very interesting, or a good reason for checking out early, or whatever. But you’re wrong. Because there’s no point to anything. And if there’s no point, it’s probably easier being dead. And it’s not like anyone’s going to give two shits if I’m here or not.

He turns off the camera for a moment. Takes a deep breath. Turns over the photo, so he doesn’t have to look at it. Turns the camera back on.

SEXTON (cont’d)
Look, Sylvia, when you see this, I’m really not saying you’ve been a bad mother. But I’m not saying you’ve been a particularly good one, either. Let’s leave it at that. And Steve, it’s not your fault, either. I mean, you’re an arsehole, but that’s probably just part of being a lawyer. I Read somewhere that a suicide note is actually a cry for help. Well, this is a suicide note, but it’s not a cry for help. This is a statement of belief. Or of disbelief, because there’s nothing in the way of adult bullshit I do believe.

There’s a KNOCKING on the door. The door opens, and SYLVIA, Sexton’s mother, leans in. She’s an ex-hippie who owns a restaurant.

He turns the camera so that it’s filming her, now.

SYLVIA
Darling. Everything okay?
SEXTON Hi Mum. Everything’s fine. Shouldn’t you be at the restaurant by now?

SYLVIA
It’s Marlon’s first day as Permanent Chef, and I thought I’d stay out of the way. What are you doing?

SEXTON
Homework.

SYLVIA
You want anything? Herbal tea or anything?

SEXTON
Nope.

Sylvia closes the door. Sexton turns the camera lens back to him and says...

SEXTON (cont’d)
That’s the other thing. I don’t want anything. So I might as well be dead. Right?

So that's Sexton Furnival. He's going to meet Didi really soon - before she bumps into either The Eremite, or Mad Hettie, and when they do turn up and start messing with her day, he's quickly caught up in it all.

The first scene featured voice over narration, and there's only one other incident of voice over in the entire script. Sadly, it's as much of a mistake - if not more.

The voice over this time is attributed to Sexton, and it reproduces one of the more popular and oft-quoted pieces of the book. On paper there's several reasons it works well - the sudden introduction of an interior monologue in any written medium is much less extreme than in a film, for one thing, but for another, the lengthy piece of text can sit alongside an image representing only a short period of action. In the film, to give Sexton time to finish his thoughts while he's running down the stairs, Gaiman's going to need a lot of stairs. A lot.

I'd like to see this voice over, vanish, I'm afraid. Some slow-motion or a flashback wouldn't really work, either (a surprise is about to come and playing with pacing with either of those techniques could derail it a little). All I can think of by way of solution, in fact, is to turn the piece into dialogue, adapt it a little, and have Sexton deliver it to Didi the next time they talk, to let her know what he was feeling as he left on that day.

And there you go: I just caught myself offering advice to Neil Gaiman. This makes me feel awkward and a little embarrassed.

Okay, back to the monks. The Tibetan monks from the first scene. They do reappear again. What happens when they do does make sense, and it does sort of turn out to be a good gag. But (here I go again) their whole throughline seems a little thin. They're set-up at the top, almost as a backdrop to spoken exposition that I'm not happy with anyway, then later, they just sort of pop up, be part of a "What a weird day!" running gag, touch on an idea about what Didi is and does, and then they're gone.

Now... if they somehow appeared again, that'd be useful. They must have some place they can go, or something they can do, that will be more centrally relevant somehow? It would certainly ensure nobody saw them as just a device.

Another sequence that seems to need a little rethink, I'd say, takes place in a club. The scene is largely unchanged from the printed original and that seems to be the root of the problem.

I think it comes down to pacing, and possibly because ripping through a comic at top speed means that any slight variants in pacing are less noticable, the scene as reproduced here feels a little hard to swallow. Essentially, a character we've only briefly glimpsed before is accelerated to the front and centre of stage, and given a spotlight to tell her story. This is Jackie, and to me, she really doesn't feel "ready".

I think the scene in the club needs some expansion, just a little, to give Jackie some more time to settle. And the conversation she's having needs to have run a little longer to make her seem more sypmpathetic when she opens her heart up (guarded though she is).

I think that the solution is to get her conversation with Sexton rolling, then move time on a little. Come back to the club a short while later. Perhaps they don't talk so much in the mssing scene, perhaps they do. Just give the impression that they've had a bit more time to get to know one another.

