Freethinking: a journal of popular culture .

DVD REVIEW: SATAN'S BABY DOLL (1983)

2012-02-02T12:52:00.000Z

A shorter version of this review appeared on amazon.co.uk under the title Glum and received a 2 star rating. This version incorporates XXX material cut from that review. Because of this, print quality of the reinserted material may not be as good. Caution: contains plot spoilers.

The best bit of this disc was the trailer for a sex and cannibalism movie whose name I can't remember but must look up and order! Lots of nudity, explicit sex, straight and lesbian, and some heart ripping out and munching and much more fun in a couple of minutes than in the entirety of this film.

Completely misleading cover (reminiscent of Boris Vallejo) as there's no devil anywhere. The triple X reinserts aren't remotely hardcore either so don't get too excited when the screen gets grainy. It consists mostly of a hand rubbing pubic hair. Okay, the naked beautiful faux-nun fondling herself isn't bad but there's a lot less sex than you'd expect. There isn't much gore either and what there is is pretty feeble. A fairly innocuous dessicated corpse which has been laying around the crypt in full view comes to life and strangles the servant (see below).

Most of the film is the cast emoting as loudly as they can. You have the nasty patriarch bullying and intimidating everyone. There's the blubbering servant who wants to save the daughter from being possessed by the soul of the dead (naked) mother in the catacombs -too late. Let's not forget the beautiful virgin faux-nun who relives her sexual tension by masturbating. The patriarch's crippled brother who wasn't crippled until the patriarch caught him shagging his wife. The doctor who was also shagging the wife. And the beautiful teenage daughter who also likes touching herself.

Basically it's a story of revenge which starts when the entire cast gather round the naked body of the dead wife. The naked wife has shagged the crippled brother and the doctor (and probably anything else on two legs). The patriarch wants to shag the beautiful faux-nun who fondles herself but she won't do it with him. Patriarch locks his crippled brother in the crypt to starve to death.

The beautiful naked dead wife possesses her daughter. The daughter doesn't actually do much except stand around near an intended victim. The first one to get offed is the servant (see above). Using her daughter to actually appear in person, the BNDW lures the trapped crippled brother to a hole which he falls into and dies (a mercy killing actually). The Patriarch beats the beautiful faux-nun and locks her up. The BNDW reveals herself to the Patriarch who falls over a balcony. The possessed daughter goes to the nun whom we discover is the love of her mother's life (and death it seems) and who wants her (cue more pubic hair fondling) to be her possessed daughter's lover. The nun, however has a conscience and goes to the naked corpse, lies on top of her and kisses her in a sort of necrophiliac lesbian scene and the corpse kills her so they are together in death. The End. Breath sigh of relief that it's all over.

And I've probably made it sound better than it is. Dull, glum, and dull. Now what was the title of that opening trailer? Something with 'naked' 'cannibal' and 'queen' in it I think.

Post Script.

Actually, it's Love Goddess of the Cannibals. Close enough.

BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF THE NME by PAT LONG (Portico, 2012)

2012-01-31T17:09:00.000Z

Expanded from an Amazon 5 star review entitled: The book that needed to be written.

The NME was a phenomenon. For the last 50 years anyone seriously interested in modern music will have read it at some time in their lives. While its importance has waxed and waned, it was nevertheless a serious British cultural icon. For me that was roughly from 1962-1982 (maybe a bit later) which covered my teenage years when just about everyone in my class read it and talked about what it contained and argued about the msuic, up the through (for me anyway) its golden age of superstar writers like Charles Shaar Murray, Julie Burchill, Nick Kent, Tony Parsons and so on. Murray remains to this day one of the best writers about music and its trappings.

Burchill & Parsons

Writer Pat Long covers the NME's long internal story with a fair amount of detail -the feuding, the drugs, the highs and lows and the newspaper's coverage of the ever changing face of music. He hits the nail on the head with the appearance of Q magazine signalling a sea-change in readers' attitudes as I was one of those who wanted something more the NME could offer and found it in a glossy monthly magazine.

The NME was an important part of my cultural life and I found this account fascinating, consuming it in little over a day as if it had the readability of a taut thriller.

Criticism? Maybe I'd have a liked a little more detail of the cassettes the NME released which did a lot to widen my musical taste. Jazz, nu-country, new wave, and much more was all there for a very small sum. My favourite was All Africa Radio which showed me a new world of music before World Music was invented and which provides the seeds for very fruitful years of exploration. Also he skips lightly over the rise of the Internet while acknowledging its world-changing importance. But that's just me. Probably every reader will find their own areas in which they'd like more detail. However, as far as I can tell, this is an accurately told tale and one which needed to be told.

And this is where I came in

Post Script.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a member of the Amazon Vine programme whereby I get to pick two items twice a month from a list of freebies. Often the list is pretty crap but sometimes it comes up with a gem. This was one of them.

DVD: SHOCK-O-RAMA HORROR COLLECTION

2012-01-22T18:09:00.000Z

Okay, this requires a little explanation.

Explanation

A. Shock-O-Rama is the name of a horror movie label owned by Independent Cinema.

B. Shock-O-Rama is the title of this 4-DVD box set.

C. Shock-O-Rama is the title of one of the movies in this set.

D. Independent Cinema also owns the Seduction Cinema label. Seduction Cinema is known primarily for soft-core lesbian movies which are often cash-in's on more popular films like Planet of the Apes, LoTR (Lord of the G-Strings), etc. Some of these are not necessarily parodies as Women In Black (aka Vampire Obsession) is actually a bleak study of alienation (with lengthy soft-core lesbian scenes and some horror) as is The Erotic Ghost.

So I've been told.

E. Seduction Cinema's biggest star is Misty Mundae (aka Erin Brown). Others include Julian Wells and A.J. Khan.

F. These three actresses also appear in most of the Shock-O-Rama movies in this collection. This is not a coincidence.

Julian Wells & Misty Mundae

In praise of Brett Piper

All four of these DTV movies were written and directed by horror vet Brett Piper, filmed on video on a low budget, often in little more than a week. What is surprising is how good they actually are. Yes, that's right, I said good. Well, by cheap DTV horror movie standards. The stories are actually coherent, the characters are all distinctive, the actors aren't great and usually overact but it's forgivable. Piper knows how to frame a scene -I almost commented that the mise-en-scene is quite distinctive but that's a bit pretentious. The films are never dull. Piper eschews (probably for cost reasons) CGI but does use, and quite effectively too for the low budget, stop-motion animation and mechanical effects. Really they look like they were made for ten times the actual cost.

And so the films themselves, in the order they appear in the box.

Shock-O-Rama.

This is an anthology consisting of three separate stories.

In a piece of meta-fiction, soft-core porn star Rebecca Raven (Misty Mundae) has angrily quit and the two idiot producers are looking for a new star so they watch a couple of short films submitted to them. In the first, a couple of tiny stop-motion aline criminals on the run crash into a scrap yard run by a moron with girlfriend troubles and mayhem ensues which includes a giant robot made out of scrap. This is a lot of fun. Meanwhile Raven has gone to a house in the middle of nowhere, cuts herself shaving her legs in the bath and the blood which goes down the drain resurrects a previous owner. Raven ends up in the toolshed where she finds a... Oh come on, we've all seen The Evil Dead, haven't we? In the third film, mad scientist Julian Wells is secretly experimenting on some young women, giving them lurid dreams which involve a naked Julian Wells. One such dream turns into a genuinely horrifying nightmare which caught me by surprise when I didn't notice a jump cut where a real woman's body was substituted for a prosthetic. That doesn't happen very often.

I really enjoyed this one.

Screaming Dead

A film of four fifths and one fifth. A cult photographer takes pictures of women under extreme distress because, he says, they expose how women are exploited in society. This is a crock of shit: he gets off on it. After the quite disturbing scene setting, he recruits three women and takes them to a spooky house along with his female assistant and encounters the macho representative of the owners who he doesn't want there but has to be there because he's our hero. Anyway, nutty sadistic photographer spends some time getting the women in the appropriate state of mind -vulnerable and scared- by a variety of psychological tricks including lying, bullying and creating pretend ghosts. Then he -and the rest of them- encounter the ghost of a previous occupant who liked to torture young men but is happy to give women a go.

This is really quite well done. Relatively slow paced, there's always enough happening to keep the interest until gore gets going. Like the previous film, there's an unexpected gore shock which caught me by surprise. The acting isn't up to much but in most other respects this is quite well done. After watching this, I ordered three other of Piper's movies.

Bacterium

Three young people paint-balling in the woods get trapped in house with a mutating bacterium and a mad scientist who risk getting shot at by soldiers if they try to leave and helped by two other scientists in sealed suits. The virus mutates into an ickily effective blob-type thing which could destroy the world. Rather than risk a nuke, the govt decides on a black hole bomb.

Piper really does know how to make an entertaining low budget horror movie. He keeps things eventful while building up the suspense to his big set-pieces. Lacking the usual ensemble of actors from the other three in this set raises the acting bar a little.

Bite Me!

Mutated blood-sucking ticks emerge from a box of marijuana, a special strain created by the government, and get loose in a strip club. Their bite doesn't kill but it does induce strange behaviour. This one is played for laughs. All three strippers are useless for various reasons. The rat-like manager is fighting off a takeover from butch businessperson Julian Wells (perhaps the best actor of the studios soft-core lesbo porn regulars). The barwoman is a martial arts expert and part-time whore. There's a nutty CIA agent and our hero is a dumb pest controller. Eventually the ticks get really big.

Slightly less fun than it sounds and the weakest in the box, it still is fun.

This is the only photo of the monster I could find. Honest!

Conclusion

To be honest, I wasn't expecting to enjoy this box set (which has plenty of extras) as much as I did. Writer/director Brett Piper is genuinely skilled in, to coin a phrase, the field of schlock-o-rama. He knows exactly how to create an entertaining junk horror movie which entertains from start to finish and to watch four in a row is, for a horror movie fan, quite a find. I'll even forgive Piper for writing (he didn't direct) Troma's A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell.

Post Script.

Mundae left the studio to work in mainstream Hollywood as Erin Brown and, while she's found some work, she doesn't seem to have done much recently.
Julian Wells left the business and now works as a journalist in L.A.

DVD REVIEW: SCI-FI INVASIONS (MILL CREEK, 2011, 12 DISCS), PART 2

2012-01-13T20:06:00.000Z

Introduction.

See previous post for the general intro to this box set. I should have mentioned that the transfers are generally so poor that on my 23inch monitor they look blurry so I generally reduce the size to less that half in order to get a picture that is watchable. As for things like subtitles; you must be joking.

The robots

The villains

The good girl

Our hero (centre)

Disc 2

War Of The Robots (1978)

This is actually the second film on the disc but I couldn't find photos for the first on Google, but these are better anyway. This does count as invasion though it's the humans invading the alien planet in search of the kidnapped scientist who is the only one who knows the codes to stop a nuclear meltdown (sloppy organisation there) and the hero's girlfriend. Spoiler alert: see above, it's the photo labelled 'the villains'. The good girl is hopelessly in love with the hero who only has eyes for his siren girlfriend (who the scientist has the hots for) and at the end has to choose which one to save. Spoiler alert: there's a happy end. The space battles are excruciatingly bad (a year after Star Wars). The dubbing is by English actors including one who has to adopt a southern drawl. The robots are terrible shots, probably because their guns go poo poo wing! as opposed to the humans whose guns go wing wing poo! and hit every time. The sets are terrible though a couple of Italian (probably somewhere in Rome) external locations look okay. There is a story but it really isn't worth repeating.

