I misjudged you, demon

Paranormal, tentacled terrors from the pit, no, this isn’t a reference to the 70s toilet in my flat but my new love. Boy Hell, I mean, Hellboy. Its unsettling that, apart from inheriting several physical and physiological traits from my dad, I’ve also inherited an uncontrollable tendency for irrational prejudices when it comes to certain franchises.

It happened with Firefly, despite the love that dare not speak its name, (not in public at any rate) for Buffy and Angel. Again, I suffered this affliction when considering Clone Wars despite knowing some Samurai Jack episodes verbatim. And so, it follows, like a chicken burger that has stewed under a heat lamp, follows too much Bombay Safire, that I would feel the same way about Hellboy.

The Hellboy revulsion is easier to dissect. My first real exposure was a giant bust (for the non-geek this amounts to a classical bust but of a popular comic/anime character) of Hellboy on the desk of a tard I did a degrading summer job for. Negative enforcement number one. The second exposure came via the film version, which, despite being directed by Del Toro loses a lot of the elements that future me would come to love about the graphic novels. The references to Lovecraft and blending of folklore were watered down for a heavier emphasis on action…lame.

So, the moral...the moral? Amoral. Toril, that’s a planet apparently. Don’t judge a graphic novel character by the sawn off horns on his head.

Everybody's gotta grow up sometime, bum, bum, bum

I've moved in with my significant udder, got a permanent job and have governance, both physical and spiritual, over the cat. It's all competing for geek out time. I've even started to contemplate some sort of geek schedule.

Fitting in an hour of Battlestar every week shouldn't be too hard. And, lets Cylon it, once that's over I'll have already rounded up all the episodes of Deadwood and tapped every series of The Wire. Maybe I could buy the Cracker DVD box set? After all, I was only a wee one when the series originally aired. The only episode I can remember, with any clarity, starred Robert Carlyle as a Liverpool supporter who moonlighted as an anarchist bomber. I still duck and cover whenever I hear a scouse accent.

Graphic novels: a friend of mine works at Forbidden Planet, so there's a social excuse to fit that in. I've got some time before the next volumes of The Walking Dead, Fables and Ultimates get released. There's no rush to venture into the BO steeped caverns. They really need to give out deodorant to the more 'special' patrons.


Films: I watched Iron Man on das interweb recently. I also made the mistake of going to see the latest Indy film at the picture house. I thought this time, this time it'll be different. No idiots' mobiles going off in the back row, no middle class twits mindlessly twittering away (in the old fashioned sense) about the price of organic Soya beans. But every time, every bloody time. Cash and time I'll never get back. Still, the significant udder has a free pass to the Mezzanine. I'm gonna go all art house on your asses.


That leaves games. Its officially my job to keep up with what's going on in the gaming world, so maybe a new console isn't such an outlandish concept. I dunno, maybe I should wait till winter and then I can justify staying in with the sweet sounds of the console fan, as I shower fiery death on whatever.

Philip Pullman's, John Blake

I was reading the Guardian Weekend magazine, whilst having some fair trade coffee and eating organic Soya beans, writing to Philippe my adopted Peruvian child and listening to Radio 4 (so much middle class smugness it burns)...


....Right, so the magazine contains three pages of Phillip Pullman's new comic strip. Buccaneering-atheist awesomeness, I hear you cry. Yes, indeed. It's a tale about a boy on a ship akin to one of those 'ripping yarns’ of the Alan Quartermain variety, except its called John Blake. It looks pretty good so far, and has all the wit and atmosphere you'd expect from Pullman. Here's hoping they turn it into a graphic novel.

Hearts and minds: Death Note, Samurai Champloo and SAC

They are juvenile, sexiest and derivative. So said my significant udder of comics and anime. Like some crazy eyed profit or oil hungry, industrial-military complex spokesman, I managed to convert her, on the first one at least. It’s the same for everything you care to think of; some people just don’t get poetry, others football, some, God. The old strategy of, ‘try it, you might like it’ or ‘all the cool kids are doing it’ doesn’t always work. Instead you need to think deeply about what peoples' conceptions are and how you can offer them something unexpected.


