A lot of British critics gave rather mixed reviews of the film. On one hand, they thought that it was a good film, but on the other hand they weren’t sure what they thought about the film as an adaptation of the graphic novel. The original G.N. was a lot darker, and V was portrayed as being far more amoral (with the suggestion that the revolution he wanted to bring about would be even worse for Britain than Norsefire).

The graphic novel was a critique of Thatcherism and Conservatism (in a similar way to the ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘2000 AD’ comics), which wouldn’t have been relevent in todays world. So I think the way the film made use of current fears of terrorism and extremism (and the use of scapegoats, which is growing more and more plausable by the day in some areas of Britain). And Valerie’s story was at once touching, disturbing and scarily plausible. Even more so, because there are countries where ‘black-bagging’-esque activities do happen. And with respect to that, I thought Steven Fry did a fantastic job (I confess, I rarely think of him as a ’serious’ actor…)

But, yes. A very good movie. And a good podcast. I surprised a ’secret’ film camera wasn’t considered or spotted as a ’security’ risk. Flew out of the Uk recently. Only difference I noticed was that we had to take off our shoes as we went through security. That said, it was just a flight to the continent from a small airport.

kev!

The camera is an Aiptek MPVR. It’s a smallish palm-sized digital camera of questionable quality. However, it is quick and easy and if it gets broken it’s not that big of a loss.

America. I’m embarrassed.