Or maybe it's just me. I don't know. It's an important scene, and a relatively late one, and it contains quite a big reveal, so I won't reproduce it here.

My final problem concerns a scene with a ventriloquist's dummy and a police uniform that seems too banal - almost like something from an episode of a TV police procedural or a post-Silence of the Lambs serial killer film. Gaiman's world is more magical than this scene, and more idiosyncratic, and this suddenly felt like something... else.

And, truth be told, those are the only major issues I had with the screenplay all.

Gaiman's umpteenth representation of a magical underworld is as mesmerising and resonant as all of his others, from the strange rituals to the odd names and the curious characters to the odd deals. And like every one of his underworlds, it's satisfyingly different from all of the others. Knowing that he's directing is great too: he gets all of these things in a way that hardly any film directors ever have, and he's always been dedicated to making the audience, his readers, get what they want - even if, like Sexton, they won't admit to wanting anything at all to begin with.

This is a satisfyingly story-shaped story, with a great (belated) beginning, a fun, funny, wonderful and engaging middle and a true, fair and inevitable conclusion. I see no reason why Death and Me shouldn't be a bonafide smash. My years of anticipation have been quenched.

That's my review but... more later. Non-review things. There's a lot to say about this one.

Movie Minesweeper - The Lucky Boy Edition

Remember how I was talking about Neil Gaiman's Death film last week? And I wished for a copy of the script? Well, I got my wish. I've just finished reading it. And while it percolates a little, I'm going to share another Movie Minesweeper links list with you, and then I'll write a review. For me at least, it's all very exciting.

Here are your links.

- Mark Millar has seen the Steve Ditko documentary produced, written and presented by Jonathan Ross. He's called it his favourite documentary ever.

- Howard Stern only last week turned down a brief voice role in the Transformers movie. Quite a fun casting idea, actually - think for a second and you'll know just which robot they wanted him for. His agent's advice on why he shouldn't take the role was seriously flawed. And now we'll probably be left with Opie. Or Anthony.

- Several signed Hostel 2 posters are being auctioned off for charity. I found the link at DreadCentral.

- Michael Bacall has been hired to write the fiction version of Seth Gordon's King of Kong. He's also writing the Scott Pilgrim script for Edgar Wright - or at least he was. Must like his retrogaming, that boy.

- Russell Crowe is to produce - but not appear - in Dolce's Inferno, a fairly standard seeming romantic comedy. According to Variety, "The contemporary romantic comedy concerns a hardnosed L.A. gossip columnist who falls in love and watches his world spin out of control".

- Daniel Craig dropped out of Blindness, now Mark Rufallo is stepping in.

- Variety have quoted Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith at the BAM screening of Son of Rambow. Jennings: All the technical, clever stuff, that is actually from the clever people I asked to do it. I have no idea how it works; Goldsmith: There's 1,400 people here tonight. Can you imagine if we got a bad response? Of course, they did not get a bad response. Son of Rambow is a great, great film - certainly the best I've seen so far this year.

- Eli Roth has a very, very, very big penis. But it's fake.

- The NY Times are weighing up the chances of four potential Sammy Davis Jr. biopics.

- Patrick Stewart is talking up his collaboration with John Logan on a modern-day Merchant of Venice.

- Nikki Finke (unknowingly?) pays tribute to Ray Dennis Steckler in a headline.

- A completely CG trailer for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery is already online. Download it now.

- A list of films and TV shows set to be hyped at Comic-Con this year has been unveiled. Beowulf, Hellboy 2, Stardust, Sweeney Todd, American Gangster, Where the Wild Things Are, Trick'r Treat and The Strangers are the film ick faves on show.

- Another behind the scene clip from The Golden Compass has shown up.

- Brian Helgeland is doing a rewrite of Nottingham.

- David Poland was appalled by Hostel 2 too.

- Working Title have optioned the documentary Young@Heart with the intent to turn it into a feature film. Basically, it's about a rock group composed of pensioners, something a bit like The Zimmers.

- The trailer for Triangle is online now. I found the link at Twitch.

Now, just a couple of more detailed posts and onto Death. So to speak.

Movie Minesweeper - The Wedding Daze Is A Crime Against Cinema Edition

A really, realy short round up this time. Just four seperate pieces. Savour every one.

- The latest video for Faithless is not only a commercial for the band and the song, but also for Coca Cola. The visuals are much better than the audio. Feed have the clip, as well as some behind-the-scenes business.

- Neil Gaiman himself has commented on the Death story I got re-rolling last weekend.

- Criss Angel is designing the magic tricks for the Mandrake movie.

- Goldfinger is to be rereleased across the UK this summer - entirely in digital screens. Hopefully they'll have done a good job with the mastering because this will pull in a lot of customers yet to see a digitally projected film.

Movie Minesweeper - The Fingers On The Button Round Edition

I'm in a real hurry. This will have to be quick

- Pics from I Sell the Dead are up at Aint it Cool.

- Cartoon Brew have some details of, and a clip from, Pingwings - the holy grail of British kids' TV. There's a must-buy DVD if ever there was one.

- Collider think an I am Legend trailer is to roll out with Ocean's 13.

- That thing about Shia LaBeouf and Neil Gaiman's Death really wasn't news, you know. We've known since September 2005 that Shia was eyeing the role, I was just reminding you all. He's mentioned it several times in the meantime. The new news was the bit about shooting taking place later this year, and in the UK. And it would be really big news if I could tell you will be playing Didi/Death. But I can't.

- Dennis Iliadis is to direct the remake of Last House on the Left. That probably doesn't tell us anything.

- Some Iron Man on-set footage aired on ET and found its way online.

- Thomas Schlamme is to direct the American Life on Mars remake.

- Iranian officials have declared the jury prize for Persepolis 'Islamophobic'.

- A stage version of All About My Mother is to premiere at The Old Vic later this year. The theatre is also planning a Stephen Fry-penned version of Cinderella for Christmas.

Want To Know Who Is Going To Play Neil Gaiman's Death? Don't We All

Later this year - if all goes well - Neil Gaiman will be directing his first feature film. It's an adaptation of his Death: The High Cost of Living mini-series, and - of course - he's scripted it.

This was the film he was discussing with Guillermo del Toro at the meeting a couple of weeks back, as I suspected. I've now had this 100% confirmed.

What more do I know? That the film will most likely shoot in late autumn, early winter, and in the UK, though the comic takes place (mainly) in the US. I'm also pretty sure that, as he's discussed before, Shia LaBeouf is almost certainly going to play the male lead (he certainly talks about it enough) - in the comics he was called Sexton Furnival; and that Death, or Didi as she calls herself in her mortal form, has snagged the interest of one famous young actress in particular. The Death hunt is done, if the deal works out, and soon she'll be named.

No news at all on who will play the Eremite or Mad Hetty, though it's hard to believe Miriam Margolyes won't get offered the latter role once casting moves into top gear.

Gaiman has mentioned that there is some business in the film's script that there was simply no room for in the comic - something about Buddhist monks 'running around', for example.

I really want to read this one - the original comic is one of my very few favourites, as was true of We3 and you know how head-over-heels I ended up with that one. If anybody out there has a copy, you know where to send it.

You can download the first issue of the miniseries as a PDF. That should get you off to the bookstore to buy the whole thing pretty sharpish, I'd imagine. And pick up Fragile Things while you're there. It's Gaiman's latest published book, a collection of short stories (and the occaisonal poem) and it is, to be absolutely clear, the very next book you should buy.

The Road To Endor, But Not Venice

Neil Gaiman has reported on his blog that, actually, Beowulf probably won't be at the Venice fest. Shame.

A week ago, or so, Gaiman mentioned a meeting with Guillermo del Toro. I didn't think that alone was necessarily news - del Toro is attached to the Death film as a producer, and they're probably still working on trying to get it moving forward. But then I received a few e-mails on the matter, and realising people were really interested, I started asking around.

Now, this might not come to anything and, frankly, I think the Death explanation is still more likely, but there's some buzz about del Toro coming onboard another Gaiman project as producer. This time, it's an adaptation of the novel The Road to Endor, scripted by Gaiman and Penn Jilette - first mentioned here last November. And indeed it does seem to be the sort of film del Toro would be very interested in - in fact, I expect the rumour to blossom and bloom and become 'news' that del Toro is to direct the film before long, as if he doesn't have enough on his plate. We'll see, however, what actually does become of all of this.

