It suddenly occurred to me that a Cavorite Sphere – as developed by Mr. Cavor in H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon – is something that I did not have, and I searched for such a thing.

I discovered that there are two on the market suitable for 28mm. One is relatively easy to find mention of, but is sold in the US and doesn’t seem particularly easy to order even there.

The other I discovered via eBay, and it’s made in the UK by Richard Helliwell’s company Infinity-Engine. This is the one I bought.

I first heard of it under a fortnight ago, ordered it less than a week ago and completed it today – this may be a record! And at this point I wish I’d included a 28mm figure for reference in the picture, as I had to ask the seller for the size and I’ve made it no better for anyone finding this – but you’ll just have to take Richard’s word and mine that it’s the right size. The sphere is about 9cm across, from bumper to bumper, or about 3½” in old money.

It’s a 38-piece resin kit, of which 32 are railway bumpers and one is the Moon’s surface (or a small part thereof). Visually, it’s based on the 1964 movie, which I re-watched parts of in preparation for painting this kit. (If you’re interested in this story, the 2010 Mark Gatiss TV Movie is also worth watching).

Having re-watched some key parts of the movie, the easiest thing to pick up visually was that the Cavorite itself was a yellowish substance painted on to white blinds. The yellow turned put to be metallic and reflective when the sphere was flying through space lit by the sun, so I could have gone for a very brassy look and it would probably have looked great. But the thing about Cavorite is that it counteracts gravity when it’s a) cool and b) exposed. If the blinds were deployed, and we had the brassy look, the sphere would probably not be – wherever it’s meant to be. It would be flying off into space. I thought about having one blind partially exposed, and maybe weathered so that the Cavorite covering is only partial, but ultimately I decided to keep it simple. No exposed Cavorite.

With my dodgy colour vision, I was less sure about the colours used for the rest of the sphere. However, the impression I wound up with was the ribs were a dark metallic colour, the panels surrounding the portholes were wooden, and the other panels of the sphere, where the blinds would be deployed were also dark in colour. I couldn’t decide whether it was a dark metallic colour or something else, but then I caught a hint that it was a dark red.

Now, this could be entirely my imagination, and if you watch the film you may see something else. As I’ve mentioned, my colour vision is dodgy, so if you see something else you’re probably right. But having seen it, real or not, I was caught up by the idea and decided that the majority of the panels were to be painted Burgundy. It’s not so far-fetched after all – burgundy was a popular colour of the period and not a million miles from the “Purple Lake” colour used for some railway carriages, so it fit in reasonably well with the railway theme of the bumpers.

The only “clever” bit of painting, as opposed to using flat colours, was for the wood panels, where I used a base coat of ochre and a wash of burnt umber to achieve a slightly textured varnished wood colour. I dry-brushed a little silver on the hard edges of the bumpers to give them a bit of wear.

You can attach the hatch open or closed. I chose not attach it at all, so I continue to have the choice. I also chose not to glue the top and bottom halves together, so that I have the option at some future date of scratch-building the interior. As you can see if you click through for the larger version of the picture, the interior is a bit ribbed – you can also see a bit of waviness on the exterior panels, although it’s not so marked. I think the body of the model was originally mastered in a 3D printer, with some details being modelled more traditionally before the whole was cast in resin; which is of course a faster way of producing multiple copies than 3D printing is, at least for now. It’s quite cool to see new technology being used in this way, and although there are detectable artefacts, I don’t think they harm this model, adding to the “hand-built” charm of the fictional sphere.

Finally just a brief mention for the base. Not used to getting a base in these sorts of models, it was quite nice to do so. Here it is in a photo of its own, where it doesn’t look quite so washed out in the harsh rays of the sun:

I decided that the powdery surface was pale, but under the surface – or harder bits that hadn’t weathered away – would be darker, and a combination of washes and dry-brushing in different shades of grey got me there, more or less. These highlighted most of the structure I wanted, but I did try to paint faint impact rays around the centre of the largest crater.

Fear them!

A double bill with "Back Toy The Future":

Last night, I watched The Complete Metropolis, or at least the version that’s as complete as we’re ever likely to get, although it has a few scenes still missing. It is the best version I’ve seen (and the fourth I’ve owned).

