Clandestine Critic

Review – Kill Shakespeare Vol. 2: The Blast Of War

2011-12-30T16:27:00.002Z

Kill Shakespeare #7–12
Written and created by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col
Art by Andy Belanger
Colours by Ian Herring
Lettering by Chris Mowry, Neil Uyetake and Shawn Lee
Edited by Tom Waltz
Published by IDW Publishing

When I reviewed the collection of the first six issues of this series, I said that I enjoyed it and was looking forward to the denouement of the story. Now that I have consumed the final half of this adventure, I was not disappointed by the conclusion and execution of a great idea.

The first trade paperback did all the hard work, creating the universe in which the characters live and setting up the story. This means the second collection can revel in the broad sweeps and the battle of heroes against foes in the world of William Shakespeare. Hamlet has joined Lady Juliet, Othello, Falstaff and Iago in the battle against Richard III and Lady Macbeth, and in the search for the Bard himself. But there is still time for character development: a play within a play, a device used in Hamlet, is used on Hamlet himself, which leads to story within a story, as we learn how Hamlet and Juliet in this world differ from the plays. Duelling practice between Othello and Iago is intercut with images of how these two men suffered at each other’s hand, with Iago’s dialogue about the sword fighting having another meaning regarding their relationship. There is even a nice reversal of the balcony scene, as Juliet climbs up to Hamlet to give him courage and a kiss.

The comic book is enjoyable in its own right, although knowledge of Shakespeare enhances it – the use of phrases from the plays are littered throughout the book, even seemingly innocuous terms such as ‘this infinite space’. It’s sometimes easy to forget how many expressions Shakespeare was responsible for introducing to the English language. The authors work Shakespearean dialogue into the book – even I recognise the ‘unsex me’ reference from Lady Macbeth, ‘Oh, happy dagger’ from Romeo and Juliet, as well as ‘Sound and fury, signifying nothing’ – but I like that there is deviation: when Hamlet finally meets Shakespeare, Will tells him ‘piss off’, which is a lovely earthy phrasing for a man revered for his poetry and use of the English language. Even my limited awareness of the plays brings something extra to this book, which uses language well – the speech by Hamlet to Shakespeare to force him to face his creations and the speech by Shakespeare to rouse the rebellion soldiers are rousing and inspiring without copying Shakespearean dialogue.

The battle between the two fractions is the climax of the book, and it is brutal and bloody and savage – as were the Shakespeare plays, as people forget – and it takes up the second half of this collection because there is so much to fit in. There is betrayal from Iago, double-crossing between Lady Macbeth and Richard, deaths of major characters, Shakespeare fighting his creations, as well as leaving open the possibility of further adventures in this universe, if the authors are given the opportunity to entertain us with more stories. However, there is still humour: the final words in the story are from Hamlet, ‘I can hear you laughing from down here, Falstaff’, after he has been kneed in the groin (in an affectionate way) by Juliet, which leaves the reader with a smile.

I have spoken a lot about the writing, because it is an important part of a book about Shakespeare (I can understand why this book has been used to bring Shakespeare to a new audience in schools), but the art is important as well. Belanger’s style has become more solid and confident through the series, able to turn from comedy to tragedy, from vast and bloody battlefields to the talking heads of a dialogue scene, from magical battles to flashbacks. There is more design in this book as well, using splash pages in scenes where they will have the most impact, or using a split in the middle of a page to enhance the emotion of a scene (when Juliet and Hamlet reveal their histories to each other). I particularly liked the motif of disembodied eyes percolating out of clouds or from smoke at the start and end of the book, reflecting the nature of the different levels of authoring in a story about William Shakespeare and his stories.

Kill Shakespeare is an excellent comic book series that rewards re-reading and which also makes you want to know more about Shakespeare plays. How many comic books can you say that about?

Comic Book Shop Update: Gosh! Has Moved

2011-12-24T21:10:00.000Z

Gosh!, my favourite comic book shop in the world, let alone London, was based opposite the British Museum for 25 years – I thought they would always be there. However, nothing lasts for ever and Gosh! moved premises to a new location at Berwick Street in Soho (the blog has a nice map on the flyer used to tell everyone about the move). And the new premises are fantastic.

The previous shop was bijou, to use estate agent parlance; the new shop is much larger and has floor-to-ceiling windows, which lets light into the wonderful display space and makes it seem even bigger than it is. The main floor is full of shelves along the walls with a massive selection of different books, with an emphasis on the variety of genres and styles that demonstrate the range of modern comic books. Art books, European graphic albums, crime collections, manga, history, journalism – the shelves heave with quality and diversity. This seems to have paid off – when talking to Andy, the manager, on the day before the official opening (they were still unpacking and downstairs wasn’t ready yet), he told me that there had already been loads of people coming into the shop, with a 50:50 ratio of women to men, all looking for a variety of books. They had been worried that they wouldn’t get so much walk-past custom after the move, especially as the new shop is opposite ‘porn alley’, but the seedy shops add colour to people’s expectations of Soho and they’ve had more people than ever, despite not being officially open.

In addition to the books on shelves, there is also a big old table in the middle of the shop that is laden with books and has benches around it, so that people can sit and read if they so wish (there wouldn’t have been the room to do that in the old shop). If you go downstairs (there is some art on the walls as you descend), this is where the superhero comics now live – the new imports are on the shelves at the back; the trade paperbacks are on the shelves on the left and right, with the back issues in boxes in the middle (the desk by the stairs is where the subscription lists are still handled). There is nice moody lighting, so you don’t feel as if you’re in a dark pit to pick up your ‘embarrassing’ haul of regular comic books; however, when I bought my first weekly haul from the new shop, a few books had been accidentally left off my list – I jokingly mentioned it on Twitter that they didn’t care about the old regular customers any more, to which they replied (jokingly as well) that it was all about ‘new media now, darling’; the teething problems have now been smoothed out and the shops seems to be running efficiently.

The new premises are an impressive space (which is why it has appeared in Retail Focus Magazine), and I can understand the desire to host exhibitions in the shop (they had some of Dave McKean’s art for a signing on opening day); there have been book launches, such as Nelson, and Eddie Campbell will be giving a talk at the shop in February. The move to Soho has definitely raised the profile of the shop: Gosh! was used as the location for an interview with Art Spiegelman on the BBC.

All of these raise the calibre of the shop – this isn’t your comic book dungeon, this is a book shop where anyone and everyone can feel comfortable coming in and looking around the rich diversity of books and asking the staff for obscure items and recommendations. I’m amazed that Gosh! moved to such big premises at a time when the sales of comic books are decreasing; however, the expansion into the full range of all the possibilities offered by words and pictures in a location that suits this market is a smart move, and shows why they are still in business and thriving.

Notes On A Film: The Adventures of Tintin

2011-12-17T22:00:00.000Z

Even though I haven't been blogging regularly, I had to capture some of my thoughts about The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, if just for the fact that we in the UK got to see the film long before arriving on North American screens, which makes for a nice change.

Despite the fact that I'm comic book fan, I didn't read the graphic novels of Georges 'Herge' Remy as a child; why this is the case, I do not know, especially as my brothers and I devoured the other prong of continental European graphic albums that invaded the UK, Asterix, but I should include the fact as a disclaimer. Therefore, I didn't have any emotional investment in the cinematic adaptation of the ageless journalist adventurer Tintin (unlike my better half, who has read and loved the books since her teenage years).

Before wittering further, I should summarise my opinion: I thought that the film was perfectly fine but nothing great, especially with the calibre of creators involved (a script by Steve 'Doctor Who and Sherlock' Moffat, Edgar 'Spaced/Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz/Scott Pilgrim' Wright and Joe 'Attack the Block' Cornish, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Steven Spielberg – surely a Platonic ideal creative team for Tintin). I just hope I wasn't expecting too much from such great folk.

Perhaps Tintin works best on the page – the exquisite clear line of Herge's artwork, the detailed images he created (he used a lot of photographic reference for accuracy) that occasionally veer into pure art in some of the splash pages, the ability to have a talking dog (or the notion that Tintin believes that Snowy talks to him) which is accepted by the reader, the silliness of the slapstick without the pain, the vagueness of time and place (is it the 1930s? Is it mainland Europe?): these are aspects of a comic that can be difficult to translate into a different medium and conserve the special qualities that make something distinct. However, the motion-capture CGI is very impressive – this is not the dead eyes of Beowulf or The Polar Express. The result is a successful combination of a photorealistic style based on Herge's art style (but without the excess of caricature employed in the books), with special mention for Captain Haddock, helped no doubt by Andy Serkis's performance (who employs a broad Scottish brogue for the part, which sounded to me like an impression of the great rugby union commentator, Bill McLaren), with a wonderfully expressive face to match the excess of character in Haddock himself.

The opening credits were a nice touch – an different animation style (a 1960s European feel to them), with some nice nods to various Tintin stories, and even that little swirl behind the feet that Herge used to indicate movement – and the film starts with a lovely introductory scene and in-joke for Tintin and his creator. But it doesn't take long for the film to get underway, with a plot that keeps film motoring all the way through to the end with barely a pause for breath, based on a mash-up of the books The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham's Treasure and a hint of The Crab With The Golden Claws. There is humour and excitement and spectacle, as well as one of the most blatant 'this isn't the end, it's just the first part in a series' I think I've seen in a while. It just doesn't add up to more than the sum of its parts.

Another disclaimer: I didn't watch this in 3D, even though the CGI meant that it would have been true 3D, so I can't speak for the use of it in the film. However, based on some parts, it would have been a mixture of impressive and hideous. For example, the scene where Haddock 'relives' the life of his ancestor: in the books, it's recounted from a journal (not very cinematic); in the film, Spielberg can cut between shots in fantastically imaginative fashion, jumping from the desert to a ship on the high seas, or reflections off a sword to jump between past and present, and it looks spectacular in 2D. However, a climactic scene where Haddock and villain Sakharine fight each other in a dock by smashing loading cranes into each other is chaotic (and not something you would have seen in a live-action film): the power of CGI goes to Spielberg's head, as he whirls the camera around like a dervish, swooshing through windows and gaps in the crane's structure, deranged camerawork that flips and wheels in a dizzying display that might have caused headaches if watched in 3D. It must be the director's dream, to have the ability to move a camera wherever his or her imagination can follow, and Spielberg does it very well, but it can also look a mess.

There is enough in the film to keep people entertained, even if some of it seems familiar (a chase scene in an Arabic town, with the previously mentioned impossible camerawork, seems to be a homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark), but it doesn't quite manage the balance that was achieved seemingly effortlessly in the books. The strangest choice, which seems most out of character for a Tintin story, is the 'joke' of Haddock accidentally firing a bazooka into the wall of a dam over a town, so that it releases the water behind it all over the populace below. The scene is played for laughs as they escape the flood, but surely it killed lots of innocent locals? It seems thoroughly bizarre, and highlights the gap between getting it wrong and getting it right. It means that The Adventures of Tintin doesn't achieve the heights it could have.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Review – Darkie's Mob: The Secret War Of Joe Darkie and Johnny Red: Falcon's First Flight

2011-12-11T19:36:00.001Z

Darkie’s Mob: The Secret War Of Joe Darkie by John Wagner and Mike Western
Johnny Red: Falcon’s First Flight by Tom Tully and Joe Colquhoun
Published by Titan Books

These two handsome hardbacks are part of a collection of reprints by Titan Books of some of the classic black and white stories originally published in Battle, the weekly British war comic which started in 1975, including The Best Of Battle and Charley’s War. Both of these volumes have an introduction from Garth Ennis, a man not unfamiliar with writing war comics, and who has often stated the influence of these books on his writing and how much he loves them. There is also an overview in the Johnny Red book of the story behind the story, and the true incident that was the inspiration for the character.

Darkie’s Mob collects the full uncensored strip from 1976 (the book has a disclaimer at the front: ‘This book is a work of fiction. Characters may have views and use language which some of today’s readers may find offensive. The publisher and copyright holder in no way endorse the views expressed or language used.’), which is about a group of soldiers in 1942 behind enemy lines in Burma when Japan invaded (in what Ennis calls ‘a hateful war’ in his introduction) and the savagery of the fighting that ensued.

This is particularly the case for Darkie’s Mob, with Joe Darkie leading a group of soldiers in a personal guerrilla war against the Japanese. It is a vicious tale of war and fighting and death, told with brutality by John Wagner and Mike Western. The storytelling is amazing: each section is six pages packed with story and character and action. John Wagner, famous for co-creating Judge Dredd and a huge volume of stories, writes these tales with power and intensity and economy. Each chapter is a masterclass in compressing as much into as few pages as possible. Western does his part by fitting as much art on to the page as he can without losing clarity or intensity, fitting up to 14 panels on a page. His style is detailed and dark with a rough edge appropriate to the material, showing the viciousness of the battles but also characters involved.

The story reflects an accurate attitude of the men at the time: the language used is a sanitised but truthful portrayal of that used by the men fighting at the time. The language is inappropriate for the present day, but it was used freely in a different time at a time that we can’t fully comprehend in our supposedly more enlightened time where we haven’t been drafted to fight a vicious war against an equally vicious enemy. Titan should be applauded for reprinting the book in an uncensored form, in a time where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been reprinted with removal of the ‘n-word’.

The comics are boys’ adventure stuff, so there is a stretching of plausibility for the sake of an exciting story, but the only element that slightly mars seeing these comics now that I enjoyed when I was a lad (like most boys, I was obsessed with all things to do with the second world war) is the sacrificing of various characters for the sake of Darkie’s Mob. I have no doubt that there were incidents of valour and heroics in the war that exceed those described in these comics, but nearly all of the characters seem to sacrifice themselves to save the other characters, and it seemed excessive. But perhaps it is because of the change in my approach to war comics: where once I would have lapped up the heroic deaths of minor characters, I have found that my appetite for it has changed, so your mileage may vary. The strip covers a year of fighting in the jungle with an ending that explains the mystery of Joe Darkie and his hatred for the Japanese and his fighting abilities in the jungle, which make for a very good war comic.

Johnny Red is a different story, describing the adventures of fighter pilot Johnny Redburn, who ends up joining the Falcon Brigade in an advanced airbase in the Arctic Circle in Russia in a stolen Hurricane airplane. The Falcons have been left to fight their own war for the Motherland, trying to stop the Germans in their corner of Russia despite the fact that they only have old biplanes against Messerschmitts. This hardback collects the first volume of the strip, written by Tom Tully (the longest-serving writer on Roy of the Rovers) and drawn by Joe Colquhoun, who was the first artist on Roy of the Rovers.

This book, which contains the same warning about the language used, sets up the story of our protagonist and how he becomes involved with a Russian air squadron fighting on the Russian front and then stays with them, starting in 1941. The strip was the longest-running strip in Battle, lasting about 10 years, covering about three years of the war during its run. It is also a boys’ adventure story, but it’s not afraid to mix in truth about the state of Russia during the war. The people and fighters starving due to lack of food and supplies, fighting a brutal war in vicious and freezing conditions, and the security police killing soldiers and pilots who didn’t die in fighting because they hadn’t given their lives in defence of the Motherland (of the approximately 70 million people who died during the war, over a third were Russians).

Colquhoun provides excellent art: his drawings of the planes used are exquisite, even in the small panels (like Western in Darkie’s Mob, Colquhoun fits a lot on to a page, full of detail without losing clarity), and his dogfights are particularly impressive, with different types of planes in icy and snowy conditions. All his characters are individuals, with a Slavic visual for the Russians, and the starving emaciated people look appropriately horrific; he was a very talented artist, and this is a small section of this 30-year career.

Tully had an equally impressive career, writing for many other British comics apart from his run on Roy of the Rovers, including for Valiant and 2000AD. His writing here is very heroic – Johnny Redburn is a classical hero character – and he has done his research on the war on the Russian Front to provide an accurate depiction of the events in which he places his characters, who are all individuals. I can understand why Garth Ennis declares Johnny Red as his favourite strip from Battle in the introduction, and why it was the longest-running strip in the comic: it’s a classic of British war comics.

DVD Review: Shaolin

2011-09-04T21:40:00.000+01:00

I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Shaolin Temple when I went to China a few years back; I don’t think that the building itself is the original but that’s not the point. It’s what it represents: the Shaolin Temple isn’t necessarily the birthplace of martial arts but it is the birthplace of what our idea of martial arts is today. I think this is what the film is about: the idea of what Shaolin Temple represents.

The film Shaolin starts in China in the 1920s: Shaolin monks clean up after a battle, saying prayers over the dead as they collect them to burn, including families as well as soldiers. The Shaolin temple has become a home for refugees, during a time when warlords are rampaging through China. One such warlord is General Hou (Andy Lau), who has taken over the local area after killing the opposing warlord who was seeking refuge in the temple – he even defaces the temple’s sign (‘Birthplace of martial arts’). He plans with his second-in-command, Cou, to eliminate General Sung, his warlord ‘brother’, who Hou is worried is going to kill him after arranging the marriage of their children. However, after killing Sung, Hou is betrayed by Cou, who arranges to kill Hou and his family – Hou escapes with his daughter but she dies when they arrive at the Temple seeking refuge, and his wife blames him for it. Now wanted for murder and treason by Cou (who has now taken over the area, killing and looting), Hou decides to become a monk and dedicate himself to the Shaolin Temple, under the mentorship of the Temple’s cook (Jackie Chan in a small supporting role – his character is a tribute to a famous Shaolin monk cook who defended the temple; the monks still honour his name by shouting his name at the end of a form).

Life in the temple as a monk is shown – the training (which is of course very tough) and the cleaning and the cooking (Jackie Chan, when explaining why he is a monk cook and not a martial monk, says, ‘I can’t do martial arts. It’s beyond me’, which is a very nice in-joke) – and there is even some philosophy as well. Meanwhile, Cou has been using locals to work on railroads in association with the British but then getting the locals to dig for relics to pay for it and killing them to keep the secret. This leads to Huo revealing that he was still alive and Cou comes to the Temple for him, which leads to the finale with Cou’s army coming to destroy the temple and the monks defending it (which has a monk utter the wonderfully anachronistic line, ‘Don’t mess with Shaolin Temple’).

The film is a drama about the nature of man and the philosophy involved, but the action is impressive – there is not as much action as you might think in a film called Shaolin, but what there is makes up for it, and the martial arts are both beautiful and intense. The film is directed by Benny Chan and the action director is Corey Yuen, and they create a suitably epic and visually beautiful film. The camera sweeps and swoops majestically and the period detail feels authentic – for the film, the temple was recreated brick for brick (only bigger); there are genuine Shaolin monks in roles in the film (as Senior Brothers), even the kids in the film are products of Shaolin training; Andy Lau trained in Seven Star Fists, the style of Shaolin, for the film under a grandmaster of Shaolin. Although the film is based on Shaolin Temple (Jet Li’s debut film), it is a very different movie with a greater focus on a violent and ambitious man discovering the philosophy of ‘martial zen’ and becoming a better person, and this film tells that story very well.

The 2-disc DVD has a ‘Making of’ gallery, with some nice background information on the film, plus interviews with members of the cast (it is interesting to see Jackie Chan giving interviews in Mandarin and Cantonese, although more comfortably in Cantonese) and deleted/extended scenes, which hint at even more minutes of beautifully choreographed fight scenes. But, then again, I could watch them train in Shaolin style for ever – the credits close over Shaolin monks training in the snow, and it’s a thing of beauty in itself, as well as a hopeful and enduring image of what the Shaolin Temple represents.

Selecting From The 52 New DC Titles

2011-09-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

The first title in the ‘new’ DC universe of titles (I refuse to call it DCnU, which I think is very silly indeed but seems to have caught on) arrived yesterday in stores and online, both legally and unfortunately illegally, so it seemed about time to talk about the titles that interested me sufficiently to pick them up.

An aside: I think this is a bold move by DC to try to improve sales of comics, which have been decreasing in a depressing fashion for some time. DC has constantly rebooted its superhero universe, so this isn’t completely unexpected. However, doing it to the entire universe and starting everything again from the beginning, and then expecting people to pick up 52 new series seems ambitious and wildly optimistic. (And why 52 issues? It makes no sense.) Good luck to them, but the price of comics and the value for money they provide suggest that the business model is no longer viable for such a large-scale operation and the future does not look good for mainstream comic books, and I say this as someone who loves comic books.

Justice League #1
So, I didn’t buy it. I’m not a big DC fan, so I don’t have the affection for the legacy of this team that others have, and I’m not a fan of Geoff Johns’ writing, so it was not going to be on my list, even if it is the flagship of this launch. The only lure was the Jim Lee art (I’m a bit of a fan), but that wasn’t enough.

Action Comics #1
It’s written by Grant Morrison; obviously I’m buying it. I saw him give a Q&A recently, which only reinforced my desire to see a Morrison Superman book. Definite purchase.

Superman #1
A little comic book heresy: I don’t really like the art style of George Perez. I think that it looks stuck in the 1980s. For one of the big books of the ‘new’ DC universe, this seems at odds with the mission statement. He’s only doing breakdowns, but that’s enough. I have never read any of his writing, so I don’t have a compulsion to check this out.

Superboy #1
Don’t care about the character, don’t care for the writer, don’t care for the artists.

Supergirl #1
Don’t care about the character, don’t know the writers, I quite like the artist but not enough to sample this.

Batman #1
I haven’t read the Scott Snyder Detective Comics that has been getting a lot of good reviews (I might check out the trade), so this is an unknown quantity. It would take a proven, high-calibre writer to make me take a chance on this, especially with Greg Capullo on art duties, whose work has never appealed.

Detective Comics #1
Tony Daniel on writing and art? No thanks.

Batwing #1
The idea of the Batman of Africa is intriguing, but not by Judd Winick, who hasn’t written a superhero comic that I’ve liked.

Batman: The Dark Knight #1
Bwahahaha. David Finch doing both the writing and art on Batman managed two issues in all the time he’s been working on the character. I can’t see that changing any time soon.

Batman and Robin #1
Unless it was Dick Grayson and Damian by Grant Morrison, I don’t want to know. Apologies to Peter Tomasi (I don’t think I’ve ever read anything he’s written) and Patrick Gleason.

Batgirl #1
Gail Simone is an interesting writer and Barbara Gordon is an interesting character, but I don’t want to see her back in costume; I think that Oracle has been one of the best characters at DC and it’s a shame that we won’t be seeing her any longer.

Batwoman #1
The artwork of JH Williams on Batwoman in Detective Comics was astounding and I’m sure that it will continue. The only thing that prevents me from this becoming an automatic purchase is the untested nature of the writers: I don’t think I’ve read any Williams work and I’ve never heard of W Haden Blackman. Possible purchase.

Nightwing #1
Never heard of Kyle Higgins (sorry) and I don’t particularly care for the adventures of Nightwing (see previous comment about enjoying him as Batman previously).

Catwoman #1
Another Judd Winick-written comic book, another excuse not to buy.

Birds of Prey #1
Although I like the artwork of Jesus Saiz, I’m not tempted by ‘Gotham City’s covert ops team’ as a concept, and Duane Swierczynski isn’t a sufficiently proven author to change my opinion.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1
The name alone is embarrassing enough for me to ignore this title, I’m afraid.

Green Lantern #1
I’ve not been reading Green Lantern and this seems to be a continuation of what was happening before (I guess Geoff Johns gets a pass on this title because he’s revived it so successfully and because he’s Chief Creative Officer at DC Entertainment, which means he can do what he wants), so I’ll continue with that track record.

Green Lantern Corps #1
See above for my Green Lantern-related reading habits.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1
Ditto. I know Green Lantern has been doing well, what with the Brightest Night/rainbow Lanterns stuff, but how much mileage does DC think it can get out of this title?

Red Lanterns #1
Apparently, DC thinks it can get quite a lot of mileage out of this concept. Even though it’s written by Peter Milligan, a writer who has created some great work, I think this will be one of his lesser works (e.g. Elektra). And I don’t want to read about people who get so angry that they vomit blood, thank you very much.

Justice League International #1
I have no deep-seated affection for the Justice League (I’ve only read the Giffen–DeMatteis and Morrison iterations), and Dan Jurgens and Aaron Lopresti don’t do anything for me creatively, so this is a pass, even if it does have August General in Iron.

Aquaman #1
Dear DC, please stop trying to make people care about Aquaman. It really doesn’t work. I think that this only exists because Geoff Johns is writing it (see previous comment about his position of Chief Creative Officer).

Wonder Woman #1
The creative team of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang is an appealing combination but I’m not sure if it’s enough to get me to try a Wonder Woman comic. I’ll grade this as a possible, and wait to see what the reviews are like. Possible purchase.

The Flash #1
An artist writing his first comic book (albeit with a co-writer) doesn’t fill me with confidence, and I think it’s a strange choice for one of DC’s A-list characters. I’ve nothing against Francis Manapul, who is a fine artist, but I won’t be getting this.

Captain Atom #1
Seeing that JT Krul is supposed to have written some of the worst comics at DC recently (Cry For Justice and Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal), I don’t think I’ll be trying this book.

The Fury of Firestorm #1
When was the last time Firestorm was able to sustain his own book? More bravery from DC, but even the presence of Gail Simone as a co-writer isn’t enough to tempt me into buying what I can predict will be a short-lived title.

Green Arrow #1
JT Krul strikes again, so it’s another issue that can be left on the shelf.

The Savage Hawkman #1
Another character that DC refuses to acknowledge as a failure. Nobody has been able to make Hawkman work in an ongoing series, and I don’t think that Tony Daniel has got the skill to write a story that will change that.

Mister Terrific #1
I’d like this book to work because of the character (Mister Terrific was a great character in Greg Rucka’s Checkmate) but I can’t see it happening, unfortunately. The creative team doesn’t inspire me, and it needs to be a more famous team to give a character who has never had his own series before for it to stand a chance in the current market.

DC Universe Presents #1
I haven’t read a Paul Jenkins-written comic in a good long while, and although he is a competent writer, he’s not a must-read author.

Stormwatch #1
This one has me intrigued: I have a lot of affection for Warren Ellis’ Stormwatch, it’s written by Paul Cornell (who wrote the short-lived but enjoyable Captain Britain and MI:13), and it’s got the Martian Manhunter on the team. That’s enough to make me want to buy this. Purchase.

Grifter #1
I don’t know anything about the creative team, and the character always seemed to be trying too hard in any books I read with him in, but it gets a pass because it seems to have taken its story concept from Killer of Demons by Christopher Yost and Scott Wegener, which was good but it doesn’t mean it can be stolen from for a superhero comic.

Deathstroke #1
I’m showing my ignorance of the DC universe, but wasn’t Deathstroke a villain? Has he been recently converted to the good guys, or is it just this new series? Whatever the truth, it means I don’t really care for something that is trying too hard to be cool with its ‘finest in mayhem and gore’, as it says in the solicitations.

Suicide Squad #1
Another creative team that I’ve never heard of takes control of a strong concept but which hasn’t survived in its own ongoing series since the lauded John Ostrander series. And that cover: oh dear.

O.M.A.C. #1
I usually look at anything that Keith Giffen co-writes and draws, but I really don’t care about OMAC and, more importantly, it’s co-written by Dan DiDio so I’ll be ignoring it and watching the negative reviews.

Blackhawks #1
DC really likes it legacy concepts – when was the last time that the Blackhawks were able to sustain a series? Good luck with updating the concept for the modern world, but I can’t see this comic surviving without a powerhouse creative team behind it, which this doesn’t.

Men of War #1
I haven’t done exhaustive research, but I’m pretty sure that no war-related or soldier-based mainstream comic book that hasn’t been written by Garth Ennis has sold at all in the past decades, so good luck to Ivan Brandon and Tom Derenick, because I’m not confident.

All-Star Western #1
A cowboy comic book? I’ve always felt that this a genre that is loved by creators but not by audiences, but they still keep coming back. Even Brian Azzarello couldn’t keep Loveless going past two years. Another case of good luck to the creative team.

Teen Titans #1
Bob Harras was editor-in-chief at Marvel in the 1990s; he is now editor-in-chief at DC and, based on this title, is trying to bring back the 1990s. Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth seem to be doing a comic that looks about 15 years too late.

Static Shock #1
I have liberal guilt because I haven’t read enough of the Milestone comics, and it looks like I’ll be continuing that by not picking this up either. I’m not a great fan of Spider-man and a copycat version doesn’t interest me.

Hawk and Dove #1
Rob Liefeld drawing Hawk and Dove? The 1990s are back, and that's not a good thing.

Blue Beetle #1
I really enjoyed the John Rogers-written Blue Beetle, so I want this comic book to succeed, but I don’t think that Tony Bedard is the man to do it.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1
DC loves the LSH because it’s the comic book that won’t be allowed to die. Will the man who was creative force behind the team’s success in the 1980s be able to repeat the success now? Based on Chris Claremont writing the X-Men again, I’m guessing no.

Legion Lost #1
Not one but two LSH books to spread the lack of love? That seems cruel. If they had a crazy creative team, perhaps, but Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods are nothing more than a safe and competent pair.

Justice League Dark #1
This has got a sufficiently stupid idea (Shade the Changing Man, Deadman, Zatanna and John Constantine on the same team) and a writer in Peter Milligan sufficiently oddball enough to pull it off. I don’t think it’s going to work, but I’m going to find out for myself. Purchase.

Swamp Thing #1
This is a conflict: Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette is an interesting creative team (if Paquette stays on art duties longer than a few months) but I haven’t read an interesting Swamp Thing comic since Mark Millar wrote it. I might take a look if the reviews are positive. Possible purchase.

Animal Man #1
Animal Man will always be associated with Grant Morrison’s run, so I can’t imagine the character in any other way. It’s not helped by the ‘child manifests powers’ storyline, which doesn’t excite me. I’ve never read a Jeff Lemire book before (mea culpa), which could be another reason why I’m not interested.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
See above for the Jeff Lemire link. The Grant Morrison Frankenstein was awesome, so this has potential, and Alberto Ponticelli is a great artist, but I’d need good reviews before checking this out.

I, Vampire #1
Scott Snyder’s American Vampire is the only vampire comic from DC that has appealed, and I don’t think that’s going to change. I’m completely unaware of the previous work of the creative teams, so that doesn’t help.

Resurrection Man #1
Another comic from the 1990s, and a comic that didn’t last back then either. The concept is quite strong – a character who keeps coming back to life and with a different power each time – but I can’t see it doing any better than its earlier incarnation.

Demon Knights #1
Despite the fact that Paul Cornell writes this, I have no interest in a comic book about the Demon set in the Dark Ages of the DC universe. At all.

Voodoo #1
I didn’t like Voodoo when she was written by Alan Moore; I doubt that Ron Marz is going to change that opinion.

Three definites and two possibles. Hmm, I think I might be a Marvel guy ...

Comic Book Shop Update: A Place In Space (Central London)

2011-08-18T22:17:00.000+01:00

I’m not timely on this blog, but I try to be complete. So think of this blog post as a tweak to a previous post, but with little in the way of actual information.

In my compiling of the comic book shops of London, the third in my list was Comicana in central London. I didn’t have much to say about the shop because it was small and I hadn’t visited it very often. Recently (I don’t know exactly when), the shop changed hands because it has a new name but little else different.