Comics:

Full of spandex wearing, self righteous, never doubting, muscle bound idiots. This is still the case, you need only venture to the subterranean, B.O den, that is the Forbidden Planet in Soho to see that the best selling comics are still the ones that would make anyone except an adolescent boy, shudder.

However, there is many a comic that is the polar opposite. Alan Moore’s, Watchmen or the same panelled smack I got my significant udder hooked on, Fables, are both examples of what this medium can achieve. I highly recommend the later, for its wit, post-modernity and incredible artistic style as penned by James Jean. These two titles combined should be enough to shift the opinion of even the most entrenched book burner.



Anime:

Spiky haired, shrill voiced, large breasted, cretins. It’s a cliché because there is some truth to it. Three animes that are, if not completely removed from this stereotype but still manage to stand out: Death Note, Samurai Champloo and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is based on the feature film from back in the cyber day. It’s still essentially a cyber punk, neo noir, set in a post World War IV Japan. It’s like a cop drama with sharp dialogue and a mastermind villain that uses 'people hacking' and the web itself to inflict terrorism.


Death Note is the typical story of a seventeen-year-old boy. Light is the number one student in his country, bored with his mundane life and sickened with a world he sees as falling into depravity. Who hasn’t been bored or sickened? Thing is, we didn’t find a notebook which was dropped by a Shinigami or death god, that resembles an emancipated Goth.

The deal is you can kill whomever you like as long as you know their name and can picture their face. Just scribble it down in the Death Note and they will die in the next forty seconds. For our anti-hero this a god send, literally. He begins a reign of righteous judgement on criminals with the intention that a new world will be born out of his actions where only the pure of heart will live and he shall preside as a God.


Things are never that simple and soon enough, the MAN in the form of the police, start to see a pattern. Unable to gleam any leads they hire the mysterious L, a freelance detective that has solved some of the world’s greatest crimes. And so the stage is set for a battle of wits that will ultimately end in the death of one of the combatants. Death Note has some of the best deductive thinking employed in a drama I have ever seen. It sets a new standard for what we consider a horror/thriller. Talk about moral ambiguity.

Like a rapper armed with a katana, Samurai Champloo slices its way through Edo period Japan. Samurai Champloo is considerably lighter hearted than the other two. It’s the story of a criminal that employs break dancing into his fighting style, a ronin samurai with verbal barbs that cut as deep as his blade and an ever-loveable protagonist in search of ‘the samurai that smells like sunflowers.’





Champloo, means mash up or mix up so that the title translates as Samurai mash up. This is as good an indication of what the format of the show is than anything. Despite, the technology and architecture both being strongly entrenched in the Edo period of Japan, the language, characters and society is an amalgamation of modern day Tokyo and West Coast hip-hop culture. This connection can be over used at times, like when a scene shakes with the accompanying sound of a record scratching as a means to cut to another character somewhere else. Still, funny lines, excellent action scenes as timed to a hip-hop soundtrack all amount to an nteresting amalgamation. Lets go win some hearts and minds.

Why the love for J.J Abrams?

I was catching up with my TED viewing yesterday when I chanced across a lecture given by J.J Abrams, writer, producer, director and spectacle wearer. The lecture was interesting enough, much talk of character development over special effects, a mystery box that he keeps in his office to remind him about, well, the importance of mystery presumeably.


Despite the passable lecture I didn’t understand why the assembled audience made up of scientists, designers, artists etc laughed harder than was necessary at so, so jokes and gave a standing ovation once he’d finally stopped.

I’ve seen many a TED lecture and although it is a rare occurrence, some can be quite dull but usually this is down to the specific orator rather than the subject of discussion. J.J Abrams ‘owned the stage’ which essentially meant he walked up and down it and made sure to make eye contact with as much of the audience as possible.


So far so unremarkable but it must have been the enthusiasm he brought to the TED hall that caused the TEDites to temporarily lose their senses because the other conclusion is far more chilling. It could well be that these learned, innovative and ‘free thinkers’ actually like and elevate J.J Abrams’ works with their own.

