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Jun. 21st, 2008 @ 02:03 am
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"That's the wonderful thing about crayons, they can take you to more places than a starship."
This must surely be the worst dialogue ever spoken on any episode of a Star Trek series. |
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May. 29th, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
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Went into Forbidden Planet today to pick up Judenhass, the new Dave Sim comic. I go in there fairly regularly (basically every week I remember to) but most weeks I leave without buying anything. Not because of some geezerised hangup about how the comics aren't as good as they used to be, sonny boy, but because years ago I realised I was a terrible comic collector. Just about every run I owned had a gap of two or three issues to mark the weeks I had forgotten to go to the store.
So for the last decade or so I've only bought the trade paperback collections or other one-offs, which means that when I spend money, I really fucking spend money. A few weeks ago, bang, impulse purchase of £50 worth of American Flagg hardcovers. Today, if I didn't have to carry them around the town with me, I could have come away with the OMAC, Iron Fist and Starman hardcovers and the True Story Swear To God Archives.
But what struck me when I was looking through the stuff on the racks is that for someone who basically doesn't read current superhero comics, there was an awful lot of stuff on there that I'm interested to see. Giant Size Astonishing X-Men. Iron Fist. All Star Superman. 1985. Final Crisis. Legion Of Super Heroes. And that's before you list the indie books (Usagi Yojimbo had a new issue out) and the things I want to read just to see if they're really as retarded as they sound (Helen Killer issue #2, I am looking in your direction).
I'm playing with the idea of spending a few weeks reading absolutely everything that comes out and doing one-line reviews of it all, classic Savage Critic style. I mean, they seem to have given up on the format, so someone might as well put it to use. I've got a feeling that the average review would feature me being completely baffled as a result of coming into a continuity-heavy storyline somewhere in the middle, but you've gotta have a hobby, right? |
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no time to blog, doctor jones...
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May. 22nd, 2008 @ 11:51 pm
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...'cause it's late and I need my beauty sleep. But I have to stop in and give the new Indiana Jones film a brief, regretful, thumbs down.
The only thing I can say without going into depth is that the original films were homages; this one is a sort of half-hearted parody. I find a lot of dumb films entertaining. I don't have anything against dumb films. I just draw the line at a dumb film that keeps hitting you over the head with how clever it thinks it's being.
Also, if you like that bit in Predator where Arnold Schwarzenegger escapes a nuclear explosion by jumping behind a log, you will wet yourself with joy at what Harrison Ford does here.
(The very distant possibility of) More later... |
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May. 20th, 2008 @ 09:20 pm
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So this morning my sister-in-law gave birth to a baby girl. And this afternoon it was announced that Steven Moffat is taking over as showrunner on Doctor Who. If parliament votes this evening to approve the Fairness And Justice In Football Act (2008)*, it will have been a really pretty good day.
*"Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, that if anyone beats Glasgow Rangers it only counts as a draw." |
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was it you?
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May. 5th, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
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Was it you? Who was it? Was it you? Was it you? He said it was you. Was it you?
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you must have a heart of steeeullll
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May. 4th, 2008 @ 02:56 am
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IRON MAN: a solid B+.
First, I have to repeat a couple of things other people have said about this movie. One, Stan Lee actually makes it better by being in it. Two, I totally fancy Gwyneth Paltrow now.
The film has been incredibly well-reviewed at rottentomatoes.com, scoring 94% positive reviews at last count. However, one of the negative reviews includes the following text:Light on both CGI and moral quandaries, [it posesses] neither the zip and sparkle of a Spider-Man nor the brooding existential subtexts of Batman Begins. I have frankly taken dumps that contain more brooding existential subtexts than BATMAN BEGINS. Do not listen to people who tell you that Christian Bale explaining all the steps involved in ordering a backup supply of Bat-Ears is more fun to watch than battery-powered Robert Downey Jr. building a supersonic flying armour.
It really shouldn't be difficult to tell an entertaining story with giant robots in. You would think. But I'm working on a robot-related project at the moment, and have been watching lots of mecha anime in the hope of finding some ideas to steal. Everything I have seen so far has been incredibly bad. In fact, I was fully prepared to walk out of IRON MAN the moment Robert Downey Jr. realised one of his childhood friends was in fact a mystical avatar, but luckily that didn't prove to be part of the plot.
