Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

03-17-06

There's quite a lot to pack into this week's entry. First there's V For Vendetta. There's been talk for years of bringing Alan Moore and David Lloyd's brilliantly dystopian view of a near future Britain to the screen for a number of years now with rumours of shifting the action to the States and generally messing around with the concept. It was public knowledge last year that Moore disowned himself from the project, asking his name to be removed from its credits and giving his slice of the movie money to artist David Lloyd. And now it's here. I went to a press screening to see it last week (by the time you read this, it will be on general release in the US and the UK) and I have to say that I was actually pretty impressed. Unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was cack-handed and pointless, and From Hell, which was a worthy effort but let down by a very shaky script and some pantomime performances, V For Vendetta manages to keep the flavour of Moore and Lloyd's work without changing things for their own sake. Natalie Portman plays ingenue Evey, who gets rescued by the eponymous V (Hugo Weaving) and brought in as his co-conspirator. It's not perfect by any means: sometimes Portman shows her limitations as an actress and her indeterminate English accent can be annoying but Weaving is excellent, delivering classic lines with style and grace. V For Vendetta the film takes a microscope to modern authority while remaining intelligent and one of the most interesting aspects to the film is that it comes across as a very British affair despite the fact that the director is Australian and the producers are American. V For Vendetta puts across some bold ideas in a dynamic and exciting fashion without dumbing down the source material.

I also took a trip to the London Book Fair last week, hawking around the London Bridges book proposal and beginning to set up a number of other projects. It's an amazing show and this year it moved from the Victorian tram shed of Olympia to the purpose built, modern environs of Excel in Docklands. Basically Docklands is in the east of London and it's a huge area, redeveloped from the original London docks as expensive loft apartments and commercial space. Excel is a fantastic venue and the book publishers seem much more at home here than they did in Olympia. If anyone gets the chance, I would recommend trying to visit the Book Fair at least once.

On Wednesday evening, I went to a Nick Park and Steve Box Wallace & Gromit signing at my friend Russell's Animation Art Gallery. It was absolutely jam packed with people so I didn't get the chance to meet them but left my card with someone at the gallery. It's heartening to see that Wallace & Gromit's success continues unabated.