As you can see from the photograph, the shop is now called A Place In Space. What I can’t find out is if this shop is connected to A Place In Space in Croydon (which I talked about in a post about comic book shops in Croydon) – there is nothing about it on the Croydon shop’s Facebook page, and my Google fu is weak in discovering any information.

The shop is essentially the same as the previous shop, except that it’s brighter inside now and there are fewer posters and toys in the windows. Apart from that, the only difference is the banner on the front of the shop over the previous boarding (if you look closer, you can see URL for the old shop below the banner – NB: the URL doesn’t work now). At the time of taking the photo, there was a man who was sizing up the front of the shop for the owner, obviously to repair the wood at the bottom, so I guess there will be a new sign up soon.

My apologies for the lack of actual knowledge in this post. I just wanted to keep my files up to date, so to speak.

Television: Half-Year Report Card Part 3

2011-08-13T22:00:00.000+01:00

The final part of my summary of the things I’ve been watching on television in the first half of 2011. This selection is under the heading of comedy, which covers a broad spectrum.

COMEDY
Twenty Twelve
I wasn't sure that a documentary-style comedy about The Olympic Deliverance team coping with the pressure of organising the London 2012 Olympics would be funny, even though it has Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Hynes, Olivia Colman and that squirrelly chap from Green Wing (Karl Theobald). But it is. In a 'this is probably how it is in real life' kind of way. Written and directed by John Morton (who did People Like Us), the realism means that you can feel their pain as they meet one problem after another. In fact, the show was so prescient, it accurately predicted that the real London Olympics would have with the countdown clock; it was rather spooky. Hugh Bonneville is great as Head of Deliverance, Olivia Colman is very quirky as his PA (I love their truncated conversations when relaying messages from his wife), and Jessica Hynes is hilarious as Head of Brand (having worked in an agency, it is uncanny the true shallowness and vacuousness she portrays).

Friday Night Dinner
I was surprised to hear that the ratings and critics were against Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner. Although there is a vague similarity to BBC2's Grandma's House – both set in a Jewish family home over the course of an evening – but that was all about Simon Amstell trying to break out of his presenter mode with some navel-gazing. Friday Night Dinner is a different beast altogether. Friday Night Dinner is written by Robert Popper, more famous for Look Around You with Peter Serafinowicz, although he started out as a commissioning editor for entertainment and comedy at Channel 4 (he commissioned Spaced, so he will always have my gratitude). The premise is that the two sons (Simon Bird from The Inbetweeners and Tom Rosenthal, son of ITV sport presenter Jim) come back to the family home on Friday evening for dinner with mum (Tamsin Grieg, who is far too young to have grown-up sons) and delightfully odd dad (Paul Ritter). With the addition of Mark Heap as the creepy next-door neighbour who has a disturbing crush on the mum, this is a very funny sitcom about families and the way they interact with each other. There are funny lines, over-the-top comedy moments and lovely performances. It's not ground-breaking or the greatest thing ever, but it's really good and enjoyable - why would the critics not like that?

How Television Ruined Your Life
This show is the perfect distillation of Charlie Brooker's progression from his columns for The Guardian through Screenwipe/Newswipe on BBC4 and his work on Channel 4 with You Have Been Watching and 10 O'Clock Live. It brings together his love/hate relationship with television and his bleak world view based on watching lots of television in the first place. It is both incredibly funny and incredibly depressing the points he makes about the affect of television and the nature of modern programme making. The episodes about love and 'aspiration' were so perfect and true and harrowing, you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It perfectly matches his onscreen persona and his dislike for practically everything, but in a scabrous and amusing way. This was six episodes of visual manifestation of one man's mind, with additional sketches with the likes of Kevin Eldon. Excellent stuff

Sirens
A very good comedy drama on Channel 4, based on the book (Blood, Sweat & Tea) of the blog (Random Acts of Reality) by Brian Kellett, a nurse and former emergency medical technician (his beat was London, but the series is set in Leeds). It follows the exploits of a three-member ambulance team and the female police sergeant university friend of the main character (who occasionally narrates thoughts). It's funny, intelligent, warm, and real, with a look at days in the life of people who respond to the normal 'emergencies' of life. I liked the camaraderie between the members of the ambulance crew (one is smart but overthinks everything; one is gay and avoids thinking; the trainee is a typical young lad but who learns a few things) and the fact that it wasn’t afraid to throw in science in a casual manner. It also balanced the humour and the serious stuff, which is always a difficult act in comedy dramas. I hope this gets another season.

I was going to talk about Lead Balloon, the ‘sitcom’ co-written by and starring Jack Dee that is supposedly a very close relative to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (I wouldn’t know; I’ve never seen it), but it wasn’t as funny as the previous seasons and dwelled more on the character anguish. The fifth episode with Robbie Coltrane was interesting and different, but I was watching it without any sense of wanting to – when the PVR abruptly cut off at the end of the final episode, I think it was trying to tell me something.

Television: Half-Year Report Card Part 2

2011-08-10T18:00:00.002+01:00

The second part of my quick look at some of the television programmes in the first half of this year. Today I discuss those shows I’m going to label as ‘genre’, which includes sci-fi and detective television.

GENRE
Doctor Who
I talked about the effects of budgetary problems on British television, which brings me to Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a great programme, which has started exploding over in America, and makes a lot of money for BBC, but it has had problems with the money needed to make the show. I don’t know if this was the reason for only getting half of the season before a long summer break, but it can’t help. Of the seven episodes shown, there were the great ones (the ones written by Steve Moffat – episodes 1, 2 and 7 – and the beautiful episode about the Tardis written by Neil Gaiman) and the not so good ones (the silly pirate one and the two-parter about the synthetic flesh ‘gangers’). The continuing story of the death of the Doctor at the hands of the Impossible Astronaut is another piece of Moffat fun, and the reveal of the identity of River Song (one of the great characters in sci-fi) was a delight. It’s an agonising wait for the second half, but the title of the next episode alone has kept me smiling: ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.

Being Human (Series Three)
I've enjoyed the BBC3 fantasy drama Being Human but the third series has been a real drag. It was getting to the point where I didn't anticipate watching 60 minutes of whining. Mitchell was annoying, the love story between him and Annie seemed unbelievable and silly, and the resurrection of the irritating Herrick (he looked like the branch manager of a small rural bank) depressed me because it meant he was back and even more irritating. And I was angered by creator Toby Whithouse’s cowardice in having Herrick NOT killing Nina – a vampire with centuries of murder who stabs someone in the kidney – just so Nina can be back for the next episode. However, the pain was relieved by the greatness of the season finale, and not just because they killed off Herrick and Mitchell. Intensity, drama, action, meaning; it was almost worth watching the rest of the series just to get to it. And, with the introduction of the marvellous Lee Ingleby as an ancient vampire called Wyndham, there is finally a mean and scary vampire (one of the Old Ones) that you can believe in. Ingleby, who has done many things but will always be associated to me with his roles as Young Thug in the famous episode of Spaced and Stan Shunpike in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was brilliant in the few minutes he was on screen and I hope he will make a great villain for the next series.

Zen
BBC1 went the Wallander route with this: taking a series of crime novels that are set in a foreign country but use English actors filmed on location. Wallander had Kenneth Branagh as the lead in adaptation of the Henning Mankell book set in Sweden; Zen has Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen (I love the name) in the Michael Dibdin novels set in Italy (specifically Rome). The show looked good, the opening credits had a lovely vibe of the 1960s, the setting was beautiful and it was intriguing to follow the adventures of an honest policeman in a culture of corruption. There were three 90-minute episodes that followed Zen as he tries to balance his job, being used by government officials, a divorce, living with his mother and starting a relationship with a woman in the office. Sewell worked well as the main character, and there was good support from the rest of the cast. The ratings and critics had been good, but it appeared that the BBC had decided not to make any more episodes; however, the international sales of the series were so good that it looks like we might be getting more episodes.

Case Histories
This was a six-part series of one-hour dramas adapting three of the novels by Kate Atkinson about Jackson Brodie, a former police inspector (and originally a soldier) who is now a private investigator. The main draw is Jason Isaacs (Hello to Jason Isaacs, if you’re a listener to the Mark Kermode show on Radio 5) in the lead: he brings a depth and empathy to the role, which is expected from an actor of his quality, and you really feel for his character. The other aspect that is intriguing here is the character himself: the female perspective of Brodie, who is a tough guy but who also has real drama in his past that still haunts and drives him, and you can see this depth of caring he has for people as a driving force in what he does. The stories themselves are interesting and clever, but it’s Brodie and Isaacs that keep you coming back. I really hope they make another series.

Justified
This is broadcast on 5USA, an offshoot of Channel 5, which might go some way to explaining why this excellent series isn’t well known in this country or showered with the critical praise it deserves. It’s a show that quietly and without fuss creates excellent drama. The different plot lines that bubbled along throughout the season were handled well, and they were all based on great characterisation. Timothy Olyphant is fantastic as US Marshal Raylan Givens, the lead in the midst of a great cast: Walton Goggins as old but criminal friend Boyd Crowder being one of the highlights, but perhaps outshone by Margo Martindale as Mags Bennet, the ruthless but smiling matriarch of the Bennet clan. Comprising shocking turn of events, gun play, social commentary and big business, Justified was quietly brilliant and shows no sign of stopping.

Walking Dead
This was broadcast on terrestrial TV (Channel Five) earlier this year, which is why I include it. I haven’t read the comics, not because it’s black and white or an Image comic, but simply because I’m not a fan of zombies – the recent zombie craze has completed eluded me. Therefore, I was in two minds about watching this, but I’m glad that I did. The good thing is the way that the story is treated completely seriously and the tone and approach is maintained throughout the six episodes that make up the first season, and it’s thrilling and well done. However, this is still a zombie story, so all the characterisation is leading up to the deaths that will happen. Also, I really didn’t like the bit in the third episode where, having escaped from downtown Atlanta and a horde of zombies, Rick Grimes (played well by English actor Andrew Lincoln) turns around and goes back; it was clunky and annoying and it took me out of the story. Good stuff, but not necessarily my cup of tea.

Castle
This has just started showing on terrestrial television (Channel 5 on a Friday evening) and it’s nothing more than Murder She Wrote with ride-alongs and sexual tension, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, which is mostly down to Nathan Fillion. He’s a charming mofo, and that is the entire appeal of the show. His attitude, charisma and delivery are fantastic, and I spend most of the time laughing at his dialogue. It’s not groundbreaking or great television, but it’s thoroughly entertaining and, sometimes, that’s all I need.

Television: Half-Year Report Card Part 1

2011-08-08T22:15:00.000+01:00

As I did for my cinema habits of the first half of 2011, I’m jotting down a few notes on the various television programmes of interest that have passed my eyes. I’ve been watching a lot of dramas on the BBC (after they got a money infusion just before the stupid coalition government took it all away), but there’s a variety of other genres as well, just not in this post – see the next posts for others.

DRAMA
United
This starred David Tennant, in a one-off drama about the events leading up to the Munich air disaster in 1958 where 20 of the 44 people died aboard the plane carrying the Manchester United football team (nicknamed The Busby Babes). Tennant is coach Jimmy Murphy (he wasn’t on the plane because he was managing the Welsh international team on the same day – side note: he was the manager of Wales in the only time they qualified for the World Cup), who keeps the club going, even though they only had four surviving players able to play, including Bobby Charlton (the drama had focussed on his early days at Man Utd), because manager Matt Busby (Dougray Scott) was badly injured. This was the sort of excellent drama that the BBC does, and it was moving (obviously, based on the central event) and a fascinating glimpse of a different world.

Christopher And His Kind
Doctor Who connection again: this see Matt Smith showing that there’s more to him than his excellent portrayal as the Doctor. He plays Christopher Isherwood, the author (this is an adaptation of Isherwood’s autobiography; Isherwood also wrote the novella Sally Bowles, which was the source of inspiration for Cabaret; he also wrote A Single Man, which was turned into an excellent film with Colin Firth by Tom Ford), and his time spent in Berlin in the early 1930s. He has a tumultuous affair with a young German man which ends abruptly, only to see him as a Nazi later on; he also teaches English to a wealthy Jewish department store owner, which leads to him seeing firsthand the effect of Nazis on Jews; he meets another young man and they eventually leave Germany but Isherwood can’t get his lover a passport, so they travel around Europe for a while. It is a powerful drama with excellent performances but particularly Matt Smith, who is fantastic in a role that is completely different from his famous alter ego.

Exile
The first Alzheimer thriller, starring John Simm and Jim Broadbent, with a great supporting turn from Olivia Colman. Simm is a disgraced journalist who has to leave London and return home up north, where his sister (Colman) looks after their father (Broadbent), a well-known newspaper man who now suffers from Alzheimers. Simm hasn't been home for a while because of the time his father beat him when he discovered something in his father's study, but this memory is what sets off events as Simm finds out more about the circumstances behind it and the conspiracy that his father seems involved in (the council leader was the man he was investigating, who had been a doctor with possibly dodgy credentials at a psychiatric hospital where there were rumours of one of the orderlies forcing inmates into sex with him and others). The programme was three one-hour episodes shown over three nights, and the best part was the chance to see Simm and Broadbent acting against each other (Colman was good too), but the conspiracy element wasn't enough for the intensity the programme was trying to display, thus leaving the ending weakened.

The Shadow Line
This was a very intriguing series that really split viewers down the middle: either they thought it was interesting and different, or they thought it was annoying and slow. It was a unique programme: written and directed by Hugo Blick, known for his comedy work, and it had a very unique rhythm to the storytelling and the dialogue, with lots of pauses and camera shots lingering on props. The story was about the cops and criminals investigating the murder of a drugs boss, but it was also about the people doing the investigating, particular the DI running the police investigation (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the ‘consultant’ of the drugs gang (Christopher Eccleston). It had a great cast – the two leads were strong, and Rafe Spall was a scene-stealer as the nephew of the murdered drugs boss – and a unique sensibility that made it feel more like a novel on television. The series was good but it had one incident that took me out of the story – when Stephen Rea’s mysterious character survived being shot with hardly any after effects, my heart was no longer engaged in the otherwise excellent drama.

The Crimson Petal And The White
This got good reviews, but that hadn't persuaded my girlfriend and I to watch it. When it was recommended by my girlfriend's parents and her cousin, we thought we should check it out on iPlayer. An adaptation of a novel in four hour-long episodes, it was an interesting approach to a period drama (it was set in the late 1800s), with unusual mood music and shifting camera work and focus instead of the more stately style that is employed in these sorts of things. It was sufficiently interesting to keep watching, but we never really connected with it. It was good to see Chris O'Dowd acting well in a straight piece, and there were nice supporting turns from the likes of Gillian Anderson, Sheila Henderson, Mark Gatiss and Richard E Grant, but we didn't really care about what was going on to get absorbed into the drama.

From A Library: Grandville

2011-08-05T18:00:00.009+01:00

Script, art and book design by Bryan Talbot

Even though I am European, I haven’t read a lot of what I consider European comics (specifically bande dessinée and Italian comics) – even though there is only a small stretch of water separating us, it’s not that easy to get your hands on them (except for Asterix and Tintin), and they’ve always seemed to be completely different to the sensibility of British comics (such as Eagle, 2000 AD or The Beano). Grandville seems to be a British version of those exotic European books, produced in their hundreds every year (on a trip to Brussels, I spent a happy hour just being in a shop that was covered from floor to ceiling with thousands of these graphic albums), and I mean that in a good way.

Grandville is a ‘scientific-romance thriller’ – containing elements of steam punk, alternate history and adventure. It just happens to occur in a world of anthropomorphised animals (which is not a problem for someone like me who is a huge fan of the excellent Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai). The hero of the tale is Detective Inspector LeBrock (French for ‘The Badger’) of Scotland Yard, a powerfully built and capable badger with the deductive ability of Sherlock Holmes. The setting is a world where the British lost the Napoleonic wars and France conquered Europe; for the past 200 years, Britain was a ‘small and unimportant country connected to the French empire by the Channel railway bridge’ that has recently gained its independence, becoming the Socialist Republic of Britain. The French empire is ruled from Grandville (Paris) by Emperor Napoleon XII, where there is a lot of Anglophobia after a terrorist attack occurred which had a similar scale to September 11.

LeBrock has been called in to investigate the death of a British diplomat, who was found in his home having seemingly committed suicide. Things are not what they appear, naturally, and soon LeBrock is on his way to Grandville accompanied by his sidekick, Detective Ratzi, and where LeBrock immediately finds himself in trouble as his investigations start to uncover a political conspiracy. And the trouble is violence – for a book full of animals that harks back to children’s stories (Rupert the Bear is an inspiration, according to Talbot, and makes a cameo in the town called ‘Nutwood’ where LeBrock’s investigation begins), the violence is bloody and vicious. It is no surprise that, along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Quentin Tarantino is one of Talbot’s influences – there is even a torture scene where an ear is cut off. This blood-spilling action and fruity language make for a compelling blend that contrasts with the furry setting – seeing LeBrock firing a massive machine gun with one hand and slaughtering lots of Frenchies is great stuff.

There is lots of referencing in the book, which adds to the appeal. In addition to Rupert, there is a character called Snowy Milou (Tintin’s dog was called Snowy in the English translation, Milou in the French), who refers to the Congo and the Blue Lotus; the only humans who exist (‘a hairless breed of chimpanzee that evolved in the town of Angoulême’) look like they’ve been drawn in the style of Hergé; there’s a poster for Omaha the cat dancer at the Folies Bergère; there is even the priceless film reference pun, ‘Badgers? We don’t need no steenkin’ badgers!’, which is an indication of the humour Talbot employs throughout.

This is a beautiful book – Talbot’s clear line is exquisite and his sense of design and storytelling is impeccable. All the different animals look great and the action sequences are fantastic. The story is a thrilling mix of different genres – it’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s smart, it’s romantic – and I love the alternate history that Talbot has created for himself. If I have one tiny complaint, it was the unnecessary death of the love interest, seemingly there just to provide LeBrock’s fury for the final violent section. It was the only bum note in an otherwise rip-roaring adventure yarn, and I look forward to the remaining books in the series (a second book is already out, Grandville Mon Amour, and there are three more planned).

Comic Book Shop (Sort Of): Book & Comic Exchange

2011-08-03T16:00:00.003+01:00

I define a comic book shop primarily as a location where you can buy the new comic books that were published that week. Even though I don’t classify Book & Comic Exchange on Pembridge Road in Notting Hill as a proper comic book shop, I thought it warranted an entry on my list of places you can buy comic books and trade paperbacks in London. It has been around for a while (I traded comic books there in the late 1990s, early 2000s) and it even recently started a sister site on Berwick Street in Soho (where I picked up my Blue Beetle trades for a steal), although the Soho site no longer sells comic books, despite what it might say on the website.

The Notting Hill shop is just around the corner from Notting Hill Gate tube station, which could explain part of its long-lasting appeal – easy to get to and it sees a lot of people walking past (trying to get a photo of the shop without people walking past it or into it was almost impossible). However, the shop itself is not the reason to visit: it’s a mess. It’s a dark and dingy shop, with shelves from floor to ceiling full of books; in fact, the shelves aren’t enough and there are books on floor in various piles.

The overwhelming majority of the shop is dedicated to second-hand books; the comics and trade paperbacks are a small concern, contained in a central aisle in the middle of the shop. It’s not a huge selection – I remember that they used to have more comics back when I was a regular visitor, and I don’t think that’s just my rose-tinted nostalgia – but there is some filtering: there are some issues bagged together because they form a complete story; there are some relatively newer comics, sectioned out into Marvel/DC heroes or teams, which are different from the older (approximately 10 years) comics in another section; the trades are split into Marvel and DC and Indie; there is even a small filtering of authors (Ellis, Ennis, Moore, Morrison – it is a UK shop, after all).

The main appeal of the shop is that the comics are priced to sell – usually about £1 for recent things, 50p for slightly older or less sellable books – although the second-hand trades are about the same price as trade you can buy new on Amazon; however, you do get the opportunity to flick through the books before you buy and see what they actually look like (I flicked through some Jason Aaron Ghost Rider collections because I’ve never seen more than some preview material on comic book news websites), and you always have the opportunity to sell or trade them back afterwards.

If you want to get down and dirty with books and comics, you can always visit the basement – everything down there is 50p and there is no filtering of the books, and the comics are a messy collection on top of a table and on the floor. This is the chaotic part of the shop but the upstairs is only slightly less messy and chaotic. The shop is cramped, messy, dusty and unwelcoming – I’m amazed that it is able to keep operating. But exist it does, and thus demands cataloguing for the purposes of my comic book shops list.

Notes On A Film – Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-08-01T18:26:00.000+01:00

It may not be news to you, but I didn’t know that Joe Johnston was won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for his work as part of the team on Raiders of the Lost Ark. This fact certainly explains a lot about the feel of this origin story for Captain America: a serial adventure with a period setting but a modern sensibility. It doesn’t achieve the heights of Raiders, but it’s a lot of fun with the right tone needed for the translation of Marvel’s sensibility towards World War II from comic book to screen.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m British or because I have trouble accepting the character of Captain America, but he’s never really worked for me (with the exception of Ed Brubaker’s run, but I’ve always felt that the book deals with Steve Rogers, not Captain America per se). Part of it is the time-specific nature of the concept – the ones set during the war seem to make the most sense. This could be one of the reasons why this film works: it’s Captain America in a time where he fits. The classic origin tale is told: Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a puny individual who is unfit to join the army, which doesn’t stop him from trying five different times (illegally using different towns in each application), until he’s noticed by German scientist Dr Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who thinks he would be the perfect candidate for his experiment – creating a super soldier using his scientific serum and vita rays (as supplied by Howard Stark, Marvel doing what it does best by creating a coherent universe with characters popping up in different films but maintaining consistency). The experiment is a success, and Rogers is turned into the hyper-muscled version we know; however, the film takes a nice twist with the origin story and turns him into a PR tool for selling war bonds, which allows for the slightly original costume to be introduced and the badge-shaped shield. They even have the comic book with Captain America punching Hitler on the cover as propaganda for the kids, which was a nice touch.

This section of the film flows well: Evans is really good as both the weakling (the CGI to make him look like so puny is really impressive, with only a few sections where it looks a bit ropey) and the pumped-up hero; he was good fun as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four films, but he plays this character completely differently and does a very good job of selling the person of Steve Rogers. There is good support from Tommy Lee Jones as the Colonel in charge of the operation, Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter and Tucci as Erskine. This section also nicely sets up the idea that Rogers is the right guy to become Captain America because he’s a genuinely heroic and decent person: he never gives up, he does the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and he’s self-sacrificing (throwing himself on a dummy grenade to protect others in the pre-serum sequence). It is summed up perfectly in the response to the question from Erskine, ‘Do you want to kill Nazis?’ – Steve replies, ‘I don’t want to kill anyone. I just don’t like bullies.’ It should also be pointed out that the film is rather funny – there are some good lines that reminded me of the humour in Raiders – and this adds to the enjoyment of the film.

The other section of the film is the bad guy: the Red Skull. A fanatical German, Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is head of Hydra, the research and technology department of the Nazi war effort, who underwent an imperfect version of Erskine’s super soldier formula, making him strong but also giving him his red skull. He obtains the Tesseract (last seen in the film Thor) to power his weapons, with which he is going to take on the world – he has Dr Arnim Zola (Toby Young) creating advanced tech for him, so there is the comic book mix of futuristic design in the middle of the 1940s. If you’ve read any of the comic books, you can handle this fantastical version of World War II as portrayed in Marvel comics – the stories are set in the horror of the actual war but don’t dishonour the events by basing these superhero adventures in the exact same details, hence fighting Hydra, who are more Nazi than the Nazis. Again, the tone of the film gets this balance right so that you can go with it instead of wondering about the incongruity of laser guns and laser tanks in World War II. It’s also helped by Weaving’s performance as the Red Skull; I swear that he sounded exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger at times, which probably helped.

There are a lot of things that Marvel has done right in this film in adapting from the comics. Bucky is no longer the 16-year-old sidekick in a uniform, but a friend of Steve’s from Brooklyn who enlisted and was subsequently saved by Steve and then became a member of Steve’s team (effectively Sgt Fury’s Howling Commandos, from the comics but with some changes: Dum Dum Dugan [the moustached one], Gabriel Jones [the African American], Jim Morita [the Japanese American] and Jacques Dernier [the French resistance one] are there, but the British one is now James Montgomery Falsworth, who was Union Jack in the comic books and wasn’t part of the Commandos). The fate of Bucky is also kept (I guess the cinema universe isn’t ready for the Winter Soldier) but not as part of the final battle with the Red Skull as in the comics. There is also a nice Easter egg for fans in the form of the Golden Age Human Torch, seen encased in a glass cylinder in the World’s Fair where Steve encounters Erskine, with the name of Prof. Phineas Horton above. The development of the linking thread of the Tesseract from Thor through this film (I presume it’s going to be the MacGuffin for the Avengers film) and the setting up of Hydra as a serious and continuous threat in the Marvel universe are handled well. The only thing that didn’t quite work for me was the post-script to the film: after Steve has sacrificed himself at the end of the film (if you consider that a spoiler, can I ask what are you doing reading this blog?), we get a footnote showing Steve waking up and discovering he’s in the future (and introduced to Nick Fury) – the scene just sits there as an unnecessary addendum after the moving climax. It felt like the beginning of The Avengers movie instead of the end of the Captain America film; the post-credits sequence didn’t click the way the other Marvel post-credits sequences have – it’s more of an actual teaser trailer, instead of the usual (and subtler) connecting scene.

Overall, I enjoyed Captain America: it’s a good film but it doesn’t have that X-factor that makes it special (such as the first Iron Man). The action sequences suffer occasionally from CGI imperfections, perhaps due to the 3D – I saw it in 2D, naturally, so that might have had an effect – but they are competently handled and enjoyable, which overcame my minor niggles. In some respects, this was the easier proposition of a Captain America adventure in World War II – Joss Whedon will have the tougher job in The Avengers when he has to make the character work in the present day. In the scale of this summer’s superhero blockbusters, it is miles better than Green Lantern, slightly better than X-Men: First Class, and not quite as good as Thor.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Comic Book Artist: Leinil Francis Yu

2011-07-30T22:16:00.000+01:00

I haven’t done one of these posts – a collection of images and overviews of comic book artists I enjoy – for a long time now, but they seem to the source of many visits to this blog according to Google Analytics (although it’s mostly to download the images of comic book art; I guess I make it easy to find them with Google Image search, particularly the Chris Bachalo post I did). However, that is not the reason for me returning to this theme – with these posts, I’m still trying to find a way to talk about the comic book art I like from the perspective of someone who connects with stories and writers.

I first saw the art of Filipino comic book artist on the Wolverine story Not Dead Yet (Wolverine #119 – 122), written by Warren Ellis, back in 1998. He’d been working on Wolverine for six months before this, and it seems to be his first major work. What’s amazing is how good he is from the start: he’s a great storyteller with a style that is perfect for the modern age of comics – his art is slick but with a nice rough edge, it has some realism but with a comic book edge, it’s dynamic and, resorting to fanboy status, it’s just plain cool.

After a respectable run on Wolverine, Yu moved on to The X-Men – talk about a promotion (I haven’t seen any of the work; I’m going out on a limb and assuming that it was good). He worked on one of the top books in the industry for two years, and he’s barely started his career. Which makes it strange that he moves over to DC to work on a creator-owned series with Scott Lobdell set in World War II, High Roads. The story is unusual, but Yu’s art is still awesome – he draws all the craziness and sexiness involved with aplomb.

The next DC project is bigger; in fact, it’s the biggest yet – the new origin sequence for Superman, Superman: Birthright, written by Mark Waid. This 12-issue series is not only really good, it’s got fantastic art from Yu. He draws a noble Clark, a heroic Superman and a smart and sexy Lois Lane, and he’s one of those good artists who can handle the normal stuff as well as the exciting superhero stuff that is all the less talented artists care about.

Having pencilled DC’s greatest superhero in a definitive story, Yu seemingly decided he didn’t want to be pigeon-holed because his work afterwards jumps around on a couple of different books for different publishers before drawing Andy Diggle’s Silent Dragons, a creator-owned six-issue mini-series set in Tokyo in 2063, with futuristic violence and samurai cool. Yu is nothing if not eclectic.

In 2006, Yu signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, which he admits his more his spiritual home than DC. He starts drawing Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk, written by Lost’s Damon Lindelof, which unfortunately goes way off schedule due to the author’s work schedule (comics will always get relegated when TV or movies come a-calling), although they do finish it eventually (over three years later, in the middle of 2009). Yu is a hot artist, in demand and evolving his style to one with more detail and intensity but still with his vibrant and slightly exotic edge. Since he was on contract, Marvel sensibly decided to use his time on something big: he was eventually put on New Avengers, where he fitted right in, providing some great art (and great covers – I love the Ronin being attacked cover).

If working on one of Marvel’s biggest books wasn’t enough, Yu then pencilled one of the big crossovers: Secret Invasion was an eight-issue mini-series that was a continuation of the Skrull storyline that had been part of the New Avengers for a while, and he excelled again at the big stuff (double-page spreads of heroes versus heroes and heroes versus Skrulls) as well as the intimate stuff that is part of the package of a Bendis book. There’s no stopping Yu now – he’s drawn Ultimate Comics: Avengers with Mark Millar, which led to Yu drawing Millar’s creator-owned Superior (which will be turned into a movie eventually) and he’ll be drawing Millar’s Supercrooks, which is also being turned into a movie. This means that we’re going to get a lot more of his beautiful artwork, which will continue to evolve and get better; you can check out his website on deviantart if you don't believe me.

Comic Book Shops: Krypton Komics (Number 10 In A Series)

2011-07-28T18:00:00.002+01:00

Blackhorse Road tube station, the penultimate stop at the northern end of the Victoria line, is one of those tube stops where there is nothing of note. It’s on the corner of a large and busy crossroads, with a pub and a few shops but no sign of anything else. If it hadn’t been for Krypton Komics, I would never have come here. After travelling nearly the entire length of the Victoria line, it had a lot to live up to. Fortunately, as its website says, the shop is a 2-minute walk from the station, so that helps.

I visited the shop’s original location – it used to be in Tottenham, up from Seven Sisters tube station – at some point in my past (possibly the late 1990s), but I don’t know when it moved to its current location. It seems out of place where it is now – if you use the street view on Google Maps, you’ll see that it is on a mainly residential road that has a fair amount of traffic passing it by. However, in some ways it adds to the charm of this little shop tucked away in a quiet spot.

The first notable aspect is gaining access to the shop – I have visited many comic book shops and this is the first time I’ve had to push an entry bell to be buzzed in to the shop. The man behind the till was a friendly chap (he blessed me when I sneezed) but he didn’t hassle me, probably because Krypton Komics is a back-issue haven, where the serious collector comes with his/her list to forage through the many boxes of old comics for a missing book in the collection. This is highlighted by the fact that you enter the shop into the middle of the back issues – the new comics are on shelves at the back of the shop. There are three tiers of comic book boxes all around the walls and in an aisle in the centre of the shop, although only the top box (at just above waist height) has labelled separators to indicate the alphabetical storage system. The only slight difference is the immediate right as you enter the shop – there are several boxes of 25p comics, some manga and then a couple of boxes of cheap second-hand trade paperbacks.