Hands of Steel (1986)

Not an invasion film. In the near polluted future, an evil polluting industrialist (John Saxon in a guest role) sends a cyborg to kill an elderly blind crippled environmentalist -what a stinker! But the cyborg is starting to get his human memories back and only puts the ebce in hospital and so has to go on the run from everyone. The first half of the film isn't really interesting but around the halfway mark the action picks up and just doesn't stop. We find out that the cyborg (our hero) is invulnerable to bullets but he can get beaten up pretty badly. There's also a demented female cyborg who kicks the crap out of him in a really good scene. This isn't a good film by any standards, though it is half an acceptable action movie with some good fight scenes.

984: Prisoner of the Future (1982)

After ten minutes I checked IMDB to see if this film was what I thought it was and I was right. It's a bleak nihilistic totally depressing Canadian art movie with no entertainment value whatsoever. I flicked to the end to watch the final scenes as mentioned in the solitary (no surprise there) review. I also learned from IMDB that this was commissioned as a pilot. Jumping Jesus Christ! I'm surprised this film wasn't buried the first time anyone saw the complete cut.

Top Line (1988)

Spoiler alert: This Italian movie, filmed in English, actually is an alien invasion movie. Franco Nero finds (after 20 minutes in which nothing of interest happens) an alien spaceship buried inside a mountain and then finds that pretty much every authority in the world is after them. And then nothing much of interest happens again for a while until he and his new girlfriend get chased by a cyborg which, in true Terminator style, gets half his human face ripped off revealing a robot eyeball which moves from side to side with a whirring noise until the cyborg gets dismembered by a pissed off bull. An even better scene is when he's confronted by his beautiful ex-wife who metamorphoses quite gruesomely into an alien and he learns the real truth about the world. Sorry but even I have limits. You'll have to watch the movie to find out what it is. (But you can probably have a good guess.)

DVD REVIEW: SCI-FI INVASIONS (MILL CREEK, 2011, 12 DISCS), PART 1

2012-01-12T19:32:00.000Z

Introduction.

Every so often I indulge myself with one of these multi-movie cheapo box sets from Mill Creek. Usually it's a horror compilation, this time it's science fiction with theme (according to the set's title) of invasion. Now even using the word invasion in it's broadest sense which, in this context, I'll take to mean unwanted intrusion by someone or something not native to the movie's environment (you'll see what I mean as we go through the individual films), there are a few which don't fit the category by any stretch of the imagination.

Now if all the movies aren't in the public domain which, I suspect, is most of them, then Mill Creek got the rights for peanuts. None of them have ever been remastered, just copied directly to DVD, and tend to look shoddy. Usually they tend to be quite old from the 50s to the 70's, some even earlier. In this box they're mainly from the 70s & 80s with one dating 1991 and the earliest from 1936. And the chances are that most of them won't be very good but at a cost of about 25p per film, so what. I'm looking for diamonds in the rough.

As usual I watch them on my pc and when I get bored (often) I'll use the slider to move it along a minute or two and can watch a 90 minute movie in 20 minutes. Normally I pick my way through these set by choosing the film I'm most interested in. However, as I'm intending to review the whole box set, I'll do it a disc at a time, starting from the beginning. And here we go.

Disc 1.

Brain Twisters (1991).

Scientist drugs students to turn them violent. Dull, no nudity/sex, minimal gore, no invasion except of the bloodstream. Flicked through it very quickly.

The Head (1959)

A black and white cheapo from an independent studio, though studio is hardly the right word. A scientist manages to a keep a dog's head alive. His mad scientist assistant keeps his head alive when he dies of a heart attack so the scientist can help him transfer the head of a hunchback nurse he's fallen in love with onto the body of a stripper. Which is what happens, though it all, naturally, ends badly. The limited budget with most of the film shot at night, the small sets, and the adequacy of the actors give this an oddly engaging and claustrophobic feel, despite the cliched melodrama. It's not good but it's better than I expected.

The Day Time Ended (1980)

This is the first which actually involves aliens invading, though they only invade an isolated modernistic house and barn where a family live. I saw this on video in the early 80's. It stars forgotten (by me at least) character actor Jim Davis (a name I associate with the creator of Garfield) and (the less forgotten) Dorothy Malone. Things in it include: a time and size-shifting glowing green pyramid, a tiny friendly alien, a hostile small space craft, two stop motion monsters fighting with the winner attacking the family, lots of flashing lights, and the family getting zapped to the future for a happy end. (Oh, spoiler warning.) It's engaging enough in a low key way.

Eyes Behind The Stars (1978)

Some dubbed Italian crap involving a couple being chased by government agents after accidentally photographing an alien space ship. I had to switch if off half way through and felt absolutely no desire to find out what happened at the end.

Films

Abraxas - Guardian of the Universe
The Alien Factor
Alien Prey
The Amazing Transparent Man
Assassin
The Bat (1959)
Battle Beyond the Sun
Beyond the Moon
Brain Twisters
The Brother from Another Planet (yes, the John Sayles movie)
The Crater Lake Monster
The Creeping Terror
The Day Time Ended
Death Machines
Escape from Galaxy 3
Evil Brain from Outer Space
Extraterrestrial Visitors
The Eyes Behind The Stars
Fugitive Alien
Future Hunters
Future Women
Galaxina
The Giant of Metropolis
Hands of Steel
The Head
Horror High
Hundra
Hyper Sapien: People From Another Star
Invaders From Space
It's Alive (not the one you're thinking of)
Life Returns
The Manster
Mission Stardust
Morons from Outer Space (yes, the British film with Jimmy Nail)
Night Fright
Night of the Blood Beast
Primal Impulse
R.O.T.O.R.
Raiders of Atlantis
Robo Vampire
Rocket Attack U.S.A.
Slipstream (yes, the one with Mark Hamill)
Star Knight
Star Pilot
Top Line
Trapped by Television
War of the Robots
The Wasp Woman
Welcome To Blood City

"Oh what fun we had."

To be continued...

GRAPHIC NOVEL: ABSOLUTE PROMETHEA VOL.3 by ALAN MOORE & J H WILLIAMS111 (DC, 2011)

2012-01-05T19:17:00.000Z

This deserves a much better review than I can give it. In terms of story, Promethea isn't that complicated, in terms of ideas it's certainly Alan Moore's most philosophical work. Or perhaps that should be mystical or metaphysical.

Sophie/Promethea have returned from heaven only to be forced into a fight with her friend Stacia/the Grace Branagh Promethea incarnation. After a trial in the Etheria, Sophie goes on the run and refuses to invoke Promethea who will end the the world. Hounded by the FBI and hunted by Tom Strong, Sophie becomes Promethea and ends the world. Of course that isn't the end of the story.

Volume 3 returns to the more accessible narrative of the first volume and is a wild exciting ride which also resolves the fates of the many supporting characters by the penultimate chapter. The last chapter is something else again and has to be seen to be believed. Whatever you may think of it, it's certainly unique.

What is pretty much inarguable is that it's his most beautifully illustrated series and one which places the most demands on the artist; though I'm sure that Linda Gebbie on Lost Girls has her adherents. J. H. Williams 111 (who came to my attention with Chase back in the 90's) does a phenomenal job using a range of artistic and design techniques without ever losing sight of the narrative. On that level alone, I'd argue that it is one of the finest graphic novels ever. One minor but engaging and amusing part is how Williams deliberately copies the style of the artists who drew characters from other ABC titles, often simultaneously in one panel.

I've criticised the lack of extras in previous volumes, particularly the first, but I have no complaints (well, just a couple) about this one. Nothing from Moore but no-one expected that. There are the complete Little Margie in Magic Misty Land (Moore's tribute to Little Nemo In Slumberland) illustrated by Eric Shanower, some Promethea-related bits and pieces from other ABC comics (including an extract, but alas not the complete episode, from Tom Strong's view of the end of the world), Williams writing about visually creating (drawing seems such an inadequate in the context) Promethea, Moore's script for chapter 29, and a half-size replica of the poster version of the final chapter.

And that is it, the conclusion to one of Alan Moore's finest graphic novels. Yes, these three Absolute volumes are expensive but they're worth every penny.

This review has just been submitted to amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

SOCIETY: THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE MURDER AND THE DAILY MAIL

2012-01-04T18:45:00.000Z

I'm a regular critic of the Daily Mail because of its right-wing reactionary attitude but sometimes it gets it right and when it does it deserves due credit.

The Mail's response to the initial acquittal of those accused of Stephen Lawrence's murder is an example of when it got it absolutely correct. Unlike every other newspaper, it published the names and photographs of the killers and accused them of the murder. They could have been taken to court for libel but they weren't. It may be that, at the time, the editor also saw an opportunity to raise the paper's profile but I also have no doubt that it was primarily sparked by genuine outrage at this vile racist murder by five scumbags who seemed to have gotten away with it.

Ever since they have consistently maintained their position, actively supporting the campaign for justice by Stephen Lawrence's mother. Due, in part, to their efforts the law on double jeopardize was repealed. In the years since the murder and as a reaction to it, if racism has not gone away it has certainly gone underground. The institutionalised racism of the police force has to a large extent gone, though I suspect not completely. Attitudes to racism most definitely have changed for the better.

And two of Stephen Lawrence's murderers have today been been given long sentences. Some justice has finally been seen to be done. If the other three can't be brought to justice, I hope their lives are as miserable as possible. This result certainly won't help them.

The Daily Mail, of course, is taking as much credit as it can and playing up its role as far as it can. For once, I can't find it in my heart to criticise the paper for it. What they did, as they claim, was in the finest tradition of British journalism.

Happy New Year everybody.

GRAPHIC NOVEL: DC THE NEW 52 (DC, 2011)

2011-12-30T20:40:00.000Z

Take a deep breath and hold on to your seats because we’ve got a long wild ride ahead into one of the boldest decisions ever taken by a comics publisher and into 1200 pages of comics.

The superhero genre of comics is often derided by critics as inferior to more ‘mature’ or ‘serious’ works of graphic storytelling; though I suspect that literary snobbery is aimed as much at the fans whom these critics see as reading nothing else which, pretty much like most generalisations, both is and isn’t true. I have a broad taste in comics or graphic novels or whatever it is you want to call them but I still keep coming back to superheroes. Why? Because they’re just so much damn fun which is why they’ve not only lasted but come to be the most popular genre of comics. This massive book demonstrates why that is so.

But it was still a big gamble for publishers DC Comics. They cancelled all their titles and rebooted their shared universe from scratch with 52 No.1’s. And, in my opinion, they were extremely clever in the way they went about it. This new universe begins five years after the appearance of superheroes which allows some stories which worked well and were popular from the previous continuity to be carried on (specifically titles which feature Batman) and to adapt elements from it to makes changes to characters (Barbara Gordon was crippled by the Joker but has now recovered and is back as Batgirl). Vertigo (DC’s mature readers imprint) characters which were owned by DC (Swamp Thing, Animal Man, John Constantine, etc) have been brought into the new shared superhero universe. Elements of the Wildstorm imprint bought by DC years ago and previously in their own separate universe are now integrated into DC’s –Stormwatch, Grifter, Voodoo. Some defunct characters have been revitalised (Resurrection Man – a favourite of mine from the 90’s- I,Vampire, Omac). And there are a handful of new titles –Justice League Dark, Frankenstein Agent of Shade, and Demon Knights.

DC planned this as a jumping on point, though no doubt being well aware that for others, like a long-standing DC superhero fan and friend of mine, it could also be a jumping-off point. No doubt some did indeed jump off but many more jumped on. For the first time in decades, DC outsold Marvel Comics and while sales have dropped after the initial explosion, DC are still matching Marvel. So as a commercial exercise, there’s no question that DC’s New Universe has been a significant success.