On the other hand, there is a scene where the love interest performs heart surgery on the lead, and the scene sort of turns into a penetration metaphor. I demand you see this film for that reason alone. |
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May. 2nd, 2008 @ 08:08 pm
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I keep seeing adverts for theatre productions and thinking "Must get a ticket for that" and then not. Frankly, as a former theatre studies student it's a miracle I ever see anything at all, but I made a list of every show I've been to in the last five years and it doesn't amount to much:
2004:
West Side Story, amateur production
Tosca, Scottish Opera
Die Fledermaus, Scottish Opera
2005:
Telstar - The Joe Meek Story, Con O'Neill
A Few Good Men, Rob Lowe & John Barrowman
2006:
Richard III, Northern Broadsides
The Wolves In The Walls, National Theatre of Scotland
A Moon For The Misbegotten, Kevin Spacey & Colm Meaney
Cabaret, Anna Maxwell Martin
2007:
Er...
2008:
The Mousetrap
Not sure about the cast for The Mousetrap. Whoever's in it now, I suppose. I can remember whodunit but not who did it. |
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the doctor delusion
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Apr. 8th, 2008 @ 02:07 pm
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Hoho. Richard Dawkins to appear in DOCTOR WHO:[Dawkins] is perhaps equally well known amongst some Doctor Who fans as the husband of Lalla Ward, who played former companion Romana! He was also a close friend of former script editor Douglas Adams, to whom he dedicated The God Delusion.
...
[Russell T Davies] said the show's crew were delighted to see Dawkins on set: "People were falling at his feet ... We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping." Well, who knows. Maybe it was intentional.
In other news, my cable package has series 2 of WHO available for one-click viewing. My goodness, but those are some largely-tepid episodes. I mean, the first year was patchy as hell, but at least there you had Christopher Eccleston elevating the material a bit. |
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Apr. 5th, 2008 @ 02:17 pm
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Mar. 29th, 2008 @ 02:51 pm
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On Mark Evanier's website right now there's an entry about Jerry Siegel's heirs winning back partial rights to Superman, the character Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created in the 1940s. There's also a photograph of Shuster holding a copy of THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN, a 1970s history of the character in which the names Siegel and Shuster do not appear.
Pretty much every time the question of ownership of these characters comes up, there will be some person who says "But Siegel and Shuster [or Jack Kirby, or Bill Finger, or whoever] signed away their rights. It was all legal and proper. They weren't entitled to anything more." (In fact that's often not true. You would be astonished how little paperwork Kirby put his name to in the 1960s. But in Siegel and Shuster's case they did sign the contract and take the $130 payment for the rights to Superman.)
Okay, if DC Comics were really comfortable with that, then in the 1970s they would have had no problem publishing a history of Superman which did indeed make mention of those figures of minor historical interest, the guys who actually came up with the idea in the first place. And they could then have said "Nowadays Jerry Siegel is living in penury and Joe Shuster is legally blind, and neither of them sees a penny from Superman, the character they created which is now worth many millions of dollars, and it is all legal and proper."
So why didn't DC do that? Because everybody who read it would think "That's not right. Now I don't enjoy reading Superman comics so much." The fact that DC instead went to such Stalinist lengths of historical revisionism (and in fact so did their competitors Marvel Comics, who, after Captain America co-creator Joe Simon left the company, retroactively decided that he had never existed) shows that they knew exactly how much it mattered that the forms were signed and the deal was binding and it was all legal and proper. |
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i'll settle for a cup of coffee but you know what i really need
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Mar. 9th, 2008 @ 11:12 am
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... and what I really need is a political biography in comic book form to read while I'm eating breakfast. How did I miss this? Last year, Slate serialised RONALD REAGAN: A GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY, and you can still read it online (Section 1, 20 pages; Sections 2-5, 80 pages).