The cataloguing system of Krypton Komics has to be praised – the website calls it ‘the latest bar-coded inventory control system’ and I’d have to agree. Each comic has an identifying sticker: the name and number of the comics (with the volume number if applicable), the condition of the book, the price clearly marked, as well as details of the shop and a bar code. Compared with the small price sticker seen on books in other shops, it’s impressive and certainly the most comprehensive I’ve ever seen. I thought the prices seemed a little high – perhaps based on a price guide – but I’m not running the business, so my opinions don’t matter that much.

There are some trades on the walls and some select old comics (there are also a few boxes specifically marked ‘Silver Age’) but no merchandise that I could see. There was a large selection of new books when you finally get into the back area, showing no particular preference for the big two, but I can only imagine that they are for the regulars and locals because the shop isn’t going to get any passers-by popping in unexpectedly. It’s an achievement that this shop can survive in the current economic climate, but I’m glad that it does – it is obviously a labour of love for the owner and the people who work there.

Notes On A Film: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-27T21:01:00.001+01:00

Not a review: these are the thoughts of a fan [see all my posts on Harry Potter] after he has seen the film (in 2D, of course, because I avoid money-grabbing 3D films that were filmed in 2D), and it assumes a detailed knowledge of both the books and films. You have been warned

This discussion of is belated but there is a reason. I couldn't write about the final film in the Harry Potter series because I was so emotionally bereft after viewing it. The film was great, a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the series, and it made me cry in all the right places, but I was left with that strange feeling of loss that it was all over and I won't have new Potter films to anticipate. It had to come to an end – all good stories need to end, otherwise there's no point – and I don't need the comfort blanket of the continuing adventures of Harry Potter (although I would like a JK Rowling-written encyclopaedia that covers all the stuff that happened to the cast and the world afterwards), but I felt sad that I'd seen the last one at the same time as having enjoyed the film.

The film hit all the high points of the book and was exciting and moving, but it was odd that the first part of the Deathly Hallows was so long and leisurely in its telling of the story whereas the second part seemed to be rushed in comparison (apparently, it’s the shortest of the eight films). The book had to be condensed, even in two parts, but the concentrating of narrative beats seemed more acute in the second film. It was all about the climax, moving the characters towards the finale – gone is any of the background information about Albus Dumbledore and why he did what he did; the section about the Ravenclaw diadem Horcrux is condensed considerably, changing the subterfuge angle from the book in to a charging-in approach, and drastically reducing and altering the involvements of ghosts in the deduction of diadem's location (although I did enjoy Kelly MacDonald as The Grey Lady); any sections that involved people talking about what's going on (planning in the cottage, talking to Aberforth, accessing Hogwarts via the Room of Requirement) are reduced to the shortest time possible, in order to get to the action (and they omit the postscript in the headmaster's office; I would have liked to see the way Harry repaired his wand and removed the Elder Wand from the book, instead of the film's version) – but strangely, Yates has extended and expanded the actual final battle to something more dramatic and ‘cinematic’, although not necessarily better. The book contained the finale in the Great Hall, so that everyone was witness to the face-off between Harry and Voldemort; the film prefers the open landscape of the ravaged quad and has Harry and Voldemort jumping off the top of the clock tower and flying around fighting each other (I think Yates made a lot of tiny errors in this section due to the power going to his head: in a short interview, he talked about this flying scene being a eureka moment, but it seems rather silly; he also requested the dialogue that was seen in the trailer but excised in the final film ('Why do you live?' 'Because I've got something to live for') because he realised that the reason why screenwriter Steve Kloves didn't write it in the first place was because it was rubbish and that Voldemort wouldn't be a chatty type in a fight; he also has Harry and Voldemort fighting for longer than in the book which doesn't make any sense because it just provides more moments where it's obvious that Voldemort could easily kill Harry but doesn't because it says so in the plot.

These are quibbles, however, of a fan and of someone who has read the book. As Kloves put it, we kept the emotional core of what was happening, and they did a great job of putting the book on film. There were a lot of things I enjoyed in the film. Seeing Snape in charge of a Hogwarts where the students have been beaten into submission was powerful, the action scenes were exciting (I knew what was happening and even I had the enjoyable thrill of tension as I watched the film); it was great to see Professor McGonagall taking charge and leading the defence of Hogwarts. The explanatory quiet scenes were included and were powerful: the Pensieve scenes of Snape's memories was beautifully done (Rickman's face might have looked a little computer-enhanced in one scene, but the scene where he holds Lilly Potter's body was devastating) and seeing Dumbledore again in the King's Cross scene (tears were in my eyes when he says to Harry, ‘You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man.’) was nicely done. The scene with the Resurrection Stone had the tears really flowing, which is a perfect indicator that they had got the tone completely right; after that, I was an emotional wreck and even felt a lump in my throat at the moment when Harry, Ron and Hermione see each other for the first time after Voldemort's death and communicate so much with just facial expressions. To be fair, I had a lump in my throat when McGonagall said it was good to see him to Harry, so I don't know if I can be completely impartial.

Another thing: if you've read the book, you realise that the whole story is told from Harry's perspective – events that occur to other people when he's not there have to be recounted to him in some way. So we saw Fred's death in the book (which is played differently in the film) but don't see Remus and Tonks die. When the film made the change of following Ron and Hermione into the Chamber of Secrets to see Hermione destroy the cup Horcrux (and the Ron–Hermione kiss), I hoped they would give Remus and Tonks their moment but it was not to be. I also thought we'd get more of the other characters in wizard duels in Hogwarts, but most characters only got brief bits (we did get Molly Weasley killing Bellatrix, which was pretty cool), which seemed odd because there could have been so much more spectacle to add to the more cinematic climax they were creating but didn’t. I’m so difficult to please.

What am I trying to say about the film? I thought it was a good film, a good conclusion to the series of films, with the story intact (more or less), everyone doing a good job on screen (although most of the adults barely get more than a few lines or scenes; it’s entirely about Harry) and behind it, it wasn’t perfect but it made me cry and I look forward to all the deleted scenes on the DVD.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Six-Month Report Card Part Two

2011-07-20T21:00:00.003+01:00

In which I complete the cataloguing of my cinematic experiences for the past six months.

Submarine
A superb directorial debut from Richard Ayoade (Moss from The IT Crowd), adapting a coming-of-age novel set in Wales (in the recent past). Quirky, funny, moving, cinematic, individual, stylish, charming – Ayoade does a great job, with an interesting soundtrack (from Alex Turner) and good performances from the two young leads and support from Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor and Paddy Considine (hilarious as a ridiculous self-help guru). DAVE

Limitless
An efficient thriller, with a dash of sci-fi in the form of a pill that makes the brain work better (the scenes demonstrating this are very good), but it prefers the thriller aspect to understanding the full implications of the concept they have used for the story. It is also made annoying if you have seen the trailer (and have a good memory) because there are scenes in the trailer not in the film and scenes in the trailer switched around to give a completely different interpretation from the film. DVD

Sucker Punch
I’m so sorry I saw this. Zack Snyder makes the ultimate YouTube mash-up – the fight scenes are beautifully shot cut-scenes from a computer game done as pop videos, where our cosplay heroines fight giant Japanese demons, clockwork/steam-powered World War I German zombies, killer robots, and orcs and dragons – but the gender politics and the implications of fantasy-within-fantasies being escapes from institutionalised rape make this a very disturbing film to watch, which you probably shouldn’t. DA

Source Code
A really good film that uses sci-fi ideas intelligently to make for an engaging, smart, emotional and gripping story. A good script, good direction (the second film from Duncan Jones, who made the excellent Moon), and good acting from Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan as the leads. DAVE

Thor
Already reviewed: see here.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec
Already reviewed: see here.

13 Assassins
An enjoyable samurai drama from the prolific Takashi Miike – it’s a long film, with a slow build, but then the last third is just pure action. It’s like a modern version of The Seven Samurai, as 13 samurai attempt to kill an evil lord (who is protected by loads of samurai), and it’s really good. DVD

Hanna
A curious but enjoyable B-movie actioner with poetic visuals by Joe Wright, director of Atonement and Pride And Prejudice, with Saoirse Ronan excellent as a girl raised by her father (Eric Bana) to be an assassin with no concept of the real world, chased by an evil queen figure (Cate Blanchett) in a film that parallels fairy tales but is its own thing. Some great supporting turns from Tom Hollander, Jason Flemyng and Olivia Williams. DVD

Attack The Block
Already reviewed: see here.

Blitz
Another curious film: an adaptation of a police detective book set in London about a cop killer that feels like a British Dirty Harry filtered through an American cinematic approach, with Jason Statham in the lead and a supporting cast of top British actors (David Morrissey, Aidan Gillen, Paddy Considine) in a film with an ending that really fit the preceding narrative. DVD

X-Men: First Class
Already reviewed: see here.

Kung Fu Panda 2
Beautiful visuals, a great voice cast (including Michelle Yeoh as a soothsaying sheep and Gary Oldman in fine form as the villain), and a moving story combine to make this an equal of the very enjoyable first film. The fight scenes might have been slightly better in the first film and this film misses the spark of the relationship between Po and Master Shifu, but it’s a great sequel that was equally ‘awesome’. DAVE

Green Lantern
Already reviewed: see here.

Bridesmaids
A very funny film that mixes gross-out humour with believable characters and a simple story, which just happens to be about women. Kristen Wiig stars in and co-writes a film that is full of laughter but without it resorting to the frat boy humour or characters having to shout the punchlines – everyone gets a look in and the film has an emotional resonance that rings true. DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Cinema Six-Month Report Card Part One

2011-07-18T22:02:00.003+01:00

Despite not blogging regularly at all this past year (after a productive year in 2010) for various reasons, I have still been going to the cinema on a regular basis. I’ve reviewed a couple of the films I’ve seen, but the rest have been ignored, not even mentioned on Twitter. Therefore, to catch up and document somewhere the films I’ve seen in the past six months, I’ve decided to list the films in order of viewing, along with a few lines about each and my rating value, for what it’s worth.

Love and Other Drugs
A manipulative romcom with at least some genuine chemistry between the leads, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, but it didn’t make me believe the ending. DA

Tron: Legacy
Boring but beautiful (within The Grid, the only part that needed the 3D): I liked Jeff Bridges (cool as the Tron Jedi in the bar scene); Clu didn’t quite work, especially when he talked; Michael Sheen seemed to be doing an impression of David Bowie as the White Duke, and as if he was in a different movie. DVD

The King's Speech
Very good indeed; Colin Firth deserved his Oscar as he really did a great job with the stammer. Uplifting and enjoyable, with excellent support from Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush. DAVE

127 Hours
Danny Boyle does a great job about making a film about the real-life story of an overconfident man (James Franco) who trapped his arm under a boulder in Blue John Canyon and (spoiler) has to cut off his arm to escape. It’s cinematic and Franco is excellent and THAT moment is incredible and will make you squirm. Despite the premise, it is actually an uplifting film. DAVE

Season of the Witch
Oh dear. I’d hoped for some B-movie fun but Ghost Rider and Hellboy fighting with swords the 14th century is boring and silly, with an obsession with killing witches because of the church but the reading of a holy book saving the day at the end. Strangest part was seeing Robert Sheehan from Misfits in the film and having to adjust. DA

Blue Valentine
A vanity project for the actors – Ryan Gosling plucking his hair to a receding bald patch and Michelle Williams playing a woman coping with lots of emotions – about the start of the end of a relationship. They are good but, as executive producers as well, the film doesn’t feel like a story, more like an acting workshop. DVD

Black Swan
Totally deranged but in a good way: loud and excessively melodramatic, with a good performance by Natalie Portman (probably her best since Leon) as the good dancer going crazy playing the dangerous Black Swan. She is ably supported by Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey (very creepy as Portman’s mother) and Mila Kunis, and Darren Aronofsky directs with brio and intensity, but it’s Portman’s show and she really makes you believe in her dancing and her madness. DAVE

Barney's Version
An adaptation of a book that probably worked better as a novel – Paul Giamatti, very good as the central character, seems too unlikable a person to be married to Minnie Driver and then Rosamund Pike – but it still has its charms, including Dustin Hoffman as Giamatti’s father. DVD

The Fighter
A film that doesn’t break new ground for the boxing film but it is very enjoyable nonetheless. Mark Wahlberg plays it straight and low-key as the lead, allowing Christian Bale to act up a storm as his junkie brother and worthy of his Oscar. I didn’t think that Melissa Leo’s performance as mother of the clan warranted an Oscar, but you will be left with a good feeling at the end of the film so you won’t really care. DAVE

Animal Kingdom
Excellent crime drama from Australia, showing grim and gritty life in Melbourne, with Guy Pearce in a supporting role (presumably to help get the film made) and terrific performances all round, but particularly from Jacki Weaver as the mother of the criminals – she is truly terrifying and deserved her Oscar nomination. DAVE

Adjustment Bureau
Already reviewed: see here.

True Grit
A really, really good Western: Jeff Bridges is good as always (although occasionally unintelligible), Matt Damon is good in a sidekick role but the standout is Hailee Steinfield as the young girl who shows true grit when she employ’s Bridges Rooster Cogburn to hunt down the man who killed her father. It feels authentic and gritty and harsh, and not what I expected from the Coen brothers, but in a good way. DAVE

Never Let Me Go
Muted, slow, pensive, composed, uneventful – this adaptation of a novel is a strange little film that always feels like it made for a better book. This isn't to say that it's a bad film – the script by Alex Garland deftly handles an unusual concept as the basis for a doomed love story, the three leads (Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield) are all very good, and Mark Romanek directs with an attention to Britishness that is rather eerie. However, the story-with-a-sci-fi-kink is very slow, sometimes distancing the viewer from the characters because the drama is so internalised. DVD

Paul
Already reviewed: see here.

I Am Number Four
A film that is mostly drippy and chaste teen romance hiding behind the mask of sci-fi trappings, which completely wastes Timothy Olyphant in the mentor role, and only gets going in the last third, which is fortunately all action and aliens using their psychic powers, sorry I mean ‘Legacies’, to beat down the very silly looking bad guys. I don’t think the plainly hoped-for sequel will be forthcoming. DVD

Battle: Los Angeles
Another film that uses sci-fi trappings to mask another type of film; in this instance, a straightforward war film, along with all the clichés that this involves, with a better-than-necessary performance from Aaron Eckhart and some pretty amazing special effects to bring an alien invasion to Earth. It’s certainly impressive to look at but the story and characters don’t hold water. DA

Part Two to follow and bring me up to date.

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Book: Have You Seen…? By David Thomson

2011-07-08T22:06:00.000+01:00

I am under no illusion that my writing about film is worth reading to anyone apart from me, but I still like capturing my thoughts about films. However, after reading the writing about film of David Thomson, my feelings of inadequacy have multiplied a million-fold and I never want to write about film, or anything else, ever again (which is one of the many reasons why I haven’t been writing a lot of film reviews in the past 6 months).

This enormous tome contains 1,000 one-page essays on films (and the occasional television series, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Sopranos) that mean something to Thomson. Just writing that amount on films is an achievement – most lists of 1,000 films to watch only have a few short paragraphs to accompany a photograph, and from many contributors. However, it’s even more impressive when you actually read the lucid, warm, intelligent, well-informed, effortless prose that flows of each page.

Thomson has seen a LOT of films, has strong opinions on them, but he is also well-read both inside and outside of cinema, something he brings to each piece, which makes the entire book more than merely film reviews. It’s erudite without being dry, passionate without sounding fanatical, and an excellent guide to a wide selection of films from cinema history.

Thomson does prefer films from the distant past over the recent past: fewer than 180 entries for 1980–2007, with the 1940s and 1950s accounting for 40% of the book. However, he isn’t a fuddy-duddy who only likes ‘old’ films – his selection is eclectic and diverse: he includes the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Aliens, The Big Lebowski and The Matrix, in addition to the usual suspects (which is also included).

I have to confess that I didn’t read all of the entries – there are a thousand, for goodness sake. They are listed alphabetically, so you can dip in and out (I had a preference for films I have seen or at least heard about), which is perhaps the best approach. The beauty of the writing keeps you coming back for more; his description of a film can make you see things in it you never noticed before, and his turn of phrase can be enchanting. When talking about Belleville Rendez-Vous (or The Triplets of Belleville, the American title as used in this book), he describes the art style as ‘often a little like Toulouse Lautrec dating Betty Boop over an absinthe sorbet’, which is just one example of the delightful language that peppers the essays.

This is an impressive book, and Thomson is an incredible writer on film. Just don’t read it if you ever want to write about film yourself.

Author Appearance: Grant Morrison at Foyles

2011-07-06T21:59:00.000+01:00

Grant Morrison participated in a Q&A in Foyles on Charing Cross Road on Tuesday evening to promote his new book, Supergods. Because we were not allowed to photograph or record the Q&A, these are my long and rambling recollections of the hour.

I was lucky to get tickets for this event – The Gallery on the third floor of Foyles on Charing Cross Road was full of Grant Morrison fans (all seats were taken, people were standing up; among the crowd, I spotted the new chap from Gosh!, and Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston was present of course, and there was a chap who had some original artwork from Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, which I assume he was going to have signed afterwards). I had a nervous moment when the woman with the clipboard of power had to flip to the third page before she found my name on the list, but find it she did and I took my seat in the third row on the left of a small aisle in the main bulk of seats. This was a good choice – it meant that I had a perfect view of the God of All Comics.

Grant Morrison was looking in good shape – no shiny white suit, rather a dark blazer, a dark t-shirt with a design and slogan on it and shiny black trousers, to contrast his bright shaven head – and he seemed happy and comfortable as he sat down to begin the hour of Q&A to promote his new book, Supergods. As he drunk from his glass, he commented how much it looked like a urine sample: ‘Mmm, Neil Armstrong.’ Laughter would be a regular background noise throughout. After the clip-on microphones had to be replaced with an old-fashioned microphone (Morrison started crooning Strangers In The Night when it was passed to him), things were got underway. He explained how the book came about: an editor friend suggested compiling his interviews (great, thought Morrison, 500 pages and I don’t have to do anything); Morrison’s agent suggested he write a new introduction; when the agent read the introduction, he said, ‘This is good, why don’t you write a book?’ This was at a time when Morrison was in the middle of Final Crisis and Batman: RIP, so it’s not as if he wasn’t busy enough already. However, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to create a ‘cultural artefact’ when given the opportunity; 18 months later, he wasn’t feeling the same way – he described clinging to his desk, having worked ridiculously long hours and avoiding friends, leading to what he called a ‘businessman’s breakdown’, where he would stop because he simply couldn’t continue but 15 minutes later would knuckle down and get back to work because he ‘had to’. Despite this, he’s very happy with how it turned out and that it exists.

(My recall of the specific timeline of questions and answers after this first round of discussion is a little hazy, and the phrasing might not match the exact words used by Morrison, so please allow for some interpretation.)

Morrison talked about the ‘superheroes as archetypes’ idea (Superman is Zeus, Batman is Hades) but he expanded on it – Flash is Hermes and the Egyptian Isis and the Babylonian Nabu (god of wisdom and writing), but now Flash represents more than just that: he is the idea of modernity, of modern-day communication, of fashion, of transformation. Morrison’s depth of understanding and his ability to explain it is quite breath-taking – he is a smart man who has obviously thought about this a great deal and what it means to him personally. The point of archetypes is more than just the superheroes, it’s about ideas – he talked about the idea of love existing throughout human existence (we all hope to experience it at some stage, but the idea of love remains whether we do or not), or the idea of anger (which was represented as the ultimate form of anger in gods of war), or the idea of being 16 (we all experience it but only for a year, but there is always someone somewhere who is intense feeling of being 16). I was smiling just listening him drop knowledge bombs on his attentive audience.

The book examines the relevance of the lightning symbol in the development of the comic book, and Morrison discussed some aspects of it. The lightning bolt is present throughout the ages of comics, from Captain Marvel in the Golden Age, through the Flash in the Silver Age, Alan Moore’s Marvelman (a version of Captain Marvel, don’t forget) in what Morrison terms the Dark Age (from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s), and the Flash again in Mark Waid’s run on the character, which Morrison sees as the start of the current renaissance of comics. In the book, he links this to the Kabbalah (the original version, not the string-wearing modern silliness) and the magician’s path – the jagged structure from right to left (which is the reverse in the Reverse Flash, which reflects the dark magician’s path) – and he tried to put this structure into the book itself

He talked about the notorious alien abduction episode – where he was taken up by aliens on a higher dimension and they reassured him about the state of the world – about the different branes of reality, describing it terms of how we can see lives represented in 2D in comics, so what if there are beings on a dimension who can see us in the same manner of higher dimensions because they can see five dimensions, including time, so they can read us in the same way we read comics, seeing us at all points of our life at the same time. He also says that, regarding the abduction, he doesn’t believe it, but he does (with a cheeky grin on his face) – it’s a fiction but a really positive fiction

One topic that recurred was the concept of the reality of superhero comics. For example, Superman is more real than us – he’s been around for longer, he will be around long after we are dead, more people know who he is than will ever know. Morrison talked about how adults (a pejorative term for people who have closed minds who can’t enjoy themselves) don’t get fiction, particularly superheroes – they can’t enjoy the comics because they let reality intrude (how can Bruce Wayne run a billion-dollar business during the day and be the Batman at night? It’s not possible. To which Grant responds, with an unbelieving smirk on his lips, ‘because he’s not real’). In contrast, children understand the difference between fiction and reality, despite what adults think, and don’t believe that a cartoon of a crab is the same thing as an actual crab and don’t expect them to start singing and dancing.

Another facet of this the participation of the real world in comic books: the original Superman and Batman were realistic superheroes – they were responses to world around them, facing foes from headlines – whereas Captain Marvel was the first magical hero, with the mythic origin. He expanded on this by providing his thoughts on the types of writers of superheroes. He believes there are two types: the Missionary and the Anthropologist. The Missionary comes along and imposes his reality on a character: in real life, the missionary arrives at a new civilisation and says, ‘you’re naked, here’s a Bible, you’re doing everything wrong’ (despite the fact that the civilisation was fine before they came along); in his analogy, this leads to comics that are realistic and dependent on the outside world to impose rules on the stories. In contrast, the Anthropologist takes a different approach: when an anthropologist meets a new society, he strips down, paints his face, eats food he shouldn’t, blends in, gets stuck in and accepts their customs; his Anthropologist writer accepts the rules and limitless imagination of superheroes and works with them to come up with something new. Obviously, Morrison sees himself as the Anthropologist, who believes in the unreal reality of the superhero and enjoys it and celebrates it and doesn’t impose the real world on the superhero (or, as he put it, ‘Batman has never pissed EVER because he’s not real’ – take that, Kevin Smith). Saying that, he did state, ‘Watchmen is a beautifully written piece of work, you can’t take anything away from it’, despite it being an obvious example of the reality-based superhero story.

I can’t remember the context for the next answer but it had a lovely feel to it: for Morrison, writing superhero comics is like twelve-bar blues – there is a basic structure to it but with that you can do anything you want as long as you stay within the parameters of the rules. The analogy of someone who knows what he is doing and talking about.

Morrison was specifically asked about Action Comics, his new book about Superman in the new DC universe in September – in the book, Morrison wants to address certain issues that ‘adults’ have about the character, but he’s not allowed to say anything about it because of signed NDAs.

After 30 minutes, the Q&A was opened up to questions from the audience. I captured some of them, although I can’t always remember the questions. There is more Seaguy coming (Morrison thinks it is the best thing he’s written). When asked about the conspiracy stuff of his Invisibles, he agrees that there are no lizards running everything because we humans are not smart enough yet, so the world is all chaos. When asked about his first experience with superheroes, he said that he learned to read at three years old (thanks to his mother), and that his first comic was a story where Marvelman meets Baron Munchausen (which obviously influenced everything he’s done since, because it is the story of a magical superhero meeting a complete liar). He talked about how his parents were anti-bomb activists, which affected him a lot as a kid, not helped by the family friends would sing songs about the bomb, so he was really worried about the bomb. The arrival of superheroes was exactly what he needed because these characters could defy the bomb and diffuse his fears.

When asked about the contradiction between believing in the reality of the DC universe, which exists outside the people who have created it, and the reality of the fact the DC universe is owned by a corporation, he said that nobody owns superheroes – we do, everybody does, like Robin Hood or King Arthur – and that they will probably soon be open source soon and we will all be writing these characters. On a related note, he said that he doesn’t have carte blanche at DC, he is just allowed to do his stuff because his comics sell. When talking about comic books in general, he professed that he mostly loves superheroes rather than comics as a medium – he isn’t interested in, say, a comic from a bloke in Iran. Related to his Missionary/Anthropologist analogy, he explained quite succinctly the difference between stories that are relevant to the world around us and those from the imagination – he wants stories that are ripped from the neurones, not the headlines.

Morrison loves the ways comics engage both sides of the brain simultaneously, and he is undecided about digital comics – at the moment, he thinks they are like early cinema trying to recreate theatre, that they are just replicating comic books on another medium, even as far as having you flip the pages – and is waiting to see the development because of its potential; he’d like to see digital comics where you can press on a character and the entire history of the character would pop up, or press on another part of the page and you could play a related game. Asked about the way that Batman is being reset to only Bruce Wayne in the new DC and how he felt about DC ignoring his Batman stories, he said he knew it was never going to last, which is why he always tries to write a complete story in his entire run on a book (such as on Batman and New X-Men) that reflects his passions and affection for the characters, because the characters will always be reverted to the status quo.

Morrison talked about something he discusses in his book, which is the superhero history in terms of a life: Golden Age is like a child, with its simplicity and bright colours and black and white viewpoint; Silver Age is 12 years old, the age of transformation, as puberty hits and there are lots of changes (such as Superman becoming fat/multiple/small, or Flash and his large head/gorilla, or Jimmy Olsen and his many changes); Dark Age is adolescence, with its anger towards the previous way of doing things, making things more serious; current Age is adult, intelligent and knowing but also playful (he used Warren Ellis’ work as an example, and as an example of good comics). In the book, he parallels these ages of comics with his own life (he was 12 when the Silver Age ended, he was an adolescence at start of Dark Age). He was embarrassed at the ‘cringeworthy’ memoir aspect (memoirs make him sound like he’s 86), but he thought it would mean that people other than comic book fans would read it because it was cached in an acceptable literary format.

Comics are wish fulfilment, in response to question about superheroes being used as propaganda (specifically, Captain America punching Hitler) – this would have been great for soldiers at the time, most of whom would have joined up just so they could punch Hitler on the nose, ignoring the occupied territory and huge army in the way of achieving the goal. He’s sure that Holy Terror will be cathartic for some Americans but it’s not his thing. When asked if he had a final Superman story, Morrison brought up Alan Moore’s Mr Majestic ‘Big Chill’ story (from Wildstorm Spotlight #1), calling it the best thing Moore’s ever done (Morrison would like to write something about it one day), and also thinks it’s the best Superman story. He reckons that if it was drawn by someone like Jim Lee (and not Carlos D’Anda), it would be considered a classic. One answer to a question involved him talking about Socratic Dialogue and then Ronald McDonald and referencing his own conversation with Animal Man in the classic issue where Morrison meets the character. Wonderfully bizarre.

It wasn’t all comic book talk. When talking about the current evolution of human society (we have the database of human knowledge at our fingertips, we are making new connections in a new way now, but we’re too close to it to understand how fast it is happening and what it will do, but it is having an impact), he talked about the phone as an organism that has evolved with us, adapting to our needs – ‘machines don’t want to kill us, they want to fuck us, like we want to fuck them.’ Morrison talked about film: he thinks that in the future, we’ll wonder why we paid Tom Cruise to be the hero in films when we will soon be the heroes in our own entertainment – he thinks everything will be video games 20 years down the line. Saying that, he has just finished writing the script for Barry Sonnenfeld – Dinosaurs Vs Aliens – and really enjoyed it; he laughingly said he wanted to do more – particularly Dinosaurs Vs Quakers. He also talked about some heavy stuff, when talk of how superhero always come back led into how your mum/dad won’t come back to life, and talk of how he’s getting older and how hard it is to see his mother, a strong feminist, not as able to think as she could. He said that he wanted to go the same way as the magician in Captain Marvel’s origin – a concrete block falling on him and crushing him. The phrase that also stuck with me was, ‘Being human is hardcore’, meaning that it’s scary on the small scale. Although, after talking about some heavy stuff to do with human society and progress, he said, ‘I don’t know, I’m not a fucking guru’ with a laugh

It was such a shame that we weren’t allowed to photograph or record – I wanted a transcript just to capture a record of his thoughts on everything. He expressed himself so well and eloquently and passionately. An hour wasn’t enough, as he said when he finished answering the last question, ‘I was enjoying that’ with a smile on his face. He was doing a signing afterwards, but only if you bought a copy of the book – I almost wish I bought hardbacks. The book sounds like it’s going to be amazing, and I can’t wait to read it. Listening to him talk, I was enthused about comic books again and their possibilities, and I wanted to read all Morrison’s books all over again.

From A Library – The Sandman: The Dream Hunters

2011-07-04T22:04:00.001+01:00

By Neil Gaiman and P Craig Russell

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was a very important book in my development as a comic book fan, but I never really kept up with any of the spin-offs or extras that came out after the series itself ended. I read the last Gaiman-written Sandman stories (Endless Nights) via a book from the library, and I never even read the original prose novella (with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano), or bothered to seek it out. I didn’t even know that the story had been adapted into a four-issue comic book series by P Craig Russell; when I saw it in the library, I had to pick it up because I was so surprised by its existence, and because Russell is a fantastic artist and adapter of other people’s work.

In the afterword, Gaiman says something pertinent to my reading this: ‘What I did not expect was the strange feeling that comes from reading a new Sandman comic. … It was magical.’ Not having read much of the other material, I came to this quite anew and it was exactly like reading a new Sandman comic, and it was magical. It is not a vital story about Morpheus – he is a supporting character in this – but it is an enchanting and exquisite tale, marrying Gaiman’s beautiful prose with Russell’s gorgeous art. Set in Japan sometime in the distant past, it tells of a Buddhist monk who looks after a small temple on the side of a mountain and a fox spirit that starts out trying to evict him (in a wager with a badger spirit), only for emotions to get involved and a plot by a Kyoto civil servant (who deals in magic) to kill him through dreams. It is a story of hubris, tragedy, love, sacrifice, revenge and, of course, dreams, and it leaves you both sad and happy in the way that a good Sandman comic can. There are appearances from the Three Witches, Cain and Abel, and Matthew the raven, and Morpheus appears in human form but also in the form of a large black fox, which looks absolutely fabulous.

The art is ridiculously beautiful – Russell talks about the three influences in this work: Japanese woodblock prints, European Art Noveau and, bizarrely, Disney – and it all shows in the precise detail and composition. A clear line, with visuals playing off each other from panel to panel, while some hark back to Japanese prints in the scene-setting panels (mountain vistas in tall vertical panels, or waves in the sea echoing Hokusai); then there is the playfulness of the fox and the badger and Morpheus-fox, or the charming facial expressions that speak volumes, which are then contrasted by the huge majesty of the strange and beautiful places the monk passes through to enter Dream’s palace. Russell has done his usual outstanding job, and I’m glad that he persuaded Gaiman to let him adapt the story into this comic book, and I would recommend it to anybody who enjoyed the original Sandman series.