But has it also been a creative one?

Well, having just read all 52 first issues and read hundreds of reviews on various websites of these and successive issues, the answer to that is a qualified yes. So, time to look at the book itself.

Although it begins with the first title of the New Universe published, it doesn’t reprint them in order of publication. Instead, they are arranged into categories. The first section is Justice League and does indeed begin with that title, setting it five years before the new current continuity when superheroes are just beginning to (re?)emerge. And concerns Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) meeting Batman, for the first time, in Gotham against a mutual alien enemy. It ends up in Metropolis where GL gets the crap knocked out of him by –oh come on; I don’t really have to tell you by whom. So these first few issues of JL are the origins of the current team. Next up is the founding of Justice League International in the ‘present’ day. Other titles in this section include Aquaman, Wonder Woman (superb), The Flash, Green Arrow (more in line with the character as shown in the tv series Smallville), The Savage Hawkman, etc. You might do a double-take when you see Mister Terrific in there. This is the first case in the book of DC shoehorning in a title which doesn’t fit anywhere else; unless there’s something they aren’t telling us.

The next section consists of four titles, one of them being the section title Superman, but it’s preceded by the Grant Morrison written Action Comics which is chronologically the earliest title and features Superman at the beginning of his career when his powers are limited (he can only leap buildings at a single bound, etc), he doesn’t have a proper costume as such, and he’s after crooked businessmen which puts him in line with the Siegel and Schuster original character. And it’s wonderful. In the George Perez scripted Superman, he’s in his new costume (no pants on top). The other titles are Superboy and Supergirl who seem to be newish takes on these characters.

The 11 titles of the Batman section are often the least changed yet the most startling. The final page at the end of Detective Comics is both surprising and deeply shocking and is guaranteed to get you to buy the next issue. Catwoman is already almost a legend for its graphic depiction of rough costumed sex between her and Batman. I’ve already mentioned the new/old Batgirl. There are also the usual suspects –Nightwing and Birds of Prey. Two new titles are Batwing (an African Batman) and Red Hood & the Outlaws which stars Jason Todd, Roy Harper, and a rather controversial version of Starfire. And then there’s Batwoman (which was delayed for months so as to fit in with the DCnU) which is in a league of its own. If you only buy one title, this is it.

I’ll skip the four Green Lantern titles of which only The New Guardians caught my interest and move quickly on to The Dark which happens to be the most interesting and diverse collection of titles which all happen to be generally pretty good or better. They also share something else in common, apart from the fact they appear to involve the supernatural, in that they are all setup issues introducing the reader to the characters. Justice League Dark features Madam Xanadu trying to form –oh you guessed- which includes, among others, John Constantine and the Enchantress. Animal Man and Swamp Thing have already garnered high praise. I, Vampire is probably the most surprising title to be revived and is about vampires surviving in a world of superheroes. Resurrection Man is the title I would have second least expected to be revived but the one which most delighted me. Demon Knights (written by Paul Cornell) is either Justice League Medieval or an earlier version of Stormwatch (see above). Add Frankenstein/Shade and that’s 7 trades I’ll be buying when they come out.

Less interesting, but not without interest, is The Edge a disparate collection of titles bunged together to call them something. There’s the Wildstorm titles (see above), Deathstroke and The Suicide Squad (same old, same old), Blackhawks (a completely new team of covert operatives), and Men of War (the grandson of an old DC character). But I’ve saved the best till last. Dan Didio and Keith Giffen channel the spirit of Jack Kirby in a new over the top version of his character O.M.A.C whose Mohawk hairdo is now an energy field of some kind. In All-Star Western, Jonah Hex has been hired to investigate the Ripper-like murders of prostitutes in Gotham City and finds himself way over his head in one of the best of the New 52 titles.

And finally, Young Justice starring the younger heroes though what Hawk & Dove are doing there I’ve no idea. There’s a nice reboot of the Jaime Reyes incarnation of the Blue Beetle which is welcome and a very promising Teen Titans. Static Shock mildly disappoints and neither of the two Legion of Superheroes titles impress.

And there we have it. It’s a mixed bag which ranges from the nothing special to the WOW! with an average of pretty good. Or, if you want it graded numerically: 3.75, 9.5, 7.5 respectively. (Except for Batwoman which rates a 10).

I’ve been going through the list of titles and, based on the first issues, I will definitely be buying 20 of the titles in trade editions when they appear, with another 10 as strong possibilities depending on reviews. This alone has made it worth me buying this book as that’s a lot higher number of DC trades than I have been getting. Additional material like alternate covers is minimal and could have been a lot more.

Sure, it’s also quite expensive but just remember you’re getting a 1200 page 52-comic hardback sampler of some of the best superhero comics around and you’re in at the ground floor of the DC New Universe. For superhero fans that’s as good as it gets.

This review has also been published on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

GRAPHIC NOVEL: DEAR CREATURE by JONATHAN CASE (TOR, 2011)

2011-12-27T11:33:00.000Z

So, there's this vaguely humanoid sea creature which lives in a sunken submarine in a Californian bay where it snacks on the remains of dead submariners which it shares with its friends the crabs. Now and again it is compelled by drifting pheromones to head to shore to kill and eat sexually aroused teenagers.

This is Grue, our hero. Now both confusing and stimulating him are the bottles containing pages of Shakespeare which keep appearing in the waters of the bay. Entranced by Shakespeare's language, Grue has begun to speak in iambic pentameter, an affectation that is derided by his friends the crabs who are more interested the scraps of human remains he leaves for them.

A chain of events occur which (I won't detail here) lead him to discovering where the bottles containing fragments on Shakespeare come from, how his actions impact on a human family, and him falling in love with a middle-aged female agoraphobic.

And now, here's the cover.

This really is almost impossible to describe. A plethora of adjectives spring to mind: graceful, witty, tragic, deft, bold -which are all appropriate but don't convey the full flavour. The artwork is delightful with its human figures reminiscent of Dave Stevens and Terry Moore. The art is also in black and white, not only devoid of colour but also of grey; there is no shading at all which is unusual but it works. This is really quite a unique and delightful graphic novel.

THE CHRISTMAS CURMUDGEON'S CHRISTMAS (PAIN, CONTINUED)

2011-12-26T18:34:00.000Z

Needless to say I was still suffering from the strained shoulder. Since I first wrote about it had gotten worse and by Friday 23rd, I decided I'd go to Casualty (A&E) to get it checked out. By the end of Thursday I'd called an en to me driving because I just didn't feel safe. I load the van up with donated food, then went and bought some cat food and that was that. Before Susan drove me to Casualty, she'd phoned a physiotherapy number which was part of the NHS and got me to tell them my problem and arranged a formal phone interview next morning. Then off to Casualty while Susan continued on with the cat food to Carole's.

And after a preliminary interview they told me to sling my hook. I had to either go back to the Walk-in Centre (see Pain post) or see my GP. I rang my GP and got an appointment for 11 in a couple of hours time. I tried calling Susan to tell her but no answer so I slung my hook and got two buses back home. Pay for a taxi? You must be joking! Besides the hospital and my house are on two of the busiest bus routes and I hardly had to wait a couple of minutes at either stage.

Dr Mackrell, my doctor, checked me out thoroughly and put me on a different combination of pain killers. with one of them -cocodamol- I should have avoided alcohol but I didn't and it didn't seem to make much difference. The other was a once a day anti-inflammatory. And they did seem to have a stronger effect, though they didn't make any difference when it came to waking up in the early house with severe pain when I moved my arm and a painful ache even when I didn't.

On Saturday morning I did the telephone physiotherapy interview and got an appointment early on the 4th January. God bless the socialised medical service of the NHS.

And suddenly-

Having 8 adults to feed, an injured shoulder and with Susan not feeling all that great, we decided to get as much prepared as possible. So later that day I peeled and cooked the potatoes which Susan then mashed as my shoulder wouldn't allow it. I'd prepared the breadcrumbs for the sage and onion using the food processor and did the same for the onions which, again, Susan had to mix up with the sage, eggs and seasoning and then went into the oven.

Later that evening, just as I was settling down to watch a DVD on my pc, there came a knock at the door. Turned out to be our next door neighbour who'd taken in two parcels earlier that day when we'd popped out. One was something Susan had bought as a present, the other was the massive 1200 page DC: The New 52 (see a couple of previous posts) arriving in only 9 days from the States at standard postage rates and during the Xmas rush and at least two weeks earlier than I expected. Hurrah! Of course the damn thing was so fucking heavy that I couldn't hold it with both arms to read it. It does, however, fit snugly on this computer desk where I'm typing. And that was Xmas Eve.

Christmas Day. Up early to peel and trim the potatoes which will be roasted later. Peel and wash sprouts. Prepare the two turkey crowns. We weren't sure if one would be enough so we got two. One, it turned out, was enough but only just. Susan started tidying the house up with some help from me. Periodically taking a break to rest my shoulder, it seemed to be holding up okay. Eleven o'clock and the turkey crowns went in the oven. An hour later I started on the vegetables which was about the same time as Susan brought her mother from Rowlandson House where she lives.

I'm not going to go into much detail about our guests as this isn't that sort of a blog, but just a little. Susan's mother has always been difficult and this has been worsened by her dementia and the virtual disappearance of her short term memory so it wasn't long before she started causing problems. Ironically, when the other guests started to arrive she became completely confused about who people were. They being Nick, Susan's brother and her son, Viv her daughter in law (who live down the street from us). Her grandchildren Alex, a mechanical engineering student at Hull whose 21st birthday is fast approaching, and Sarah, 24 and happily ensconced in Edinburgh where she works for a big finance company. Lastly there was Viv's elderly aunt Joan. She became completely confused about Nick, Viv, Sarah, and Alex and constantly had to be told over and over who they were and what they were doing. At least that meant she wasn't causing trouble by being obnoxious. Strangely she didn't seem to get confused over Susan and I.

So everybody arrived and started handing out presents. Me, I dashing between the living room being co-host and the kitchen as cook where I had a can of lager to help get me in the mood. Seeing as this was the celebration of the founding of a patriarchal sexist religion, I summoned Nick and Alex briefly into the kitchen for a glass of Jim Beam bourbon to toast Christmas and continuation of patriarchal structures. Okay, I was just being perverse.

Meanwhile I realised the turkey should have been in a little earlier which meant delaying lunch a little which meant turning the roasting potatoes down. The mashed potato was heating slowly in the microwave and the sage and onion re-heating in the oven. Carrots and sprouts were coming along nicely and Susan told me I'd forgotten the roast parsnips which I had but there wasn't room in the over for them anyway so tough. I'd also forgotten the mini pigs in a blanket which went in just as we began serving the food and were cooked by the time we'd almost finished the serving. Susan and I sat down by the time the others were halfway through the meal. The wine, a Banrock Station Chardonnay with a funny Spanish name tacked on, was acceptable. I thought the turkey could have been cooked a little more but it just about passed. The roast potatoes should have been removed from the goose fat when they were cooked but they weren't and tasted a little greasy.

While Susan was preparing the Christmas pudding, I managed to break the back of the washing up, then went upstairs to the loo. When I got back down, Susan told me there wasn't enough Christmas pud for everyone which fine by me. I went upstairs to lie down and when I woke it was teatime.

Tea was down and Nick and Viv's and it was very nice but there was too much and it didn't seem like five minutes since I eating my Xmas lunch. Afterwards we had a nice family time and when Susan decided to take her mother back to the home, I took the opportunity to retire to mine and see to the cats. Susan didn't get back for over an hour as she'd taken Auntie Joan to where she lived near Durham. We watched Eastenders together while I finished off the lunchtime wine and then went to bed.

