Tuesday, February 28, 2006

My brother was at St Mary's

Not sure what the press embargo stuff is on V for Vendetta, and don't want to steal the thunder of Boss Joe's forthcoming review on Film Focus, but that was not nearly as bad as it might have been.

As a general rule, any time they stray from the comic the logic starts to unravel. Yeah, the effort to update it, to make it about political shit now, kind of works - and they get some good gags out of it. But John Hurt being a Tory is 10 years out of date, and wish they'd asked if we still do the 11+, or checked a map to see where the tube runs. Natalie's accent wobbles a bit, bless her, and they'd lost some of my favourite stuff.

Of course, I'm hugely protective of the comic 'cos it really blew my head off as a kid. A friend at school - St Mary's, as it happens - leant me the DC run. Wrote GCSE and MA coursework about it, trying to understand why. Will look out the latter as a bonus-post here sometime.

But basically, it works. It's the first good adaptation of an Alan Moore comic, which is something of a feat in itself. (Though he's foregone a credit, so its oddly described as "Based on the comic illustrated by David Lloyd".) The Dr, who won points the first time I met her for saying she too loved the comic, was also very pleased.

Odd to watch work exploding, too. Right, back to the Terroism Bill.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Er, in some parts of the country we still do do the 11+

0tralala said...

Do you really? Show's what I know.

Which parts of the country, out of interest? The parts that still burn witches?

Anonymous said...

It'll be Kent, I expect. That's where I did mine. They still have dem grandma schools.

Nimbos said...

AFAIK they still have it in Reading. I took the test but elected NOT to go to Reading School as they did sports on Saturday mornings :-p

Anonymous said...

I grew up in Essex where they did, and still do have the 11+.

0tralala said...

Dammit, looks like I wuz talking bollocks, then.

Oops.