The guy who reviewed this for the Comics Journal said that although the comic makes no bones about how appalling Reagan was whenever he departed from his script, you finish the book feeling somewhat more charmed by the man than you did when you started. Which is a nice balance to strike, I think. Anyway, quite a pleasing read. |
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Feb. 26th, 2008 @ 07:18 am
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New Dave Sim project announced. JUDENHASS, a 56-page essay/comic about the Holocaust. It really does look good; check out the preview if you have time. |
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albums i wish i still had #1
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Feb. 24th, 2008 @ 08:45 pm
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Audioweb — Audioweb
I first encountered this album via a full-page ad in the NME. It was a blank page with, stuck to the centre, a fragment of an interview with Ian Brown which featured him saying that all he'd been doing lately was sitting around listening to the Audioweb album. So I went out and bought a copy that day; endorsements work, kids.
I must have lost my copy in one of the various house moves around 2001 or so, which is infuriating because it came with a special limited edition bonus CD featuring a live performance recorded at the Reading Festival. I can only imagine that singer Martin Merchant was ripped to the tits on divorce powder or something, because he introduced one of the songs — maybe it was Into My World — with a rant which went: "This is the best fucking track ever recorded. Europe, America, Jamaica, I don't care where you're fucking from, you're not better than this fucking track." I mean, I'm one of the bigger fans Audioweb had and even I think he was a bit off-base with that "best fucking track ever" thing.
The other thing I remember about the bonus CD is that the songs came with subtly altered lyrics. You know the concept of "jazz jokes"? It's when a jazz band is playing one tune, and they throw in a couple of bars of another, and everyone in the audience falls over themselves to be the first one to smile and nod knowingly. Well, say Audioweb were doing their song Sleeper live. The lyrics would go "I'm only sleeping... don't wake me... son, I'm thirty, I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty... don't wake me, don't shake me..." Do you see what he did there.
So I suppose I could buy a copy of the album off Amazon Marketplace, but it probably wouldn't come with the bonus CD and so wouldn't be the same somehow.
In other news, the Audioweb saga came to a sorry end after the release of their second album. The band were scheduled to support Ian Brown on his British tour, but when Brown was sentenced to four months in Strangeways after the notorious King Monkey "chop your hands off" air rage incident, the tour was cancelled and the band decided to call it a day. (I also nearly spent six weeks walking around Glasgow in a custom-made T-shirt with the slogan FREE THE MONKEY ONE until, crucially, I realised that I couldn't be bothered.)
To close, here is my gift to you: Audioweb's cover of The Clash's song Bankrobber, which I have just now listened to five times on the trot. Is it just the befuddling effects of nostalgia, or is this actually a bit of a storming track? You be the judge.
bankrobber.mp3 |
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currently reading
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Feb. 17th, 2008 @ 02:57 pm
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PRESS GANG: HOW NEWSPAPERS MAKE PROFITS FROM PROPAGANDA by Roy Greenslade. I bought this absolutely ages ago but was probably put off reading it by the somewhat po-faced title and the sheer size of the thing — nearly 700 hardback pages of text before the index and endnotes.
But much to my surprise, it turns out to be an extremely funny book. I've had to stifle giggles and shocked laughter several times whilst reading it in public. The early parts, at least (the book' coverage begins in 1945 and I've so far reached the late '50s), come across like a comedy of fading British imperialism, with a huge cast of bizarre characters and appalling attitudes. Some examples:
There was the newspaper editor whose open opposition to apartheid caused general mockery and led to competing editors informing their friends that if they wanted an appointment with the man, they should first cover themselves with boot polish...
Then there was the early paparazzi-style incident which involved an unauthorised photograph being taken at a society wedding. The groom grabbed the camera and smashed it, which kicked off a debate over whether he was right to sully himself by striking a social inferior...
And the editor whose chronic alcoholism was leaving him drunkenly incoherent at 9:30am. When, to his incredulity, he was finally fired he bellowed "Judas!" and dragged his whisky-soaked carcass downstairs to guzzle booze with the janitorial staff for most of the day before eventually retiring to a nearby wine bar...
And the sale of the family-run Scottish newspaper, whose proprietors were willing to entertain any offer as long as the buyer wasn't English...
The "propaganda" of the title turns out not to be an overstatement. During the 1945 general election rival newspapers ran headlines including GESTAPO IN BRITAIN IF SOCIALISTS WIN and A VOTE FOR CHURCHILL IS A VOTE FOR FRANCO, prefiguring internet conversation by a good fifty years...
As of the 1950s, the newspapers were comically baffled by the emergence of youth culture. Articles straight out of OUR DUMB CENTURY abounded, with one paper covering jazz by describing "More and more white teenagers... contorting to the rhythm of the Negro," and another reacting to the looming menace of Bill Haley after "rhythm-crazed teenagers terrorised a city."
(Possibly you have to have something wrong with you to find this stuff amusing. Maybe it's just me.)
(Although even my sense of humour has its limits. I didn't get many giggles, for example, from the section on men who were put in jail and had their livelihoods ruined after being outed by the newspapers. Or from the part on the 1954 race riots, which led to gangs of white wide boys wandering around Notting Hill chanting "We want a nigger." Although it has to be said that the coverage of the latter featured journalists concluding that there needed to be new immigration restrictions on the grounds that the presence of blacks in Britain was causing white people to riot and smash stuff up. Which more or less brings us back to high comedy again.)
Anyway; terrific book. Highly recommended. |
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Jan. 14th, 2008 @ 11:26 pm
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The Writer Meme nicked from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) budgie_uk and edited down because I'm lazy
What's the last thing you wrote? An assignment for class: a short story set in Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS universe. It ended up being a blatant plagiarism of SLINGS AND ARROWS, about a theatrical company mounting a production of DOCTOR FAUSTUS.
Was it any good? Hmm.
What's the first thing you ever wrote that you still have? A story I wrote (well, scrawled really) in primary school, aged eight or so. It's about me traveling back in time to impress Toulouse-Lautrec with my painting skills by showing him paintings of his from two years in his future and pretending I did them. Unfortunately he kept saying inconvenient and irritating things like "Why is my signature on this?"
Was it any good? I think so, yes. When I found it, I read it with a mixture of pride and mild depression.
Best plot you ever wrote? A spy story called COMPLETE CONTROL which was to be an entry for a short screenplay competition (except I blew the entry deadline). It had probably the maximum possible number of double-crosses per script page.
How often do you get writer's block? Constantly.
How do you fix it? Go and sit on my own somewhere with nothing else to do.
Write fan fiction? Only for class.
Do you type or write by hand? Longhand, always. Since I learned to touch-type I can't write anything coherent on a keyboard (which you've probably figured out already from reading this entry).
Do you save everything you write? God, no. Screwed-up sheets of paper in the bin, that's the way it should be.
Do you even show people your work? You have to read your work aloud at the class I attend. That's very useful, by the way: paying attention to the response when you read something to an audience will tell you infinitely more about what you've written than you'll ever learn from verbal criticism.
Did you ever write a novel? No, but I have one that I really need to get around to.
Have you ever written fantasy, sci-fi, or horror? Yes.
What's your favourite setting for your characters? Grim dark futures a la DAYS OF FUTURE PAST etc.
How many writing projects are you working on right now? One. It's only ever one at a time.
Do you ever parody? You know, I used to, quite frequently. Maybe I can't summon up the necessary bile lately.
Do you actually like the thing you're parodying, or are you spitefully making fun of it? Oh no, it's pure spite.
Do you ever write based on yourself? That reminds me of the actor who asked David Mamet "Should I use my own experiences to play this part?" What other choice do you have?
Do you ever write based on your dreams? No. Mind you, I had this dream the other night that my parents were going to see a fat, old Lenny Bruce live in concert. I was really worried the whole time that they would come back complaining that he's not as good as he used to be. There's probably a story in that somewhere.
Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write? Yeah. I can't really turn that off.
Does music help you to write? No, just to survive.
Quote something you've written. The first thing to pop into your mind. "She emerged from the closet carrying a mop and bucket and a bewildering array of dusters." |
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my new year:
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Jan. 2nd, 2008 @ 04:24 am
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I actually got a haircut in the end, because after a while I kept flashing onto that FREAK BROTHERS strip where a bunch of rednecks drive past Freewheelin' Franklin and shout "Haw! I cain't tell if it's a boy or a girl!" and he shouts back "Why don't you suck my dick and find out?" and then they... you know the one I mean? If not, I demand you go out and buy every single FREAK BROTHERS comic that was ever published.
Spent Hogmanay at the Ashton Lane Street Party. It cost £20 just to get in, and the booze was ludicrously overpriced, but crucially Ashton Lane is about a two minute walk from my flat and thus transport home afterwards wasn't going to prove problematic.
At about 1am, ran into a bunch of people I haven't seen since leaving school in the '90s, one of whom has spent the intervening decade performing on cruise ships. I dunno if that means he was being Dirk Benedict's straight man or what. He introduced me to one of his friends, a local girl who has somehow ended up working on behalf of Tuscany at the European Parliament. We had a very interesting conversation and then I singularly failed to ask for her phone number due to intense personal rubbishness.
Also: got very drunk. Happy New Year to you all! |
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Dec. 21st, 2007 @ 12:29 pm
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I love online tracking for parcels. I think it's a great idea. It would be an even better idea if it ever actually fucking worked.
Just the most recent example: I did the bulk of my Christmas shopping this year on Amazon UK. Two parcels were shipped out yesterday by guaranteed-next-day, requires-a-signature Royal Mail Special Delivery. Of the two tracking numbers I was sent, one confirms that the parcel has been successfully delivered (it hasn't) and the other tells me that tracking is sometimes not available until evening on the day of postage and I should check back later.
I realise that we're now in the death throes of the Christmas mail rush and there's going to be a certain amount of chaos in the system, but this is exactly the sort of thing that always goes wrong with parcel tracking. The tracking site goes directly from telling you that the parcel has reached their Hong Kong international depot, to informing you that since no-one was home to receive the delivery, you should call the following local rate phone number to rearrange or drive ten miles to the local sorting office, without passing the sole useful stage of Parcel is now being loaded on delivery van; please ensure you are available to sign for it during the next three hours.
To summarise: modern life is rubbish, technology doesn't work, and next year I am going to make all my Christmas presents by whittling. I blame the Microsoft corporation. |
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in which i probably put you off watching a tv show
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Dec. 18th, 2007 @ 08:05 am
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I've been watching and enjoying DAWN FRENCH'S BOYS WHO DO COMEDY on BBC1, which consists of clips of French interviewing 35 professionally funny blokes about their trade, including John Cleese, Bob Newhart, Eddie Izzard, Robin Williams and, bizarrely, Jethro.
Here's a bit that made me laugh. Simon Pegg describes an incident from his life that he could never get to work as a stand-up routine.
There's also a spinoff series with the great title DAWN FRENCH'S MORE BOYS WHO DO COMEDY, which is six episodes of French talking to one of the 35 for a full half-hour. The Cleese episode is great, and so is the Rob Brydon one; haven't seen the rest. Current Music: John Spencer, Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing - Wonderful Xmastime |
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Dec. 11th, 2007 @ 03:49 pm
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I was going to fill out that '2007 in review' questionnaire that's circulating, but because I'm lazy, I've only answered one question instead of forty. Which is:
38) What was your most embarrassing moment of 2007?
Right. So, as I mentioned at the time, during the Edinburgh Festival my oldest brother invited us through to the theatre he was running to attend a taping of the radio panel show Just A Minute. One of the panelists that day was Jo Caulfield, and my mum fancied seeing her stand-up show that evening.
Assembly Rooms. 8pm. Sell-out crowd of, what, about two thousand? Jo Caulfield starts her act by saying that the previous night some woman had brought her 12-year-old daughter to the show and had been thoroughly scandalised by the language and subject matter. Had anyone brought their children with them this time?
No response. Then my mum puts her hand up.
Jo Caulfield catches sight of me and says "Oh, that's all right, I'm not worried about him. He's old enough -- he's probably having sex and everything."
And my mum says "Lucky him!"
This got a big laugh, but not from me because I was too busy trying to hide under my own seat, and also not from Jo Caulfield, who flashed my mum a look that said I do the jokes and quickly changed the subject. |
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the darwin award for ambiguous sloganry
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Dec. 8th, 2007 @ 03:34 pm
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I was watching a news item about the John Darwin case earlier. There was some footage shot outside the police station where Darwin is being held which showed a police surveilance van driving past. On the side of the van, the words POLICE CCTV and their slogan:
WATCHING OUT FOR YOU
Indeed. |
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