I have to say, despite my reservations about some of the dinner (with no-one to blame but me), my shoulder held up and it was one of the less stressful family Christmases and really quite nice overall.

Today, Susan and I have been completely exhausted and done as little as possible in between naps. This is the most positive thing I've done today and in a few minutes time I'll be cooking the leftovers for our tea prior to watching a new version of The Borrowers at 7.30pm.

Happy Xmas everybody.

Post Script.
I almost used this image in the main body of the text.

DVD: ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011)

2011-12-20T19:09:00.000Z

This is going to be a short review because its been widely reviewed and, quite frankly, I don't have anything original to add.

In case you haven't heard of it, here's a short synopsis. A mixed gang of 14-15 year olds who live in the same London tower block mug a young nurse on her way home to her new flat in (unknown to the gang) the same block. After the mugging they come across an alien which eats a dog belonging to one of them and they kill it. They take the corpse to the local drug dealer in the block to show it -this unknown animal- off. Then the rest of the aliens arrive and attack the gang and anyone else in their way. The aliens are very black, shaggy, no-eyes, but with lots of luminous teeth. The gang pal up with the nurse they mugged out of mutual survival needs and surviving occupies the rest of the film.

This doesn't sound particularly wonderful I admit, but this is a very likeable and engaging little movie written and directed by Joe Cornish. The gang, aggressive and drug-taking thugs as they are, aren't as bad as they first seem with quick phone calls to relatives to assure them they won't be home late. Much of their macho behaviour is, like their nicknames, to do with image. Two kids around ten are continually laughed at as they try to claim nicknames for themselves. Much of the dialogue is slang but it's fairly easy to pick up from the context and it sounds right. The young cast are excellent and the characters they play distinct individuals.

There's some gore and a lot of bad language. The aliens are quite scary, partly because they're never shown in any detail. To be honest, they reminded me of larger nastier versions of Krites from Critters. Overall, this is a lot of fun and I think I'll watch it again quite soon.

One minor quibble: the aliens' life cycle is absolutely unbelievably unbelievable stupid rubbish even by the standards of low budget SF movies. I won't say why because that would spoil a major plot reveal, but it still doesn't spoil the fun.

HEALTH: THE (NON-EXISTENT) SOMEONE UP THERE DOESN'T LIKE ME

2011-12-20T14:01:00.000Z

After writing about how much I disliked Christmas, I've been struck down. Clearly I've upset that useless (nonexistent) omnipotent paranoid twat that some people refer to, this figment of their imagination, as god. Obviously I've pissed him/her/it off. Well, screw you, you non-existent piece of shit! How dare you do this to me!

Of course it could just be a coincidence. And I could think of worse things to be inflicted with just before Christmas, or at any time. Like developing allergies to alcohol and computers and to cats. That would be my life well and truly fucked.

No, I'm just suffering

I woke up from a Sunday afternoon nap to find a pain in my right shoulder and when I moved my arm the pain extended itself there as well, into the upper half at least. I decided that if it was no better the following morning I'd visit the 24 hour walk-in health centre about a mile and a half away.

Got up the next morning, still in pain but with stuff to do before I could even think about going to the health centre. I'd loaded the van the previous afternoon pre-pain with donated cat food which was fortunate. So out early to Asda to buy the week's load of tins of Kit-e-Kat and to take some cat food from the donated pet food bin there and over to Carole's to drop it off. On the way home I called in at Sainsbury's where there donated pet food bin was overflowing with, mostly, cat food -hurrah! I'd put a couple of stickers on it over a week ago saying we were in need of cat food so it looked like it had worked.

When I got home, my shoulder felt as if it had eased off slightly so I decided not to go to the health centre. Needless to say the pain got worse during the course of the day so at 5.00pm I drove there in the van. The place was almost empty and I got seen by a nurse within half an hour. He made me raise my arms in various positions and checked the muscles before deciding I'd pulled a muscle in the shoulder, probably through heavy lifting.

Well I do heavy lifting quite a lot, loading up the van with unsaleable stuff to take from the shop to the tip or stuck stuff to another charity like Barnardos. There was also the weekly tip trip from Carole's with a van full of sacks of soiled cat bedding and used cat litter and other smelly stuff. And in the last couple of days I'd done three trips to empty a flat of items we could sell. So heavy lifting is nothing unusual.

Then I realised what had caused it.

Until recently the skips at the council were about waist height (plus six feet further down) making it easy to get stuff out of the van and drop it in with no great effort. Now, however, the council have installed new skips which are twice the height and necessitate climbing up several steps to get to the rim which is then still higher than the old ones. When this happened I asked Carole to put less items in the black sacks and, when light enough, had got into the habit of hurling them over the rim with my right arm, sometimes without even going up the steps, and did the same with shop tip trip stuff when light enough. This was not a good idea.

So:diagnosis pulled muscle. Treatment: paracetemol and rest.

And about 1.30am I woke up in agony. Even the slightest movement caused pain. I struggled through the night until around 4.30 when I got up, emptied smelly cat litter, let cats out, read a magazine, and at 5.00am took two paracetamol and went back to bed. The pills must have had some effect as I dozed until half seven when I again woke in agony. An hour later I was on the phone to the doctor's. I wasn't disagreeing with the diagnosis, I just wanted to be prescribed heavy duty painkillers. She told me to start taking ibuprofen every three hours alternating with paracetamol and trying heat treatment (a hot water bottle on my shoulder).

It's now just before 2.00pm, I've had one dose of both and I have a hot water bottle which I'm going to place against my shoulder when I lay down for a nap in a few minutes and just hope this pain goes away before Christmas.

Sooner would be good.

THE CHRISTMAS CURMUDGEON: SATIRE, PERHAPS

2011-12-18T18:59:00.000Z

There is only one good reason for committing suicide -other than severe physical and/or mental distress -and that is so you never get to hear Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody ever again.

There is a very good case to be made that it's the most hideous Christmas song ever. Considering that is a very large field it's quite an achievement. As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as a good Christmas song. Bear in mind that there is a considerable difference between a song which mentions Christmas and a song about Christmas. This definition automatically excludes A Fairy Tale of New York (Kirsty McColl/The Pogues), Feed the World (Band Aid) though after over a quarter of a century that too is becoming remarkably tedious and twee, and The River (Joni Mitchell, not Bruce).

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Extract copyright Joni Mitchell.

The melancholy lyric expresses to a degree how I feel about Christmas. It's partly the fact that I don't have kids and my niece and nephew are now all grown up. Yes, Christmas is about kids. Stuff any religious aspect; that's meaningless to most people never mind an atheist like me.

during the week preceding the shops are packed, especially stores like Asda which (and excuse me) -for Christ's sake- is only shut for one frigging day but people will be buying enough stuff for a week resulting in an enormous waste of food. Why don't people reduce the unnecessary food bill and make a donation to Oxfam instead?

And then there's all the shit Christmas specials on TV -previews rammed down your throat with all the fake jollity- which I found so much fun when I was a lot younger but seem to be now, well, a load of shit. I exclude Dr Who from this (but only provisionally as I haven't seen it yet).

At least there aren't the number of carol singers that there used to be. When I was a kid, even I went round carol singing with friends/kids from school.

And on every TV show which includes singing are yet more hideous Christmas songs. And on the radio, especially the local radio which gets played at my sports centre where I go swimming most mornings and every day last week while I was there they played fucking Slade's fucking Merry fucking Christmas Everybody which just fucking might have something to do with this piece.

Is there nothing I enjoy about Christmas then? Actually, yes. With one certain caveat which I won't go into here, I enjoy the turkey Christmas dinner with the family, particularly if I've cooked it. I cook it rather than Susan, not because she's a bad cook -in her own way she's probably as capable as me- but I can do one thing she can't: I can get everything ready at the same time. I don't even time everything, I just estimate but I'm very good at estimating. It's our turn this year and we have 8 adults in attendance and, as long as Susan stays out of the kitchen, it'll be fine, especially as for the half hour before it's all ready I'll be starting in on the drink.

But that's the only thing about Christmas that I like. Pity I can't pass the rest of it by. And doesn't that card at the top with its western Europeans make you want to vomit? Never mind, the paperback cover below will make you smile.

Oh, and then there's this-

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

DVD: THOR

2011-12-17T15:39:00.000Z

It's no secret, especially to readers of this blog, that I'm not a great fan of Marvel superheroes. Thor, in particular, being one I found both irritating, with cod-archaic mode of speech, and boring, with a no-dimensional personality. So I was quite surprised when good reviews rolled in by the dozen and which encouraged me to buy the DVD when it came down in price a bit.

I still remained to be convinced but damned if Marvel didn't do the 2011 triple of really entertaining well-made super-hero movies. Captain America and X-Men First Class being the others which actually dragged me to cinema (see appropriate posts). 2012 brings Joss Whedon's Avengers which everyone expects to be utterly brilliant and anything less will be a disappointment. DC have much better characters than Marvel but, Batman excepted, they just can't seem to get it together on the film front.

There is a lot that Thor the movie gets right and very little it gets wrong.

First off is Asgard and the Asgardian gods. They aren't the supernatural based entities of myth and Marvel comics. Instead they are the products of science that is so far advanced that it looks -and here is where director Branagh is really clever- almost but not quite like magic. When Heimdall operates Bifrost to transport people to other realms, it is clearly a teleportational device. These gods are more like the Hindu gods of Roger Zelazny's award-winning Science Fiction novel Lord of Light. The Norse myths surrounding the Asgardians are the perceptions of a primitive people viewing a science they can't comprehend. The design of Asgard itself is very impressive which is just as well as a surprising amount of the running time is spent there.

Secondly, the story is kept quite simple. When Thor, on the verge of being given the kingship, arrogantly disobeys Odin and attacks the Frost Giants on their homeworld of Jotunheim almost bringing about disaster, Odin removes his powers and banishes him to Earth. While Thor learns a lesson in humility in a New Mexico town with the help of astro-physicist Jane Foster, his brother Loki, with Odin in a god-coma, seems to be bringing about the downfall of Asgard by secretly allying with the Frost Giants because (spoiler omitted). Odin has also sent Thor's hammer to Earth. The hammer can only be lifted by someone worthy of the power of Thor and is discovered by SHIELD which sets up a camp around it. Thor's buddies (the Warriors Three plus Lady Sif) go to Earth to help him and Loki tries to put a stop to it which leads to the climax.

It's all very clearly told, at a good pace, and leavened by touches of humour. On seeing the Warriors Three, a cop reports in that there's "Robin Hood, a ninja, and ...some other guy." The 'other guy' should be Falstaff after whom the portly character Volstagg is named and is a sly Shakespearean joke which, I assume, was inserted by director Kenneth Branagh who knows more than a little about Shakespeare.

The acting is more than acceptable. I can't imagine anyone giving a better performance as Thor than Chris Hemsworth, who can act. It's impossible to imagine anyone else convincingly playing Odin other than Anthony Hopkins who provides the gravitas necessary to take the character seriously. Tom Hiddleston underplays Loki rather than making him a hissable villain. Natalie Portman (Jane Foster) is one of the best young Hollywood actresses around. Idris Elba as Heimdall provides provides great dignity and power to an otherwise one-note role.

Branagh has done a terrific job on this film. Sure it's a popcorn movie, but it's a really good popcorn movie.

POLITICS/ECONOMICS: AN IGNORAMUS'S VIEW ON THE EU (EUROPEAN UNION)

2011-12-10T11:54:00.000Z

1. Introduction.

Opinions are like arseholes: everyone's got one. A more accurate analogy, however, would be: opinions are like blood cells: everyone has millions of them. Doesn't matter how well or ill-informed we are on a topic, we've always got an opinion about it. This piece is, therefore, my thoughts, my opinions, on the EU and its current state.