Notes On A Film: Green Lantern

2011-07-01T14:00:00.004+01:00

Pity poor Green Lantern – despite the recent successful revival by Geoff Johns, he’s always been a B-lister; now that he’s in cinemas, it seems that the entire weight of comic book movies is resting on his shoulders and he’s taking the blame for it all. All for a film that isn’t as bad as everyone seems to be saying it is, but which isn’t a good film either. The fact is that the film just sits there, not achieving the enjoyable levels of Iron Man or Thor but not sinking to the awful lows of Steel or Catwoman or Batman and Robin. There are some good bits but it never sings, it never flies (if you’ll pardon the punning metaphor).

The problem appears to be a dichotomy between the two halves of the film, and the script can’t seem to make up its mind which side it wants to favour. Favouring the Marvel Studio approach to bring the comic book characters to the silver screen, the film spends half of its time on Earth with Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) and his interaction with humans – he’s a test pilot with Ferris Aircraft who screws things up for his colleagues, he’s had former romantic interaction with Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), there’s a sub-plot involving Senator Hammond (Tim Robbins) and his scientist son Hector (Peter Sarsgaard) – but the film starts out with a voiceover explanation of the Guardians of Oa and the Green Lantern Corps, and sends Jordan out into space and to Oa receive induction from Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) and training from Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan), which only lasts two minutes before Sinestro (Mark Strong) steps in to make Jordan feel inadequate and want to leave the Corps. There is also the threat of Parallax, this huge entity of fear who destroys planets – why have both the small Earth-bound story of Jordan handling his fear and fighting the Parallax-infected Hector Hammond when you’ve got the prospect of the entire galaxy and thousands of alien Green Lanterns at your disposal?

I wanted the aliens and outer space – the CGI for Tomar-Re and Kilowog was impressive, and it was wonderful to see such scope in a blockbuster film, including the presence of so many different aliens and the vista of the home planet of the slightly creepy Guardians. I wanted more of the Green Lanterns fighting Parallax in space, and I wanted the development of the Sinestro–yellow ring storyline that was hinted at in the mid-credits sequence (and I have to agree with everyone that the way this was played in the film made no sense whatsoever, and ignored the character development for Sinestro in the rest of the movie). The ‘Hal has to overcome his fears to become the Green Lantern’ storyline seemed so small and minor in comparison, despite the best efforts of Reynolds, who delivers some of the comedy lines very effectively. This section could have been dealt with quickly and then we could have got more action. A prime example of the smallness hobbling the ability of the film to soar is the way that the Carol Ferris is used as the reason to have a fight between Hector Hammond and Hal Jordan – Hector’s unrequited love was really silly and rather sad to see it used as a device in the plot. This lack of logical narrative was also a problem – see this post at Topless Robot for the best snarky dissection of the storyline of the film – as if the filmmakers thought that people would understand and accept the way the narrative develops because they do the same in the comics (why exactly does Hector get telepathy and telekinesis because he’s been infected by Parallax?), and no amount of spectacle could compensate.

It’s not all awful – the actors are mostly good in their roles (Mark Strong is always good value), there are some funny lines, it’s nice to see that Carol recognises Jordan when he’s in his Green Lantern costume and mask (the CGI costume wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be based on the trailer – well, in the 2D version I saw; I’ve no idea what it looks like in 3D – but the mask never works in the film), and it’s great just to have a big blockbuster about the Green Lanterns. However, the film lacks visual flair and energy – Martin Campbell might have done good jobs on The Mask Of Zorro and Casino Royale, but he does a workman-like job here; this lack of imagination is evident in the manifesting of the Green Lantern energy through the ring, particularly the scene where Hal saves the crashing helicopter by constructing a race track to save it. This means that Green Lantern the film is a very flat experience, which is sad because I would really like to see the sequel where Hal Jordan and the Green Lanterns fight the Sinestro Corps in a great big CGI war in space.

Rating: DA

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Book From A Library: The Science Of Superheroes

2011-06-29T22:20:00.000+01:00

By Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg

I’ve been reading comic book superheroes for a long time now. An unrelated fact is that I trained as a scientist (I even have a PhD in biochemistry). In all that time, I have never had a problem with the use of science in superhero comic books. Science is for explaining the wonders and mysteries of the universe; comic books exist to entertain me, with a side order of informing me when appropriate. When I saw this book in the library, I wanted to read it because I couldn’t understand quite why it existed – they do know that comic books are fictional, right?

The title is a little misleading – this isn’t a book explaining how superheroes can work within the constraints of the laws of science. It examines aspects of science that are related to aspects of superheroes. This is a significant difference, but it makes for an interesting read. The first chapter was particularly fascinating, as it discusses the Drake equation (which provides an estimate of the number of intelligent species in our galaxy) to demonstrate the possibility of Krypton, before talking about a book called Rare Earth, which examined the various factors in the Drake equation and show that, instead of many planets with life on it, habitable planets are quite rare – the habitable zone is more complicated, possibly requiring a gas giant like Jupiter to exist as a magnet for comets; for biological life to evolve requires three billion years, which requires a G2 type star (a lifetime of ten billion years) that are not very common. The authors use this to explain why Jor-El sent his son to Earth – there was no other choice. They then go on to explain that Krypton can’t exist because the size it would need to be for Superman to be as strong as he is on Earth is impossibly large for a planet with that gravity to exist. Fun stuff.

The next chapter talks about cosmic rays and gamma radiation, stating the obvious fact that the Hulk wouldn’t exist, but then proposing a theory for the Green Fluorescent Protein version of the Hulk, based on real science anabolic steroids and genetic manipulation. The third chapter talks about the possible contents of Batman’s utility belt and the basis behind the Cataclysm storyline, which is a bizarre choice of subject among all the various facets of Batman. The fourth chapter talks about underwater superheroes, which takes in Plato’s description of Atlantis and the aquatic ape theory of the evolution of man (which states that early humans spent more time in water than we do now, something I hadn’t heard of before), before talking about the mechanics of living underwater (breathing fluids and withstanding pressure).

The fifth chapter talks about Spider-Man – how almost none of the attributes of ‘spider powers’ relate to actual spiders, before discussing clones because of the infamous Clone Saga. The sixth chapter uses the Green Lantern concept to discuss black holes in detail as a possible source for the infinite energy required to power the Green Lantern Corps. The next chapter uses Ant Man and the Atom as starting points for discussing the Square Cubed Law in relation to shrinking and growing, with an aside for atomic structure and some quantum mechanics. The eighth chapter talks about the Flash: after stating that stories with someone moving that fast would be really boring because criminals wouldn’t be any sort of challenge, they examine the impossibility of moving at the speeds mentioned in the comics. This involves discussion of the calories required to power the speed, not being able to see or hear properly, causing sonic booms, the trouble with momentum and a thorough discussion of the speed of light – if the Flash actually moved at the speed of light, he would have infinite mass (i.e. all the mass in the universe), which is impossible.

The ninth chapter uses the X-Men to talk about the theory of evolution (giving a good kicking to Creationism while they are it); the tenth chapter talks about science fiction comic books in general, and how they ignore science for the sake of telling a fun story in a short number of pages, and a mention of the Grandfather Paradox when discussing time travel (which allows for a section on Einstein-Rosen bridges). A lot of this might sound like nerdy nitpicking, but that’s not what the book is about – it just wants to ‘edutain’ on the elements of science involved in the comic books they love. They leave the final chapter to talk about Carl Barks and his use of accurate science in stories of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, just to prove that they’re not haters.

The last chapter highlights the love the authors have for comic books – the science may invalidate the accuracy but it doesn’t stop the enjoyment. Each chapter has a very informative introduction to the characters and the comics in a historical framework, providing excellent overviews of the development of the science fiction superheroes of the Silver Age. The book is a very enjoyable combination of superheroes and proper science, essayed in a highly readable style.

My London Comic Book Mart Experience

2011-06-27T22:27:00.000+01:00

The National Collectors Marketplace is a regular mart for comic books, trading cards, books and merchandise related to science fiction, film and TV. According to the website, it is the largest of its sort, hosting 130 tables in the Royal National Hotel near Russell Square in central London. When I arrived on a wet Sunday at the beginning of the month, I could believe the claim to size.

The hotel had three large rooms packed with sellers – I recognised Paul Hudson, who owned Comic Showcase (one of the shops I frequented in my youth) until it closed down in 2006, and Incognito Comics (I used to buy from the Canterbury store when I lived there) had a huge stall of boxes filled with 25p comics – with the emphasis on comic books. And the comic book fans were there in force to buy from them; I arrived 30 minutes after the doors opened at noon, and the place was packed. Unfortunately, these readers of comic books hadn’t taken to heart any of the ideals of altruism and looking out for your fellow man that populate superhero stories, because they didn’t care about anyone or anything else apart from finding comics at a good price.

People – mostly men – were flicking through the comics in the longboxes and not letting anyone get a look in. If you were lucky to locate a space to examine the comics, the people on the either side were not very friendly or patient. There was one chap who had spent all his money on comics and not an optician, because he kept his head absurdly close to the comics as he flicked through them. There were the hunters with their lists – computer printouts of spreadsheets for some, aged, folded pages of hand-scribbled titles for others – obsessively going through every box and every comic book to find their missing items. There were some ‘ordinary’ punters, but there was also a large contingent of the type of comic book fan who are examples of the stereotype that rest of the world sees: overweight, wearing superhero t-shirts that were too small, unfamiliar with personal hygiene (the smell in the rooms was a little on the ripe side).

I had intended to take some photos of the mart to accompany this reminiscence but I felt too awkward, too uncomfortable in the confined space with the crowds - if you want some photos, see the report by Dom of London Loves Comics. I’d been looking forward to rifling through comic boxes looking for bargains and trying to fill gaps in my collection, but I felt out of place and didn’t enjoy it as much as I had wanted. Oh, I wandered around and looked diligently through the boxes – I even found the five issues of Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis at 50p each – and thought the variety of material for sale was interesting (trays full of Doctor Who novels in plastic bags, old British comics lying on tables, old cult films on DVD, original artwork, even old British porn mags). However, the experience left me little deflated and out of sync with my collecting hobby, which is a shame. I can’t fully explain it but I don’t have the urge to return to a comic book mart, even though I still have the desire to buy cheap comic book. It’s not to do with the National Collectors Marketplace, just an adverse reaction to my first interaction for a while with the hardcore comic collecting community. I don’t classify myself as a real geek because I don’t have the depths of geekness I perceive in real geeks, even though I’ve just spent 600 words talking about going around a room full of old comic books, but this was yet another sign to confirm my belief. Your mileage may vary.

Notes On A Film: Attack The Block

2011-06-24T14:00:00.002+01:00

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish have been part of pop culture commentary since the days of their delightfully homemade television programme, The Adam & Joe Show, the highlight of which was the re-creations of films with soft toys. They continue to amuse and entertain with their BBC 6 Music radio show on Saturday mornings. The fact that Joe Cornish has written and directed his own film, and that it is really good, is still mind-boggling.

This is a great debut from a man who knows and loves films, but there are no homages or nods to other films. This is very much a film that exists on its own terms, in its own right (even if there is a sense of Spielberg that haunts the background, as Cornish brings the same awe and wonder to an alien incursion but in south London and a slightly bleaker worldview).

The basic premise: an alien drops to Earth near a south London estate where a group of boys are mugging a nurse. They beat the alien to death, and return home to recover. However, more aliens land on Earth and they are a lot bigger and nastier than the first alien, and the council block comes under attack. The boys have to fight back.

The film is scary without being excessively horrific (although there is a fleeting gruesome special effect) and it has humour but not in a parodying fashion – it’s a serious film about serious alien monsters but the laughs come through character and situation. There are parallels with Shaun of the Dead – both have a sense of their part of London, both take the material seriously but have humour in them, both have Nick Frost and same producing partners, and both have tight plots that set up elements that play out later (such as the flat on the block that has a large Union Flag, or one of the kids who pretends to have a limp in front of his gran so he can take a weapon out of his flat). However, apart from both being very good films, they are separate entities.

Everything in the film (apart from the aliens, obviously) feels real – Cornish lives in south London, and he was mugged by teenagers, which inspired the start of the movie, and spent time ‘procuring jazz-related herbs’ (as he described it in this interview in The Guardian) on Wandsworth estates in his youth (one of the characters, a middle-class white young man who visits the block for weed, could be a Cornish stand-in), so he knows the place and the setting intimately, and it shows. It rings of authenticity, which emphasises the alien element, and allows the alien element to play out in a believable world.

Attack The Block is well filmed and well acted – the kids are really good and the slang they use sounds just right (I live in south London and the teens sound like that); there is no concession to the slang used but it isn’t impenetrable. Also, the film has something to say about the attitude towards these kids on estates, saying something interesting about hoodies as human beings and not just Daily Mail headlines.

Attack The Block is a really good film – it’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s genuine, it’s well done and everyone on screen does a good job. It’s a great debut film and it promises good things from Cornish in the future; I guess that means we’ll have to live without the excellent radio show if he becomes a full-time filmmaker.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Book: Comic Creators On X-Men

2011-06-22T13:18:00.000+01:00

It seems the right time to talk about this book after my long rambling review of X-Men: First Class. My love of the X-Men might have had some impact in my enjoyment of the film, but that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the books I read as a teenager nor my affection for the creators of that work.

This is a strange book: compiling a collection of interviews with writers and artists who have worked on the X-Men leads to a book that becomes dated the moment it is published, which is perhaps why I found this book for £2.50 in the sale section of Forbidden Planet. However, it is a nice way to provide a voice for creators from the previous generation and allow them to share their stories on what was once the dominant franchise in superhero comic books.

The book doesn’t interview everyone involved with the history of the X-Men – there are a lot of people who have had input in the >40-year history – and the book admits that fact up front. It’s a good list (although I would have liked an interview with Ann Nocenti, who edited the books at the times when they started to expand and become really successful, and Jim Lee would have been a good choice for an artist with an impact on the book): Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Alan Davis, Louise Simonson, Marc Silvestri, Bob Harras, Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar.

Tom DeFalco, former Editor-In-Chief at Marvel, does the interviews but, although he tries to keep things on topic, he does have a tendency to ask more general questions than the remit of the book would suggest (such as talking to Neal Adams for several pages about his breaking into the field of comics and his work before starting on X-Men). Most creators are given an equal number of pages, although the pages do include boxed sections with historical information about the X-Men and some artwork and script pages; however, Chris Claremont rightfully gets the most pages, and there is a lot to talk about and is perhaps the most interesting for a reader who grew up on The Uncanny X-Men and The New Mutants. The sections with Roy Thomas and Dave Cockrum provide some nice details about the decisions that were made leading into the new version of the book that would become so popular, and some Cockrum character guides for some of the new characters.

The interview with John Byrne is interesting, including his thoughts on what happened and the work he did after the landmark run with Claremont (he did some Wolverine work, briefly wrote script over some plots before working on X-Men: The Hidden Years). We get different views on the Claremont/Byrne split from Claremont, Byrne and Louise Simonson (who was editor at the time), but the book doesn’t veer into troublesome areas too much – the section with Bob Harras seems to be deliberately diplomatic and avoid saying anything problematic (it was interesting to see that Harras had started out as a salesman in stores before lucking into an editorial assistant position at Marvel), even though he was in charge of the X-books in the most tumultuous time of its history: Claremont leaving the books, the rise of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld on the books before the exodus to Image, not to mention the trouble that Marvel was having in the mid-1990s and Harras’ elevation to Editor-In-Chief.

The interview with Scott Lobdell goes some way to making me reassess him – I’m one of those readers who stopped reading the X-books eventually after Claremont left, but not before I had read quite a few stories that he wrote, so I incorrectly associate him with the negativity I perceive with that time – and he seems like a decent human being. As with the other artists in the book, DeFalco spends too much time talking about how they work and got into comics when talking to Chris Bachalo, but the interviews with Grant Morrison and Mark Millar make up for this, and Millar isn’t in hyper self-promotion mode so he makes some decent points for a change. As a whole, the book is an oddity, but it is a sufficiently interesting oddity to warrant a purchase for a former X-fan like myself.

Notes On A Film: X-Men: First Class

2011-06-20T22:27:00.000+01:00

It’s been nearly two weeks since I saw X-Men: First Class, which is perhaps an indication of the conflict I’ve had in compiling my thought about it. Part of it is to do with my years of reading the Chris Claremont X-Men, part of it is some parts of the film itself, and another part of it is the general reaction to the film in the press. To sum up, if you don’t want to read my jumbled ramblings: it is a generally good film, with some very good bits, but it’s not great (despite what current X-Factor writer Peter David might think), mostly due to various problems with the story.

Let’s start with the good stuff. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are great as Magneto and Charles Xavier respectively. Fassbender is cool and tough as the spy-with-superpowers going after Nazis (very James Bond, but even cooler); McAvoy is charming, funny (he gets some good lines) and has the right sense of optimism and amazement in mutant powers. Together, their relationship is the beating heart of the film and it would have been great to see the entire film devoted to them alone.

The film is rather groovy. The reference to Bond is appropriate, not just the 1960s setting: the clothes, the production design, the globetrotting (Oxford, Argentina, Russia, Cuba), Sebastian Shaw as a classic Bond villain – the various secret headquarters (the submarine is a particularly nice touch), the cool hench-people and a silly plot to destroy the world. Everyone looks good, although the female attire perhaps goes too far, and there is a nice feeling of historical authenticity, even with the unfortunate attitude towards women. The action is good as well – the scene with Magneto in Argentina was particularly badass – and it flows at a good pace. And three cheers for not being in 3D.

Can I just say: greatest cameo ever, even if it doesn’t make complete sense. I laughed out loud, I’m not afraid to admit.

There are lots of nice touches, and the film makes sure it fits well with the first two X-Men films (Bryan Singer, producer on this film, seems to have a thing about making a new film based on only the first two films in a series, if this and Superman Returns are anything to go by) – the relationships between various characters, the development of Cerebro, the Blackbird, showing how Xavier ended up in a wheelchair, Magneto’s helmet. It is also unashamedly comic booky – Banshee flies on his stretchy wing things, the CGI visualisation of Shaw’s absorption of energy, Emma Frost’s diamond form, Darwin visibly mutating to display his adaptive power, the costumes, Magneto raising a submarine from the sea, the whirlwind powers of Shaw henchman Riptide (although he’s not named in the film, or even speak).

Time to talk about some of the things that weren’t so good. Although I enjoyed the presence of so many characters from the X-Men universe (apart from those mentioned, the film has Havok, Beast, Mystique, Angel, Azazel, Moira MacTaggart [albeit an American CIA agent instead of a Scottish doctor]), there are too many characters in the film. If it had been more about Xavier and Magneto, even if they were facing against Shaw on their own and realising that a team is needed, it would have been a tighter narrative. Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman do a great job of including all the characters and giving their moments, but it diffuses the story and loses focus.

The story itself, with an epic scale that revolves around the Cuban missile crisis, seemed implausible – even with a telepath, I couldn’t see how one man could influence the specific individuals to bring the world to the brink of war. It’s a classic Bond villain plot, with the big idea with a stupid reason, but that shouldn’t be an excuse.

The large cast means that few of the cast stand out. January Jones is a non-entity as Emma Frost – bland, looking very uncomfortable in the costume, and I really don’t like the diamond form (I didn’t like it when God-of-all-comics Grant Morrison introduced it and I like it even less here, where it looks silly). Riptide is a pointless appendage in the film; it’s like he was only kept around for precipitating the final action sequence. The actors playing Havok, Banshee, Darwin and Angel don’t make an impact (Angel is played by Zoe Kravitz, the daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, so she knows something about good genetics), and I feel sorry for Jason Flemyng for such a non-role as Azazel. Jennifer Lawrence, who was so good in Winter’s Bone, is fine as the young Mystique but seems flat here. Kevin Bacon doesn’t really work as Shaw – he doesn’t bring the menace necessary for the role.

The biggest problem I had was the inadvertent racism. Darwin, a black man, is the first die in the film. Not only that but he goes out in such a lame way – he is a character whose power is to adapt to any danger, but he is killed by Shaw putting energy in his mouth (Ed Brubaker, his creator, must be a little upset about that). In the same scene, the only character in the proto-X-Men to turn evil is the only black woman. I’m not saying that, to address the years of racism inflicted upon black people, all black characters in film should be good guys and not die; however, in a film that is an allegory for racism and is filled with nearly all white characters, the filmmakers made a huge error in their uncalculated use of Darwin and Angel.

The other things that niggled were minor: the hands-as-feet mutation of Hank McCoy was very silly; Riptide having whirlwinds coming out of his hands looked very stupid for some reason; the lack of sense behind Emma Frost’s diamond form; I don’t like that Sebastian Shaw is one of the first mutants in the film continuity, or that Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summer is not the first pupil of Xavier, but the continuity of the Fox X-Men films is quite messy anyway (e.g. the age of Xavier in this film and Wolverine: Origins, or the presence of various versions of Cyclops and Emma Frost in that film), so I guess I should get over myself. The film also suffers from the ‘more characters means a better superhero film’ problem of late (e.g. Spider-Man 3, or Wolverine: Origins, which seemed counterintuitive when examining the story of a loner hero). These niggles also extend to the promotion of the film – the original teaser trailer was a terrible indication of the film and the terrible Photoshopping of the posters are an embarrassment. However, the film is fun and worth a watch overall, even if Thor is still the current leader for best comic book superhero film of 2011.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Saturday At The London MCM Expo

2011-05-31T21:03:00.001+01:00

I haven’t been to a convention since I attended the London Film and Comic Con in 2008, so it was about time I exposed myself to another celebration of geek culture. Mark Millar’s Kapow! might have been oriented more towards mainstream comic book (matching my tastes), but tickets for that sold out because it was so small (and I’ve started to come out in a rash whenever I read or hear Millar hyping himself and his products) – the MCM Expo is huge, held in the vast ExCel London exhibition centre in the Docklands, so there was no worry about turning up on the day without a ticket.

In retrospect, turning up on the day to buy a ticket wasn’t the greatest idea I had in the world. You couldn’t buy General Entry (11am) tickets in advance, only the Early Entry (9am) tickets, which were £5 more expensive, but it might have been worth it: I spent 90 minutes shuffling along in the queue to buy a ticket (I tweeted a lot during this time to help, which kept my Expo timeline). The photo below isn’t great quality because it’s from my camera phone, but I'm in one corner of the huge hall and the place where you buy tickets is in the opposite corner, with all the people in between standing in rows walking up and down very slowly.

I wouldn’t recommend the authentic convention experience of extensive queues, unless you are in a large group of cosplayers – there were lots of people in cosplay, mostly related to anime/manga or computer games I couldn't identify (there were some Stormtroopers, Harry Potter cosplay, steampunk and even a few superheroes; my favourite team-up was Rorschach and Deadpool), and they were mostly young people with an even split of girls and boys. I’d say that about half the people at the Expo were in cosplay, and the costumes were very impressive in most cases, but the only weird thing was the Free Hugs phenomenon: people in cosplay holding a sign saying ‘Free Hugs’ and all these strangers happily hugging each other. I’d never seen it before, but apparently it has been quite popular with da kidz for a few years now.

The other strange aspect was feeling old – a lot of the attendees were a lot younger than I am, and I was glad to see people of my age (some had brought their kids, even if they were in pushchairs) or even older (I saw a couple who were definitely OAPs) to make me feel less like an antiquated anomaly. It didn’t help that I was going solo (I’m glad I didn’t drag my long-suffering girlfriend along because the 90-minute queue would have tested her love for me), and I was worried that the youths were looking at me with suspicion.

Eventually, I got my ticket, which was a paper wristband that was initially stuck to my arm and they had to pull out a few hairs before it was put on correctly, and I was allowed entry into the Expo. Despite lots of people hanging around outside, the hall was packed (as the blurry photo above demonstrates) and wandering around was an effort in some narrow alleys. I had missed the Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class panels in the main stage (serves me right, I suppose), but I thought I might watch the Futurama panel, which had four of the voice cast from the show. However, the man who was hosting the panel was so incredibly annoying that I couldn’t stick it out (his ‘hilarious’ joke was to pretend to get someone in the front row thrown out) and I left before the cast arrived.

Fortunately, this worked out for the best because I accidentally arrived at the SFX panel on science fiction journalism. I don’t want to be a sci-fi journalist, but I was interested in hearing them talk about the experience. It was interesting and well hosted (I think by Dave Bradley, Editor-In-Chief of SFX), who kept it flowing and getting everyone on the panel involved. When it was opened up for questions, the first one was from Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston, who asked about the problems that the magazine has had with JM Straczynski (obviously, Johnston collects gossip from everywhere, not just comic books). I left when somebody asked the question, ‘What advice do you have for someone wanting to get into sci-fi journalism?’, demonstrating how much he hadn't been paying attention.

It was another bit of good timing because it meant I could line up for an autograph from Warren Ellis. He had started at 2pm, so there were only a dozen people ahead of me when I arrived around 2.30pm and I didn’t have to wait long to get his signature. Unlike others in line, I hadn’t brought a specific comic book (or books) for Ellis to personalise; instead, I got him to autograph my writing notebook so that I could be inspired whenever I look at it. I’m a big fan of his work (see the Warren Ellis label on this blog), so it was a pleasure to meet the internet Jesus in person. I didn’t fawn or gush – I told him my name for the autograph, I thanked him for being a writer (he replied, ‘Well, it was that or get a proper job’), thanked him for the autograph and left him to carry on signing. It was a relief to meet a writer whose work I enjoy without coming across as an idiot (as I did when I met Chris Claremont nearly 20 years ago at a UKCAC), so it was the highlight of the Expo for me.

Warren Ellis signed for only 40 minutes, according to this tweet, which highlighted a significant aspect of the MCM Expo – it’s not really a convention about comic books. Yes, there is a comics village that is always increasing in size, and there were even some artists I recognised (Gary Erskine, John McCrea, Paul Duffield and, according to Rich Johnston, Frank Quitely was there doing sketches even though he wasn’t announced), but the main focus seems to be the manga/anime/gaming. If there was a Warren Ellis signing at a comics-focussed convention, it would not have been finished in 40 minutes. The sheer number of cosplayers (I haven’t seen any numbers online, but the number on my wristband was 13876, so I’d guess that about 20,000 people were at the ExCel, including the people who stayed outside at the MCM Fringe, and I’d guess half the people were in cosplay) dictated the focus of the hall: tables and tables of Japanese-related merchandise. Manga, anime DVDs, cuddly toys, statues, bags, hats, sweets, trinkets, cosplay swords (both wooden and real); even the Comics Village was half manga. There were other aspects to the Expo: there was the Games Village, where people could play the latest games (a lot of them looked like they were from Japan), and there were tables set up for Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, the British Origami Society, a wrestling ring where wrestlers wrestled and people watched (no, really), and places for people to be artistic, but the Expo seemed to attract and cater to the cosplayers more than the other geek elements.

To sum up: standing in a queue for an hour and a half is not fun, a lot of people like to dress up and get their photographs taken, Warren Ellis is a nice bloke, geek culture has taken over the world, and I need to attend a comic book convention so that I don’t feel out of place.

Notes On A Film: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

2011-05-16T21:57:00.000+01:00

I saw The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (or, to use its French title, Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec) on Free Comic Book Day because I thought it was appropriate to see a film based on a comic book. The fact that I had never read the original graphic albums by Jacques Tardi – or, to be honest, even heard of them – didn’t come into it, especially when the film was written and directed by Luc Besson.

Besson may have spent the past decade writing/producing slightly racist Euro thrillers starring a famous face, but he is the man who gave us Leon; this means I can forgive him practically anything. This is not only his first live-action film in a while but also supposedly the last film he will direct (if he sticks to his 10-film rule), so I had to see this film in the cinema.

The film is adapted from two of the graphic albums (Adèle and the Beast and Mummies on Parade): in Paris in 1911, a pterodactyl has been brought to life from an egg hatched in the Museum of Natural History, and is causing havoc; intrepid reporter Adèle (Louise Bourgoin) is in Egypt to retrieve the mummy of a Pharaoh’s doctor to help her sister. The two are connected. It’s a fun romp, mixing a female Indiana Jones with more overtly over-the-top fantastical elements. Besson brings it all to life with energy and style – Paris of 1911 is lavishly recreated, the story is silly in a fun way, all the male characters look exactly like characters from the books come to life (they are all caricatures, with large faces and big noses), and Bourgoin is charming as the central character: resourceful, plucky, unable to take ‘no’ for an answer.

It’s not perfect: the CGI is occasionally a little ropey (particularly when Adèle rides the pterodactyl); the film is overly long at nearly two hours; and the French sense of humour loses something in translation, especially when it comes to the police inspector given the task of capturing the pterodactyl. Also, the epilogue that blatantly shouts ‘sequel’ seems a little silly and optimistic. However, the film is enjoyable and it feels like the graphic albums come to life in a very cinematic fashion, and I’m glad that Besson has taken time out from writing the likes of The Transporter and Taxi films to bring his talents and production company on a fun adaptation of a comic book.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Notes On A Film: Thor

2011-05-11T21:37:00.000+01:00

I went to see Thor last week (before it came out in the US, which makes me smile), and I saw it in 2D (because it wasn’t filmed in 3D, so it looked better and I didn’t have to pay unnecessary money for the privilege), so this isn’t a review but a collection of thoughts on the film.

Topline: Thor is really enjoyable, and it’s a good Marvel film about a character I thought would have difficulty making the transition to the big screen. It’s fun, it’s action-packed, it’s big scale, yet it’s about character and small moments and good performances.

I was worried that the mixture of Norse mythology and superheroic action wouldn’t be able to work – in can be tough in the comics, let alone transferring to the specific requirements of a blockbuster action film – and I didn’t think that they could achieve the balance between the theatricality of gods and the demands of what we expect from a Marvel film (after Iron Man set the bar unexpectedly high). However, Kenneth Brannagh has done a great job of combining all the elements into a satisfying mix. I think the reason for this is that he is an actor’s director, and he got some really good performances from the cast.

Chris Hemsworth is a great Thor – his physique has been toned to suitably godlike proportions (reminding me of when Walt Simonson drew him in civvies early in his marvellous run on the character) – but he is also impressive as the character: he is noble and arrogant to start, but he shows a great touch for light comedy in the scenes on Earth, as well as the necessary gravitas when the character needs to show some emotional range. Tom Hiddlestone is great as Loki (Brannagh acted with him on Wallander, so he knew his abilities); as someone who knows that Loki is a deceiver, I was watching his performance for the signs, and he plays the character perfectly, not as a one-dimensional villain, but as something much more subtle, with lots of layers to everything he says or does. The others are good – Anthony Hopkins is a good Odin (there is a Shakespearean quality to the story of Odin, Thor and Loki, and Brannagh brings this out in the scenes between them), and Natalie Portman shows off a lightness of touch to her Jane Foster (now an astrophysicist, not a nurse) that I thought she had lost, especially if you had seen her in Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. The fun performance comes from Kat Dennings as an intern who gets all the best comedy lines, who is only matched by Hemmings for pricked pomposity and slapstick.