Funnily enough, the most immediately obvious improvement is to the captioning! The captions are translated from the originals, and since previously available versions of the film have been so heavily cut that the story is different, the captions have also been rewritten; often not very well. The original captions construct a better narrative. The few remaining missing scenes are replaced by captions in a different font, so you also know what you’ve missed.

Of course, although the captions create the best first impression, the “new” footage (largely unseen since the film’s first seventeen days of showing in Germany in 1927) are invaluable in re-establishing the intended narrative too. Two substantial subplots are reinstated, the symbolism around the seven deadly sins, the Book of Revelation, Babel/Babylon and Robot Maria’s residency in the Yoshiwara nightclub is more clearly spelled out, and we see rather more of the destruction of the machines and the underground city. The recovered footage is of poor quality, even after restoration, with a lot of vertical scratching and a bit of black boxing around the edge. I’m surprised they couldn’t have done a better job of removing the vertical scratching, but in the full context of the movie, honestly you won’t care tuppence.

The first “new” subplot concerns Josaphat, the Thin Man and Georgy 11811. Josaphat and Georgy 11811 make minor appearances in other versions; Josaphat is the administrator Joh Fredersen sacks early on, and Georgy 11811 is the worker whose shift Freder Fredersen takes over in his enthusiasm to find out how the other half live. The Thin Man, Joh Fredersen’s sinister enforcer, is largely absent from other versions, as is the subplot that intertwines these three. Although Georgy 11811 remains a minor character, it’s nice to see that his arc contains both a fall and redemption, and I would go so far as to say that Josaphat becomes the third heroic character in the film, after Freder and Maria.

The second re-established subplot is the relationship between Joh Fredersen, Rotwang and the deceased Hel, loved by them both. Although this is touched on in previous versions, with more time devoted to it it helps to better explain the character of Rotwang. He’s still the archetypical mad scientist with wild hair, staring eyes, and a mechanical hand – but we have a better understanding of why he’s as mad as a box of frogs these days and why he does what he does, rather than him appearing to be a rather random agent of chaos.

More is made of the religious symbolism in the film, and it becomes clear why it’s there. This is much better handled by the previously missing footage, and unified by a sequence where Freder’s hallucinating. Now I finally understand how the statues of the seven deadly sins come to life!

Finally, we see rather more of the destruction of the machines and the underground city and although there’s little added to the plot by these sequences it does help to flesh out why things are happening as they are. Without these sequences, some of the destruction seems a bit random, but they become more coherent with the missing footage added back in. Particularly worthy of note are Robot Maria and the mob storming the Moloch Machine, and a much fuller sequence of the destruction of the Heart Machine, which triggers the flooding. First of all, the Heart Machine is clearly identified as such, and then we see how the mob get at it, leaving me with rather more sympathy for Grot, the Chief Foreman, than I’ve felt in previous versions. The flooding sequences are extended, and more time’s spent building up their tension.

Unless you have a fondness for 1980s music – in which case, Giorgio Moroder’s tinted version is still worth watching – this is the version of Metropolis to see, whether you’re coming to it fresh, or you’ve seen it before and would like to  revisit it. Unless those few missing scenes turn up, this is your best chance to see the movie pretty much as Fritz Lang intended. Ultimately, although it’s still very much of it’s time, Metropolis is a better constructed and more modern movie than you may have thought.

I went to see The Eagle on Saturday, which is a film adaptation of The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff. I read the latter when I was at school – in first year at Dunoon Grammar I think – and although I couldn’t remember much detail I did remember enjoying it.

It’s had mixed reviews, and I had a mixed response to it too. Ultimately it’s an OK movie, with good and not-quite-so-good aspects to it. If you feel like going to see it, do. If you weren’t already considering it, then don’t go out of your way.

Having said that, that’s only my response – and I can’t remember when I was last at a movie that garnered applause at the final credits, even if it was from only a part of the audience. So it must have something!

The story’s set in Roman-era Britain, a little less than a generation after the Ninth Legion marched into Scotland and disappeared. (This is historically just about possible, but unlikely – the Ninth Legion does disappear from the records as far as explicit records go, but there are mentions afterwards of people who may have been in the Ninth, and another theory is that it was transferred to the East and lost there. Check the Wikipedia link for more.) Invalided out of the Roman army, the son of the Ninth’s centurion goes looking for what happened to his father’s legion, accompanied by a slave.

