A lot of stuff got resolved in 2007 which made it really nice to reflect on the year that was and look forward to 2008. Cindy organised a surprise birthday party for me in a bar on the Dials attended by pretty much all my good friends from Brighton and London. I was truly shocked when I walked in and spent a good portion of the night in a dazed state. It was really lovely that people turned up to say hello and I really appreciated the effort she and everyone else had gone to. Here's my news headline of the year:

Brighton's local newspaper is the home of consistently lamentable journalistic editorial standards. Which makes it very occasionally downright bizarre.

1 original comment:

You’re being a little unfair to some of the Argus scribblers there… Consistently lamentable *Editorial* standards would be more appropriate, imho ;)
Comment by Eric — 8 January, 2008 @ 12:08 pm

I've been working on a brief piece of research into greenwash; an interesting topic given how it highlights the extreme cognitive dissonance of our modern existence. This was thrown into sharp relief by the following articles I read over the last week:

Wind energy to power UK by 2020, government says
If the government says so then I'm not going to hold my breath, though perhaps I should to help with the blowing. The Guardian article is claiming that the target could be up to 33 gigawatts of offshore wind energy. Up to. That's going to require a lot of investment but can be seen as a turn away from the nuclear option, where, given the ripe old age of Britain's reactors, a decision needs to be made soon.

Big Oil lets the sun set on renewables
The upshot of this is that Shell has sold off most of its solar business. I doubt they'll be advertising this as heavily as their move into renewables.

BP to pump billions into oil sands
They've decided that actually they aren't beyond petroleum and are going to sink a lot of money into environmental devastation in Canada.

Russia forms state nuclear giant
Gazprom has got the oil and gas side of things stitched-up so why not do the same with nuclear? All civilian nuclear assets from mining, enrichment, design, construction and decommissioning will become part of one company.

Advertising would have us believe that we're going to have a greener future, that alternatives and renewables are our best bet for our survival, that the big corporations are going to get right on this as it is a new business opportunity. The problem is that we need a lot of energy and we're all geared up for the dirty not the green kind. Alternatives will be explored as an option and government will make a big noise about it while lying about the rise in year-on-year emissions. Where there is money to be made the corporations and the society they power will continue to rely on expanding existing areas of production. While the price of oil rises ever higher previously uneconomic options, such as oil sands, will become viable whatever governments decide. Energy security is an important issue and although it will get mentioned I don't see the environmental impact being at the forefront of consideration.

Sometimes the hardest job of all when given something of brilliance to work with is not screwing it up. If you happen to be enthusiastic about it too then I imagine politely leaving well alone and encouraging those more talented than yourself to take up the reins is equally hard. Sadly Chris Weitz couldn’t manage either and so The Golden Compass appeared on cinema screens this week. Adapted from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials this was a film Cindy and I had been waiting for with trepidation.

The initial exposition about Dust made my heart sink. If a film needs a voiceover to explain itself before it’s properly started I usually know that the work has been fatally compromised. And so it has. The cast was great, the effects weren’t bad, the problem lay entirely at the feet of the screenwriter and director who just simply wasn’t capable of getting the source material onto the screen. Ploughing through the major plot points of the book at speed is not a film adaptation. Some critics have referred to it as being complicated, they actually mean it is confusing, as an over-simplification of a dense plot can easily become.

Weitz’s version is very much like a mate of yours trying to explain the story-line of a really good book to you they read about six months ago. They’ve remembered who the main characters are and it’s pretty much in the right order but as far as eloquence and flair goes you’d be best reading it for yourself.

In an interview in 2004 Weitz said: “I knew I wanted to mount a large-scale film... something... more complex in terms of scope and meaning”. This was obviously a challenge as he later went to visit Peter Jackson in New Zealand and said: “... it scared the wits out of me... I really didn’t understand the logistical and technical aspects of that (digital effects) world... I said to New Line ‘I don’t think I’m capable of executing this’”.

Is it gumption or arrogance that lies at the heart of Weitz’s ambition? While he was with Jackson he might have sought advice on how to get an epic up on the screen. Jackson succeeded with Lord of the Rings, a monumental achievement and the kind of effort required for Pullman’s work. Weitz’ problem seems to have been that he thought the directing was his major problem and not the writing, he certainly felt competent enough to throw out Tom Stoppard’s version of the script, which I would dearly love to read.

I imagine Stoppard’s script did not skimp on the religious aspects of the novel and that the studio felt they required a treatment that would not offend and play well with their assumed target audience of children. That may explain why Weitz got to write and direct and why we ended up with a de-clawed version that couldn’t even bring itself to end at the same point as the book. Philip Pullman has made supportive noises but ultimately what we have is a heart-breaking disappointment. I hope Weitz stays well away from the next two. Give Stoppard and Chris Cunningham a call and let’s start over.

Update: Maybe, given I know nothing about what actually happened during filming, I'm completely wrong. Oops. Highly likely really. I read this article by someone who claims to have looked at the Stoppard script and Weitz's original script and they're saying that Stoppard's version was "ponderous" whereas Weitz's was "actually great... it vividly and more clearly creates the various worlds Lyra inhabits". What prevented this version from being the one that was made? Perhaps I've let personal prejudice cloud my entirely speculative opinion and mundane requirements such as the available budget restricted what could be accomplished.