Danny

Writing about web page http://www.poisonpixie.com

Future cult classic?
It wasn t my mum who gave me this for Christmas! I like extreme novels but this one almost tipped me right over the edge.
Northern England, the mid eighties. Three brothers and their cousin play sadistic sexual power games at a remote farmhouse.
The title character, Danny, is a twisted Tadzio. His irresistible beauty and charisma sucking those around him into a twilight world. A nether region where the boundaries between love and hatred, pleasure and agony have dissolved. His brothers John and Ian, cousin Rab, have used and abused one another to the stage of having lost all conceptions of themselves as separate beings.
This is a dark, disturbing yet compelling read. Theres a lot of graphic depictions of sex and violence, including incest which are not for the faint hearted or easily offended.
Chancery Stone's clear writing style is ideally suited to a novel challenging many beliefs and assumptions. The main aspect which struck me is the authors' exploration of how close love is to hatred, both feelings can be held for someone simultaneously.
Wuthering Heights meets American Psycho.
Highly recommended.

: 04 Jan 2006 16:07 |  Tags: Book Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Edge of Darkness. TV drama doesnt get better than this

Remember being gripped by this when it was on TV twenty years ago. Having bought the DVD in the summer been looking forward to watching it over these cold winter nights. Just seen the first episode. My Gosh am I impressed or what? I had to write this review straight away. If anyone, having seen this, can show me a better tv thriller / drama, I d like to know what it is.
Bob Peck stars as policeman Ron Craven who witnesses his student activist daughter Emma gunned down. His investigations lead him into a murky twilight world of conspiracies reaching into the heart of the nuclear establishment.
His performance is out of this world. We learn he lost his wife to cancer. Having just lost his daughter this is a man who gradually begins closing down. Theres an amazing scene early on when, going through his daughter's bedroom, he opens the contents of a box file. His acting an utter masterstroke as he discovers a geiger counter, a pistol and an ordnance survey map. Everything is conveyed through minor registers of facial expression. Television filming doesnt get better than this, avoiding effects laden drama the characters and their actions are allowed to speak for themselves. Theres no moody music or lighting telling us what to feel. This scene is comparable to that in GET CARTER when Michael Caine, having seen the pornographic film with Doreen, breaks down with a tear running down his cheek.
Theres a noir sensibility to EDGE OF DARKNESS both in terms of it's theme and iconography. A lone protagonist with restricted knowledge caught up in circumstances over which he has no control.
The heavy rain and night time setting which open the series is pure noir as are the trenchcoats worn by the characters. The cop shows of the seventies are also an influence in the form of the busy incident room, the guvnor's office, hard drinking and cigarettes. Inevitable given the writer, Troy Kennedy Martin, worked on the police show Z Cars.
By the time its progressed to the third and fourth episode, it becomes a hard edged political thriller. By the concluding episode it's morphed to environmental mysticism. However, it manages to avoid stretching credibility. Indeed its all too credible. The underground nuclear facility, Northmoor, must have been modelled on the complex of tunnels and caverns beneath Box Hill in Wiltshire, a former quarry used for storing munitions in WWII which later houed a nuclear bunker.
The production values put this way ahead of other series from the mid eighties such as WIDOWS which I also recently watched. Lynda La Plantes first show is poorly scripted, badly acted and under budgeted. DARKNESS uses nice camera work, fully exploiting location filming rendering London s North circular appropriately grey. Theres also a moody soundtrack by Eric Clapton.
Enduring and totally watchable twenty years on this captures perfectly the mood of the time it was made. For example, former environment minister Michael Meacher plays himself as a young Labour politician addressing a bunch of student radicals. In the background are posters for the Miners Strike and Socialist Workers. The genius of EDGE OF DARKNESS rests in its ability to still reach us twenty years on. It achieves this through maintaining a universality being both of its time yet reaching beyond. Having now seen all six episodes it is timeless. It could easily have relied on bashing Thatcher, which would have dated it. Instead it calls into question the very nature of the state, power and institutions.
The DVD is available in Warwick Uni Library. Give yourself a week end to watch it. I promise you TV drama never got better than this.

: 18 Dec 2005 23:11 |  Tags: DVD Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem