THE TIME HAS COME TO...GALVANISE!

NEWSFLASH! Richard Kelly's third directorial feature THE BOX wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Initial signs weren't good, though: for one thing, putting James Marsden in your film's always going to be a bit of a gamble. He's the sort of charisma black hole that makes his appearance as Cyclops in the X-Men films feel like stunt-casting, and if you put him in a room with Hayden Christensen they'd cancel each other out.

In THE BOX, he plays Arthur Lewis, a Nasa...somethingorother. Engineer, I think. He helped develop an optic lense for a space camera, or something. But really, all he seems to do is make prosthetic feet for his wife, Norma (Cameron Diaz) - in a needlessly convoluted bout of exposition, Arthur explains that Norma has a deformed foot, not for a simple reason like birth defect or burn wound, but because she dropped a dumbbell on it, and then when she was getting x-rayed in the hospital, the doctor left the machine on and irradiated her toes so they had to be amputated. The actual point of all this nonsense is to reveal that all she got in the way of compensation was $10, 000. WHAT AN INJUSTICE!

We're supposed to care about Arthur and Norma, and feel sorry for their money troubles and hard-done-by life, so that we're more willing to accept the incredibly simple premise of the actual film: Here's a box with a button on it. Press the button and you'll get $1million...and someone you don't know will die.

I try to avoid spoilers but I'm going to have to mention the 80's Twilight Zone episode, and the original story this film mutated from so be warned. In the TZ show, the family aren't exactly well-to-do, so we believe they're willing to risk killing a stranger to get their hands on some dough. In the original story, the husband gets pushed in front of a train, and the insurance money is the amount the wife's been promised. The caveat is "How well do any of us really know someone?"

Not so in THE BOX. Arthur works for NASA for crying out loud. How are we supposed to believe he's not getting a nice amount of money, especially if he helped build a bloody space camera. And then there's Norma, who's a teacher, and she's losing her 'teacher discount' (I have no idea what this actually pertains to). Fair enough, she makes the comment that they're living 'pay cheque to pay cheque', as so many people tend to do, but any and all sympathy you might have for this couple goes right out the window when she comments that the £1million would really let them have the life they want. Not a better quality of life, but the life they want.

"Ah!" you say, possibly clicking your fingers in realisation. "They're spoilt brats! I have no sympathy for these people!"

Norma's parents are clearly well-off, so that's undoubtedly supposed to explain her desire for 'nice things'. But there's no suggestion they wouldn't help her out, financially, so why is there any real need for her to worry about money? And Arthur drives a ridiculously flash car. Sell it, mate. There's this thing called 'downsizing'.

And who dies as a result of Norma pressing the button? I'm not entirely sure. This is where it starts to get confusing. A lot of people have been, and are being, offered The Box and the money, so a lot of people are dying all over the place as a result of other people pressing buttons. Possibly. There's no real indication who Norma and Arthur 'killed', except at the end when...well, I won't spoil the actual ending for you.

If I remember correctly, in the original story, and I think the TZ episode, we either don't get to find out who's behind The Box, or it's possibly the government. In THE BOX, it's aliens. There, I've said it. Aliens. They're testing the human race to see if they should expppzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

HUH? WHAT?! Oh sorry, I kinda zoned-out there for a while. Something about watery gateways, and the afterlife, and...something. Or something.

To it's credit, THE BOX turns into a mutant conspiracy thriller (that is, it's a weird version of a conspiracy thriller, not a conspiracy thriller about mutants, which might actually be quite good) but the downside to this is that it adds a whole load of superfluous guff to proceedings. There is absolutely no need for the alien angle at all, as it doesn't add anything to the film except a sense of confusion. Something about the Mars Project, and lightning putting a man in contact with aliens, and...you get the idea. Well, no you won't, but you can at least marvel at the disgusting wallpaper in Arthur and Norma's house.

THE BOX is a prime example of the source material not warranting a full-length movie. And instead of crafting a lean paranoid thriller with supernatural undertones, Richard Kelly vomits his science fiction obsessions over the script (which he wrote) and tries to be interesting, but comes across as desperate. Aliens! You can't trust anybody! They're going to kill everyone! No, wait, they're going to take everyone to a better place! Hang on, they're malevolent! No, benevolent! Look at me! Look at what I'm doing! I can be good again; I promise Donnie Darko wasn't a fluke! Just keep giving me money and continue to not let anyone else read my scripts!

Oh Richard, you're not a terrible filmmaker, not at all. You have a fine imagination, but it lacks focus. THE BOX isn't a terrible film, it's just not very good. And I'm not angry with you - I'm disappointed.

OPOPANAX AND BLEEDING FOOTSIES

I found Stephen King's Dark Tower saga so enjoyable I didn't want it to end. So I stopped reading it. I put the seventh (and supposedly final) book down when I was only half-way through it, and have never picked it up again. One of the things that so gripped and fascinated me about the Dark Tower story is that it is absolutely huge, and quite mind-boggling in its intricacies. With it, King had woven threads between and through pretty much every single thing he'd ever written, tying apparently unrelated threads together to form the world's biggest and craziest jumper.

BLACK HOUSE links directly into the Dark Tower saga, but not until quite a way into the hefty 600+ pages. To start with it feels like a mystery/thriller, before mutating into a sort of horrific fantasy, which took me by surprise let me tell you.

A serial killer dubbed 'The Fisherman' is targeting the children in and around the Wisconsin town of French Landing. But he doesn't just kill them - he eats parts of their bodies, in an echo of notorious murderer Albert Fish's M.O.

A few years before The Fisherman appeared, former homicide detective Jack "Hollywood" Sawyer retired to French Landing after helping the chief of police, Dale Gilberston, apprehend another killer who lived in the town. As a favour to his old friend, and his best friend Henry (Dale's blind uncle), Jack agrees to help the FLPD hunt for The Fisherman.

But what caused Jack to retire at the ridiculously early age of 31? And what is it about his past that links him to The Fisherman?

BLACK HOUSE is a sequel to King and Straub's first collaboration THE TALISMAN, but I haven't read that and I don't think it's necessary too either, as BLACK HOUSE is largely self-contained, and the references to the previous book are explained well enough so you're not sat scratching your head.

In that book, Jack Sawyer was a young boy who was involved in a quest to help his dying mother. His journey took him to the Territories, a sort-of alternate/parallel reality that's a bit like a fantastical Wild West. BLACK HOUSE sees him journeying there again, in a bid to help protect the Dark Tower itself.

BLACK HOUSE is a frustrating book. The characters are all excellent, with the main trio of Dale, Jack and Henry being the stand-outs (as you'd expect). King and Straub pepper the story with an insane amount of other characters, some of whom appear briefly, but almost all play an important part in the grand scheme of things. There's also some decidedly affecting emotional tugs along the way, particularly once Jack and his friends start to close in on The Fisherman.

What is less excellent is the overall style of the book. King/Straub choose to use a third-person omniscient narrative form that allows us, the reader, to see and experience things the characters themselves aren't aware of. On the one hand, it helps to build tension and suspense as we're told of someone stalking another person, for instance, but on the flipside it ruins the fictive dream the moment the narrator (which is actually the joint voice of both authors) makes a point of following someone else, and thereby reminding you you're reading a book.

Thankfully, it doesn't ruin the overall experience - generally speaking, the story and execution is top-notch - but it does serve to keep breaking the flow and pulling you out of the action...sometimes literally. However, I will mention the cheeky author intrusion at the end of the book that invites you to stop reading, unless you want to see what the last few pages have in store. I did think that was actually pretty cool.

It's also difficult to tell quite how much of this story is down to Straub. The Dark Tower, and it's related environs, is a resolutely King-created proposition. I've only read one collection of Straub's stories, and remember they were generally quite strange, so maybe he created the book's monstrous villain Mr Munshun? Or suggested The Fisherman's M.O.? Admittedly, the point of a collaboration is that it's, well, a collaboration, so it shouldn't sound too much like one author over another, and trying to separate the voices and ideas is a fairless pointless endeavour. But it's difficult not to wonder...

BLACK HOUSE has well-developed characters, and even shines the spotlight on ones you wouldn't normally pay much attention to. It's core story is sinister and gruesome, and its plot is interesting and involving. It weaves literary references through it smartly and smoothly, and adds another exciting dimension to King's Dark Tower saga. Is it a fine example of the talents of Peter Straub? It's difficult to tell, but it certainly lacks a lot of the needless description that occasionally plagues King's work. The best of both worlds? That would have to be up to you to decide, dear reader.

NO, I REGRET NOTHING

The time has come to bid a fond farewell to some very dear friends of mine. They've filled my life with joy and pride (well, one of them has) and many, many fruitless hours of waiting for them to actually DO something. I hoped they'd have children and grow old together, or indulge in a three-way and make some sort of mutant mega-baby, but this never happened. Maybe I cut one of them off in his prime, so the blame lies squarely on my shoulders. The others...never really did anything in the first place so I can't be blamed for their lack of enthusiasm.

So please, join me in bidding farewell to three of the worst pets I ever had, as I set them free in the backyard to get eaten by birds or perhaps ants. Sayonara, LEGS MCKINLEY (Impossibly Fast Snail), PAJAMAS BANDICOOT (Relatively Attractive Snail) and TINY TIM (Very Very Small Snail). We'll always have Acapulco *sniff*

Legs McKinley, pissing all over the competition at the Indoor Snail Racing Championships, 16th July 2010.