A friend of mine once wrote about coming up with clever ideas in advertising as, “lets not take ourselves too seriously we’re not curing cancer.” Or something to that effect but that’s just what the assembled mass at that TED lecture did. It’s like grouping the invention of the big Mac to that of the electronic microscope. Different league, no, galaxy.


Which leads on nicely to one of Mr. Abrams crimes against, everything, yep that’s not overstating it in the slightest. Now it’s important to mention that for the purposes of this spleen clearance I’m discussing Abrams written works:

Armageddon: so painful is the memory of seeing this in the cinema my mind, as a self defence mechanism, only allows me to remember the scene where the triumphant (only U.S) astronauts return and do the slow motion walk thing with the stars and stripes flapping in the background. Then someone says (I think it’s Billy Bob Thornton) to Bruce Willis’ daughter, “Permission to shake the hand of the bravest man on earth.” Or something equally anti-genius.

Regarding Henry: meh

Forever Young - with Mel (Jews are no friends of mine) Gibson: Fell asleep

Gone Fishin’: utter tripe

Alias: I missed most of Alias but did catch up by about series five and I admit the dialogue is pretty snappy despite the overall and overused spy cliché storyline.

Lost: Like many I was taken in by Lost and as I’m not a complete ‘playa hater’ I can congratulate Mr Abrams on a well deserved Emmy for Outstanding Directing for A Drama Series for the first series of Lost, which I assume, was actually won on the strength of the opening episode. Who doesn’t like jets engines on a beach. However, Lost soon became Lost in it’s own pseudo- well everything.

Mission Impossible 3: spew

Cloverfield: the trailer looks interesting but how many times has that been misleading

Star Trek 11: really? Why?

In light of all this Abrams bashing, take heart for if ‘award winning’ writing can be distilled from: emotion, character development and mystery, you should all get writing right now and you too can have a gold statue.

WANTED

As someone who has read WANTED, and who enjoyed it immensely, I can’t help but feel violated for the nth time as Hollywood is releasing a motion picture based on the cult comic. The comic written by citizen pen, Mark Millar, is about a down trodden, youngish man, who is spat at by the local yoot, emasculated by his boss and cheated on by his girlfriend. He is Edward Norton in Fight Club. Our protagonist has however, the decidedly more advantageous luck of being the heir to the world’s greatest assassin’s fortune and skills. This deux ex machina is communicated to him by a femme fatale (played by Angelina Jolie in the film.) Cue the montage of training and awakening of said devastating killing efficiency.


What made the comic a more interesting proposition than the weak and clichéd synopsis might thus far entail, is that all this assassination business takes place in a world where super villains have taken over the world, the catch, no one realises. The world was divided between five arch-super villains in a mafia family type structure, after every super hero on the planet was done away with and the populace was made to forget that superheroes ever existed outside of fiction. This idea of humanity being lorded over by sinister forces that they themselves don’t realise exist sounds very similar to the plot of the Matrix Trilogy and so it’s no wonder that the wakowski brothers are directing. Lets hope it’s more Matrix than Matrix Relamented and Matrix Revulsions.

After watching the trailer for WANTED, I can make an assertion that the film will probably make the ‘Fraternity’ (the name describing the alliance of super badies) appear as a necessary evil a bit like the CIA and not as the insidious crime organization it’s made out to be in the comic. Expecting a Hollywood blockbuster to be green lit when the premise involves an ‘average jo’ who upon learning that he has both vast wealth and power (the American dream) becomes increasingly amoral with no redemption in sight might have been a bit iffy.

NASA mission to Mars and the Ministry of Space

Mars is further away than Scotland. Further even than the North Pole. According to NASA we won’t be going there for a while yet. Had things taken a different turn as speculated in ‘Ministry of Space,’ which sounds like a governmental department for interior decorators, we’d have been to and settled upon Mars ages ago.