2. How I got there.

I don't understand economics. I started taking it at A level back in 1964 and after several weeks gave it up for Religious Education, rather ironic given my long-standing militant atheism. I also took British Constitution A-level at which I was much better. So if I don't understand economics, I do have a modest grasp of politics and the political system.

I was born in 1948 at the height of the post-war baby boom and the shadow of the Second World War loomed large culturally and economically during my childhood. I'm old enough to even remember rationing. The rations were delivered to our door in a cardboard box, butter wrapped in greaseproof paper and groceries were still referred to in the house as rations for some time afterwards. Films about the war were popular in the cinema during the 50's and strips about the war were equally popular in kids weekly comics. All this combined to lead me to be of the opinion that a United States of Europe would a good idea to prevent war happening in the future.

Which is sort of what happened with the rise of the Common Market (or, more accurately, the European Economic Community -EEC- which ultimately became the EU). The drive to closer economic ties accelerated with the fall of the Iron Curtain, but it also resulted in the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and the horrendous events which followed.

3. Where I stand today.

Whatever the name, I've always been in favour of closer ties with Europe, indeed with every country. While I am deeply proud of Britain -a country where the acceptance of those who don't quite fit the perceived norm is actually practiced by the majority of its citizens rather than just paid lip service by its government and media- I remain an internationalist.

The problem is that the EU hasn't worked the way it was intended and this is becoming more and more self-evident. The organisation and the many organisations within it have grown out of all proportion to the work that they needed to do. They have become bloated and corrupt. The salaries of MEPs are inflated with perks, many unearned. Stories constantly come to light of MEPs signing in and then immediately buggering off to pursue their own interests. Powers are delegated to unelected bureaucrats with no responsibility to the tax payers who fund them. When, as rarely happens, a watered-down but decent piece of legislation does get passed, it is cynically ignored by any country (naming no names but one of them is France) for whom it is inconvenient except Britain which naively plays by the rules. The system has encouraged an enormous waste of resources and the spread of corruption. The EU is theoretically a wonderful idea that has been derailed by the vested interests of capitalism when a degree of socialism might have saved it.

The EU's refusal to control the banking system and limit international debt until it's all but too late and the internal failings of the Euro (which in theory I support) has lead to the current crisis where David Cameron has found himself and the UK isolated and no-one knows how this is going to end up. Ironically, as a lefty internationalist, I find myself, with my limited knowledge, supporting him so far.

The EU needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and based on firm clear principles and the chances of that happening is about the same as a snowfall in hell.

Sarkozy pointedly refusing to shake Cameron's hand at the summit.

Sod the French prat.

MUSIC: THEA GILMORE -JOHN WESLEY HARDING (2011)

2011-12-08T18:08:00.000Z

It's not exactly unknown, quite the opposite in fact, for movies to be remade. It's also extremely common for one artist to cover someone else's song, though it's rare for it to be an improvement than the original. Ironically, one such cover is Jimi Hendrix's version of All Along The Watchtower which even Dylan prefers, as does everyone in the known universe. It's also one of my favourite songs and covers I own include those by The Grateful Dead and an absolute balls to the wall live version by Neil Young with guest Chrissie Hynde. It is, however, extremely rare for an artist to cover an entire album but Thea Gilmore has done it and with one of my favourite Bob Dylan albums.

Gilmore is one of those artists who can be classified as a singer/songwriter, folk, and folk/rock. Unlike, however, the album which followed this one -Don't Stop Singing (see earlier post)- where she channeled Sandy Denny, she doesn't attempt to recreate the original album, Gilmore does it her own way.

And she does it brilliantly by reinterpreting the songs in a variety of different ways, all different to the originals but always doing justice to one of Dylan's landmark albums. All Along The Watchtower is a shuffle, The Drifter's Escape rocks out. There are elements of country, folk, folk/rock, and more including echoes of Fairport Convention (the Sandy Denny-Jerry Donahue lineup) which is probably to be expected. The small band is tight as a newt's arse, playing with precision and skill -some great guitar solos too. Gilmore's vocals are flexible and expressive -she is truly one of the best current British female vocalists in any musical genre and I've a feeling I'm probably going to end up buying all her albums.

This is great genre-transcending stuff.

PLACES: DURHAM CITY -THE CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL

2011-12-05T15:38:00.000Z

Ironically the day after I put up a post in which I said I hardly ever went anywhere, Susan and I paid a visit to the Durham City Christmas Festival. Okay, this was hardly a great effort as Durham is barely 20 minutes drive away and mostly along dual carriageways, plus, to coin a phrase, the city itself is absolutely fabulous.

Don't take my word, take that of American writer and anglophile's Bill Bryson who came and saw and fell in love with the place. In one of his books about travelling in the UK, when he comes to write about Durham, he insists you stop reading and go visit the city and he wasn't entirely joking. You've got the cathedral itself which is one of the most beautiful and inspiring cathedrals in the world (and that is most emphatically not an exaggeration) which is now nearly a thousand years old. It's perched, next to Durham Castle, on the top of a hill, around which wind streets that curl down to the River Wear which almost entirely encircles the base. The old streets themselves, still cobbled, are packed with restaurants, cafes, bars, bookshops etc. The walk along the river bank at the bottom is lovely no matter what the season. See for yourself.

Told you.

But Susan and I were there for the Christmas festival, specifically that humongous tent in front of the cathedral in the first photo. Inside it contains a vast range of stalls selling all kinds of arts and craft items, clothing, food, and drink -a great place to spend lots of money on things for yourself and on Christmas presents for others. We must have spent an hour browsing before, laden down with goodies, we went inside the cathedral to the tea room for coffee, plus a cheese scone and a slice of lemon cake which we shared. After that we wandered slowly down the narrow streets to our car and then home.

........

You still here?

Oh right, you were wondering what fabulous things we bought at the festival. Well, Susan bought one fancy Christmas card and I bought two pies -a layered game pie and a layered pork with chicken, both wrapped in tasty crusty pastry and delicious they were too.

MUSIC: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

2011-12-03T16:10:00.000Z

I'll be honest, I'm not much of a person for going out, for going places. I've never really been interested in travel and in my entire life I've only been to Belgium, Holland and France (that on a school trip aged 10), Brittany (once), Spain (once), Yugoslavia (twice, when it still existed, these days the specific area is Croatia), and Lanzarote (about half a dozen times). Otherwise I've never been out of the UK. It's just too much trouble. Similarly I've never been to any music events like Glastonbury. All the gigs I've been to have never been further away than Newcastle or Middlesborough. Except for the 101 Club in London when I went down in a minibus with a band that my friend Ian Penman was managing and threw up in it (the minibus not the club) on the way back after smoking some dope.

So, yes, I have led a fairly dull life, mainly because I found the inside of my own head a more interesting place to visit. Other places are just too much of an effort, but-

I'm going to see Bruce Springsteen!

At the Stadium of Light, Sunderland

on June 12th 2012!

I probably wouldn't have bothered if he'd been playing at St. James's Park (or whatever they're calling it today), Newcastle -too much of an effort to get home- but I can walk home in half an hour from the Stadium of Light.*

Springsteen is up there in my pantheon of music gods being almost, but not just quite, on a par with Neil Young, Sandy Denny, The Grateful Dead, and Albert King (whom I saw at the Sunderland Empire a year or so before his death), and just above U2. I saw an add for it last Wednesday in the local edition of Metro the free paper while I was having coffee with my retired library colleague friends. Phil (ex-local studies librarian, was also interested). I'm 63. Big events don't happen on my doorstep very often and, while I wouldn't rule out the impossibility of Young and U2 playing the SoL, this could be my last chance at getting to see someone whose music I love and who I know gives the audience a great time. I'd have been mad to miss it.

So this morning I was logged in to the ticket website, ready for its opening at 9.00am. I'd pre-registered with the ticket company and was making my booking within seconds of the tickets becoming available. I've got myself a seat (I'm not standing for maybe three hours even for Bruce and it was only £5 extra). The total cost came to £69.25 but it's going to be worth it!

Post Script 1.

Susan looked at me in amazement. "You're going by yourself," she said.

"Yes," I replied, wondering why that should be such a surprise. Barry wouldn't be interested and another certain person would only go if could get in free. Being an only child, from childhood I've been used to going to places on my own. Not always, often with friends, but it doesn't bother me being on my own and never has.

"Oh," she said. Susan isn't like me in this respect at all and considers it just one my many strangenesses.

But as far as I'm concerned, I'll be surrounded by thousands of Springsteen fans and I wouldn't have expected to talk much anyway. It's the music, man!

Post Script 2.

* Talking about the Stadium of Light, in the last four days Sunderland Association Football Club has sacked manager Steve Bruce and appointed the acclaimed Martin O'Neil. He's so famous that even I, whose only interest in sport is the doings of Sunderland and other local football teams, have heard of him. If anyone can pull the team out their current doldrums it's O'Neil.

And after that, could it be -glory days?**

** That's the title of a Springsteen song you philistines.

SOCIETY: JEREMY CLARKSON HACK! SPIT! VOMIT!

2011-12-02T11:22:00.000Z

Jeremy Clarkson gave his considered opinion about the recent strike (see post) when interviewed on the popular One Show (BBC1, 7.00pm weekdays).

It went like this-

"I think they (the strikes) have been fantastic. Absolutely. London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about, restaurants are empty," he said.
"It's also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow," said the Top Gear presenter, before adding: "But we have to balance this though, because this is the BBC" and went on: "Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?"
Text copied from the BBC's website, emphasis mine.

Clearly Clarkson was taking the piss but he still managed to get over 21,000 complaints. This is an absolutely enormous number. You probably wouldn't have got many more if he'd suggested necrophilia with Diana's corpse. But I don't know why anyone was surprised that he should insult over two million people who were striking to maintain the pension they were promised. I think Clarkson is an arsehole and couldn't care less what this moron says. Except when I do.

Because there is often, and most certainly is in this case, a subtext to his so-called joke. Clarkson is an elitist misogynistic public schoolboy snob who counts the Prime Minister as one of his buddies. He's an arrogant snob who manages to disguise his utter contempt for ordinary people with a self-debunking wit which proves he doesn't really mean his barbs.

Don't believe it. He does. And that joke was Clarkson's way of expressing his annoyance at the temerity of working class people to go on strike and thereby inconvenience him.

Clarkson is a loathesome piece of shit who should have his cock cut off in public, followed by a slow disembowelling while a white-hot poker is gradually inserted up his upper class arse and his children are being eaten alive in front of him by pit-bulls.

Oh dear me, that was just a bit over the top, wasn't it? Sorry about that. Just a joke Tee hee. Oh I am awful.

TV: AMERICAN HORROR STORY (FX)

2011-12-01T11:58:00.000Z

It's not too late to catch up on this new brilliant series of which three episodes have so far been shown in the UK. It isn't what I expected at all and is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on television.

A dysfunctional family buys an old house on the west coast. He is a psychiatrist who had an affair with a student. She can't forgive him. Their teenage daughter is a mess. Here they are.

What they don't know is that the house has a murderous history. But whether it is actually haunted is so far unclear, though that is suggested.

There are four other characters of note so far. Jessica Lange plays, and absolutely brilliantly too, their malign neighbour. She is absolutely the most scary woman you have ever seen.

She has an adult daughter who suffers from Downs Syndrome, who tells everyone who enters the house that they are going to die, and is impossible to keep out of it. (I couldn't find any photos of her on Google Images)

Mustn't forget the middle aged housekeeper who seems to go along with the house. To the husband, she looks different from the way others see her. Jessica Lange's character remarks to her that she wouldn't want to have to kill her again.