The script is really good (especially because it doesn’t use the pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue in the comics) – it handles the epic of Asgard (which looks fantastic and suitably grand), the darkness of the realm of the Frost Giants, the action scenes (such as Thor taking on the Frost Giants with only Sif, Fandrall, Hogun, Volstagg and Loki, or the fantastic face-off between Thor and the Destroyer – seeing Thor whirling his hammer and flying and bringing the lightning was fantastic), and the integration with the Marvel film universe. Apart from the presence of Agent Coulson of SHIELD, there is an elliptical reference to Bruce Banner, a cameo for Hawkeye, the obligatory post-credits scene setting up the next film, the required Stan Lee appearance (JM Straczynski and Walt Simonson also appear); there was even a nice in-joke about Donald Blake. It was a good balance that didn’t interfere with the story, which is classic origin material, but the origin story is always a good narrative (which is why it is something that is revisited so often in the comics) and this one works a treat.

Those were my thoughts, but I had to tell you my girlfriend’s (semi-joking) thought: Thor is a chick flick. She has a point, and there is symbolism to back it up. In essence, Thor the film can be seen as the impotence of a man who is unable to use his very phallic ‘weapon’ until he admits that he has emotions for someone else other than himself. The fact that Mjolnir is a blatant Freudian symbol that is the source of Thor’s power, and that he has to overcome his ‘Thorishness’ (i.e. his male arrogance and inability to think of others apart from himself) in order to use Mjolnir again, seems to have been deliberately employed to highlight this. However, I can assure you that Thor is not a chick flick; it is a very entertaining superhero film, and I’d happily see it again in the cinema.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Thoughts On Some Free Comic Book Day Comics

2011-05-10T17:33:00.000+01:00

It seems a little churlish to review the comic books published for Free Comic Book Day, but that’s not going to stop me talking about them: they are now out in the world, which is the fate of all creative works. I only got eight of the 27 comics created for Free Comic Book Day (the full list is available here); even though I arrived relatively late to pick up the books, I don’t think that the UK shops got all the books involved (I can’t see the day when anyone in the UK would pick up an Archie comic), but I didn’t see the Airbender/Star Wars book, the Darkwing Duck book or The Smurfs book, for example. The only book that I would have liked to see was the Kung Fu Panda book, but I don’t begrudge that if a child picked up the last copy.

2000 AD
I used to buy 2000 AD religiously in my teens but lost the habit when I discovered the American superhero market, so this was a nostalgia trip. A free introduction to 2000 AD makes the most sense for the UK comic book market, and there seemed to be a lot of copies of it in both Gosh! and Forbidden Planet. Beneath a suitably moody cover of Judge Dredd by Jock, there is a selection of different stories from the comic. The first story is what looks like a reprint ‘editorial’ strip from the early days as a comic book reader who doesn’t like 2000 AD is given a tour by Tharg and exposed to the mighty thrill power of 2000 AD. It seems an odd choice, if nostalgic, to entice new readers to the book. Next is a 6-page Judge Dredd story written by co-creator John Wagner which is a textbook Dredd short story; a done-in-one tale that takes inspiration from an aspect of reality ('the Bureau of Creative Bureaucracy'). The next story is a teaser for the upcoming Slaine (by Pat Mills and Angela Kincaid); the painted art looks great. Following this is the first section to something new called Kingdom by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson, which is at least something new (even if the lead character has the pun-tastic name of Gene the Hackman), as is the final story of Shakara, by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint, which uses a nice bit of misdirection. Apart from the higher quality printing, things seem to be the same at 2000 AD, and I mean that as a good thing: futuristic tales told well and with a British sensibility have always been the raison d’être of 2000 AD, and it’s good that they are still doing exactly the same.

The Amazing Spider-Man
This is a really good example of what a Free Comic Book Day comic should be: an introduction to the character, a complete story but also a teaser for what’s in store in the immediate future. Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos tell a fun little story of Spider-man fighting a pheromone-controlled Spider-woman, before getting fighting lessons from Shang-chi. It’s exciting, funny (the first words from Spider-man on the inside: ‘Howdy, cheapskates!’), cool and a perfect example of what a good Spider-man story is. I’m not so sure about the psychic Madame Hydra thing, but the rest of it is great (‘I’m an Avenger!’). There is also a preview of Fear Itself, to give another indication of things at Marvel. A good job all round.

Atomic Robo
I was glad to get my hands on Atomic Robo, a book which the blogosphere reliably informs me is good and does good Free Comic Book Day comics. And the blogosphere is correct: Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener craft a sharp little tale about a robot who is a scientist and a talking dinosaur that attacks the regional 4th grade finals of the National Science Fair. It’s very funny, with jokes about gun control and Doctor Who, and there’s exciting action as well. This made me want to see more Atomic Robo comics. There are also previews of two other comics, Moon Girl and Foster Broussard, but Atomic Robo is the winner here.

Baltimore/Criminal Macabre
A flip book from Dark Horse: Baltimore is by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Ben Stenbeck, while Criminal Macabre is by Steve Niles and Christopher Mitten. To quote the advert for the collection, ‘Europe has been flooded with vampires and Lord Henry Baltimore is on the hunt for the creature responsible for the chaos!’, and this is a short story about him in a small town in Germany in 1916, where he does indeed kill some vampires (and giant spiders). It’s a good comic, and gives a good introduction to the character. The Criminal Macabre story is about the central character, Cal McDonald – an occult detective in a Los Angeles overflowing with zombies, vampires and werewolves – meeting Frankenstein’s Monster, who is being chased by descendants of Frankenstein. It’s hard-boiled, funny, smart, and it made me want to read more (there is a 392-page omnibus for $25 coming out later this year that I would be interested at looking at). A good effort from Dark Horse.

Captain America/Thor
This ‘great for all ages’ story of Thor and Captain America by Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee seems to be a cruel twist, when their Thor The Mighty Avenger was cancelled recently. However, this is a fun story that sees a Merlin captured by Loki bring Thor and Captain America back to King Arthur’s time – wonderful comic book silliness – and it leaves you with a smile on your face: when Thor arrives and asks Loki what’s going on, Loki responds ‘Don’t blow this for me, bro’. There is also a preview for The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes graphic novel, drawn in a style similar to the cartoon, but I don’t get why anyone would want to buy a comic book of a cartoon, so it seems an odd choice. However, this is a good book for the all ages market, even if I don’t think it really exists any more.

Elric
Beneath a beautiful cover from Erik Jones, this is a preview of the new adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s Elric, as written by Chris Roberson and drawn by Francesco Biagini. There is also a potted history of Elric in comic books (I have been trying to find the Walt Simonson Elric book from DC for a long time) and some concept sketches. The story is an excellent introduction to the character and the concept of Elric and the Multiverse, although I have to confess to not enjoying the art style as much.

Green Lantern
DC’s free comic book is a reprint of Green Lantern: Secret Origin issue #2 by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis. This is a cheat when compared with the original material from the other publishers, but it makes perfect sense for a company that has a big film coming out soon: this is a refined version of the comic book origin of Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern, tying it other concepts that are playing big within the DC universe at the moment, and providing a taste for the movie as well. It is well written and well drawn, and I want to read the whole story because of the nice touches in the story, such as the ‘concealing identity’ line from the ring when Jordan comes in contact with the public, hence the mask. DC does include some original material at the back: there is a preview of Flashpoint by Johns and Andy Kubert, which seems like a basic alternate timeline story, but it is the next big DC crossover, so it has to be in this book to get fabled new readers to pick it up. One of the lesser books in the pile.

Super Dinosaur
Is it because Robert Kirkman is Chief Operating Officer at Image that his book gets the Free Comic Book Day treatment? Whatever the reason, an ‘origin special’ for Super Dinosaur is a fun all-ages story and a good choice. Kirkman and Jason Howard tell a simple origin story and provide an example of what the book is about: a boy and his best friend, who happens to be a talking Tyrannosaurus Rex (altered to be smaller and smarter) with robotic attachments to make him even more awesome. Action-packed and fun, this is a perfect gateway drug for the series, although the story part could have been longer – I don’t know if the fact file pages that fill out the second half of the book were really necessary.

Experiencing Free Comic Book Day 2011

2011-05-09T15:43:00.000+01:00

Although Free Comic Book Day has been going since 2002, this was my first time actually venturing into comic book shops on the day itself. It hasn’t been a big deal here in the UK (I believe that the shipping charges, even for free comics, make it an expensive promotion for shops in the UK), and it was only this year that I got the sense that it was being approached in a manner similar to that in the US. In fact, the advertising in advance must have worked because it was bizarrely mentioned in Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert newsletter as a ‘hot item’ (as I tweeted at the time).

I made my way into central London on Saturday morning, but didn’t arrive until after 11 am, by which time the vultures had already descended. I went to Gosh! first (because it is the shop I buy my comics from) – they had the free comic books on the display table in the middle of the shop. It was the first time they had done something about Free Comic Book Day, seemingly because everyone else was doing something about it, and there had been four people waiting outside before the shop opened. There was also a signing later in the day, so an effort had been made and this had been rewarded by more people in the small premises (or ‘cosy’ in estate agent terms). I purchased the books I had waiting for me on my pull list and took a copy of the free books that were left – Amazing Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Super Dinosaur, 2000 AD, Elric and Captain America/Thor.

My next stop was Forbidden Planet, the largest shop in central London. There were a lot more people both inside and outside the shop – I saw a young girl outside with her father, a Forbidden Planet bag full of swag in one hand, in the other a map which she was using to point out to her father the location of the next shop to visit; there were families of parents with their small children looking happy with their haul of free comic books. It warmed the cockles of my heart. Inside, the shop was very busy, with lots of people at the table near the tills which had the free comic books on it – I was able to pick up a copy of Atomic Robo there – and downstairs at the comic book shelves, especially the shelves with deals on trade paperbacks (I bought The Question: The Five Books Of Blood for less than half price). There was extra promotional activity in the form of people dressed up wondering around the shop: a man as Batman, a woman with a red skirt outfit with the Flash logo on it, and a Superman who was handing out a bag of free stuff at the entrance (I got the Dark Horse free comic book and a free Marvel screen wipe from him), so I’m guessing that they worked at the store. Quite an impressive display from Forbidden Planet.

My final destination was Orbital Comics, which trumped Forbidden Planet’s costumed assistants with some excellent cosplayers (see the photos at Bleeding Cool – unlike Rich, I don’t nick people’s photos for my blog with acknowledgement: specifically, see his post about the closing of They Walk Among Us, where he stole my photo from my blog post about the same shop the year before). There was a Batman who looked good in his costume, but the women as Poison Ivy and the Black Cat were fantastic, and there were quite a few chaps lining up to take their photo. Orbital didn’t have any free comics to give away – you had to buy something to get a few comics from them – but that could be due to their proximity to Leicester Square tube station. However, there were lots of people in the shop looking for comics, so it must have been doing very well, and I took the chance to look at the display of original art at the back, which had some phenomenal art from Paul Duffield, the artist on FreakAngels. It demonstrated his design talent – there were some amazing pages that played with the panel layout and the visual conveyance of the story, presumably to show that he was no longer confined by the four-panel grid he has to do for FreakAngels under orders of Warren Ellis.

I don’t know if the rest of the London shops went to the same extremes as these three shops, but I have to say I was impressed by their efforts and by the presence of so many people in comic book shops. It obviously seemed to achieve the goal of getting casual punters and, importantly, young children into comic book shops, and I hope that it continues in the future. As for me, I continued my comic book-themed day by watching The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec – the French don’t need a special day to sell their comic books (even if I have never actually read Jacques Tardi’s original graphic albums).

Not The Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T22:12:00.003+01:00

People want to feel attached to a ‘historic’ moment in their lifetime. I wanted nothing to do with it, and this is my reminder of that day.

Friday morning was wonderfully quiet in the suburbs of London. Instead of being one of the idiots who had camped out the night before to wave a silly flag as two people they don’t know and will never meet went past in an extremely expensive mode of transport, my girlfriend and I did our weekly shop. There were far fewer people than normal; it was nice. It was quiet walking up to the shops. Not Christmas quiet – there were still cars on the road – but fewer people on the back roads and fewer people in the shops (although there were younger folk who had popped in for snacks and booze for relaxing on a day off). After the grocery shop, we headed out for some other shopping in another part of town. Again, there were fewer people on the main roads and fewer cars on the streets (crossing the roads was a much easier and less dangerous experience than normal); it seemed that everyone was either at the event or watching it on television. Reports now state that about one million people were in the vicinity of the event, and nearly 25 million people watched it on television. That depresses me a little.

The shops were relatively empty, although not to the extent that we thought we had slipped into Shaun of the Dead (or equivalent) where we thought we were the only people alive in London. However, after 1pm, when the event had finished, people started to emerge from their living rooms, and London started to return to normal levels of busy-ness for a day when most people aren’t working. It was slightly annoying – we felt proprietorial towards the empty London these idiot people were now invading.

It has been very hard to avoid the royal wedding. The build-up has been annoying – the main channels all had various programmes about the wedding, from documentaries about the family history of the bride (why?) to general overviews of the relationship to the supposedly awful American TV movie (on Channel Five, naturally). The news was no better, filling the allotted time with build-up nonsense and talking about how the media was getting prepared for the big event. It was hard to find any actual news. It was compounded by living in London and having to suffer it twice with the London news full of items about the crowds and the preparation and the people. It was depressing. It was as if nothing else was happening in the world. I can’t imagine what it was like in the US: I only saw the items that Charlie Brooker found for 10 O’Clock Live that made me glad that I didn’t have to suffer that (I can imagine the indignation of various sites about the blanket television coverage of the wedding on American channels – why is there so much coverage of something that is not happening in America and doesn’t involve Americans? I lived and worked in America, and I know that American news doesn’t do world news). The ridiculous royal worship that happens in the US is nauseating and embarrassing, and the spectre of Diana looming over all of this (the last time a stupid wedding had been so fawned over) made it even more absurd.

Even though the event is over, it still dominates the news. As I write this on Saturday, the BBC website’s main items at the top of the page are all about the wedding – it was yesterday; therefore, I should like to point out that it is no longer news, BBC – and I still have to be ready to change channels to avoid wedding-related nonsense on the television. I’m sure that this event was introduced as the ‘wedding that everyone is watching’ (in much the same way that apparently ‘everybody’ mourned the death of Diana – I would like to put it on record that, as someone living in the UK at the time and being a British citizen, I did not mourn the death of Diana; in fact, I didn’t care in the slightest), and I would love to point out that I know of two people who did not watch the wedding (my lovely girlfriend and me), so they are lying when they say ‘everybody’ watched the wedding. Thank God for The Guardian website, who yesterday had two versions of their website: one for royalists, with blanket coverage of the wedding; and one for republicans, with not the slightest mention of the event. Thank goodness there are some people like us still out there.

I Need A Clone To Do My Blogging For Me

2011-03-31T22:12:00.000+01:00

I was going to blog something.

And then the post man delivered our copy of Lego Star Wars 3 The Clone Wars.

There should be a modern saying about good intentions and video games for children.

Ah well. Time to get back to throwing lightsabres and blowing stuff up.

(PS: I love the muzak when characters are in the lift when moving between levels in the central hub)

There will be normal blogging again. Eventually.

Book: Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg

2011-03-29T22:31:00.000+01:00

Simon Pegg is one third of the creative team (along with Jessica Hynes nee Stevenson and Edgar Wright) of Spaced, my favourite sitcom. He's the same age as me, we attended the same university at the same time (I was a scientist, however, and so our paths would never have crossed), and he's a self-confessed geek – a big fan of Star Wars and comics and films. All this makes me happy for his success, but even I was surprised that he was writing an autobiography.

Pegg has always come across as quite guarded about his personal life in interviews, something that makes a lot of sense as a celebrity who has to promote his projects. He even makes a point of it in the book, before going on to talk about various important parts of his youth. He talks quite openly about growing up in Gloucester, about his parents splitting up when he was young (he channelled the feelings about his relationship with his stepfather into Shaun Of The Dead; he also does a deft analysis of the other relationships in the rest of the film), about first encounters with girls. He doesn't go into excessive details (his relationship with the girl he calls Eggy Helen is talked about, but I guess that using it as the basis for Sarah in Spaced, which was taken from his stand-up material that channelled the break-up of the relationship, was probably enough), but he's honest about his other famous friendships, such as with Nick Frost and even Chris Martin from Coldplay.

He uses the book to talk about his love of geeky things, with Star Wars being the most famous example. He gives us an overview of his thesis called 'Base and Supersucker: A Marxist Overview of Consent in Star Wars and Related Works' and his film studies-influenced views on the cultural impact behind Star Wars and its effect on America. Rather highbrow but very interesting and he keeps it light and readable. He also includes his thoughts on the Star Wars prequels, although Spaced fans know how he feels about them already. There are other things: watching Star Trek on BBC2 as a child (he was Scotty in the update), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (he's working on Tintin with Steven Spielberg), The Young Ones (he would later appear with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson in Guest House Paradiso), and the various zombie films that led to Shaun Of The Dead, and An American Werewolf In London (he was in Burke And Hare directed by John Landis). Basically, it amounts to 'these are things I loved growing up and I got to work with all the people involved' but you don't hold it against him.

The important aspect that I learned was the amount of amateur dramatics was involved in his formative years. His mother was very involved in the local dramatic society and brought Simon along to everything, which led to him acting at an early stage and is present throughout his youth. Unlike a lot of his contemporaries, who seem to have got into comedy acting via other routes (stand-up as a means of expression), Pegg has always been into acting, which led to his studying drama at university. The photographs included in the book show him as an expressive child who wasn't afraid of his acting side – I never realised that about him. The other, perhaps related, reveal is the intensity of the passions he felt – he seems to fall in love with the object of desire in very dramatic fashion, as if he felt everything with an exquisite amount of emotion. I don't know how he survived growing up if he was that expressive in life.

Pegg makes a strange inclusion in the book: in between chapters, he writes the adventures of Simon Pegg the superhero and his faithful robot Canterbury. It's a tongue-in-cheek affair about trying to write his autobiography, and it's a bit silly and indulgent (although, as he says, where else to be self-indulgent but an autobiography?), but it works better in comic book form (I believe there's an app you can buy), so I guess I'll let him off.

This is an enjoyable book: Pegg is a good writer and he has some interesting ideas, such as his theory about 'quantum attraction', and it's clearly about how lucky he feels to have got where he has (there are lots of photos of him with the famous people he's met). There is some weird stuff, such as an entire large chapter on his love of The Shepherds pub (I don't drink so don't understand the attraction of pubs), and he seems to rush through the various television shows he worked on in the build-up to Spaced, but he seems more interested in the formative years than the years in which the rest of the world got to know him. It's his autobiography; he can do what he wants.

How To Make Me Buy A New Comic Book Series: Get The Perfect Writer

2011-03-27T22:26:00.000+01:00

Not having a lot of money at the moment to buy new monthly series, I have to be overwhelmed by the prospect of a new book to make me add it to my list. The vast majority of books from the Big Two have to go well out of their way to persuade me to try something (especially because they tend to end up as trade paperbacks). Apart from having my favourite creators working on a title, the best way to guarantee that I can overcome my huge reticence to buy a new series is to have the perfect writer working on the appropriate character.

Case in point: the news that Greg Rucka will be writing the new series of The Punisher in the Marvel universe. Goddamn you, Marvel!

Greg Rucka is a fantastic writer: his novels (both the Atticus Kodiak series and the Queen & Country accompanying novels) are great, and his creator-owned comic books are really good (the aforementioned Queen & Country and Stumptown). His work-for-hire has been best when working for DC: two runs on Detective Comics with Batman and recently Batwoman, Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood, a great run on Wonder Woman (treating it as a superhero version of The West Wing), the excellent Checkmate and the brilliant Gotham Central (with Ed Brubaker); his superhero and Marvel work hasn't been has strong (by his own admission, superheroes are not his strong point), but that can all change with his decision to take on the Punisher.

A street-level character is the perfect choice for Rucka to write: he gets that world and his writing has the perfect sensibility for a man with no powers fighting an unceasing war against criminals, but without the gadgetry or years of detective and martial arts training. If he can find the balance needed to make Frank Castle work in the Marvel universe, especially after Garth Ennis' run on the character in the MAX universe (and by all accounts, Jason Aaron has been proving that the character works best outside of the world of superheroes), then I have no choice but to buy the new Punisher series, especially because the art looks good as well.

Marvel has been announcing a lot of similarly hard-to-resist creative teams: Mark Waid will be writing the new Daredevil series with art from the excellent Marcos Martin; Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev will be the creative team behind the new Moon Knight series (although they have something to prove after cutting out on Spider-Woman after only seven issues). Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen will be on Fear Itself, the next company-wide crossover. It makes sense: get the best people on new titles and the readers won't be able to resist; also, the readers win out because Marvel ensure that the books will be really good.

Now, if only I had enough money to buy all those comics ...

Book From A Library: Peter & Max (A Fables Novel)

2011-03-24T15:00:00.001Z

Written by Bill Willingham, with illustrations by Steve Leialoha

Fables has been a great comic book since the first issue, so I was looking forward to Willingham's prose story set in the Fables universe. It concerns characters we haven't seen in the comic book: Bo Peep and Peter Piper, and Peter's older brother Max. Willingham sets out the universe of Fables in the first chapter for those readers who haven't read the comics, but it also provides little extra nuances for those of us who have been there since the beginning. The story concerns the arrival of Max into this world, something that sets Peter on an adventure within this world, while the 'origin' story of Peter, Max and Bo is told in flashback in between the current sections.

The story is a wonderful mix of adventure and fairy tale, told with that same balance Willingham has found in the comic book. He has a lovely prose style, which echoes the same feeling as a good fairy tale, so you don't think about that fact that it's not in comic book form. The black and white illustrations from Leialoha make up for the lack of normal visuals, and they are utterly charming and perfectly suited in style to the novel (he does ink regular penciller Mark Buckingham, so he has been part of the Fables team for a long time), and they add a lovely touch to the book. He also draws a small comic book story written by Willingham included at the end of the book, in case you were missing the usual Fables experience.

I was utterly gripped by the tale, which mixes the story of Hamelin and the pied piper with extra 'facts' about what happened to Peter when he was in Hamelin, and what happened to Bo after she lost her sheep because of the armies of the Adversary. It's a real page-turner, but it also has the lyrical quality and atmosphere of a fairy tale, especially the ending, and it makes for a great addition to the Fables mythology.

The only minor qualm I had about this nicely packaged hardback book was the number of typesetting areas. Double spaces, extra space at the start of the line, extra indents at the start of paragraphs, missing quotation marks in dialogue – it's not a big deal, but it occasionally distracted me while reading. It seems a shame that a book that has had such care and attention to its design should be slightly spoiled by this.

But I'm being picky: this is a wonderful story, and I hope that Willingham writes more Fables novels, as long as he keeps providing us with excellent Fables comics as well.

Some Thoughts On Comic Book Casting

2011-03-22T22:10:00.000Z

I know that my choice of blog reading skews the perspective, but it seems that a lot of sites talk about comic book casting as big news. When Elizabeth Hurley was cast as the villain in the new Wonder Woman television pilot, it was all over the place (the fact that I think that this a bad thing, and that Hurley is neither a good actress or the right person for the role, is beside the point). This was nothing, of course, compared with the first photograph of the new Wonder Woman in the new costume (it reminded me more of one of those costumes you can hire or buy from online shops for your girlfriend to dress up to satiate a specific sexual fantasy).

It has even come to the stage that it's news when someone wants to be cast in a comic book project: Katie Sackhoff wants to play Detective Deena Pilgrim in the television pilot for Powers, based on the comic book by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Avon Oeming. This would be perfect casting – Sackhoff looks the same as Pilgrim in the comic and has the sass, attitude and vulnerability to play the role – but it goes to show how things have changed.

I remember when the casting of a movie or television series for a comic book adaptation was a fun diversion for comic book fans – you never expected it to happen, so why not indulge in some ideal fantasy cast? However, that was the old days; now it's a genuine prospect. And famous people want to be in comic book films. There was the recent free-for-all with the casting of Catwoman in the new Christopher Nolan Batman film: practically every famous actress who was available and suitable was thrown into the mix.

If you take the start of the modern film adaptations of comic books as Superman in 1978, you can see that the only way to attract stars was money: Marlon Brando for Superman, Faye Dunaway for Supergirl (how much did they pay for Peter O'Toole?), Jack Nicholson got a particularly sweet payout for Batman (a large salary and a percentage of the profits, netting him about $50 million by most accounts). After the success of Batman, everyone else hoped they could get some of that comic book money, but Sylvester Stallone still needed $15 million to star in Judge Dredd (he should have been made to return some of that money), and the quality of films in the 1990s suffered.

However, since The X-Men in 2000, the quality of the films has been improving and the quality of the actors attracted to roles has increased. The parlour game of comic book casting has to led to realities, some good, some awful, and some that didn't sound right initially but turned out to be perfect.

In the positive column, we got Chris Evans as the Human Torch, but in the negative column we got Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman. We got the perfect casting of Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, and the now-can't-imagine-them-as-anyone-else casting of Ian McKellen as Magneto and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Who knew Robert Downey Jr would be the perfect Iron Man? Who knew Heath Ledger would be so amazing as the Joker?

Some casting seems to ideally match the source material: Bruce Willis looks like his character from the comic of Red; Alfred Molina could have been a model for Doctor Octopus; Jackie Earl Haley could have been a model for Rorschach; JK Simmons is exactly like J Jonah Jameson; Sam Elliot (and his moustache) made for the perfect General 'Thunderbolt' Ross; Kelsey Grammer (and his voice) was perfect under the make up for Henry 'Beast' McCoy. Some times there is cheating: the Ultimates version of Nick Fury was drawn to look like Samuel L Jackson before Iron Man was greenlit for production, although this didn't work when Mark Millar asked JG Jones to draw the lead character to look like Eminem or The Fox to look like Halle Berry.

Which brings up the bad casting: Halle Berry in Catwoman, Keanu Reeves as John Constantine (who was formerly blond and British), Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze, Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut – the list could go on and on, but I won't. You have to take the rough with the smooth, in a world where comic book movies are a staple part of the blockbuster season. We can take comfort in the fact that actors like Paul Newman, Tom Hanks, Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Christian Bale, Gary Oldman and Tilda Swinton have been in films adapted from comic books. Anthony Hopkins is in Thor, for goodness sake. So, unfortunately, we get Elizabeth Hurley in Wonder Woman, but if Katie Sackhoff wants to be Deena Pilgrim, then it might balance out.

In Response To Mark Kermode's Thoughts On Film Piracy

2011-03-17T21:56:00.000Z

Mark Kermode recently captured his thoughts on film piracy in his Uncut blog, which boiled down to his view that piracy will stopped by simultaneous distribution (releasing a film in cinemas, streaming online and on DVD on the same date). I think that Kermode is coming from a naïve and cinema-obsessed point of view that won't tackle piracy.

Movie piracy is a very complicated issue and Kermode doesn't take this into consideration in his solution. A generation of people are used to the free illegal downloading of films, which is a price barrier that can't be beaten by the fee for streaming online on the day of release. There are various reasons for downloading for free – some might think they are sticking it to The Man, who is making too much money already, or because everyone else is doing it – but the cost is an important factor. A family wishing to see a film in the local multiplex will need to spend nearly £100 (including food and travel, etc.); why do that when they could download the film for free, or buy a pirate DVD for a couple of quid from the car boot sale?

Not everyone who downloads for free is taking money from the film industry, no matter what the scary estimates might suggest, but the majority don't care that the act of downloading is not affecting the studios and corporations but the people who help to make the films: the writers, the technical people, the artists. They should care – if creative people can't make any money in the industry, then there will be no more creative films and then nobody will want to download them anyway. Should Hollywood be partially blamed for creating a culture of demand for its product through blanket marketing? Or is the blame for the pricing of its product for the average consumer, who will be confused when they hear the reports of films making hundreds of millions of dollars around the world? The films that are illegally downloaded the most are the Hollywood blockbusters – don't they see the correlation?

Kermode doesn't think about how cinemas will survive his model – the price of going to the cinema will increase towards the price of seeing a play in a theatre in the West End, but without the unique experience of seeing a live performance that can't be repeated. The price of legal downloads or streaming would be set at a high price to make up for the loss of revenue – DVDs used to account for about half of the income of a film but that is no longer the case – which will only make 'free', albeit illegal, sound even more appealing.

Do I have a solution? No, of course not. Do I think there is something in the multiple-platform release strategy? Yes, but not for all films and not right now, because it is going to change how films are produced, financed and made. The only thing I hope for is that the movie industry won't destroy the internet in its misguided attempts to maintain an out-of-date business model.

Notes On A Film: The Adjustment Bureau

2011-03-15T22:11:00.000Z

How to describe The Adjustment Bureau: a romantic science-fiction thriller? Whatever it is, George Nolfi has created something unusual, entertaining, intriguing and fun. Nolfi, who makes his directorial debut (after writing The Bourne Ultimatum, The Sentinel, Ocean's Twelve) with this loose adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story, which he also wrote and produced.

Matt Damon is David Norris, a charismatic politician running for the Senate; on election night, after a story from his past ruined his chances, he fleetingly meets Elise (Emily Blunt) by chance in the men's bathroom, which causes him to make a completely different speech that allows his political life to be salvaged. Some time later, he meets Elise by chance again on a bus, and the spark is reignited. However, when he gets to his office, he finds strange men who have frozen his new colleagues in time and who are adjusting their memories. These men are from the Adjustment Bureau, who work for 'The Chairmen' to keep 'The Plan' on track, and they are ensuring that Norris keeps to The Plan by never seeing Elise again. But Norris doesn't want to be told what to do, especially when it comes to Elise …

There are lots of good things about this film. The first things are the two leads: Damon and Blunt are a great romantic couple: you believe in them as two people who have connected and should be together beyond the normal Hollywood suspension of disbelief. Apart from Blunt's inconsistent accent – I think it starts out as American but ends up reverting to her native British accent – you feel for them and the problem they face as their relationship is being prevented. The second thing is the concept: it is never stated that the men in suits and hats are angels (they prefer to call themselves 'case workers'), or that the Chairman is God, so it's left to the viewers to choose their own interpretation. There are lots of nice touches, such as the case workers' notebooks with moving visuals and their ability to move from place to place through doors (a touch that reminded me of both Monsters, Inc. and the Matrix sequel, but was different from both), but only as long as they wear their hats. The important ingredient is the tone which Nolfi maintains throughout so that you can believe in romance and the sci-fi concept at the same time. It's a difficult job to maintain the correct atmosphere for a film, so it's impressive that a first timer got it right.

It's not a perfect film – there are a few plot holes – but you don't mind because you are enjoying the ride and want to see the characters win through. The marketing of the film has confused things – the poster resonates with the story of the couple being chased by the 'angels' but Blunt doesn't wear that red dress in the film, and the main quote on the posters of 'Bourne meets Inception' is so wrong it's as if they either missed the point, or the PR people were playing a game where they picked film titles out of a hat to come up with the phrase. However, if you can ignore these red herrings, The Adjustment Bureau is an exciting and romantic film with a unique selling point, plus it will get you thinking about fate versus free will and the illusion of free will. Not bad for a Hollywood film.