The ‘real’ mission to Mars isn’t likely to launch at the earliest until 2031. In Ministry of Space we’d have been there by 1969! The underlying theories behind the advanced developments in space flight explored in Ministry of Space, are underpinned by the notion that in the last days of WW2, British soldiers got to the scientists at Peenemunde before the U.S or USSR and, especially, they brought Dr. Wernher von Braun and the plans and pieces of the V-2 rocket bomb back to England. The story unfolds that the Ministry was funded by a ‘black budget’, which ultimately turns out to be gold stolen by the Nazis. The driving force behind the Ministry is Jack Dashwood (he’s got one of those thin 40’s lip moustaches and everything) as he acts as a sort of Steve Jobs character, relentlessly pushing the Ministry as hard as possible.


In the alternate 2001 the U.S are about to launch there own space mission and Dashwood is summoned to an orbiting space station, imaginatively named, Churchill Station. He justifies his obsession to his escort, “we moved too fast, of course. But we had no choice. The Ministry of Space was leading Britain out of the Second World War. Our country could not afford to get involved in brushfires and posturing, which would surely have happened.”


Ultimately, when the U.S threaten to reveal to the world where the funding came from, Dashwood replies, “If I am a monster, then England is too. See if England cares, with her free electricity and cheap food and her glorious, unchanging aspect.” It wouldn’t be a ‘ripping yarn’ if there wasn’t some moral to the story and at the very end you see that the black woman who has been acting as Dashwood’s escort in 2001 is changing in a ‘non-white’ staff room, implying that for all the leaps in technology, socially England was still stuck in the 50’s. Despite the heavy handed moral lesson, that feels tacked on, Ministry of Space really captures the spirit of what a ‘British empire’ in space would feel like. It’s the closest you’ll feel to being on the red planet until 2031.

Beowulf, Folklore and Fables

“Don’t look at me, I ain’t gonna tell ya.” Is the parting shot from Ray Winstone about whether to eat some generic cereal, as it contains more fortified vitamins than another brand. If he uttered the same sentence as Beowulf, when asked how to take care of the Grendel problem, it probably would have gone down just as well.

The story, or should I say epic poem, of Beowulf (I only know this thanks to my comprehensive school education) is about a warrior from the Geats tribe (Germans) who goes to Denmark to stop the people of Heorot from getting repeatedly done over by a monster called Grendel.

He kills him, there’s something about nailing his arm to a door (they were hardcore back then) which antagonises Grendel’s mum to no end. She comes to settle the score but Beowulf, the original action hero, dispatches her too.

He becomes king with a throne very much like that of Conan the Barbarian’s. Years later a dragon comes along, Beowulf a little bit passed it, like Steven Segal is now, decides to give it a go. He manages to take out said dragon but is mortally wounded in the process. Phew.

The film version is co-written by Neil Gaiman, who did the heavily folklore influenced Sandman series. He’s also got another film out, Stardust which again is big on the monsters, pirates, princesses, magic etc shtick.

All this leads conveniently to the recently, magiked into existence game, Folklore. As the name implies, it’s about Folklore or rather, just ‘Folks.’ You play either as Ellen whose issues over her mother’s death lead her to the seaside town of Doolin, or as Keats (not the poet) who is a paranormal journalist (I want that on my CV).

The ‘Folks’ are spirits that can either be captured by Ellen for use against other folks or simply absorbed by Keats to modify his journo brawling style that I’m sure many on Fleet Street will be familiar with.

The last verse in this folk song is Fables, a long running comic strip by Bill Willingham. It follows the lives of famous folk story characters such the Big Bad Wolf, Prince Charming, Snow White etc living in a residential building in present day Manhattan after being exiled from ‘The Homelands’ by Gepeto (Pinnocchio’s dad) posing as the totalitarian Adversary.

What’s interesting about Fables is how all the characters are the polar opposites of what you’d expect; The Big Bad Wolf now goes by Biggy and is the resident sheriff, a kind of film noir detective character, that constantly has to smoke to keep all the modern day scents at bay. Prince Charming is a complete cad and constantly tries to seduce someone new, so he has a place to sleep for the night and Goldie Locks has matured into a gun toting, animal rights revolutionary with more than just a platonic relationship with youngest of the Three Bears.