The psychiatrist husband is treating patients in the house. One of them is a male teenager who is dangerously psychopathic which the husband does not realise.

I'm not going to give away anything that actually happens as it really would spoil it. You may be able to find previous episodes on the net on on catch-up TV. You should because this is a brilliantly done piece of television: great acting, great script, great cinematography, suspense by the bucketload, some gore, plus an overall sense of deep unease and uncertainty. It really is unmissable.

SOCIETY: THE GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE STRIKE 30TH NOVEMBER 2011

2011-11-30T14:01:00.001Z

This last image is from Sunderland Civic Centre.

And in case you were wondering-

I'M WITH THEM

GRAPHIC NOVEL: FLASHPOINT (DC, 2011)

2011-11-30T13:43:00.000Z

DC New Universe: Prologue 2.

When I post an edited version of this review on Amazon I'll be giving it four stars. The graphic novel itself comprises the original 5-issue miniseries, alternate covers, plus a variety of character sketches, with a wraparound image on the book itself which is revealed when you remove the jacket.

The story is quite well done, albeit somewhat compressed. Scenes, sometimes even single panels, refer to events which take place in the range of single issues and three-part miniseries which surround the core narrative. I wasn't actually going to bother with any of these others when they're collected except for the Superman tie-in (I'll explain why later), but now, having actually read the whole core story, I find myself interested enough to buy several of the others.

The artwork is good slick stuff by Andy Kubert (one of two comic artist sons of comic artist legend Joe Kubert) in a stylish quasi-realistic super-hero mode being attractive, dynamic and detailed.

Now the story. Barry Allen/The Flash wakes up in a changed world where he isn't the Flash, Batman isn't Bruce Wayne but is prone to kill criminals, Hal Jordan is still a test-pilot, no-one has heard of Superman and the world's great and most trusted super-hero is Cyborg. This, on its own, isn't too bad but, as Barry discovers, things are far worse. Aquaman and his kingdom Atlantis has drowned western Europe and is at war with Wonder Woman (who killed Aquaman's wife) and her Amazons who have conquered the UK, killed millions and castrated male survivors. This war threatens to destroy the world unless the superheroes can band together to stop them. The problem with this is that most super-heroes hate each other.

As I said above, there's an awful lot going so I can't really go into detail without going on for ages. Just one subplot though: Superman does exist but he's been locked in a secret vault since he arrived on this planet as a baby is isn't the Superman we know. Needless to say, Barry Allen, with his powers returned, faces his arch-enemy who has caused the reality shift and hurtles back in time to get things back on their proper track. Which is when something strange happens. Exactly what, we won't find out until the DC New Universe comics trades are released, though of course we already know (or I get my hands on a copy of the collected 52 first issues in mid-January).

Take away all the reasons behind it and we're still left with a good full of surprises super-hero yarn and that's just fine by me.

More images can be found on Google where, of course, I got these from.

CD: THEA GILMORE/SANDY DENNY - DON'T STOP SINGING

2011-11-29T15:56:00.000Z

Thea Gilmore has achieved the impossible. She's created a new Sandy Denny album. Based on poems, first draft lyrics, and other fragments, Gilmore composed and arranged the music which results in ten songs which you can so easily imagine Sandy singing.

It isn't that Gilmore is copying Sandy, not that anyone could. Her own voice is quite distinctive and strong enough that she doesn't have to anyway. The arrangements, music and choice of instruments, the way they are played echo Denny without imitating her. I could even say that Gilmore is channeling Sandy's spirit but that would be out of character for me so I won't in case anyone thinks I'm being sentimental. It's an understated, delicate piece of work which grows on the listener. In my case, a first play didn't have much impact, but with the second I suddenly heard with absolute clarity just how much of Sandy was there in this sincere tribute. Georgia, the final track, is about Sandy's baby whom she tragically never lived to see grow up and her, appropriately, Gilmore does sound the most like Sandy, something that is emphasised by a guitar sound which could have been played by Jerry Donahue on a Fotheringay track.

This is a very fine piece of work and a worthy tribute to someone I still regard as the greatest female singer to come from this country.

GRAPHIC NOVEL: SHOWCASE PRESENTS ALL STAR COMICS

2011-11-24T16:59:00.000Z

Or, to give this post its correct title-

A BRIEF LOOK AT DC COMICS CONTINUITY, DISGUISED AS A REVIEW OF ‘SHOWCASE PRESENTS ALL STAR COMICS’, TO FUNCTION AS A PROLOGUE TO THE DCnU (DC NEW UNIVERSE).

After a gap of about 8 years, I started reading comics again after being introduced to Roy Thomas and Barry (before Windsor) Smith’ version of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian published by Marvel (the collected editions from Dark Horse are reviewed elsewhere in this blog). From then I became, I suppose, a bit of a Marvel zombie. I did pick up the occasional DC title but mostly, apart from Wein & Wrightson’s amazing Swamp Thing, DC hadn’t woken up to smell the coffee –their titles just didn’t have the vibrancy of Marvel’s. But they got better and eventually my consumption of DC titles increased as Marvel’s decreased. DC just had better characters and once the Moore-led British invasion got underway, they were beat Marvel (with rare exceptions like Miller’s Daredevil) hands down.

Feeling a bit nostalgic, I recently picked up Jack Kirby’s Kamandi (see recent review) which in turn got me checking out cheap DC reprints. Their Showcase Presents series collects massive (usually over 500 pages) older titles from the 60’s and 70’s but in black and white, not colour. All Star Comics is one of several I either ordered or am thinking about. The reason I opted for this title is because I’m fond of parallel worlds stories.

Now what is considered the ‘Silver Age’ of comics began in the 50’s with DCs revival of super heroes, creating new characters with older names. The new Flash, was I believe, the first and the original Flash, from whom he took his name was a character from a comic in his world. Until, in one of the most influential comic stories ever, The Flash of Two Worlds, he meets the original Flash who lives in a parallel world (known as Earth 2) which contains all the old characters from DCs initial foray into superheroes which began with Batman and Superman in 1939 which marks the start of the 'Golden Age'.

DC gradually began to reintroduce the Golden Age characters into what became known as the DC Universe, most notably in team-ups of the JLA (Justice League of America) and the JSA (Justice Society of America) their older counterparts. Anyway, in 1976 DC revived their old title, continuing the numbering, adding Presents The Super Squad and, in smaller lettering, Featuring The Justice Society of America. The hideously named Super Squad consisted of Power Girl (Earth 2's less powerful version of Supergirl and an ugly feminist chip on shoulder whereby she constantly has to demonstrate how much better than men she is), Robin (who as a bulked up Dick Grayson is US ambassador to an apartheit-free South Africa) and the Star-spangled Kid who is twenty years out of his own time and feels it. A few issues after Paul Levitz took over the scripting from Gerry Conway, the title lost the Super Squad and it became the Justice Society of America, as it always should have been.

The title lasted four years from the beginning of 1976 to the end of the decade and while, it was mostly conventional super-hero stuff, it did have some fun stuff for DC fans. Bruce Wayne has stopped being the Batman following the death of his wife Catwoman and become Commisioner Wayne. Later in the series, his daughter The Huntress joins the JSA. A grey-haired Superman is still around but spends most of his time as Clark Kent managing editor of the Metropolis newspaper The Daily Star(!). The art, mostly by Joe Staton, is more than adequate, but of more interesting is a number of early issues inked and, in a few cases, pencilled, by the wonderful Wally Wood.

I have to say that I do miss the colour.

Roy Thomas was later to create Infinity Inc, featuring the sons and daughters of the JSA, which basically did the job that the Super Squad was supposed to do only a hundred times better. Sadly, towards the end of series, DC made a disastrous decision.

______________________________________________________________________

Yes, I have to draw a line under it.

DC decided that their multiple worlds was too confusing for readers, especially new readers. It's important to note that there were many parallel worlds other than Earth 2. The Marvel Family lived on Earth-S (S for Shazam). Back in the day Fawcett publishers came out with Captain Marvel which DC decided was a copy of Superman (he wasn't), sued, won, bought out Fawcett and eventually began publishing their own version which, for legal reasons couldn't use the character's name in the title so Shazam was used instead. These days the all-powerful hero is now regarded as an archetype and Superman has dozens of clones. Even Alan Moore paid homage to him in Supreme.

DC also bought up the Charlton characters (Blue Beetle, The Question, etc) and gave them their own universe. In their own world The Crime Syndicate (an evil JLA) lived and ruled. In another one the Nazis had won and were fought by The Ray, among others.

But enough, said DC. Let's simplify all this. Let's just have one universe where all the characters live except the ones we can kill off for publicity purposes. And so they hired Marv Wolfman to write and George Perez to pencil the first and greatest of all the company-wide crossovers ever -Crisis On Infinite Earths- a 12 issue series which would cross over with every other single DC title. It is inarguably (which, unlike 'arguably', means I'm right so don't contradict me) a superb super-hero story with terrific art. And it did exactly what it was supposed to do which was to rebuild the DC Universe from the ground up. The result was one universe and one universe only -no parallel worlds, only one Superman. Captain Marvel and Superman lived on the same Earth.

Unfortunately the powers that be at DC hadn't thought it through well enough and the next 25 years were packed with crossover series which attempted to fix the inconsistencies and mistakes which came out of Crisis -Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, etc. Parallel worlds were reintroduced in the actually excellent weekly series 52.

But none of it really worked and so DC threw up its collective hands and said, Let's start again from scratch.

And thus came the Flashpoint miniseries and its spin-off titles.

And at the end of that, every single title was cancelled and a new DC Universe was born with every title starting at issue 1.

I'm not going to go into more detail, though I want to. I'll be reading the collected Flashpoint in a few days. I have on order, though it won't arrive till mid-January, a hardback collection containing all the 52 first issues from the DCnU. The individual title collections (of which I'll be buying a few) probably won't be arriving until May at the earliest.

To be continued.

DVD REVIEW: SUPERNATURAL SEASON 2

2011-11-24T11:45:00.000Z

Okay, it's come to this: I am now hooked on this series. I finished watching Season 2 and am waiting for Season 3 to arrive.

I'm not sure why but this season gelled a lot more than the first. I found myself warming more to the characters but whether this was me being more familiar with the characters, the actors settling into their roles, or better scripts I couldn't honestly say. There were a few recurring characters this time around which helps, even if most of them got killed off by the end, and some good guest stars like Tricia Helfer. The stories seemed to be better even though I could always guess the twists before they were revealed -the nice girl was a werewolf, the woman was a ghost all along, etc. The season finale wrapped up the storyline which had begun with 1.1 and set the scene for a new one.

Basically I had a lot of fun watching it. It's still a way from being one of my favourite tv series though. If Chuck and How I Met Your Mother would rate a 10 and Eureka an 8.5. Supernatural S.2 probably comes in around 7.25, about the same as Rizzoli & Isles which I've been watching on tv recently. But, like I said, its got me hooked.

Two recurring characters who are still alive at the season's end.

GRAPHIC NOVEL: OSAMU TEZUKA'S THE BOOK OF HUMAN INSECTS (VERTICAL, 2011)

2011-11-21T15:46:00.000Z

Expanded from an Amazon 4* review

A psychological horror story.

I shudder to think what was going through Osamu Tezuka's mind in the early to mid-70's when this master of the graphic story, known for his compassion and humour, created a series of bleak adult masterpieces which include MW, Ode To Kirihito, Apollo's Song, and Ayako. The Book Of Human Insects preceded all of them and very much sets the tone for what was to come. I have to say that I hate the title, considering it ugly and much preferring the alternative Human Metamorphosis.

The story is fairly simple. An attractive intelligent but completely ruthless young woman, who is completely devoid of empathy, associates with someone of talent in a particular field. She psychologically becomes that person, steals and adapts their work and becomes famous for it. She leaves in her wake a trail of broken lives, suicide, and murder.

It is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time, perhaps even noirish with its femme fatale protagonist. Tezuka populates this graphic novel with a bunch of individual and interesting characters many of whom, even knowing what she is like, are unable to resist her, though one does. Toshiko Tomura, the protagonist herself, is either an enigma or an utterly self-centred psychopath depending upon your own interpretation of what Tezuka is attempting to portray. Even the ending has an ambiguity to it. It's difficult to discuss actual details without spoiling it so I won't.

The art is standard contemporary-setting Tezuka, containing explicit but never exploitative depictions of nudity, sex, even a brief lesbian encounter, and rape. Unusually, this edition has a dust jacket (see above) but remove it and revealed on the cover are multiple versions of one image -a screaming face.

The images aren't fuzzed out in the book

Tezuka was always fascinated by insects from being a child and clearly the insect theme contains metaphors which, not being well-versed in insect behaviour, have gone over my head. You may well get them.

One thing that is astonishing is that a work of such maturity and skill was published in Japan at the same time as American comics (Undergrounds excepted) were dominated by superhero comics aimed at children and teenagers. It's taken 30-40 years for these mature stories by Tezuka to appear in the West which is just a shame. Better late than never, but it's interesting to speculate what might have happened if western creators had been aware of them then and the impact it could have had.

Post Script.

I believe that publishers Vertical are going to reprint Tezuka's Adolf series (yes, it both is and isn't what you're thinking) sometime next year. By all accounts this is one of his great works and I'm really looking forward to it. It has been available before but is now out of print and expensive.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

2011-11-20T20:57:00.000Z

We've all got dopplegangers somewhere in the world, people who look almost exactly like us. Once, when much younger, I was walking along a street in Sunderland, saw someone I thought I recognised, and then thought: Oh, that's me. But of course it wasn't. A good episode of How I Met Your Mother was based on this idea. The satirical magazine Private Eye has long been running a series of lookalike photos.

But how many of us have famous dopplegangers? I have. Admittedly he's not enormously famous but he is pretty well known to fans of Australian soaps, particularly Neighbours. He's even got the same first name as me. As I'm assuming most of you lot aren't fans, here he is, Neighbours Harold Bishop.

Ian Smith, b.1938

And here's me.

Ian Williams, b.1948

My long lost older brother.

Or am I seeing something that isn't there? Susan insists we look alike. But then recently she's been telling me I look like Russell Brand.

No, sorry I made a mistake. It's Russell Grant she says that I look like and who, to my delight, was just voted off Strictly Come Dancing this evening.

But please tell me she's wrong.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: KAMANDI THE LAST BOY ON EARTH by JACK KIRBY (DC, 2011)

2011-11-18T09:55:00.000Z

I confess I’m not a great Jack Kirby fan. I understand and appreciate his historical importance to the super hero genre but I’ve found his storytelling to be both simplistic and overblown while admiring, on an aesthetic level at least, the vigour of his art.

After basically creating Marvel Comics with Stan Lee (okay, Steve Ditko and Gene Colan may have helped somewhat), he moved to DC at the beginning of the 70’s where he was pretty much given free rein to create his own line of comics. And what he did was create Kirby’s Fourth World which include the god-like villain Darkseid. If you think that name is bad, there’s always the hero Scott Free aka Mr Miracle, and others whose name are too painfully awful to mention. My objection to Darkseid is that he’s so powerful I could never be convinced by his being defeated by DC’s superheroes, not even Superman. DC have been mining Kirby’s legacy ever since and even Grant Morrison couldn’t convince me that Darkseid was a good character. His New Gods have also made some impact on the DC universe, Forever People less so.

Thankfully that wasn’t Kirby’s only legacy to DC. OMAC continues to make an impact and is currently revived by DC as part of the reinvention of the DC universe. As is Etrigan the Demon whom Alan Moore brought to vigorous life during his run on Swamp Thing, thereby sealing the character’s position in the DC universe. Mind you, Kirby’s original version was pretty good too. And also pretty good was Kamandi The Last Boy On Earth.

It’s a cheap and cheerful intentional rip off of Planet of the Apes. Kamandi has emerged from Command D, a government shelter where, presumably, generations of humans have lived since a nuclear war, only to find that humans are effectively animals and used as slaves by the variety of tribes of intelligent bipedal animals (lions, tigers, gorillas, etc) who live among the remains of what was, and unrecognised by them, human society. Kirby’s art is at its vigorous best and ably inked by Kirby’s own choice Mike Royer (who provides an introduction) for 20 issues included in this volume, plus a further 13 of the final 20 that Kirby would draw which we’ll hopeful see in a companion to this book next year.

Kamandi is a curious choice for a hero as he’s incredibly arrogant and super confident, convinced that he’s superior to the various animals who believe him to be inferior (like the rest of the humans). It may be a sly joke on the part of the Jewish Kirby to create such a blonde Aryan hero who is a conceited pain in the backside. His story is that of a journey of discovery as he explores this strange new world, having adventures, making friends and enemies and even, briefly, a girlfriend who can talk. There’s also Tiny a nifty version of King Kong who can talk and wants Kamandi as a pet –no, there isn’t a gay subtext- and suffers, you won’t be surprised, the same fate as the original. The animal tribes themselves, by their behaviour, are parodies of human society and there is some social comment here but I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that as Kirby is just here to have fun.

You will too.

At £37.99, Titan publishers’ edition (actually the US edition with a bar code sticker on the back cover) is a bit expensive even for 450 pages of prime Kirby. Amazon’s current price, however, is a much more appealing £22.99. The paper quality is similar to that of the original comic which is fine as that’s what the art and the colouring were designed for and it would look odd on anything else.

Post Script.

In the post from Amazon, another graphic novel by Osamu Tezuka –The Book of Human Insects which was created, I believe, around the same time as Kamandi.

GRAPHIC NOVEL: OSAMU TEZUKA'S PRINCESS KNIGHT VOL.1 (VERTICAL, 2011)

2011-11-17T10:35:00.000Z

Osamu Tezuka is one of the greats of graphic storytelling. Not to have read anything by him is akin to not having read anything by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Moebius, Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, etc. Tezuka makes you see the form in a completely new way just as Akira Kurosawa (film), Hayao Miyazaki (animation) and Haruki Murakami (contemporary fiction) do. He is that important.

Tezuka (1928-1989) was an astonishingly prolific writer/artist. His dying words were, apparently, “I beg you, let me work.” He died aged 61, still at the height of his powers, but leaving a vast legacy behind. Although known at the time only as a cult figure to western audiences, he was honoured in Japan where he was accorded the nickname “The God of Manga” for his influence on and contribution to this uniquely Japanese form of graphic storytelling.

His work is enormous in scope ranging from fairly simple children’s adventures to his dark adult-orientated work of the 1970’s, not forgetting his masterpiece, the playfully philosophical multi-volume series Buddha. But for all the range of work , it is always recognisable as that of the same person. Even in his children’s books there is an underlying compassion, open-mindedness, and empathy for humanity and all our foibles. Even his most famous creation, the exhuberant series of adventures about the child-robot Astro Boy (aka Mighty Atom), is a parable about racism. Yet Tezuka never openly preaches, he lays down his work for the reader to take away what they will.

Note: the book itself is black & white

Which brings me, finally, to Princess Knight, an early work originally published in serial form 1953-56 and then revised and republished 1963-66. Vertical, the publisher who has, and still is, re-issuing many of Tezuka’s finest works state on the blurb that “Princess Knight mixes themes of gender identity and politics with classic shojo-style illustration to create a charming proto-feminist masterpiece…” Wow! Now while this is actually true, it doesn’t make it doesn’t exactly make it sound suitable for children. In fact this is an all-ages fantasy , originally aimed at children (particularly girls) but does possess a certain charm for the older reader. Vertical, however, are clearly aiming this at an adult audience.

Accidentally given a boy’s heart as well as a girl as a result of the angel Tink (who looks like a young boy) Sapphire has to pretend to be a boy because of the rules of primogeniture in order to stop a nasty person taking the crown. Tink is sent by God to Earth to get the boy’s heart but ends up protecting Sapphire. I may as well quote again from the blurb otherwise I’d only be paraphrasing it anyway. “Filled with narrow escapes, treacherous, courtiers, dashing pirates, meddlesome witches, magical transformations and cinema-worthy displays of derring-do…” It could almost be the full-length feminist cartoon that Disney never made, though they did rip off Tezuka’s Jungle Emperor when they made The Lion King. Vol.2 is to be published in January and I’ve already ordered it.

But, when you buy your copy, do share it with a child under ten, or, better yet, buy them their own. It’s too good to keep to yourself.

DVD: THE DEAD (2011)

2011-11-15T10:47:00.001Z

Despite having watched more zombie movies than I feel I should have, I still can’t understand why they are so popular. Basically a zombie is this: shambling rotting corpses, catch people, eat them. And a zombie movie isn’t much more than that, except it centres round a group of people of whom most, if not all, will either become zombies or zombie food by the end of the movie. Zombies don’t have the versatility of vampires or werewolves who can range from predatory monsters to tragic romantic and sexualised (anti)heroes –see Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula for all that in one movie. Zombies, however, are pretty boring monsters and most zombie movies don’t transcend my description above.

And it’s all George Romero’s fault. Until Night of The Living Dead, zombies never ate anyone. They (and they were mostly black) just did as they were told by their master. The only partial exception to that rule was Hammer’s Plague Of Zombies which can be read as a dig at Britain’s class structure.

Until George Romero who established new rules and can be directly blamed for the all the cheap and really really bad movies made by anyone who thinks he (and it is pretty much all ‘he’s’) can make a movie and end up proving they can make a really really bad one. All you need are some amateur actors, basic equipment, and a friendly butcher.

It’s not as if zombies are used much as metaphors (Romero, and Plague of Zombies excepted). All most makers of zombie movies want to do is appeal to gore fans by showing as much human decay and getting as much human insides outside as possible.

Luckily The Dead is a rare exception. For a start it’s set in an un-named African country which seems to consist mostly of semi-arid scrubland. Murphy, our protagonist is the sole survivor of the last flight out when the plane crashes into the sea. Managing to get to shore he begins a journey to find some kind of aircraft to use to get home. On his way he teams up with an African soldier who’s searching for his son whom he believes has been taken to a place of refuge in the north. They travel, initial wariness slowly building into friendship, either on foot or in a dilapidated through sun-baked arid land littered with dismembered corpses and where the shambling, shuffling dead are never very far away.

This is a very powerful and well-made film. The constant threat of the dead (dead-dread) is ever-present and there are very few scenes where the tension is lifted. The gore factor is high but it never seems gratuitous primarily because the camera never lingers. The editing is very tight as it cuts quickly away from horrific images. There a few scares but you can pretty much see them coming such as when Murphy goes into the dark basement of an abandoned building or peers into darkened huts. We never find out why this is happening though the soldier suggests that it’s the earth cleansing itself, which is as good an explanation as any.

This isn’t just that rare thing, a good zombie movie, it’s a good movie full stop.

Post Script

Just one odd thing which struck me. You never see any animals in this film. I would imagine that with all the corpses around and the walking dead themselves, the place would be paradise for scavengers and predators like wild dog packs, jackal, hyenas, and lions. I suspect the reason for this omission was either budgetary -it would cost too much- or because such scenes might detract from the focus of the film, probably the former.

RECENT ARRIVALS: BOOKS, DVDS, GRAPHIC NOVELS

2011-11-11T20:24:00.000Z

These may or may not get reviewed later.