I promise to keep on investigating, bad at it as I am.

Stardust Clip And Michelle Pfeiffer Interview

Michelle Pfeiffer recently appeared on Ellen, easily the nicest, most pleasant daytime chat show presented by an ex-sitcom star. The segment starts with a clip from Stardust, with much tantalising discussion of the film following. Parts one and two are available now on YouTube.

Shooting Stars

Here's a new promotional banner for Stardust. Don't expect the posters to have the same look.

Charles Vess Reviews Stardust

The original incarnation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust was a serialised, illustrated novel. Charles Vess had previously provided the pages for one of Gaiman's best Sandman stories - A Midsummer Night's Dream - and this was the dream reteaming. Subsequently, the novel has been available in both illustrated and non-illustrated forms. One of the key sticking points for fans looking forward to the film adaptation has been the translation of Vess' imagery to live action.

Vess was at a cast and crew screening of Matthew Vaughn's film in New York, and has reviewed it on his blog. Was the man himself pleased with the film's designs?

As to the visuals, they are very different from my own conceptions but just as valid for the story.

Seems so. There's more detail in the full piece but, short version, he was happy. And Gaiman seems pretty pleased too. Will I be? Looking more and more likely by the day.

Hatchet Teaser, MPAA Madness

Finally, the teaser for Hatchet has appeared and you can download it now. Not quite as nifty as the 'gorehound patriot' poster, which you can see above. The film has been given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA who are obviously on a bit of a power tip at the moment. Rather amazingly they've given Stardust an R rating for 'fantasy violence'. I'm sure it has less fantasy violence - and less violent fantasy violence - than Return of the King and less risque gags - a less risque risque gags - than Carry on Inserting Carry On Type Titles Here Missus.

Added to their cruel and unusual punishment for the Captivity poster 'crimes', it seems like the MPAA have been axed grinding rather a lot of late. Are they embarrased, underneath of it all, from Kirby Dick's full-on attack in This Film Is Not Yet Rated?

[EDIT: Martyn Drake has debunked the Stardust story and I can't thank him enough. The Hollywood Reporter have been passing off bad information. Again]

How To Talk To Girls At Parties

Courtesy of his own wonderful, elf-maintained site, you can now listen to or download the full audio of Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties. It comes in Mp3 flavour only.

This story has been nominated for a Hugo, and rightly so. Several decades from now when the options of any number of Gaiman shorts are getting mulled over by movie execs, much like Phillip K. Dick has been treated in the last few years, this one is likely to come quite near the top of the list.

Catch A Falling Star And Save It As A Jpeg, Keep It For A Rainy Day

Paramount insisted the jpegs originally shown here were removed... for the time being at least. I think they're possibly earmarked for print use. Thankfully, Neil Gaiman's very own blog had linked to them so they've been well seen - and probably saved to the hard drives of a thousand Stardust fans.

In the meantime, here are four images that they have sanctioned. And feel free to leave Paramount a plea in the comments - nothing would make me happier than putting the first set of images back, but I'm not going to lose somebody their job to do it.

Subscribers and browsers have had a full month since April 9th to find the images here so I think Paramount are pretty much shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but I'm sorry if you have happened to come to the party too late.

If the images do appear/have surfaced anywhere else, please pop a link in the comments. Until then - four considerably less thrilling, but still pretty good, images - all of which could already be seen elsewhere on film ick. C'est la vie.

Five Pfeiffers

From the upcoming Matthew Vaughn adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, here are five images of Michelle Pfeiffer bringing a little bit of her Susie Diamond act to the wyrd sisterhood.

[EDIT: Even more Stardust stills have since gone up]

Extensive Stardust Interview From The Friends Of English Magic

Jane Goldman, screenwriter of the upcoming Stardust movie, has fielded all manner of questions from 'The Friends of English Magic' at their fulled-by-technology, where-your-magic-now-eh? website.

They're also hosting the UK trailer for the film in a averiety of sizes and formats.

Stardust UK

The UK version of the Stardust trailer has some different scenes.

[EDIT: And the Dutch-hosted version will work for more of you]