I couldn’t leave without mentioning ‘The Storyteller.’ Everyone likes John Hurt and what better vehicle for him, than to tell old folk stories with the help of Jim Henson’s unique puppets. Here’s a link to one of the many interesting tales. Beats the Hogwarts out of Harry Pothead any day. So, with all this folk about, it’s probably a good idea to get yourself a fire place

Flawed heroes (The Dark Knight and Iron Man)

Iron Man aka Tony Stark and Batman aka Bruce Wayne have a lot in common: They’re both multimillionaires, both are perceived as international playboys, rowdy bachelors and both have an arsenal of technology to enhance their human abilities. Oh and they’re both deeply flawed individuals.


My personal favourite is the Bat. I’ve always enjoyed the noir elements of Batman stories. His parent’s were brutally murdered when he’s still a child and apart from the constant guilt he feels at surviving the ordeal, he’s always skating the line between sanity and psychosis.

As far as any character can bring a sense of authenticity to something as fantastical as a superhero role, I think he manages it. Here is a man who, whether rightly or wrongly, has taken it upon himself to avenge his parents by tackling the criminal element.

Using his own immense intellect, detective skills, physicality and gadgets he accomplishes this. The thing is you could remove the utility belt and batarangs and you’d be left with a hard-boiled noir vigilante.

New trailers for both are here and here.

Why Alan Moore’s comic visions have never been realised and why Frank Millar’s have

To date three of Alan Moore’s graphic novels have been turned into major motion pictures or bastardised, depending on where you stand. I’m beyond the latter. These films are: From Hell, a jaunt into the world of Jack the Ripper. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; a collage of colourful characters from fiction, saving the day. And V for Vendetta, a scathing judgement on the greed and moral ambiguity during the Thatcher and Reagan administrations. From Hell became a so, so thriller with Johnny Depp passing a questionable cock’s egg accent, a Dick Van Dyke for the MyFace generation.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is so amazingly shit I’m surprised someone didn’t commit hari-kari. Head’s should have rolled. It’s not even that the characters have seemingly no resemblance to their comic counterparts; Alan Quartermain changes from being a has-been geriatric (in the comic)to an all action hero, played by Sean Connery.

No doubt because Sean didn’t want to be seen as weak, he used to be a champion body builder you know. Its just bollocks, the producers, director, whoever’s head is on a pike in my imagination, tried to pull every Hollywood trick imaginable. The leading lady, who happens to be a vampire, mysteriously doesn’t have any gaping wounds on her neck in the silver screen version. And Captain Nemo’s sub alone isn't enough of a toy making opportunity, so they’ve got a League of Gents, souped up, burnout car, that sort Vin Diesel would drive.

Last we have the most agreeable of the three in the same way that the flu is preferable over Ebola and AIDs. That’s too harsh V isn’t all that bad. If they’d told Natalie Portman to jump ship in both senses and hadn’t tried to make it overly English, cue the Benny Hill sequence, then it would have been a good film. Visually it’s the most similar to the comic version. Alan had nothing to do with these abominations and went as far as having his name removed from the last one.

But if the rumours are true and The Watchmen is being turned into a film I beg you Alan, you hairy Northampton troll, you have to co-direct or at least be on set. It’s too important a story, especially in the current global climate, political and literal for you to distance yourself. The Watchmen is incredible, I’ve made several none comic book converts read it on principal and all have said something along the lines of, ‘yep, tour de force.’ It’s a shame people don’t say that in real life. Seriously, if you’re ever to gamble on reading just one graphic novel let it be The Watchmen.

It’s getting late so I’ll make this short: the simple reason that Frank Millar’s graphic novels have been better realised on the big screen is his active participation. That’s not to say directors Robert Rodriguez and Zack Snyder on Sin City and 300 respectively aren’t talented in their own right but the fact that Millar co directed both helped massively. (I hope your taking notes Alan because you need to do this too from now on) If you want your creative vision realised then you need to do it yourself, to an extent.

Ok, done. Go read The Watchmen.