American Gods - 'The Bone Orchard'

Some casting is good. Some casting is bad. Ian McShane was born for this.

It's been a while in coming, but the Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman's modern classic American Gods has arrived in the UK on Amazon Video.

'The Bone Orchard' adapts the opening chapters of the book, with protagonist Shadow Moon being released from prison early to attend his wife's funeral, and making his way across country with one suit and a credit card to do so. During the journey he encounters the shabby, one-eyed conman Wednesday, who seems to know a great deal about him and offers him a job. He gets into a fight with a seven foot tall, self-styled leprechaun, discovers that his wife was having an affair with his best friend (and that they died not only in the same car crash but in flagrante,) and accepts Wednesday's offer in spite of his better judgement.

Punching!

After the funeral, he is attacked by a rabid VR helmet and subjected to interrogation by a virtual young man, who orders his virtual goons to beat Shadow to actual death. He is cut down from a lynching rope as the goons are violently torn apart by an unseen assailant.

In addition, we open with a tale of stranded Vikings in an adaptation of one of the novel's 'Coming to America' segments, and have a brief diversion as a lonely online dater is consumed by the sex goddess Bilquis(1).

The series is stylish AF; moody and dark(2), with lots of half-muttered dialogue and dimly-lit – although not indistinct; this is quality darkness – scenes in the parts which follow Shadow's normal life. Where the action tips over into the realm of the gods, however, things get a little screwy, from the Red Lodge chic of Bilquis' boudoir to the Technical Boy's virtual limo, from the use of wildly inappropriate diegetic music(3) to signal a disconnect from normality to slow-motion violence in which incredible fountains of blood spray across the shot.

 

Granted, it's an edge look...

With 'The Bone Orchard', American Gods definitely establishes potential, but I don't think it's realised it yet. This is not to say there is nothing to like here, and oddly it's one of the more difficult scenes of the book that comes out best here. At the funeral, Shadow runs into his best friend's wife, Audrey, who is drunk off her arse and bitter as anything. Her awkward, angry attempt at revenge seduction is hard to read and hard to watch, in large part because what could be cringeworthy comes across as raw and real. The writing and direction deserve credit, but huge props to Ricky Whittle and Betty Gilpin for playing the absolute heck out of the scene. It is this quality of reality that pervades much of the series, and in particular marks the noir atmosphere of the real world and juxtaposes with the hyper-stylised god world. Perhaps the most telling lack in this opening episode is a scene set in the latter which compares to the funeral for impact, leaving the magical world seeming flat and unextraordinary by comparison to the mundane.

So, to paraphrase Calvin Candie, American Gods has my curiosity; it remains to be seen if it will up its game and truly get my attention.

(1) Pronounced here 'bill-kwiss', rather than as I have always heard it before 'bill-kiss'. I found that oddly distracting.
(2) Attorneys at Law.
(3) I'm trying to remember the particular instance that caught my attention, and I can't. That's going to bother me.

Penny Dreadful - 'Good and Evil Braided Be'

"I am so fucking British."

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm take the racist express to New Mexico in search of Ethan, who is now dreaming of his sort-of father showing up all bloody faced and yelling incoherently, which can't be good.

Rusk and the Marshals look over the scene of Ethan's escape. On the edge of town, Ethan tries to impress on Heckaty-poo the merciless nature of the desert and himself, but the latter is undercut when he's the one who gets upset by her murdering a man and his wife for horses. She lays it out that she's intent on following or leading him into hell to become the Devil's hitman or whatever with her as his worst gal, and is willing to murder literally everyone in the world for that to happen.

They flee across the desert, pursued by Rusk and the US Marshals. The latter are pretty useless, firing wildly at Ethan from half a mile away, stopping when they finally realise that there's a woman with him. Rusk is all poo-poo firearms, and cautions the Marshal that he might want to start believing in the occult. I really hope he doesn't die like a chump, if only because the Marshals are bigger arseholes than he is and I begrudge them the satisfaction.

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm find the dead ranchers and are concerned about the company Ethan might be keeping.

"Well, this can't be good."

Back in London, Vanessa works some mojo on Dr Seward to try to convince her that her 'delusions' are the real deal; so far it seems like a no-score draw. Vanessa then goes on a date with Dr Sweet which leads to a circus mirror maze, where everyone else disappears and weird-looking-skinny ghoul gets all up in her face, telling her the master was with her 'in the white room where there is no day or night'. She decides she's too dangerous for Sweet to be around and dumps him.

John Clare is back in London. He sees Vanessa meeting Sweet and looks wistfully happy for her before heading off to look for his former family. After roughing up the current owner of the building, he finds them in a slum, his son dying of cholera, and like any good dad starts mugging passing strangers to give them money. Maybe next he'll start cooking high grade meth.

Sweet/Dracula pummels his goon for scaring off Vanessa and lets the other ghouls tear him apart in a feeding frenzy. The super-strength punch is an impressive and restrained use of practical effects to display Dracula's casual power, and the piranha pile is creepy as hell.

As David Balfour descends back into raving madness, Frankenstein proposes to use his research to make Jekyll's serum permanent.

No, I'm not including a picture of the bloody three-way. This
isn't that kind of blog.

Lily and Dorian bring Justine further into their plans, explaining their intention to basically murder and terrorise their way to secret power with an army of invisible women of the street, poo-pooing the gentle methods of the suffragettes. They give Justine the opportunity to kill her former tormentor, which she does, before engaging in a gore-slicked three way with her benefactors.

I know I've criticised the show for being sex negative before, but I'm not entirely convinced that one murder would really undo all of the psychological trauma of a decade of brutal abuse. Of course, it's equally possible that Lily and Dorian don't give a rat's arse about their recruit's psychological health.

Vanessa has Seward hypnotise her to recover memories of her time in an asylum, where the orderly who brought her food was the future John Clare (dun-dun duh!)

Season 3 of Penny Dreadful continues to be a massive improvement on what went before. Okay, Dorian and Lily are still pretty gratuitous, but at least they have a point at last. It is also hard to see how - if at all - the separate plotlines will come together, but time will tell.

Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters

I went to see Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters with +Johanna Scott-Bennett last week, which was both less interesting than I hoped and more so than I had expected. There was a fair bit of swearing which sort of covered for actually doing anything really daring, and it was extremely black and white (there are good witches, but only the bad ones turn ugly). There wasn't much explosive anatomy of Dredd or Django, but it worked hard for its 15 rating and I am beginning to wonder if 12A isn't becoming the kiss of death for films not marketed at children.

Besides the obvious stuff - some effective action, lots and lots of unlikely weaponry, and two hot leads in black leather - there were some interesting twists. The fact that we have two hot leads who are both implied - prior to the film at least - to be virgins was a minor thing, but unusual. Their social inexperience was not shown as a strength, or as tough attitude, but largely as genuine awkwardness. I also liked the fact that Hansel, as a result of his initial experience with the gingerbread house, suffered from diabetes. I'm not sure how many diabetic action heroes there are out there; probably fewer than there are virgin action heroes.

There is also an awesome troll, who reminded me of The Storyteller.