The first part of the film seems quite leisurely, and takes place with Hungary standing in for England. It looks just a bit too warm to me, but then the Romans did have vineyards in England at the time, so maybe it’s not too far out. A heroic incident at a fort gets Marcus invalided out, and the rest of the time is spent recuperating at his uncle’s place in the North of England.

The action sequences at the fort are very watchable, and particularly interesting is seeing a testudo in action. I did enjoy this, but unfortunately it strained plausibility rather when they used it as a tank to get in amongst a horde of Britons – rather too mobile and, while I could believe it would be highly effective, I also think it would have crumbled a bit more when completely surrounded in the way it appeared in the film. There were also chariots with scythes on the wheels, which are historically unlikely. However, to be fair, these details do come straight from the book. I also enjoyed the tense night scene waiting for attack. While it wasn’t clear what supernatural prescience had prompted our hero to wake for no good reason, once he had, the scene was handled very realistically, with a lot of silent listening, and believable doubt as to whether anything was actually occurring, until (with dramatic inevitability, of course) it did.

This battle was also our first exposure to one of this film’s nice touches; its use of accents and language. The Romans are American, the Britons, er, British, and the Picts later in the film speak Gaelic – which is an anachronism, but since we don’t have much extant of the Pictish language, it’s a reasonable and generously sensitive anachronism. There’s a mystery here though. All the talk in the publicity and online is of the accents, and the Picts speaking Gaelic. This first battle is in more southerly Britain, and the Britons here are also speaking in their own language, which in this case is not Gaelic. Unfortunately, I don’t know what language they used here instead, and I can’t find any mention of it. I’d like to know.

Whether you like the language stuff or not will depend on whether you view it as heavy-handed social commentary or a neat way of differentiating between different peoples in the film. I’m quite happy to view it as the latter.

Apart from the battle, the initial pace of the film seemed quite slow, but it did succeed in drawing me in. Then, having picked up a slave as a hanger on, we were off north of Hadrian’s Wall. The wall itself seemed about right to me, although I suspect military discipline at the gate would have been better.

There are two things to comment on north of the wall; the scenery and the people. Filming moved to Scotland – the real Scotland – for this part of the film, and it’s probably the most realistic portrayal of west highland landscape I’ve seen in a movie (they don’t spend long south of the Highlands). They choose their picturesque shots of course, but they also show it wet. There’s heavy rain, and even when it’s not raining, the ground is wet and slippery underfoot. It’s not like this all the time in the west, of course, but there’s a reason why the woods there are classified as temperate rainforest, and it’s nice to see that realistically shown on film.

The people – well, there’s not a huge amount of historical information to go on, but they were probably dialled down a notch or two in terms of attachment to wearing proper clothes, and up several notches in terms of exciting make-up. It’s unlikely that many Picts wandered about wearing pale blue foundation most of the time, and these folk wandering about half dressed are the same folk who would have been building the brochs during the preceding couple of hundred years. The clothes they were wearing were probably OK, if a bit rough. At least they looked like they might be warm. Over all, though, these Picts were a bit too “Native American stereotype”.

Although the slow first half of the movie had drawn me in, oddly the second half, when things got more interesting, lost me again a bit. It’s hard to say why this was; one thing that occurred to me is that we spend quite a lot of time looking at our heroes from a distance, which puts a bit of metaphorical distance between us and the characters too. The resolution of the difficult situation they find themselves in feels rather under justified, and so while I wasn’t entirely immune to the end-of-movie emotion, it was felt in a rather detached way.

In addition to my general recommendation above – go if you felt like seeing it already, but don’t go out of your way – I would add that if your interest’s in some aspect of the setting, go with a like-minded friend. You may enjoy the movie, but I can practically guarantee you’ll get more out of discussing its successes and failures later.

I didn’t. Edward Woodward started his career at the Byre.

For anyone who's not already read it courtesy of ffutures, the rediscovery of the full length version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis is being reported by Zeit Online.

The original version was only shown for a few months in Germany in 1927; all versions seen since then have been considerably edited. The longest cut known to exist previously was just under two hours long; the newly rediscovered copy extends that by about an hour and a half!