P.S. Why does Jennifer Ehle appear in two scenes as a background character with two lines? I had to check it on IMDb because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. A BAFTA-award winning actress with a career in the theatre (and a couple of Tony awards) and was recently in The King's Speech does not appear as a minor supporting character in a film like this.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

My Personal Favourite Comics of 2010

2011-03-13T21:58:00.000Z

Disclaimer: I don't buy anywhere near enough comic books to be able to post a 'Best Comics of 2010' list. I don't buy anywhere near enough comic books in floppy format on a weekly basis, and I tend to buy a lot more trade paperbacks. This means I haven't read many of the books that end up on these sorts of list (although I would recommend Greg Burgas' list of his best comics of 2010 for a good and realistic selection), and there are some of those books that I will be reading in trade form some time in the future. For example, I'll definitely be buying Jason Aaron's PunisherMAX, Ed Brubaker's Secret Avengers, Rick Remender's Uncanny X-Force, Fred Van Lente's Taskmaster and Brian Michael Bendis' Scarlet, which means I can't talk about them yet. The other disclaimer is that these are my favourite books that I read in 2010, either in comic or trade form, which means that I include things I bought in that year even if it was published earlier. Finally, this is not in any order of preference; just the ten books that stood out over the course of the year.

American Vampire
I've only read the first collection of the creator-owned Vertigo book from Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque (with a back-up origin story from Stephen King) but it was very good. A novel take on the vampire mythos, an intriguing central character, a sense of history that allows for different time periods (the origin is set in cowboy times, and the first story is in the 1930s), and great art from Albuquerque.

Atlas
This is a special mention for the great comic books series from Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman that unfortunately ended this year. Always interesting, always well written and well drawn, Parker created some great stories from old characters (although he spent most of the year in crossover mini-series with more popular characters), and I'd hoped that the new series would be the one that would take them to the next level. However, Parker himself brought the series to an end himself, after realising that they weren't going to catch on with the comic-buying public, despite all the help that Marvel had provided. Much equally excellent The Incredible Hercules (which almost made this list but was slightly too fractured this year, and it at least still lives on with a new series for Hercules), it was a quality book that always had trouble finding an audience.

Chew
Even though I said I wasn't going to express a preference, I would have to say that this was my favourite book from 2010. John Layman and Rob Guillory have created something really special with their wonderfully oddball book about a cibopath (someone who can pick up psychic impressions from anything he eats) in a world where chicken is a banned substance. Funny, smart, unique, offbeat and with quirky art, it continued to charm beyond the unusualness of the central conceit. I enjoyed the two trades (the second and third collections) so much, I'm tempted to start buying the individual issues.

Fables
Despite the 100th issue costing as much as a trade paperback (it was a good comic but that's expensive), Fables was a consistently entertaining book. The Dark Man provided a much-needed focus for the characters to face, and Bill Willingham continues to have fun with fairy tales and the cast. Month in, month out, this was a book that was a pleasure to read and to keep reading, which is impressive for a title in its ninth year.

FreakAngels
I still haven't caught the bug of reading comics online – I read webcomics but the dimensions feel wrong and the ability to flick back and forth between pages in hard copy is a simple pleasure that I feel has been lost. I know that I might be a Luddite but I can't help the way I am. However, the entertainment value of Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's (mostly) weekly six pages of free online comics means that it earns a place on my list. Without the need for artificially created cliffhangers to keep the reader coming back, the story keeps up a constant flow of information, dialogue, action and interesting characters, helped by the consistent four-panel layout. Kudos to the creators and for doing it for free.

Grant Morrison's Batman comics
I didn't particularly take to the first books in Morrison's run on Batman, but he found his stride on the way, particularly with Batman and Robin. I know that these books found their way on to many end-of-year lists, but it did deserve it for finding something interesting and new to do with an old character, and Morrison had a lot of fun over the course of the year investigating Bruce Wayne in The Return Of Bruce Wayne and what Batman means in Batman and Robin, as well as the first issues of Batman Incorporated. An impressive achievement for such a big franchise character.

The Nightly News
This is a bit of a cheat because this book has been out for some years but I only finally bought and read the trade this year, but I had to include it because it was so good. Telling an interesting story in an interesting way (I hadn't seen that combination of design and information dispensing, with footnotes and text, done in that way anywhere else before), it was unlike anything I've seen and I can see why people were talking about it and why it got him writing for Marvel so quickly in his career. I had been reading Fantastic Four and Secret Warriors and SHIELD, which is what convinced me to buy the book, and it is even better than those admittedly very fine comics. I can't do The Nightly News justice because it requires something with more skill and understanding to explain its many excellent qualities, but I can highly recommend it (along with everyone else who has praised it).

Scalped
This year I have felt starved of Scalped because I read it in trade paperback, and this year saw the release of only one (book six, Gnawing) because the seventh collection, Rez Blues, collects so many issues and is coming out soon. Despite that, it earns a place on my list for that one trade because it was so good and because it is so consistently good. Jason Aaron is writing a brilliant story in Scalped and the five issues of Gnawing were such brutally brilliant comics that the wait for the next collection has been agony.

Stumptown
Although it started in 2009 and has only featured four issues so far, this series by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth earned a place on my list on merit alone. The book is about Dex Parios, a female private investigator in Portland, Oregon (Stumptown is the nickname for Portland), who has a gambling problem but also a knack for having simple cases turn into something more complicated and dangerous, in the grand tradition of fictional detectives. Rucka has created another interesting female protagonist, and Southworth provides the perfect art style to accompany the story. I can't wait for the next instalment.

Usagi Yojimbo
Every year this book is excellent and every year it amazes and slightly depresses me that it isn't more successful. Stan Sakai continues to create perfect comic books, which just happen to be about a rabbit ronin set in feudal Japan, and yet its consistent brilliance is ignored by the majority of the comic book audience. It sells less than 5,000 issues in individual issues, which is a crime, so it makes my list for the double reason of its excellence and because it needs to given the extra boost (not that I flatter myself by suggesting that I can have any effect). Usagi Yojimbo is a fantastic book and demands your attention.

My Favourite Television of 2010

2011-03-09T22:07:00.000Z

Disclaimer: this is not a 'Best Television of 2010' post – I don't subscribe to Sky and all their channels (other satellite/cable providers are available) and I don't download television illegally, so this discussion will not include a lot of quality shows from abroad that might be expected in this type of post. This is a summary of the best shows that I watched via Freeview over the course of 2010.

Before that, a few negative words about one particular show so I can get it out of my system. The updating of V: The Series, while not completely awful, was hugely disappointing. The original V wasn't brilliant, but nostalgia has meant that we have fond memories of the red jumpsuits and the notorious hamster-eating sequence; therefore, I was anticipating a more sophisticated approach in this new version. The Vs announce themselves to the world, but we discover that they have been on Earth for many years already as sleeper agents in important positions (the reveal of Alan Tudyk as a V was rather fun). However, the show then decided to be the most boring, slow and annoying programme possible. There wasn't a single character who wasn't irritating in some way, although the award for most irritating went to the teenage son – every time he was on the screen, I wanted to punch his ridiculous face until I passed out with exhaustion so I didn't have to watch it any more. The only thing that was a positive was Morena Baccarin, who was somehow even more beautiful with shorter hair. It almost makes me grateful that Channel One will no longer exist, and I won't be tempted to watch the second season.

Now that's out of the way, I can talk about the quality stuff. It was a good year for comedy. In the last part of the year, two shows at the opposite ends of the reality scale were on at the same time but were equally funny (and did episodes where the main characters were stuck in one location): the second series of Miranda and the seventh series of Peep Show. Peep Show continues to be funny and horrible in equal measures, while Miranda (the person) seems to have entered the general public consciousness as a funny woman, writing and performing in a delightfully old-fashioned but very funny sitcom that is all about her being very funny.

Another good show towards the end of the year was The Trip, the semi-improvised comedy about Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon supposedly reviewing fine restaurants in the north of England but basically allowing them to play exaggerations of themselves, much as they did in A Cock And Bull Story (both of which were directed by Michael Winterbottom). Listening to them doing their various impersonations and attempting to one-up each other on their drives and meals wasn't to everyone's taste (my girlfriend didn't enjoy them, particularly Brydon's neediness for laughs) but it constantly amused me.

Howard Overman provided two different but equally entertaining programmes in 2010: the excellent second season of Misfits (which he created), the fantastic BAFTA-award winning 'Asbo Heroes', and the adaptation of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently – Stephen Mangan was perfect as the detective who believed in the interconnectedness of everything, and I hope that it was a pilot for a full series.

Two shows that took old ideas and did something new were Rev and Nurse Jackie. Sitcoms about vicars shouldn't work any more, but Tom Hollander was great in the lead, about a vicar moving to an inner city parish, and it was genuinely moving as well as very funny. Sitcoms in hospitals shouldn't work any more either, but Edie Falco is fantastic as the pill-popping, smart-mouthed nurse who was shagging the pharmacist on the side for extra pills, before going home to her husband and children. It was smart and funny, but also dark and moving.

As I mentioned before, Channel One no longer exists, so some programmes won't be readily available, which is a shame in the case of Warehouse 13 – it wasn't a brilliant show, but it was enjoyable in an 'X-Files with humour and more sci-fi bias' kind of way. The stories were interesting, the two leads were nicely different and Saul Rubinek was a lot of fun as well; I'll shall have to find other ways to watch the second season. The other casualty of Channel One's demise was Leverage, a very entertaining and slick show about a team of criminals, led by a former insurance investigator (Timothy Hutton), who try to right injustices done to small people by big corporations. The main cast was a nice mixture, the various cons and heists were slickly performed in each episode, and there was an enjoyable atmosphere to the show – it left you with a good feeling at the end of the hour and a desire to see more. It was well put together, had a good soundtrack and a good cast, and I'll miss not having easy access to it.

Another US import that fortunately was shown on a Freeview channel that is still around (Fiver) was Justified. This was an excellent little modern police procedural but about a US Marshal called Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), who is a throwback to a cowboy in the old West. Based on an Elmore Leonard story, this had the marshal reassigned to his home area of Lexington, Kentucky, after he shot a Miami fugitive in the first scene of the first episode; he is not happy about the reassignment, especially as he has to deal with people he grew up with. The show has a great sensibility, a location that is not usually used, a great theme song, and a great lead in Olyphant, who shoots first when necessary but who also has a strong moral sense of justice. He also looks great in a cowboy hat, which is very hard to pull off in a modern setting. I really enjoyed it, so I'm glad it was renewed for a second season.

I haven't rated the programmes I've discussed above because it seems strange to distinguish between favourites by enforcing some arbitrary system to differentiate them. However, the final three warrant special distinction for the quality and the amount of entertainment they provided.

Doctor Who
The reinvention of Doctor Who by Russell T Davies has been one of the great success stories of late, so Steve Moffat was always going to have a difficult job taking over as show runner on such a popular programme (even if he did write some of the best individual episodes of the previous four seasons). He was also fighting stiff opposition to a new face taking over the lead role after David Tennant had become so popular as the latest incarnation of the Doctor. However, Matt Smith made the part his own in the first appearance on screen and Moffat stamped his identity on this version immediately. The level of writing was high, the 'fairy tale' nature of his approach was perfect (and I loved that death was now rare and has more meaning in this season compared with the way Davies used to have people dying and sacrificing themselves for the Doctor all the time). It was superb stuff and I'm really looking forward to more.

Sherlock
There is the belief that television programmes shown during summer are being 'dumped' because they aren't good. Sherlock certainly proves that idea wrong. Even though there were only three 90-minute episodes, and the second episode wasn't quite as good as the first and last episodes, this exploded onto our screens and into the collective consciousness with brilliantly written dramas and two great performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, respectively. This update was concocted by Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss (the latter also played Mycroft Holmes), writing the first and last episodes, respectively, and they did a fantastic job of modernising the concept without losing any of the aspects of what made the original stories so loved. With lots of delightful details, fun dialogue and beautiful references to the original stories (the shows mostly used original adventures as the basis for these new versions), Sherlock was so good that you were left aching for new adventures – three wasn't enough, and we'll have to wait ages for new episodes.

Community
I had first heard about this in The Guide (the Saturday supplement in The Guardian), talking about how good it was and how spot on the pop culture references were, so I was surprised that it ended up hidden away on the Freeview channel Viva. However, congratulations to Viva for acquiring this because it was simply one of the best seasons of a sitcom I have ever seen. A fantastic ensemble cast with great performances, brilliant writing that squeezed so many great jokes into such a small amount of time, and the most fantastic film and television references and homages ever. Modern Warfare (aka the paintball episode) was perfection. I haven't laughed so hard at a show since 30 Rock and Arrested Development. Unequivocally my favourite show of 2010.

My Ten Favourite Films Seen In The Cinema 2010

2011-03-07T21:03:00.000Z

The Academy Awards have just passed, which means now is as good a time as any to document my favourite 10 films I watched on a cinema screen in 2010. These sorts of posts are usually found December (which always seems odd to me, because films might be released after this arbitrary cut-off date), but I'm nothing if a little different and very late.

Disclaimer: these films are the ones I thought were good and enjoyed the most last year. It is highly personal, obviously, and I haven't seen everything (because I'm not a professional film critic or anything). There were a few films that didn't make the cut – I almost did a Top 15 (but that sounded a bit silly) – so I just wanted to make special mention of the following films that almost made the list: Green Zone, which was an intelligent action film with a point; Up In The Air, which was timely and poignant and had a great turn from George Clooney; Buried, which was a great idea that was well executed and had a terrific turn from Ryan Reynolds; The Kids Are All Right, which was a smart and funny drama that happened to be about lesbian mothers; Whip It, which was a great directorial debut from Drew Barrymore and earns bonus points for being a film about women that doesn't pander to silly romantic notions or the Hollywood concept of 'sisterhood'; and Monsters (which I haven't written about yet), which was an amazing piece of cinema that is even more amazing when you realise that the special effects for this micro-budget film were done by the novice director on his home computer but look like a Hollywood blockbuster.

On to the list. In reverse order:
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
I told you this was personal. Despite the fact that it's not a complete film, I thought it was a great adaptation of the book, with a shadowy look and a perfect feel.

9. Winter's Bone
This film really stuck with me, with its amazing central performance from Jennifer Lawrence and capturing the reality of life in the Ozarks; I didn't expect it to but that's the power of this movie.

8. A Single Man
The role for which Colin Firth should have got his Oscar and a beautiful and emotional directorial debut by designer Tom Ford. Sublime.

7. The Town
A gripping tale of bank robbers in Boston starring and directed by Ben Affleck, who is shaping up to be a talented director. It's a good story, well told, with good performances and some Heat-inspired gun sequences.

6. Four Lions
I never thought I would see a film about suicide bombers that (a) I would actually want to see and (b) would be hilarious, but Christopher Morris doesn't pay attention to rules and created a really good film with another directorial debut.

5. Kick-Ass
Despite my dislike for Mark Millar's output of late, this was so joyously over the top and yet maintained a perfect tone for its ultraviolence and costumed vigilantism that I couldn't help but enjoy it.

4. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
The best comic book adaptation of the year went to this film: Edgar Wright did an amazing job of turning the source material into something was exactly like the book but was a film in its own right. It was the only film I saw in the cinema twice this year, just to ensure I saw everything (because there are so many things happening on screen at the same time).

3. The Social Network
When I heard that Aaron Sorkin would be writing and David Fincher would be directing the film about Facebook, I was disappointed that they would be wasting their talents. I was glad to be proved wrong: this was an incredible cinematic interpretation of recent world-changing events that was also entertaining and full of brilliant dialogue.

2. Toy Story 3
The three Toy Story films are all five-star genuine classics – how did Pixar do it? This was another film that I wasn't particularly looking forward to because I thought it was a cash-in sequel, and another film where I was so wrong. It is absolutely perfect and, no, I didn't cry but that didn't stop my enjoyment.

1. Inception
The best movie of 2010 was also my favourite movie of 2010. Stunning, dazzling, brilliant, amazing, enthralling, smart, entertaining – the list of hyperbolic adjectives could continue. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed the most original, most absorbing, most rewarding action blockbuster I have ever seen, and it's a crime that he wasn't even nominated for best director at the Academy Awards.

Notes On A Film: Paul

2011-03-06T20:28:00.000Z

There is a maxim about comic book story writing that states that if you could replace the central superhero with a different superhero without it affecting the plot, then the story is not about that specific superhero and it won't work to the strengths of the character. This came to mind after I watched Paul: there is no specific reason for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to be British in this film, and the film could easily work without them or their unique on-screen chemistry. Fortunately, the central character of the CGI alien voiced by Seth Rogen is such an enjoyable creation that it carries the film and you don't really mind.

Pegg and Frost are Graeme and Clive, two British geeks in the US for San Diego Comic-Con, who then go on a road trip in a rented RV around the famous UFO hotspots along the Extraterrestrial Highway. On the way, they pick up Paul and agree to help him get back home. All the while, they are being chased by various men in black, mainly in the form of Jason Bateman, who are eager to get him back.

The character of Paul is a riot – he enjoys strong weed, relaxing, swearing and popular culture – and the CGI is great, creating a tangible presence on screen that can channel the exuberance of Rogen overcoming his occasional annoyance factor. His vitality is needed because Graeme and Clive are fairly bland – they are amiable blokes but with no real personality, as if the story is sufficient to overcome this shortfall. Pegg and Frost co-wrote the script, so it's a strange choice; they also feel slightly too old for the type of characters they are playing (not helped by Pegg's rather silly hair), adding to the discrepancy.

One possible reason why the central characters are lacking in spark is that the film is aimed squarely at the mainstream, despite all the swearing: the film is packed with known comedy faces (Kristen Wiig as the love interest for Graeme, plus smaller roles for Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Bill Hader and Jeffrey Tambor, as well as a big name cameo that works really well), the direction from Greg Mottola is characterless compared with the sharpness of Edgar Wright, and the fact that the film is a geek wish fulfilment version of E.T. with a side helping of love letter to Steven Spielberg (the opening scene and the finale in particular are tributes to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and there is a lovely voice cameo in the middle). The film lacks the edge of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, which can be seen from the rather flat scenes at Comic-Con and some flimsy 'we're not gay' jokes. There is also the soft attitude to the most interesting human character – Wiig plays a Christian whose worldview is overturned by the evidence of an extraterrestrial, which is a fantastic concept to play with, but it's mostly ignored for humorous novelty swearing as she uses all the words she's denied herself.

On the other hand, the film can be funny in its use of movie in-jokes, as would be expected from Pegg and Frost (I liked the Star Wars jokes, such as the country and western band in a bar playing a version of the cantina song, and the post-credit gag that uses some dialogue from Return of the Jedi), although the name of Bateman's character, Agent Zoil, provides the cheapest and most cringe-worthy film-related gag in the entire film. The knowingness provides a relaxed humour, with occasional flashes of the Pegg/Frost interaction, meaning that the film is enjoyable and will reward future viewings. It's just that it's not as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, which is admittedly a high standard to maintain, but means that anything less is noticeable.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Oscar Thoughts And Pointless Predictions

2011-02-27T18:11:00.000Z

In which I pontificate about the major categories at the 83rd Academy Awards because I'm a blogger and that's what we do. (Yes, I can still call myself a blogger, even though I haven't blogged in nearly two months.)

Even though I won't be able to watch the actual event, I still enjoy the whole silliness of the Academy Awards and providing my completely pointless opinions. Apart from three films (Rabbit Hole, Animal Kingdom and The Illusionist), I have seen all the films that are up for the big awards, which unfortunately makes me think I know what I'm talking about. Let's see.

Best Picture
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Prediction: The King's Speech
Who I think should win: Inception

Inception was the best film of 2010, no discussion. However, the Academy is not going to recognise it as such. I would like The Social Network to win Best Picture, but I think the rousing and traditional The King's Speech will win the hearts of the majority of the voters. It is a good film, but The Social Network is better and a more suitable alternative to the correct choice.

Best Directing
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
David O. Russell, The Fighter
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
David Fincher, The Social Network
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, True Grit

Prediction: David Fincher
Who I think should win: Christopher Nolan

Yes, I know Nolan isn't nominated; the biggest oversight in this year's nominations. If you can't see that Inception was the best directed film of last year, you're not using your eyes correctly. So the rest of the nominees can consider themselves lucky. Even though the DGA awarded Tom Hooper best director for The King's Speech, and the DGA award is a clear indicator of the Oscar, I believe that David Fincher will be picked in one of those years where they split the Best Picture and Best Directing, and I've got no problem with that. He's the best of the remaining candidates and he did a great job, better than relative newcomer Hooper.

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

Prediction: Colin Firth
Who I think should win: Colin Firth

Even though I had no objection to Jeff Bridges finally getting his Oscar for Crazy Heart, it should have gone to Colin Firth for A Single Man. Therefore, I have no issues with him getting it this year. It also helps that he is rather brilliant in the role and so deserves it as well.

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Prediction: Natalie Portman
Who I think should win: Natalie Portman

Jennifer Lawrence was excellent in Winter's Bone, but she won't get it for a first role. Annette Bening was excellent in The Kids Are All Right (Julianne Moore should have also been nominated), and the Academy might think she deserves it after all this time. But Natalie Portman finally confirmed the promise and brilliance of her role in Leon with a fantastic performance in the wonderfully deranged Black Swan. Everyone else has given her the Best Actress award, and the Academy will agree.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Prediction: Christian Bale
Who I think should win: Andrew Garfield

Yes, Andrew Garfield wasn't nominated, another horrendous oversight. His excellent turn in The Social Network was the textbook example of a Best Supporting Actor, helping Jesse Eisenberg to fill the role of Mark Zuckerberg so well. However, in the list of actual nominees, I'm quite happy for Christian Bale to win – he's done some really good work in his career which hasn't been recognised, and his turn in The Fighter was a delight. I just hope that the Academy doesn't go overboard on The King's Speech and give it to Geoffrey Rush just because he's already got an Oscar ...

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Prediction: Helena Bonham Carter
Who I think should win: Lesley Mannville

I'm not trying to be deliberately difficult by wanting people who weren't nominated to win, but this is the third egregious oversight. Lesley Mannville was phenomenal in Another Year, giving an amazing performance in a role that could have easily been cliched, and it's terrible that it hasn't been recognised. The category of Best Supporting Actress can be very difficult to predict, with no clear favourite, and this is one of those years. Melissa Leo has been getting a lot of recognition for The Fighter (which I still don't think deserves a nomination for Best Picture or Best Directing); Amy Adams was good but not great in the same film; Hailee Steinfield was fantastic in True Grit, but (a) she's too young for the award unfortunately and (b) it was a lead role and this was tactical positioning; and I haven't seen Animal Kingdom. However, I think The King's Speech factor will seep through for Helena Bonham Carter; she is a really good actor and I would very happy for her to win.

Animated Feature Film
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

~~Guaranteed~~ Prediction: Toy Story 3
Who I think should win: Toy Story 3

There's really not much else to say, is there? I would like to say that How To Train Your Dragon was really good, but Toy Story 3 was one of the best films of last year, so there it is.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
127 Hours
The Social Network Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Prediction: The Social Network
Who I think should win: The Social Network

Adapted Screenplay can sometimes give love to small independent films, so could show some recognition for Winter's Bone, but Aaron Sorkin wrote a screenplay that made nerdy men talking about coding and sitting at computers doing the coding into one of the smartest, funny, engaging and amazing films of the year.

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech Screenplay

Prediction: The King's Speech
Who I think should win: Inception

Can you tell that I'm a big fan of Inception? The screenplay for The King's Speech is a deserving winner, covering a historical topic in personal terms about something important, so I won't be gnashing my teeth when it wins. However, if ever the word 'original' had any meaning in the title of this award, then Inception is the clear winner: amazingly original, smart, entertaining, requiring you to pay attention despite being an action blockbuster.

We'll see how the Academy feels tonight, and I look forward to watching all the clips in the morning and reading the 'live' blogs of Empire and The Guardian to tell me if Anne Hathaway and James Franco were any good. I hope that those of you who can see the show live can enjoy it.

Review – Kill Shakespeare Vol. 1: A Sea Of Troubles

2011-01-03T22:24:00.001Z

Kill Shakespeare #1–6
Written and created by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col
Illustrated by Andy Belanger
Coloured by Ian Herring
Lettered by Chris Mowry, Robbie Robbins and Neil Uyetake
Edited by Tom Waltz
Published by IDW Publishing

The creators describe Kill Shakespeare as a mix of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fables and The Lord of the Rings (although I think they're stretching it with The Lord of the Rings), and there is some truth in it: they use characters from the works of William Shakespeare to tell a completely original tale, which is a great idea. However, a high concept alone isn't enough – you have to use a high concept to tell a good story.

This trade paperback collects the first six issues of the twelve-part story, which starts with Hamlet in the middle of his play: haunted by ghosts after killing Polonius and banished to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, pirates attack and Hamlet is knocked overboard. He wakes up to be discovered by Richard the Third, who portrays himself as a benevolent ruler to Hamlet as he introduces him to the three witches, who have a prophecy concerning Hamlet (calling him 'The Shadow King') and the evil wizard William Shakespeare, someone only Hamlet can find. Richard promises Hamlet to return his dead father to life if Hamlet retrieves Shakespeare's quill, so they set off on the quest, where they are joined by Iago and Richard reveals his true colours to the readers but not Hamlet.

A night-time attack leads to Hamlet being rescued by Falstaff, who introduces him to Juliet and Othello. Juliet is travelling the land to incite rebellion against Richard and Macbeth, under the good name of Will Shakespeare (who is treated almost like a deity of some sort by those against Richard). They are attacked by Don John, commanded by Richard to kill them, leading to a large fight in which Iago proves himself helpful to Hamlet, leading to an uneasy alliance between an enraged Othello and Iago. However, Hamlet decides to strike out on his own to find his own path among the talks of destiny and the Shadow King. This leads him to encounter Demetrius, Lysander and and Adriana, but he eventually meets up again with Juliet and the rest, where he messes up talking with Adriana, angsts a bit about his life (he is Hamlet, after all), but eventually finds his courage in conflict, which leads to the start of the uprising.

This is a compelling narrative with all the elements of a good story. There are good characters (well, they have been stolen from an excellent source), excitement, treachery, betrayals, courage and even humour: Falstaff and 'lusty wenches' talk in Shakespearean double entendre (about wicks and tallows quill-dipping and women), the pubs are called The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Bottoms Up, and there is a rubbish escape plan involving disguising as women ('I saw it in a play once … of course, it did end in tragedy'). There are other Shakespeare characters, such as Puck and Lady Macbeth (who is working her magic behind the scenes), and there are probably lots of references that I am missing because I'm not a Shakespeare expert – I think I recognise some dialogue that is either direct quotes or riffs on quotes – so the writers have done their homework and put in the effort to reference the works they are using to tell a new adventure. The only time it doesn't work is when it tries too hard to use Shakespearean language for the new sections – Juliet's inspiring speech comes off badly in this regard and doesn't capture the right flavour. It sounds better when it keeps the dialogue simple and then brings in the occasional quote.

The art is a mix of a cartoony style with a Vertigo edge (the colouring can be a little on the dark side at times), with an occasional inconsistency in the faces between panels, but Belanger does a good job of storytelling that has to cover a lot of talking heads with bits of ghostly interaction and magic and fighting (there is a fair smattering of blood and violence in some of the issues). It feels a little rough when reading the first issue, but acclimatisation to the style happens quickly and it feels completely appropriate for the story – a slicker version wouldn't have captured the time period, and rougher form of linework wouldn't have encapsulated the many different characters so clearly.

This isn't supposed to be Shakespeare, which is what I think some reviewers have confused it for, believing it should be another sort of book adhering to Shakespeare's style and storytelling. This is an enjoyable adventure that incorporates characters from his works into something completely different – I look forward to seeing how the story finishes and if we get to meet Will himself.

From A Library – Punisher: Dark Reign

2010-12-15T21:51:00.000Z

Punisher #1–5 by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena

After Garth Ennis' incredible run on the Punisher, albeit outside the Marvel universe proper, I'm amazed anyone would want the job of writing a continuing series about the character, which is perhaps why it has been handled by newer, hungrier writers. Matt Fraction had the first attempt at bringing back Frank Castle to the mainstream in 2007, using Civil War as the launching point, eventually bringing on Rick Remender as co-writer (quite a common technique at Marvel now) before the series was relaunched with this new number one, again using a Marvel crossover as the launching point. This makes a lot of sense, ensuring hype and a link to something important, but also a valid story option: viewing the Marvel universe in the middle of a massive crossover through the eyes of the deliberately non-superhero character.

Norman Osborn has turned himself into a public hero but he's still a criminal working things from the inside, and the Punisher wants to take him down. By shooting him with a gun from over a mile away. But the Sentry stops the bullet, and tries to stop the Punisher, but the Punisher is a tough nut to crack. He also gets help from 'a new best friend', who wants to help him take down Osborn properly. When they start to gain Osborn's attention by highlight the supposedly non-existent crime in New York, Osborn sets The Hood on to Punisher to stop him permanently, and things get even more crazy. You know things have got bad when the Punisher has to get some special weapons – at the end of issue 4, he is dressed with Ant Man's helmet, a shield that looks like an old Captain America version, Hawkeye's quiver and bow, and an assortment of extra powerful weapons.

I haven't read Remender's previous work, such as Fear Agent and The End League, but I will have to based on this because it's very good. He's got the Punisher narration down really well, does good dialogue and knows how to make the Punisher work within the Marvel universe. He throws in some funny lines and pop culture references, and there are some wonderful throwaway ideas, such as the Shaolin Scientist Squad. He also has the Punisher and his new helper acting intelligently and being prepared, something I appreciate in this sort of story. There's a suitably gritty tone, but it still allows for the appearance of the Sentry and the various supervillains who show up, so I've got to say that I'm impressed and will look out for Remender's other Marvel work, such as the cancelled Doctor Voodoo and Uncanny X-Force.

The other new factor for me in this book was the art: I haven't seen Opena's work before, but it is really, really good. He's got a gritty style but with a sharpness to his line so he can handle the dirty action of the Punisher but still draw an impressive Sentry, so you can buy both aspects of the book. That's important for the balance of the comic, and I'm not sure how well it would have worked without the right artist. Opena has hints of Chris Bachalo at times, but his art is clearer and less self-indulgent, especially in his faces; I can see some elements of Mike Deodato in there as well, but that could be because he draws Osborn very similar to Deodato. However, he's still an artist with a unique and strong sense of his own style, a confident artist in both his dynamic action and his excellent camerawork in scenes of just dialogue, or generally – he's a great storyteller, a joy to watch him bring Remender's plot to life. I'll be watching out for his work, and I'll be on the lookout for the next volumes in this series.

Talking About The Indiana Jones Trilogy

2010-12-14T21:34:00.002Z

[Yes, I said 'trilogy': to me, the fourth film is just the inspiration for a fun but silly Lego game, so I shall ignore it.]

I recently watched the first three Indiana Jones films, and it got me thinking about them, so here are some of the thoughts that occurred to me while watching them again.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark deserves its status as a lean action adventure in the traditions of the old serials: it has it all, from excitement to humour to colourful characters and boo-worthy bad guys, with a taut script and a more serious feel compared with the later films. Harrison Ford is perfect as the impossible mix of intelligent (he has a lot of book learning as a professor of archaeology) and heroic man, even if he is a bit of a dick towards women. Having watched it several times, there are still bits that seem to use the logic lapses of the old serials (Indy disguising himself as a German soldier, hanging at the back of a line of marching soldiers, seems to draw no attention to himself; the scene where he threatens to destroy the ark is implausible and seems just a silly way to get himself captured; why weren't he and Marion killed instead of tied to a post at the opening of the ark – earlier, the two of them had been thrown into a pyramid to be sealed in order to kill them, so why not finish the job? And why (a) does Indy think that not looking at the open ark will work and (b) does that actually work? Do the avenging spirits detect closed eyelids and not destroy them? Very silly) but that doesn't completely ruin the enjoyment of a very good film.

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom is not a very good film, despite some recent rumblings suggesting that it should be reappraised. It is definitely the weakest of the three 'good' Indy films, and anyone who says otherwise is talking nonsense. To start with, the opening section has a very good friend of Indy, played by David Yip, get killed due to Indy's cock-up with the crime boss in Shanghai – and he doesn't even care. Heartless Indy forgets about him almost immediately, never referring to his death once, never making him reassess that he's continuing his dangerous adventures with a child, never showing remorse that his friend died because it was Indy's fault. That's not a hero I'm very interested in. There is also the fact that the main story is an accident – it completely diminishes the value of the film because it makes it feel like a minor note in the annals of Indiana Jones; no longer is it a matter of national importance, nor is Indy called in because of his expertise. Instead, he just turns up out of nowhere (after the impossible survival of a lifeboat falling out of a crashing plane) and sticks his nose in because that's who he is. That's irritating. Then there is the Willie factor: I have nothing against Kate Capshaw, but the character of the night club singer Willie is one of the most annoying screen presences I've ever seen. And heard – because Willie is constantly screaming; I mean, all the time with her ear-piercing wail that ruins the movie. This film occurs before Raiders, so my theory is that Indy is a dick to women because of her – admittedly, he treats her as badly as all the other women in his life, so perhaps he's just a misogynistic git, but he learns that from being in the company of Willie for so long. Don't let anyone tell you that Temple of Doom isn't a wonky misstep from Messrs Spielberg and Lucas.

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade makes up for Temple Of Doom by being the most enjoyable. It is lighter than the two preceding films, but that is more in keeping with the correct tone – yes, there is death and war and seriousness, but it's supposed to be entertainment. The master stroke is the casting of Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr, someone you can actually believe as Indy's father (even though he is only 12 years older than him), and who is an absolute riot in the part. He is stern and academic, but also charming and caring, and very funny. There is real chemistry between Connery and Ford that is the heart of the film, which jumps from one entertaining set piece to another in a story that is very appropriate to Indiana Jones, but also includes lots of jokes that don't disrupt from the tone of the film. Of the three, it's the one I anticipate watching again, and I like to think of it as the last Indy adventure so that I don't have to remember The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

From A Library – Justice League Of America: When Worlds Collide

2010-12-13T21:10:00.001Z

Justice League Of America #27, 28, 30–34 by Dwayne McDuffie and various artists

Embarrassing confession: I've never really read any of the Milestone books. I might have skimmed an issue here and there, but I didn't get into any of the comics. I know, I know: I'm a bad person; I'm sorry. I thought I might rectify it by reading this collection, which was supposed to bring the Milestone characters into the DC universe (although I'm not sure if they are quite as integrated as this book would suggest), by one of the original Milestone creators from the 1990s, Dwayne McDuffie.

The Shadow Cabinet, the Milestone equivalent of the Justice League, has captured Dr Light (the heroic female version) and then are caught by the JLA as they break into The Watchtower to steal something. Of course, there is something more complicated going on, and certain members know more than they say, and it involves someone who has an important role in the two universes and a very powerful supervillain. It feels very much like a DC superhero story, at least to someone like me who read more Marvel growing up, but it doesn't quite have the scope needed for such a big story. It doesn't help that the story gets bogged down in an interlude to do with the internal politics of the JLA, which involves lots of sitting around and talking.

The members of the Shadow Cabinet are mostly an intriguing bunch, each clearly delineated and individual, despite the fact that the bigger names riff on various archetypes (Icon is a riff on Superman, Hardware is a riff on Iron Man), although some of them are odder than others – Gloria Mundi is 'a living receptacle of hopes and dreams of a thousand, thousand dead races', which is a rather odd concept, if novel (but surely 'a thousand, thousand' is a million?). McDuffie handles them well, as would be expected from one of the originators, and the books work well in the interaction between the Shadow Cabinet and the JLA in the earlier issues, with some good dialogue. However, they become more generic as the story reaches its conclusion, losing some of their identity to the mechanics of plot.

Because the story wasn't as captivating as it could have been, I was distracted by other things. For example, the start of issue 30 has the Flash in the second panel, even though he's still captive within the body of Twilight, a living portal, which is quite a sloppy error that should have been spotted by the editors (but was spotted by my vigilant girlfriend). The art was a little flat; there was a static quality to the panels, as if the DC house style is supposed to be a lack of fluidity – the characters seem oddly posed in a panel or a page. It doesn't look dynamic, and Shane Davis is particularly guilty of this. Another aspect is Vixen's costume, which is inappropriate with its large v-shape cut in the front of the costume to display her cleavage; but Rags Morales has a real problem drawing the breasts, which change in size and shape (and means of support) from panel to panel. Ed Benes may be obsessed with the female bottom but at least he draws it consistently.

I don't think that this was the greatest reintroduction of the Milestone characters, although I would be interested to read the earlier stories to see how they acted in their own universe.

From A Library – Batman: Heart Of Hush

2010-12-10T22:23:00.000Z

Detective Comics #846–850 by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen

I wasn't too impressed with the character of Hush – the only reason I read the two trades collecting the story of Bruce Wayne's long-lost childhood friend Tommy Elliot we've never heard of before who has returned with a grudge against Bruce, as created and written by Jeph Loeb, was because Jim Lee was drawing it. So I surprised myself by picking this up, seeing as it's a continuation of the idiotic character. But there were two good reasons: Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen.

Dini is a good writer of Batman, but he's always been interested in the supporting cast as well, particularly the women of Gotham. The strength of this story is the focusing on Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, and her special connection with Bruce Wayne and Batman. There is a lot of backstory about Tommy and Bruce as kids, which I have to admit is done very skilfully by Dini, but it feels like padding for the more interesting stuff in the present day and the interaction between Bruce and Selina. Tommy is after Bruce, again, and his plan involves putting Selina in a bad situation to hold Bruce hostage, but obviously the good guys win the day. There are some lovely bits in it, such as Batman breaking into Arkham to question the Scarecrow in an intense fashion while he is being watched by the Joker, who is enthralled watching him ('Outstanding. Better than Christmas. Swear to God.'), and I loved the coda to the story with Bruce and Selina (and Selina's revenge on Hush). But I still don't care for Hush, and I was rather miffed that he now knows about the location of the Batcave, but I'm sure I'll live.

The other great aspect of the book is the art. Nguyen is a lovely visual stylist, a great designer of pages and panels, and a dynamic artist – he's perfect for Batman for the action but also the unusual design element of the rogues gallery. So not only does he draw a good Bruce and Batman, but also Selina and Catwoman and Zatanna and Joker and all the rest, and every page looks great. Derek Fridolfs inks his work and brings out that delicate sharpness to Nguyen's line work, making it look even more beautiful. The covers are even more gorgeous, combining Nguyen's sense of dramatic design and exquisite penmanship, and the whole visual package makes reading the story a delight even when you don't particularly care what is going on (i.e. all the Hush stuff). I look forward to reading Batman stories by these two creators when they're working on something of more substance.

DVD Reminiscing: Highlander

2010-12-09T22:57:00.000Z

Highlander was a near-perfect film for me when it came out in 1986, when I was a teenager: it was set in New York, a city that had (and has) great allure for me; it was about an immortal man who was good with a samurai sword; it was wonderfully violent, with heads being cut off with swords throughout; and there was sex in it. If it wasn't for the bloody Queen soundtrack …

I must have watched the film quite a lot when I was younger for all of the above reasons, but also because it was one of the first films where I became aware of the transitions of scenes through the movement of cameras (such as the change from a fish tank to a lake), which was one of the aspects in my development of my love of film. (This is strange because Russell Mulcahy isn't on the list of great directors: a former in-demand music video maker, his career didn't develop much after, his biggest film after this being The Shadow.) There was also the story idea, which I think is a great one: immortals exist and have lived for many years throughout history. However, I hadn't watched the film in a while, so this some thoughts after watching it again on DVD.

First off, the version I've got is quite a weak transfer – the quality is only a little above a VHS tape. My memory of the film is better than the DVD. Also, despite being a film that shouldn't date itself by setting half of the film in different time periods of the past, Highlander is very much a film of its time: it couldn't be more 1980s if it had Madonna in leg warmers doing aerobics in it. The special effects are wonderfully cheesy as well (the computer program that matches up individual letters of separate signatures to prove that the same man has signed the different signatures throughout the years is hilarious), but that's part of the charm. I'd forgotten how much of the film I remembered – I'm sure I annoyed my girlfriend by inadvertently saying some of the lines out loud from memory – but I even remembered various camera moves and even moves of some of the actors in various scenes (which is a bit scary).

There are many famous aspects to the film, which is why it went on to generate cinematic sequels, a television series, books and even a comic, but the one thing I always remembered was the worst foreplay in history: Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) is showing forensic expert Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) an old knife, then tells her, 'I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal'. [An aside: the dialogue is definitely NOT one of the strengths of the film.] Then he forces her to stick in the knife in his stomach. And then they have sex. Seriously. It's ludicrous. But it does bring up an aspect of the film that I had forgotten about: the use of women in the film. Highlander doesn't treat women with a lot of respect. MacLeod's first girlfriend wants to burn him when he doesn't die. Heather, his next (and perhaps greatest) love, is raped by the Kurgan (Tom Clancy, overacting in a great way and having a ball), an incident that is only used later on as a taunt by the Kurgan to make MacLeod want to kill him – because now it's personal. Admittedly, Highlander wasn't alone in this regard – action films of the time only used women as a damsel in distress or an excuse for the hero to kill the villain – but it doesn't excuse it. Highlander ends up using Wyatt as a damsel in distress, which doesn't make any sense in terms of plot, and just weakens it.

Apart from the notorious Queen soundtrack (which sounds so eighties), there was still a lot to enjoy about the film. I think the central idea is one of the main reasons it keeps up; I love the sense of history it has via the use of immortals. Accent aside, having Sean Connery as Ramirez linking even further into the past was a great touch, and I loved the small duel scene set in France in the 17th century to highlight the idea of the immortals living throughout the ages. It made me wonder why, if I loved the idea so much, I hadn't watched the television series or the later films; but then I remembered why. I saw Highlander II: The Quickening . That film was so awful, it soured me on the whole Highlander concept for ever. It's one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I wish I hadn't seen it. However, fortunately, it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the first film; Highlander continues to be a film that has a soft spot in my heart, and I was glad that I was able to watch it now without it losing its magic (apology for the pun), even though I know that it isn't the greatest film in the world.

Comics I Bought 23 November 2010

2010-12-08T20:00:00.000Z

This isn't completely up to date, but these are the last new comic books I purchased, so that's good enough for me. It feels good to be, if not topical, then at least as current as I can be.

Batman, Incorporated #1
Now this is a good comic book. Grant Morrison works well with a good idea, and the idea of Batmen around the world is a strong concept. He's matched on this issue with Yanick Paquette, a really good artist – he draws a strong Batman (I'm sure I can detect hints of Kevin Nowlan in the face) and a very sexy Catwoman, and his action scenes are dynamic and interesting, which is necessary for this compelling first issue of a new series. Bruce Wayne wants to recruit Mr Unknown, a Japanese crimefighter, but someone has beat him to it and he's after the villain known as Lord Death Man. It makes me smile just to write it. A strong start.

Batman: The Return
This book slightly taints the splash of the return of Bruce Wayne. Morrison sets out his stall for his latest chapter of his story on Batman, and there are some good moments of story and dialogue between the characters. However, the book is muddied with some overly dark art from David Finch; I quite like his style even while I recognise some of his weaknesses, and this work highlights some of flaws. It reduces the impact of the story, as Morrison takes in the 'bat through the window' sequence from Frank Miller and lays the foundation for Batman, Incorporated. There is also a sour taste in mouth after you realise that you have paid extra for poor filler material at the back – fifteen pages, including another identical rendition of the front cover, the draft and finished version of the variant cover, some sketch stuff and several pages of Morrison's script. That sort of stuff should be in a special version of the book, not the regular book with the story. If it wasn't for Morrison ...

Morning Glory #4
This issue of Morning Glory is slight on story development; essentially, it is Casey getting the others together for her plan, only to get ratted out at the end. Therefore, the book is mostly conversation, something which Nick Spencer does well enough. Joe Eisma's art is good enough, which I guess means that it's growing on me, but it doesn't have the stuff for the big leagues as yet. The central mystery isn't advanced but I'm still intrigued enough to come back for more, so a successful job.

X-Factor #211
This is a fight-and-banter issue of X-Factor, with lovely art from Emanuela Lupacchino (she draws an excessively sexy and voluptuous Hela, but everyone else is pretty as well); the dialogue is fun while the team have to deal with undead Viking henchmen in Las Vegas – ahh, comics – with a literal deus ex machina to arrive at the end, when Thor turns up to decide if he's going to help (with a particularly funny moment when Shatterstar has to be stopped from hitting on Thor by Madrox). It's a solid issue of X-Factor, which is a good thing.

TV Catch-Up: True Blood (Seasons 1 & 2)

2010-12-07T21:48:00.000Z

I can't believe I haven't talked about True Blood on my blog before. It's a dire omission that requires rectifying with me giving a brief taste of my impressions of one of my favourite programmes at the moment. As a fan of genre television, it warms the cockles of my heart that a show about vampires (and other supernatural phenomena) is not only very popular but also critically acclaimed; I also love the fact that the Oscar-winning scriptwriter Alan Ball used his cachet from Six Feet Under to work on a series so awash in such genre trappings, and to loosely adapt a series of books written by Charlaine Harris.

True Blood is set in a world where vampires have come out of the mythological closet to the world, although the rest of the world doesn't necessarily welcome them. The story is ostensibly about Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a waitress in a bar in Bon Temps, who just happens to be telepathic, and Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a vampire who was turned during the American Civil War, but it is very much an ensemble piece. There is also Sam Merlotte, owner of the local bar, who also happens to be a shapeshifter; there is Sookie's slightly dim brother, Jason, who still manages to get all the local girls; Sookie's best friend, Tara, whose mother is an alcoholic, yet ends up working at Merlotte's; Tara's cousin, Lafayette, an outrageously gay cook at Merlotte's, but also a prostitute and who deals 'V', which is vampire blood; Eric, the vampire sheriff of Area 5 of Louisiana, which includes Bon Temps, who is a former Viking warrior, 1,000 years old, and who runs the vampire bar, Fangtasia; and this only scratches the surface.

The relationship between Sookie and Bill is the most important aspect of the series for me, something that Ball tried to emphasise in the first few episodes of the first series: there was a real feeling of 'magic' about the emotional connection that is portrayed between the two, to show that this is a relationship you can believe in and root for (something that has leaked out into real life, now that Paquin and Moyer have subsequently married). The two seasons has ups and downs in their courtship – this is a drama, after all – but they all seem like stumbling blocks in the way of a true love, in the best sense of that phrase (or am I just being a romantic?) The story line in the second series of Eric's plans to get his hooks into Sookie seem to be a stretch to get in the way of an interesting relationship, and I found it slightly irritating and excessive.

The major story line in the first season, apart from the developing relationship and the discovery of the rules of the vampire society (an intriguing idea, having sheriffs to control areas and magistrates above them making judgements, is about a serial killer in the small town of Bon Temps, which is handled very well (although I felt slightly uncomfortable at all the murder of women in the season). The major story line in the second season concerns Maryann (Michelle Forbes), who turns out to be a maenad, a supernatural being who starts to control the inhabitants of Bon Temps in order to sacrifice Sam to Dionysus; the other aspect is about the Fellowship of the Sun, a religious anti-vampire group with a violent agenda. The first season had a straighter plot driving the action, with a wonderful return to cliffhanging endings leaving you wanting more; the second season was a bit more split between the two main plots, and didn't resolve quite as strongly. The second season also seemed to lose some of its sense of control of the story when it rather clumsily removed the love interest for Tara at the end, as well as eliminating one of the most interesting characters to appear: Godric, a powerful 2,000-year-old vampire who sired Eric and was sheriff of Dallas who volunteered to be a hostage to the Fellowship of the Sun to try to calm the problems between human and vampires, and I would have liked to see more of him.

The most refreshing aspect of this show is the honesty of the sex/nudity and violence involved – vampires are both sexy and vicious, and this show doesn't hesitate to show both of these with candour. There is a lot of sexy flesh on display, both male and female, and blood is spilt and splashed and drenched and splattered with abandon; it's exactly what the show needs, and I'm glad HBO are making it so that it didn't get watered down.

True Blood is a very entertaining series that is extremely well done, well written, well acted and it doesn't rest on its laurels. As a series, it could just be about the relationship between a vampire and a telepathic Southern waitress, contrasting the modern aspects with the old-fashioned approach of a man nearly 200 years old. However, it includes other aspects – shapeshifting, another telepath, an immortal (?) being with ability to control minds – as well as exploring the world of vampires, such as hotels specifically tailored to vampires, or the fact that Louisiana has a Queen of Vampires. It has great characters (Tara and Lafayette are particularly enjoyable) and enjoys the thrills and spills of a serial entertainment. I look forward to seeing the next season as soon as Channel 4 are allowed to air it.

Comics I Bought 11 November 2010 Part 2

2010-12-06T22:01:00.000Z

The second half of the same single purchase of comic books, because there were too many comic books to talk about in one post. Or I was bored. Or something.

Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #6
For such an important issue – the final issue of the mini-series that returns Bruce Wayne to the DC universe after being 'dead' – it loses a lot of impact by having two artists juggling the story who don't do a top-notch job. I thought that DC had learned its lesson after the rush job of Georges Jeanty did on issue 4, but apparently not. Grant Morrison brings everything together well, but it doesn't work as it should.

Chronicles of Wormwood: The Last Battle #5
I think I might be one of the few people who preordered this at Gosh! because I seem to get the wraparound covers for the book, instead of the regular cover. The only problem is that the wraparound covers are rather ugly, deliberately so because they are depictions of Hell, but it doesn't get me in the frame of mind for the story. The issue has some nice dialogue and humour from Garth Ennis, but the Pope Jacko thing seems slightly wearing and I'm looking towards the end of this particular story line. I enjoyed the first mini-series but I've lost the appeal of this one.

Knight and Squire #2
I like the idea of what Paul Cornell is doing with Knight and Squire, filling the comic with lots of British things (although it loses its charm if he has to explain everything in the back of the book) – the Morris Men and their ancient martial art, Wassail Futtock (which sounds like something in a song by Kenneth Williams' Rambling Sid character) – but it doesn't necessarily all add up to a cohesive whole and an enjoyable issue of a comic book in its own right. Maybe it's just me and being British already, but it feels like a 2000AD spoof of superhero universes but done completely straight. Still, I'll be sticking around for the remainder to see what happens.

The Unwritten #19
The Unwritten continues, and it continues to make me feel stupid – I had to look up 'afflatus' and I've never read Moby-Dick – but in a good way. There is a lot of story pieces dropped into this issue, with special surprises in the last few pages for Lizzie and Tommy, and Richie sees something (or, rather, doesn't). There is even some story-within-a-story action, which seems completely appropriate for The Unwritten. Good stuff.

Notes On A Film: Another Year

2010-12-03T22:24:00.000Z

Another Year is a wonderfully crafted, wonderfully acted, compassionate and moving film from Mike Leigh in which very little actually happens, there are stretches where there is hardly any dialogue and the central characters are a happily married middle-aged couple. I'm amazed the film was made in the first place, based on that summary.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are Tom and Gerri (yes, they are used to the joke but it's only mentioned once), a geologist and a counsellor who enjoy each other and their life, devoting a lot of their time at their allotment. They have a son who is unmarried, but he seems fine, and they have friends they see in their pleasant house in a pleasant neighbourhood. It's very unusual to see a happy couple as the centre of a film, so it's nice to see it represented, but it means that drama has to be found elsewhere. This is seen via their friends: Mary (Lesley Manville), a co-worker of Gerri, is a lonely divorcee who drinks a little too much, and Ken (Peter Wight) is Tom's old mate who works in a dead-end job and is lonely and drinks too much.

The story takes place over the four seasons as the various people interact with Tom and Gerri at various social occasions. These are mostly gentle scenes with small talk and the sort of uncomfortable pauses that happen in real life rather than the sort of dialogue that tends to happen in film – there is a sense of reality and depth, both in the situations and the characters, allowing us to invest ourselves in the moments and really feel what is going on. For the most part, there is none of the histrionics of cinema dramas – the huge shocks occur in the way that Broadbent gives a look to his wife, or the way that Sheen changes the tone of her voice with Mary after says some things about the family that Sheen doesn't like (although the winter section is about the death of the wife of Tom's brother, played by David Bradley, who is a quiet and ghostly figure, which is more obviously emotional). However, the powerful drama is centred on Mary, as she loses it while getting more drunk – Manville is fantastic in this role, completely believable as she turns spiteful and pitiful. The rest of the cast is fabulous as well – Broadbent and Sheen are perfect as the couple, and Wight is a wreck as a desperate and lonely old man with nothing in his life, and Imelda Staunton is great in a brief cameo as a patient of Gerri – but it is Manville who shines. It is a testament to the method in which Leigh works with his cast (who work with him many times over – Broadbent, Sheen, Manville, Staunton, Phil Davis were all in Vera Drake, for example), which gets the actors to truly inhabit their characters as they discover the story together with lots of improvisation. It means that the film feels like a genuine slice of life instead of just a film, with Leigh as a forensic examiner of human nature.

[A side note: this film has a Harry Potter Factor of 3: Professors Slughorn and Umbridge, and Filch]

The only problem I have with the film is the subliminal message that marriage is wonderful and that if you are not in a happy relationship, you deserve your pathetic unhappiness. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but the misery heaped on Mary and Ken seems excessive compared to the happiness of Tom and Gerri, and for their son when he gets into a relationship with a good woman. Mary comes across as a useless and desperate woman; she lusts after Tom and Gerri's son, who she has known since he was a young boy; she buys a dodgy car which breaks down a lot and she can't drive or park it properly; she is nasty when she first meets the new girlfriend of the son. Ken is a walking cardiac arrest waiting to happen, living only for his visits to Tom and Gerri, leering after Mary just because she is also single, being passed over at work because he is so useless. It seemed so heavy-handed when the rest of the film is so subtle and light and positive and showing such a happy couple. But that is the only issue I have with an otherwise excellent film.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Comics I Bought 11 November 2010 Part 1

2010-12-02T22:20:00.000Z

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I don't always get to the comic shop every Thursday (new comic day in the UK), and this is another example of such a catastrophic event: it includes my haul of books from two weeks, with the comics in this post coming out on 4 November.

Batman and Robin #16
The final issue of Batman and Robin as written by Grant Morrison, as he wraps up his story of bringing Bruce Wayne back to the present (you need to read Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne as well to get the full story). It's also about the evolution of his son Damian into the role of a superhero, and a fascinating new chapter in the concept of Batman (I'm amazed DC let Morrison do it, but we'll see how long it lasts). It's a shame that this book needed three issues to complete it, but at least we get Cameron Stewart and Frazer Irving, two great artists, and there are some great lines (particularly for Alfred). It's been a lot of fun seeing Dick Grayson and Damian as Batman and Robin, and I look forward to Morrison's next Batman story.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #38
I think it's my OCD collector mentality that is making me see this through to the end, because it's not the story any more. The strangest thing about the comic book is that it has made the series more like a comic book with its obsession with connections and including all aspects of back story, such as having the Master showing up. I don't really care about the Seed and Twilight and new universes; the only thing going for it in these last issues is that it's written by Joss Whedon himself – the dialogue has that lovely ring to it, with the characters sounding as they should and the usual pop culture references. However, it's not enough for me, at least; I just want to know how it ends.

Chaos War #3
In which things get even worse for our intrepid heroes. Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak have taken to heart the dictate (by Jack Kirby, I think) that the villain should be more powerful than the hero and gone even more extreme – it seems almost impossible that Hercules and Amadeus and the God Squad can beat the Chaos King, especially after he tricked Hercules into revealing the Council of the Godheads and the revelation of the assistance he has been receiving from a certain member of the Hercules cast … There are some nice dialogue flourishes (such as Amadeus and Thor) and this is a comic where a reincarnated Zeus and Galactus fight, and Khoi Pham does a great job showing the different god worlds from different cultures, but I honestly can't see how our guys are going to turn this around for the win. Which is a good thing.

Notes On A Film: The Kids Are All Right

2010-12-01T22:25:00.000Z

The Kids Are All Right is a charming drama that is also funny that is about the adults involved more than the kids themselves. The reason why they might not be all right is because they have two mothers: their parents (uptight doctor Nic, played by Annette Benning, and relaxed landscape gardener Jules, played by Julianne Moore) are lesbians in a long-term relationship who were both artificially inseminated by the same sperm. When the younger sibling Laser (Josh Hutcherson) wants to his biological father, he coerces his older sister Joni (Mia Wasikowska) to find out and set up the meeting. He turns out to be Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a laid-back man who owns a trendy restaurant and grows his own vegetable and rides a motorcycle but without any connections of his own. When he becomes involved with the family, things are knocked slightly off kilter.

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko and co-written with Stuart Blumberg, The Kids Are All Right is the sort of intelligent and absorbing films made for adults that don't get made as much as they should. It is very funny and very moving and well-acted: Moore is a joy as the lovable and more groovy parent; Ruffalo is subtly charming despite his slight immaturity and his not caring about consequences; Benning is terrific as the character who is the hardest to like, flinty and sharp, and not afraid to be disliked in a great performance. The film doesn't preach or push an agenda, telling the story of an unusual family that still works because it is based on love, and can withstand the wobbles created by a new ingredient in the formula (well, eventually). It is stylish and warm and very enjoyable, and it's easy to see why Oscar buzz surrounds the film.

The kids themselves are good, even if their stories are a little sidelined for the more dramatic aspects of the adult relationships (although the emotion of Joni when she finds herself at college on her own for the first time as her family drops her off was something I connected with). There is an odd element to the story that suggests that lesbians really need to get properly shagged by a man, which felt a little off (but that could be my woolly liberal side) – I can see it is part of the emotional drama aspect of the film but it seemed a strange message to include. The film doesn't seem to be fully resolved, with the Paul side of the story seemingly pushed off to the side when it is decided that it is no longer necessary, which seems to leave an important aspect neglected. However, these are not disruptive elements in a very good movie.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Comics I Bought 1 November 2010

2010-11-30T22:05:00.000Z

Another attempt to try to get back up to date, as I talk about the books I bought a few days after they originally came out in comic shops in the UK. A smaller batch than the previous week, so let's get to it.

Beasts of Burden/Hellboy
Confession: despite being a huge Evan Dorkin fan, I didn't buy the original mini-series when it first came out. I will get the trade; I also picked up this one-off crossover to assuage my guilt. This is utterly charming, scary, amusing, exciting, moving and delightful – Dorkin writes a good script (with input from Mike Mignola) about the group of cats and dogs that protect the town of Burden Hill, and Jill Thompson paints a beautiful comic: she draws a good Hellboy but it's the animals that are the attraction, each one very different and individual. The only unusual aspect was the lettering, which looked rather odd to me, but that's not a huge problem overall. I now have to have the original mini-series, and so should you.

Fantastic Four #584
I don't know if it's the mature and solid storytelling and art style of Steve Epting, but this issue of Fantastic Four seems be more balanced, more structured, with more purpose. Jonathan Hickman tells a lovely story of Ben becoming human for a time (after a cure was found by the kids, which will only last for an undetermined number of days once a year) and Johnny being a decent human being (well, mostly – he's still Johnny after all) and showing Ben a good time (including dinner with old friends, who look very much like Stan and Jack …) before an emotional pay-off. There are also plot developments with Sue acting as a referee on Utopia, and the Silver Surfer wanting some answers from Reed about Galactus (a great last page). This is more like what I expected from Hickman.

Incognito: Bad Influences #1
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Incognito was a very enjoyable pulp-inspired story about a former supervillain in witness protection and what happened when things went wrong. It deservedly got this sequel, which is equally entertaining as we see our protagonist Zack now signed on with the good guys. An incident that parallels the Shadow and his network of informers causes Zack's cover to be blown, so it is decided to use him to bring back in an undercover agent who has gone native and is about to become the leader of a terrorist organisation. It's a good set-up for an Incognito story, and Brubaker and Phillips do their usual exemplary job – taut storytelling, great art, excellent narration from the lead character, interesting characters. It's not Criminal, their other creator-owned work, but it's as good.

Usagi Yojimbo #132
Another issue of Usagi Yojimbo means another excellent comic book from Stan Sakai. This issue sees Usagi stumbling across an area he has visited before and a drum builder he helped out; of course, this story isn't just going to be about make a huge drum, and Sakai builds the connection and the threat until the final page of the issue. It is masterful stuff from a master craftsman who maintains a level of quality even in the quieter stories such as this.

Notes On A Film: RED

2010-11-29T22:39:00.000Z

I can't believe the cast list for an adaptation of a Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner comic book: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Morgan Freeman, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine. And room for Julian McMahon. How on earth did this film attract such a collection of well-known faces? The director, Robert Schwentke, must have some allure of which I am unaware – the most famous film he's done is probably last year's The Time Traveller's Wife, so I don't think it can be that.

RED is a silly but enjoyable action comedy film. Loosely based on the comic, it sees Bruce Willis as a retired black-ops CIA agent whose life is quiet in suburbia until his house is attacked in the night by a hit squad. Knowing that his phone has been tapped, he goes to the only person he has been talking to, Mary-Louise Parker, a customer service agent who works for Willis' pension office, knowing that she will be in trouble if he is. Together, they go on the run, Parker somewhat reluctantly at first, as Willis gets the old team back (Malkovich, Freeman, Mirren) to sort out the problem of who is after him, which brings them into conflict with Urban's CIA agent who has been ordered to hunt him down.

RED (an actual acronym, standing for Retired: Extremely Dangerous, stamped on Willis' file) is a nice blend of action set pieces and character comedy. It's funny to see Mirren shooting a massive machine gun, the chemistry between Willis and Parker is charming, Malkovich is suitably nutty, even Borgnine and Dreyfuss have fun with their roles. The action is mostly fun, although Schwentke is not a natural director of fight scenes and gunplay – the scene where we see Willis use his skills for the first time, it shows aftermath and not ability; there is a certain rhythm to the action but it cuts far too much to display believability in the supposed talents of the people involved, using edits to invoke the drama rather than the action itself. The final resolution scene involves too much organisation and detail that is skimmed over in the rapidity of the occurrence; however, the film is entertaining and silly and exciting and a passable way to spend some time but nothing more.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Comics I Bought 21 October 2010

2010-11-27T22:38:00.000Z

After all the effort to get up to date on collecting my thoughts on my weekly comic books, and then life got in the way so I'm back to playing catch-up. A huge haul of comics to get through for this week, so on with the show.

Batman and Robin #15
Frazer Irving draws a great Joker (and Grant Morrison has a lot of fun writing him) and a really good Damian, so this a good-looking comic book. Morrison is bringing everything together in his storyline about Dick Grayson and Damian, and the plans of Doctor Hurt (I really liked the full page shot of Batman and Robin bringing down the villain), so the final page is a really nice treat.

Chaos War #2
The return of a God Squad, with Hercules, Thor, Sersi, Venus and, erm, Galactus? The battle against the Chaos King continues, with things looking grim for our heroes, and we're only on the second issue. Apart from the chat with Eternity and the occasional joke from Amadeus (who seems particularly out of place, with his hypermind not working for the sake of the plot), it's a case of making the villain even more powerful and causing more problems, such as reawakening the dead. Khoi Pham's art seems more appropriate this issue, even with the Chris Bachalo flourishes (like the lines on the nose in a side profile), but it still doesn't feel like normal Hercules from Van Lente and Pak.

Fables #99
Ninety-nine issues and still going strong – an impressive achievement for a Vertigo ongoing series. I know that there are many people who think that Fables should have stopped after the end of the war in issue 75, but I'm not one of them. Bill Willingham is still producing quality stories – he has got all of folklore and fairy tales to work with – and I'm enjoying the machinations of the Dark Man (I like the nice touch that all the people he is using have a connection to Fables people), and it was rather fun seeing him chatting with the North Wind, who was announcing Frau Totenkinder's challenge to a duel. The art from guest artist Inaki Miranda is really good, a slick style with good line in faces (I loved the Dark Man's reaction to the challenge), and there is even a spooky full-page tribute to James Jean's cover to issue 76. Another good issue.

Morning Glories #3
A prologue set in 1490, with the phrase 'The hour of our release draws near' playing an important part, adds to the mystery at the heart of Morning Glories. Casey is trying to discover what has happened to Jade after last issue, and needs a lesson from Ike in how to get what she wants (and drops a Peanuts reference in the process); meanwhile, Jade wakes up to find herself in a part of the school with people in padded rooms, where she meets a violent Spanish girl who dispatches the guards before writing 'The hour of our release draws near' on the wall in blood. This series is doing a nice job of setting up the mystery and keeping the narrative moving, just as long as it remembers to pull the trigger eventually and not go all X-Files on us.

Turf #3
Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards certainly pack a lot in each issue of Turf; luckily, there's not quite as much writing in the first issue, but letterer John Workman is still given quite a workout. This has a lot of information exchange, as Eddie Falco learns about the aliens (via an unusual method), we learn about Pete O'Leary (in an old-fashioned comic strip style to contrast with the subject matter), and we learn about the nature of the vampires and the slightly different nature of Dragnomir. There is also planning and fighting and great artwork from Edwards,meaning that Turf is turning out to be a lot more enjoyable than I originally expected.

Vertigo Resurrected #1
It's good to finally have this Warren Ellis-written Hellblazer story published after all this time, even if it has lost its power somewhat in the interim. It's well written and well drawn (by Phil Jimenez), but it doesn't really feel like a proper John Constantine tale. This long-lost story is bolstered by a selection of different short stories from different Vertigo anthologies throughout the years. There is an exquisitely drawn tale from Brian Bolland, a Brian Azzarello story drawn by Esad Ribic (someone who usually does covers), an odd thing from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely that doesn't really work, the bizarre combination of Garth Ennis and Jim Lee that is four men talking in a car, as well as stories from Steven T Seagle & Tim Sale, Peter Milligan & Eduardo Risso, and a story written and drawn by Bill Willingham. A nice collection, if a little odd, but good as a historic document.

X-Factor #210
This is one of Peter David's in-between issues, where not a lot actually happens. The book has two threads: Rictor and Rahne get the baby checked and there is a mystery involved, and someone called Ballistique (no, I've no idea) is freed from mind blocks by Monet. Not a great issue, but not total rubbish either; just a filler that will presumably have impact later down the line.

From A Library: American Vampire

2010-11-26T22:09:00.000Z

American Vampire #1–5 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King

In a time when libraries in the UK face a difficult future, I just want to reiterate how much I love my local library. The sheer number of graphic novels and collections of comic books I've read via my library is fantastic, and that's only a small portion of what libraries provide. So it was just another in a line of pleasant surprises when this hardback collection appeared on the shelves. I'm a lucky chap.

This is the creator-owned concept from Snyder, a newcomer to the world of comics (and with only a collection of short stories to his name), but he's made a splash sufficient to attract Stephen King to write the back-up feature. The high concept here is that Skinner Sweet is a new kind of vampire, the first created on American soil, and it means that he is not immune to sunlight; he is also stronger and more deadly than his European counterparts (although he is still vulnerable to certain things). Snyder tells the story of a struggling young actress in Los Angeles in the 1920s and how she becomes involved with Skinner Sweet, while King tells the 'origin' story of Sweet in 1880 (under the direction of Snyder's notes). Sweet is an unpleasant character, and King seems have fun writing a thoroughly vicious cowboy story, with some nasty European vampires thrown in. Snyder makes an odd choice of telling a story that is not about the main character, but it is an intriguing tale in its own right, taking in early Hollywood and European vampires trying to run production. It's good stuff; Snyder has a good ability with character and dialogue, and he's created an interesting new version of an old idea, but bringing back the viciousness to vampires.

The other excellent half to this collection is the art from Albuquerque; I thought his art was good before on the likes of Blue Beetle, but he's got even better since then. His lines are sharp and slick, his style oozes atmosphere and moodiness, his Skinner Sweet in full vampire mode is horrific, his action is exciting. He even uses slightly different styles for the different time frames: the cowboy era is deliberately rougher and looser, compared with the slicker style of the 1920s. It adds to a really good book; I think Snyder is on to something here, and I'll be looking out for the next collection to find out more about Skinner Sweet.

Notes On A Film: The Social Network

2010-11-25T22:28:00.000Z

I was already lined up to like this film: I love the writing of Aaron Sorkin, I love the directing of David Fincher, and the story is inherently interesting. The fact that the film is really, really good is just a bonus. Sorkin's electric dialogue works really well here because all the characters involved are extremely intelligent (most of them are at Harvard, after all), and Fincher is a director who is good (and obsessed) with examining male relationships – women are not part of the cast, even if the idea of women play a central role in the initiation of the story. Add to this a cast that is perfect and excellent, and The Social Network is a wonderfully cinematic experience, which is bizarre when it's a film about people talking or typing on a computer.

The Social Network is a dramatic (i.e. based on fact but not sticking to the complete truth) telling of the creation of Facebook, and the effect it had on the people involved. The story is innately dramatic anyway: Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is at Harvard University when he is approached by the Winklevoss twins, star rowers at Harvard, who have an idea for a social network site for Harvard students and need Zuckerberg to do the coding. However, while stalling the twins with other code, Zuckerberg comes up with the idea for Facebook, which he sets up with investment from his friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who becomes the CFO of the company. Saverin was an economic student, so he had a traditional approach to finding money for the company; Zuckerberg had bigger ideas, which were fuelled by the arrival of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster, who dazzles Zuckerberg with his pizzazz. This leads to Saverin being edged out of his own company, leading to his lawsuit against Zuckerberg (who his also being sued by the Winklevoss twins for stealing the idea). The film cuts between the lawsuits and the creation of Facebook, and the development and destruction of relationships. And it is utterly exhilarating.

Everything about this film is great: the actors are all excellent, the script is superb and the direction serves the script beautifully. Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as an incredibly intelligent man who sees all aspects of a brilliant idea, who doesn't mean to deliberately screw people over. Garfield is excellent as Saverin, the real wounded party because of the betrayal of friendship. Timberlake is incredible as Parker, oozing charisma and energy. The Fincher factor of technical wizardry is shown in the portrayal of the identical twins: both parts are played by the same man, Armie Hammer (with a stand-in to play against), and he plays them both brilliantly. The story is completely absorbing; the two hours fly by due to the sparkling dialogue and the way that the film-makers have captured a defining moment of our time.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Book From A Library: The Passage

2010-11-24T22:18:00.000Z

By Justin Cronin

One of the great things about the internet: it was because of an item I skimmed on io9.com that led to me picking up this book. I hadn't heard of the author before, and I'm not a great fan of reading hardback books, but I was intrigued by the concept and was surprised to see it on the shelves of my local library (and that it was in the general fiction section).

The Passage is a huge book (766 pages) with small type, so it's a huge undertaking before getting into the story itself. And, apparently, it's the first in a trilogy, so we're talking about a lot of words here to tell the complete narrative. However, the prose and the idea were sufficiently entertaining and enthralling to have kept me hooked throughout.

The book starts in the near future, where a virus has been discovered that seems to cure all in illnesses and improve the functioning of the human body, and an FBI agent, Brad Wolgast, is going around the USA to find death-row inmates to sign up to become the first human test subjects for the treatment. When he is asked to bring in a six-year-old girl called Amy to be a subject, he begins to have second thoughts. The true nature of the virus is to turn the subjects into vampires, but a vicious and powerful version that kills to feed (rather than romantic types who glitter), with the exception of Amy. The military post where the experiments are being performed become ground zero for a devastating infection that practically wipes out civilisation in America.

The story jumps forward (after 250 pages of this set up) to 90 years later, and a colony of human survivors in California, who are protected by the large amount of sunshine and electrical lights that sufficiently disorientate the Virals, as they call them, so they can be killed (there is a weak spot above the heart). Cronin introduces us to the people who live there and how they survive, and what happens as some of them discover that the electrical supply for the lights begins to dwindle as the batteries fail. Also, Amy is still alive, although still not much physically developed into teenage years, and how she becomes connected to some of the survivors and the quest for the next stage in survival.

Cronin spends a lot of time with his characters, so you know all you need to know about them for the story, but it never feels like massive exposition dump due to his clear and clean writing style. He is also very atmospheric in his writing – there is a section that is a diary recollection of a survivor in the colony talking about her evacuation from a major city that really evoked the sense of dread and panic; I read this sequence as I was on the tube on my daily commute, filled with people in the middle of London, and it gave me chills as I walked out of the station and imagined what might happen to people in the same situation. It is a very long book but I was constantly engaged with the narrative and the various characters, and could easily kept reading more (the book ends with a conclusion of sorts, but it is obvious that it is only part of the story). There is a lot of world-building but it was done with aplomb, and the nature of the Virals he has created is a sufficiently new twist on the concept (at least to me) to mean that I wanted to read this about this world. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and look forward to being able to read the rest of the trilogy some time in the near future.

TV: Community

2010-11-20T22:50:00.000Z

I absolutely love Community: it very quickly became my new favourite sitcom (because I don't have legal access to 30 Rock at the moment), and we get double episodes of it each week on Viva – no, it's not a channel with which I am very familiar either (it's owned by MTV, if that helps) – so I'm very grateful to this bizarre free-to-air channel for this gift they have bestowed upon us.

Community is supposed to be about Jeff (Joel McHale), a former lawyer forced to go to Greendale Community College after the dubious nature of his law degree was discovered, and how he becomes a better person via his association with the Spanish study group he inadvertently forms when he tries to charm his way into the affections of Britta (Gillian Jacobs). However, it quickly becomes apparent that this is a real ensemble comedy. The other members of the group are: Abed (Danny Pudi), the pop culture-obsessed, borderline Asperger's Syndrome film student; Troy (Donald Glover), the former high school quarterback; Annie (Alison Brie), the prim and proper girl who had a crush on Troy in school; Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), a recently divorced mother; and Pierce (Chevy Chase), a former tycoon who has been married seven times, who says some of the most casually racist and inappropriate comments in the show. Together they form a fantastic cast who all get laughs in their own way.

Abed gets most of the big laughs with the references to film and television, as well as the meta humour when he refers to himself as if he was a character in a television show (“That's sort of my gimmick, but we did lean on that pretty hard last week. I can lay low for an episode”). The riffing on pop culture is a big aspect of the show, and I've got no problem with it, especially when the show does it so well. It's a very difficult balance to get right, but Community seems to do it with consummate ease. The other aspect is the really sharp dialogue, delivered with exquisite precision and speed, with the characters zinging off each in perfect harmony. Even Chevy Chase is funny, as a pathetic character who is often the butt of jokes, rather than his usual approach of being cocky and falling over.

The show is laugh-out-loud funny on a regular basis (such as Troy's advice to Jeff while preparing him to fight: 'Then you give him the Forest Whitaker eye', before doing that distinct askew look that Whitaker has), but it still manages to have a 'hugging and learning' plot line that doesn't feel trite or annoying, at the same time as ridiculing the mechanics of television shows. That's an amazing ability, and it's down to the writing and the cast; the writing is just amazing, with great lines and silliness, and the cast make it work, both in the humour and caring about them. I adore this sitcom and all the characters in it, and I can't wait for each new episode.

Notes On A Film: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1

2010-11-19T22:11:00.000Z

I am back and I have seen the first part of final Harry Potter film, so I'm going to ramble on about it in a completely biased fashion because I'm a fan of the whole Harry Potter thing (see my collection of Harry Potter-labelled posts for all my previous Harry Potter-related nonsense).

It's strange to discuss a film which is only half a film; I remember hearing stupid people complaining about the end of The Lord Of The Rings because it obviously hadn't ended, but at least that was a narrative arc of sorts. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 is a film without an end, waiting to finish. I'd rather have the whole thing in one sitting, but as I said: I'm a fan.

As a fan, I know the story quite well, so I spent a lot of time noticing which bits were missing. However, Steve Kloves did a great job on the script streamlining a big book into an entertaining narrative without losing the important points. The book had lots of internal stuff about the characters, as well as big chunks of exposition and excerpts from obituaries and biographies, which aren't going to work on film, and lots of non-plot conversations which weren't needed. Despite its long running time, the movie barely wastes much of it.

For those who don't know, the basic plot sees Voldemort in charge of the Ministry of Magic and out to kill Harry; Harry, along with Ron and Hermione, is on a mission to discover the missing horcruxes that contain portions of Voldemort's soul so that they can finally defeat him, as well as the discovery of the Deathly Hallows. This means that the middle third of the movie is the wizarding road trip, as our trio travel around the country to avoid their pursuers while trying to uncover clues to help them on their quest.

The first and third sections have the exciting stuff. After the funny 'seven Harry Potters', when Harry is being relocated from 4 Privet Drive, there is the Death Eater attack in a thunderstorm; there's the escape to Shaftesbury Avenue after the wedding and another attack by two Death Eaters; there is the infiltration of the Ministry of Magic to acquire a horcrux. In the third section, there is the really creepy sequence with Bathilda Bagshot, the destruction of the horcrux, the capture by snatchers and the escape from Malfoy manor, all exciting and really well-done sequences. In between, the film is much slower as our three leads are the only characters on screen; however, I didn't mind this because I wanted to spend time with these characters and see how the story moved along.

As mentioned, there was a lot of little thing eliminated for the sake of a smoother progression. No need for the pre-wedding planning, or the extra visit from Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour (Bill Nighy doing a Welsh accent for some reason), or the settling in to 12 Grimauld Place and getting Kreacher on their side or the long planning of the expedition to the Ministry of Magic. Nor was there time for Lupin's attempt to join the trio on their quest due to his feelings of anguish at having a baby with Tonks (which almost gets mentioned), or setting up the fake Ron to explain why he wasn't at Hogwarts. They don't bother with the separate locations when leaving Privet Drive (so no Ted Tonks or portkeys), going instead straight to The Burrows; Bill Weasley already has his werewolf scars, which were gained in the Death Eater attack. There's no explanation of the trace on saying 'Voldemort' out loud, or why our trio stop saying it; there's no need for the overhearing the group on the run (consisting of Ted Tonks, Griphook and Dean) for another perspective to how things are; the capture by the snatchers happens by accident instead of saying Voldemort's name, and Voldemort isn't called back from visiting Grindelwald when Bellatrix Lestrange has our trio in Malfoy Manor. All of this stuff is not needed for the telling of this section of the story. It's not necessary and not missed, and is only noticed by its absence for people who know the source material. It doesn't ruin the enjoyment of the movie.

David Yates does a good job directing the film, making it darker and more moody, although he still lacks the ability to bring the magical touches I so admire from Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban. The three leads do a good job of bearing the majority of screen time, with Rupert Grint perhaps outshining Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson by the fact of having the slightly lighter role. The adults are barely in it by comparison, but the likes of Jason Isaacs and Alan Rickman and Helena Bonham Carter bringing nice moments to their relatively fleeting presences. The mood is suitably sombre, with only the occasional flash of humour to bring a smile (the Phelps twins get most of the laughs as Fred and George Weasley, with Grint getting some smiles as well). The biggest laugh was of embarrassment, with a bizarre sequence where Harry gets Hermione to dance with him to lighten the mood when they have been on their own for a while and feeling low; it's starts off rather hideously badly with the squirming attempt at dancing, but they just about manage to save it by the end of the scene.

The most beautiful sequence is the animated telling of The Tale of The Three Brothers, which is done in a wonderful folklore/faux-puppetry style that is both appropriate and delightful. The rest of the CGI is pretty impressive – I particularly liked the patronuses, and Kreacher and Dobby were amazingly photo-realistic – and the film as a whole looks good. It makes me want to see the second half right now, to see how they visualise the remainder of the story, which means they must have done a good job. As an adult, I enjoyed it very much, even though some of the kids who had bunked off school to see the 10.30am showing didn't enjoy the more languid pace of the middle section, chatting to themselves because they didn't think much was happening, but everyone knows that kids don't have much of an attention span … This isn't really a review, because they would have to make a complete hash of things for me to dislike it, but if you are a fan then it is a very enjoyable film that makes you eager to see the second half; if you're not a fan, you might not have as much fun.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Goal Achieved. What Next?

2010-10-20T22:38:00.000+01:00

I was going to do another in my series of Comic Book Artists, where I post some great images sourced from the web from artists whose work I admire and talk about their career and try to discuss what I like about their work. However, Blogger is having some issues with Image Uploads today, so that shall have to wait.

It was then that it hit me – I had succeeded in my promise to myself of blogging about all of the comics I've bought, the films I've seen, the library books and graphic novels I've read, the DVDs and television I've watched. It's taken me a long time – I decided I was going to attempt this back in January – and I've had digressions and a couple of missed days along the way, but I am now talking about comic books and films that are up to the minute.

I am now suffering from the problem of wondering what to do now that I have accomplished my 'dream', but that's not the worst thing that can happen to a blogger. I wanted to take a moment to let the fact sink in that I did what I set out to do, but without becoming too smug because then I'll mess it up and stop blogging and I'll feel bad for ruining the accomplishment. It's a very difficult balance …

I've still got things to write about – I've bought some packs on sale from Gosh! and there are plenty of trade paperbacks I've bought, not to mention some television programmes in there – but for now, I'm going to take a moment to bask in the feeling of contentment.

Comics I Bought 15 October 2010

2010-10-19T21:55:00.010+01:00

These are my thoughts on comic books purchased just last week – I am finally up to date. I'm speechless. Better get my words down before I forget them.

Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #5
A month late, and a fill-in artist needed to finish the issue, but it's Grant Morrison writing Batman, so I'm not complaining too loudly: Bruce Wayne, still unsure of his identity as he travels through time, finds himself being asked to help investigate the death of his own parents (Martha's mother believes that Thomas Wayne had Martha killed). It's a wonderfully bizarre mixing of the current story with the history of Batman, and Ryan Sook's art is perfect moody noir art for the piece (even if it seems a little rushed in places).

Knight and Squire #1
An appropriate comic next – the spin-off mini-series starring Knight and Squire, the British Batman and Robin recently revived by Grant Morrison in his Batman run. Paul Cornell writes with tongue firmly in cheek (the rhyming slang on the first page is particularly fruity), as he introduces a whole world of British heroes and villains with that particularly British sensibility. And I do mean a whole host of British characters – the issue is full of completely new people; my favourites include the hero The Milkman, and the classic villains The First Eleven (cricket-themed villains who 'never caught on in America, for some reason'). The story itself is mostly unimportant, and Cornell plays the British tweeness to the full, but it's enjoyable and silly, which is fine with me. Jimmy Broxton provides pencils, and does a good job, making everyone distinct and drawing a reasonable pub. Bring on the next issue.

Morning Glories #2
As I explained before, I had Morning Glories on my pull list but Gosh! hadn't saved me my copy for some reason, so it only turned up in my haul this week (because it was the second printing of issue 2). This issue sees our six protagonists having their Breakfast Club detention but with discussion about how they got there involving finding out about the some of the weird stuff going on in the school. They are being tested by the teachers, seeing how they work together as a group and how they react to extreme stress – in this case, flooding the classroom with water which doesn't drain away and the windows are unbreakable. And the last page is another visual that makes sure you want to come back for the next issue. I'd still prefer cover artist Esquejo instead of interior artist Eisma, but the latter isn't a bad artist, and Spencer has a good handle on the dialogue and the plotting.

The Unwritten #18
A few pertinent pages of the fourteenth Tommy Taylor novel. Callendar trying to get rid of Mr Pullman. Our Tom Taylor taking acid and communing with his father and his 'sibling'. Finding out that the title of the comic refers to the villains of the piece, rather than to anything else. There's a lot going on in this issue of The Unwritten, after last issue's 'choose your own' story, and I'm not sure I've made all the connections. However, I did enjoy it, so Carey and Gross must be doing something right.

Comics I Bought 8 October 2010

2010-10-18T20:40:00.000+01:00

Writing about comics from this month – I am now topical. Not that this is my sole reason for doing this, I hasten to add; it's just nice to current for a change. I've been enjoying it for my Notes On A Film, so I shall enjoy it for comic books as well.

Buffy the Vampire Slayers #37
The end is in sight, as the final storyline of Season Eight draws closer to its conclusion. The appeal for me is in the dialogue from Joss Whedon (although Scott Allie is included as responsible for the script) – the characters sound exactly as they should (I can hear the actors speaking the lines) and the interaction is a bit more zingy. I'm still not sure about the Seed and the new universe thing as the reasons behind everything, but Whedon is complicating things nicely for a typical happy/messy climax; also, unless I'm being optimistic, Georges Jeanty's art is a little sharper this issue, which could be down to Andy Owens' inks.

Chaos War #1
Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak's run on Incredible Hercules has been a lot of fun, in the mix of entertaining superheroics and funny characterisation, so it's nice to see them get the chance at the mini-crossover mini-series. However, based on the first issue, I don't think that the combination of Hercules/Amadeus Cho and 'gather the heroes to fight the threat' works as well as the earlier comics. There is some good stuff in here, in the dialogue, the reaction of heroes when they believe that they have to rely on Herc, the interactions, Herc fighting the All-Fathers, but it seems to lose its sure footing when it comes to the getting the plot going regarding the battle against King Chaos. I don't know if it's the tonal shift between the two main elements of the book or if I can't handle the difference in expectations of a Herc book, but it didn't grab me as much as previous issues. It's not helped by the art; I'm not sure if it's Tom Palmer's inks on Khoi Pham's pencils, but the style is more diffuse and strangely rendered. We'll see how things progress in the second issue.

Liberty Annual 2010
This book is a charity comic for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so no negativity can be aimed at it; all the contributors gave their time for free and it benefits a good cause. There are lots of pin ups from the likes of Frank Miller, Skottie Young, Amanda Conner and Rob Liefeld (yeah, I know), and longer stories – a Conan story from Darick Robertson, a bizarre Boys story from Garth Ennis, and pages from Scott Morse, Don Simpson and Larry Marder. However, the best thing about the book is the Milk and Cheese story by Evan Dorkin; it's hysterical, it's incredibly violent and it ridicules the CBLDF and comic book fans. Apart from feeling good about buying it, this story alone is reason enough alone to buy the book.

SHIELD #4
Jonathan Hickman is working an interesting game with this series, with lots of intriguing elements, jumping back and forwards in time, setting up long-term plans and character interactions to have results down the line, as well as wonderfully bizarre notions such as the foetus god gestating in the sun and Leonardo Da Vinci becoming the first man in space in 1956. It's a great read, it makes me want to come back for the next issue, it makes me want to read it again to see the connections – this is the sort of response I want to get from a comic book. The story is enhanced by exquisite art from Dustin Weaver, with different art styles for different time periods, great panel design, able to handle people talking but then having changing location to the surface of the sun. Really good stuff.

Comics I Bought 2 October 2010

2010-10-17T17:44:00.000+01:00

It's time to return to my thoughts on the new comics I buy on a (hoped for) weekly basis. I'm so close to being up to date, it looks like I'll have no excuse for not talking about comic books bought that week. I'm not sure I how I feel about that … The books that arrived in UK comic shops on 30 September included Atlas #5, but I've already talked about Atlas in a post talking about the whole series, so that leaves one book:

Powers #6
The cover declares 'All New Story!!' and this does feel like Powers starting anew – after a nice visual gag (a splash page of the skyline with a golden statue of a hero turns to the next page where the statue has bird shit all over it), the story follows Walker and Sunrise on a typical Powers homicide, with cop black humour, and then revealing the extent of Sunrise's investigation into whether or not Walker has powers, just before we see Walker in his role as the secret cosmic protector of Earth defeating a many-tentacled beast in the Andes. So far, a typical (good) issue of Powers. It is the next case that proves the starting point for the next story, as Walker and Sunrise are brought into the murder of Damocles, a supposedly immortal hero and 'god' (one of The Golden Ones, a group of 'gods' who only helped when they thought it was worthy of them), only for a great game-changing last page. It made me smile and opens up some interesting avenues of dramatic possibilities. It's the type of thing that makes Powers so enjoyable. I look forward to the next issue.

Proud Of The BBC

2010-10-16T22:48:00.000+01:00

After yesterday's moaning about the current state of a BBC television programme, I thought I should be more positive about the BBC. I was thinking about how much the BBC means to me – how much I associate growing up with various things watched on television, or discovering music on BBC Radio London, about the fact that we pay a licence fee to pay for all of the BBC output (from the television channels to the radio channels to the great website and iPlayer) and how the freedom from advertising is so great. I would like to be able to express how much it means to me as an institution that has had such a profound affect on my life, and continues to do so, and how annoyed I feel by the threat against it from the Conservative half of the current coalition government, but I know I don't have the ability to adequately convey the emotions. Fortunately, I don't have to.

Mitch Benn is a musical comedian (he is a regular on The Now Show) who is also a geek – I recall a podcast interview he did with Neil Gaiman, if you want to gauge his level of geekery – and fervent supporter of the BBC. He has written a song – I'm Proud Of The BBC – and will be releasing it as a single due to the massive response he has received when performing it on his recent tour. Here is the video for the song (I hope the embedding works; I've never tried it before), which expresses love of the BBC better than I ever could. Thank you, Mitch.

Old Man Moans About New Film 2010

2010-10-15T22:37:00.000+01:00

This is going to sound like an old person complaining about how new stuff is rubbish and old stuff was better, but I hope to make it come across more rational and reasoned than all that. First, I'll talk about my interaction with the old thing before talking about the new thing, because that's what I do on my blog.

I grew up watching Barry Norman (no relation) – as I chatted about before – and it defined the idea of a film review programme to me: an expert in the area, passionate about the field, sharing views on films, with occasional informative chats with film-makers. I never got the same vibe from Jonathan Ross because he was a slave to multiple masters (he had his chat show, so he had to be nice to everyone), so it was more about him than the films. I know it's old-fashioned – intelligent discourse on the subject of interest from people who know what they're doing – but it's what I want from a television programme, especially on BBC1.

I understand that things have to change, and I'm impressed that the BBC decided to do something new with the Film programme. I was surprised at the choice of Claudia Winkleman, but she's an experienced presenter so it makes sense of sorts. It was also sensible to have co-presenter in the form of film journalist Danny Leigh, someone to bounce against instead of the old format. I also don't mind a team of contributors with a different viewpoint, to add some dimension to proceedings. I just didn't expect what we got on Wednesday night.

My girlfriend described it best when she said that it was 'a visual blog' – it was like watching the internet done as a mainstream television programme, and not in a good way. (Zoe Margolis had the other best description: 'They've BBC3-ed it'.) First things first – there is no need for it to be live: the stupid need for 'interactivity' is a ridiculous modern development, reading out people's texts/emails (I don't care what stupid people think about things, thanks very much), and it cheapens the programme. I was cringing with the most exquisite embarrassment when Chris Hewitt was interviewing Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield at the London Film Festival; it was awful and there was no need for it.

An aside: I like Chris Hewitt. I had a week's work experience at Empire magazine in 2003, which was a fantastic time, and Hewitt was there; I remember him doing word-perfect renditions of Father Ted one day and that meant he was good in my books. His support of geeky films in Empire has been good, and his Videoblogisode Man web videos from San Diego Comic Con have been fantastic. I was really happy when I heard he would be contributing; I thought he did a good job, although I didn't think that he needed to be painted as the total geek with the Darth Vader trainers – was it necessary? Anyway, well done on not swearing live on television, Chris (I loved the line from today's Empire newsletter: 'We now know, however, that icing "Don't say fuck" on a cake is an effective means of ensuring that Chris Hewitt doesn't swear on live TV').

Winkleman looked nervous doing the show (as she tweeted before: So I'm not nervous at all then. *vomits into bucket*); I don't know if this was because she couldn't read the autocue because of too much eye make-up (another thing she tweeted about: I have so much eyeliner on I can't open my eyes. SHITTING IT.). She talked a little too fast, which might be her usual style, and 'loved' too many things to compensate for her nervousness, and had a strange habit of not including certain people's first names when describing them ('the Ishiguro novel'). She didn't seem at all comfortable, and she and Leigh didn't really connect. Leigh was fine, sounding like his columns I've read at The Guardian, although he does wave his hands around too much, and the two of them didn't seem to listen to each other when they were making a point about a film, just trying to get out what they had to say.

The real low point was the Top Five section. Not only was this the epitome of the 'visual blog' – Top Fives, or Top Tens, are the staple of the blog world and it is where it should stay because it is cheap and silly – but it was amateur and pointless and stupid. The best thing about it was the fact that it was in voice-over, so you didn't have to see the face of Charlie Lyne – the 'blogger' contributor who doesn't deserve to be on telly (and that's not jealousy; he looks like a school kid on Newsround who's been given a few minutes on screen for no reason). I couldn't believe that I was watching a programme that was on BBC1 in the late evening when I saw his face appear on screen, nor believe the sound of his voice. It was mind-boggling.

I love film and I love good programmes about film; this wasn't one. I wanted to enjoy the new Film 2010, but I didn't. I know that I'm probably not the target audience for the show any more, but it doesn't mean that it can't be enjoyable for everyone. I hope that it was first night wobbles and that it needs time to settle in, but I'm not sure. I felt myself realising how old I was as I watched the show, but that doesn't make my reaction any less valid.