Contrary to the above image, Haruki Murakami's latest and longest work -1Q84- is actually published in two volumes. The first contains Books 1 & 2, the second (which I've just started is) Book 3. Needless to say it's an amazing piece of work and Murakami is one of my very favourite writers. He's unique and brilliant with an absolute mastery of prose.

Also from Japan is another one of my big favourites -writer/artist the late Osamu Tezuka (no stranger to this blog) with one of his earlier works (serialised 1953-56) and now published in two volumes by Vertical. Unlike their other editions of his work, Vertical haven't flipped Princess Knight and so it reads from back to front and from right to left which is a bit of a pain.

About as far from Princess Knight as you can get is Adam Macqueen's Private Eye: The First 50 Years. With an RRP of £25.00 for this hefty hardback, Amazon are selling it for £12.50 but I bought it from Amazon Warehouse for £8.50. Az Warehouse is an Amazon outlet that sells new but damaged items at a reduced cost. In this case the damage was a minor crease to the top of the front jacket cover so as far as I'm concerned I've got a bargain.

The book itself is great. Written by an Eye insider who is more than willing to display the magazine's warts and all (indeed it would extremely hypocritical given the Eye's willingness to expose those of others not to do so) and is arranged on an A-Z basis, with plenty of cross-references to enable the reader to follow particular strands, which makes it an ideal book to dip into rather than wade through. In an odd way it's also a kind of a history of the underbelly of British society of the last half century given then number of scandals that the satirical magazine has brought to light. Lots of photos and cartoons too. Great stuff. (That was the the review.)

Next up is a book I happened to see in Waterstones. I never actually buy books there, I just check it out to see if there's anything I've missed, which does happen sometimes, and then order it from Amazon or one of their marketplace dealers. It's an absolutely massive collection of short stories, one of the largest I've ever seen being a large format paperback over 1100 pages long and in a 2-column format. The writers range from Algernon Blackwood to China Mieville (check out the names on the cover) and span over a century of writing. I'm looking forward to reading it but don't hold your breath waiting for a review; it may take some time.

This DVD was loaned to me by my friend Ian Penman who has a particular interest in the 1960's British pop scene. It's a biopic of Joe Meek, the brilliant but nutty independent record producer. I was a teenager around the time the events of this film took place so it should bring back some memories. I actually saw Heinz (the blonde on the sleeve above), one of Meek's proteges at the Sunderland Odeon (a cinema now bingo hall) on one of those one-night pop star package tours which were so popular at the time. A classmate boasted he gave V-signs to the singer.

Yes, I know this comes from 1992 but I've never seen it and picked it up for 50p at the Animal Krackers charity shop (see my Cat Rescuing blog).

I've got to watch this African-set zombie movie in the next few days as I received it as a review copy from Amazon Vine (the review freebie programme of which I am a happy member) so expect to see the review here soon.

DVD: ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (2006)

2011-11-07T13:58:00.000Z

Mixed reviews when this came out meant it didn't bother until recently when I read a review in a list of under-rated horror movies. Now normally I'd do a review for Amazon and reprint it here (or vice versa), unless there were so many reviews already that anything I had to say would have already been said by someone else. But that isn't the reason I'm not doing an Amazon review. In order to review it all, without making it sound like an absolute bog-standard slasher, I would have to mention that it has a twist. Once you are aware that there is a twist you've just about guessed what it is. I know I did. I also got it wrong but not completely wrong; or, I got it right but not completely right.

So what I'm going to do is just review it here and if there's the slightest chance you may want to watch it -stop reading now because I'm going to reveal the twist.

The leading role is played by Amber Heard in her first leading role. She's since had several and is highly regarded as a very promising young actress. She's especially popular in lesbian circles as she came out three years ago and has been in the same relationship with another woman for three years. It's nice to see that this hasn't affected the parts that she's been getting. Of course there's no reason why it should. Extremely openly gay Neil Patrick Harris has been playing a compulsive womaniser in How I Met Your Mother for seven seasons now and doing it very well.

Okay, here's a decent picture of Heard.

And here's another from the film.

Mandy Lane is lusted after all by all the boys at her school. She a virgin, she's unattainable, she's slightly withdrawn but seems nice, she's athletic, she's friends with a bullied male outcast. At a party, the outcast tries to defend from a lecherous bully and later sits on a roof overlooking the pool where all the kids are. The bully, drunk but behaving decently, tries to get into coming down, but the outcast talks him into jumping off the roof into the pool. He says he'll jump too but he doesn't and the bully breaks his neck.

Several months later, Mandy is no longer friends with the outcast as a result of the incident and has agreed to go away to a ranch for a weekend with three boys (absent parents of one of the boys own it) and two girls. All the boys want to get into her pants, two of them are pains in the arse, one of them (the black kid) is okayish, both the girls are bitches. There's a macho good guy ranch hand.

Then someone starts killing the kids.

Now, knowing there was a twist, I came to a certain conclusion which is invited by the title. All the boys may love Mandy Lane, but does Mandy love the boys? Is Mandy going to be the killer? I certainly thought she was until the first killing when she's in a different location with the rest of the kids. It isn't that long before we do find out the killer's identity and it's the only other person it was ever likely to be -the outcast.

However I still had my suspicions about Mandy. One scene later on has her in the bathroom comforting a girl (see picture) and it almost looks as if Mandy is going to kiss her at one point but she's interrupted by the boys. Was I, knowing Heard is gay, imagining the sexual tension between the two or was it part of the character of Mandy?

Finally we come to the climax. The ranch hand has been shot but Mandy's bound up his wound. Shortly after the last surviving boy is killed and the girl (see above) is running across fields, pursued by the outcast, towards Mandy and they embrace. A moment later we hear the 'shuck' of a knife entering a body. Mandy steps back and lets the girl drop.

Yes, I was right. Mandy was in cahoots with the killer. But this is where it gets particularly disturbing. Now the kills themselves aren't over the top gory in the sense of Friday 13th or the Hatchet movies, but they are brutal. The victims are rarely dispatched quickly but viciously beaten or stabbed several times. When Mandy moves to meet her partner in crime, she ignores the moans of the dying girl, casually pulling the knife from her stomach to leave her dying slowly, blood bubbling from the wound. The outcast now expects himself and Mandy to commit suicide together but Mandy, who's been manipulating him all along, has a different idea but it doesn't involve him being alive.

It's never spelled out clearly, though there have been oblique clues, but Mandy is a psychopath. She's never been enthusiastic or particularly emotional about anything during the entire course of the film. The outcast may not have all his marbles, but you can understand his motives for killing -the years of being bullied, of being an outsider. Mandy's motives, other than amusement, are less clear, if she has any at all. There's a drawn-out scene where the outcast chases Mandy at reneging on their agreement but she manages to beat him to death. Walking away, she goes to the badly injured ranch hand and helps him, presumably on the grounds that one living witness supporting her story is better than everyone being dead whereby suspicion could still be cast on her. Once you know the secret, you're forced to rethink the entire film and all of Mandy's actions, making this a cut (sorry) above the usual slasher movie.

A last embrace

DVD: THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC

2011-11-06T20:56:00.000Z

In many ways this is an attractive, often funny, and likable film. Based on graphic novels by Jacques Tardi, this is a good cinematic interpretation of them. Our protagonist, Adele, is a feisty no-nonsense modern (1911) woman who goes boldly where most men would fear to tread and returns to write about her amazing adventures which are best-sellers. She's played to vivacious perfection by Louise Bourgoin and is surrounded by a gallery of French grotesques -big noses, etc.

Just as a pterodactyl emerges from a 150 million year-old egg to pterrorise (sorry) Ptaris (sorry again), Adele is in Egypt robbing a tomb of a mummy for reasons which become apparent later. This is a great opening, full of terrific scenes. Alas, after that the pacing slows down. While not without its pleasures -Adele's succession of failed attempts to break someone out of prison, the dead sister with a hairpin through her head who is kept in bed at Adele's apartment- it lacks narrative drive which all contrives to create a languid impression which taints the whole film and there were times when I felt myself dozing off.

There's a lot to like here, many vivid imaginative touches, wry humour, a touch of French cynicism, it almost, but just doesn't, succeed. Still, give it a try, there really is much to enjoy.

The inclusion of this image does not mean your blogger approves of smoking.

Mme Bougoin is a definite improvement on the graphic novel version of the character.

TV/DVD: HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 6

2011-11-05T18:24:00.000Z

An Amazon 5* review.
The funniest sitcom on TV

I came late to this show, catching odd episodes of this and Season 5 before biting the bullet and ending up watching the entire lot starting in early summer. This latest one I watched in its entirety in two days. Heck, it's even funnier than my other real favourite "The Big Bang Theory".

I'm not sure but this just may be the best season so far with several ongoing storylines like the identity of Barney's father, Marshall and Lily's attempt to get pregnant, Marshall's work problems, Ted's relationship with the edgy Zoey (the excellent Jennifer Morrison, and let's not forget Kyle Mclachlan as her husband The Captain), plus standout single episodes 'The Blitz' with Jorge Garcia as The Blitz and 'Oh Honey' with Katy Perry as Oh Honey, both playing it just right, and there's more from Robin Sparkles. What makes it all work though, apart from great writing and great performances, is the way it's structured with flashbacks, often of the same scene but from different viewpoints or what 'really' happened, teasing flashforwards, and brief throwaway scenes which only pay off in later episodes (sometimes in a later season).

There's a reasonable bunch of extras and, unusually but probably not surprising for this show, the deleted scenes are often very good. I don't usually listen to commentaries but I did with 'Bad News' featuring Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan. It isn't especially interesting but it's fun to hear Hannigan mooning adoringly over her husband Alexis Denisoff in a guest role (they never share a scene). The gag reel is as funny as you'd expect.

How I Met Your Mother isn't just the funniest show currently on TV, it's one of the funniest shows that's ever been on TV and puts things like Friends in the shade. If you've never watched it, take a punt on Season 1 and I'll be surprised if you aren't back, like I was, for the rest.

L-R: Lily (Alyson Hannigan), Marshall (Jason Segel), Ted (Josh Radnor),

Robin (Cobie Smulders), Barney (Neil Patrick Harris).

Ted with this season's love interest Zoey (Jennifer Harrison).

Barney with Oh Honey ( Katy Perry). You have to watch it to find out why she's called that.

VINTAGE SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE POSTERS

2011-11-02T19:32:00.000Z

Well, that was quick, wasn't it?

This is one of the rare examples, like This Island Earth, where the movie was better than the poster. Usually it's the other way around which is why I like these posters so much.

Special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen.

HORROR MOVIE POSTERS

2011-11-02T13:32:00.000Z

Inspired by accidentally coming across a couple of vintage horror movie posters for the previous post, I decided to bring you a few more for, as Julie so eloquently puts it, "these are a few of my favourite things".

I think that's enough for now. I may do something similar quite soon because it's easy and fun to do.

BOOK/DVD REVIEW: TWO HORROR-THEMED REVIEWS

2011-11-02T12:46:00.000Z

Just thought I'd try it.
3* review.

Sometimes I miss a really good show on TV and then later get tempted by the DVD season 1 at a cheap price and discover they're brilliant. Examples of this include Chuck, Eureka, How I Met your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and (quite a while ago now) Firefly, none of which I can now imagine being without. So I thought I'd give Supernatural a try.

Well, it isn't one of them. It's perfectly okay, I watched all the episodes and mildly enjoyed it but it didn't knock my socks off, though the last few episodes were quite good. For me the main weakness was the lack of an ensemble cast which all the above shows that I've cited have and you can add Buffy as another example (though I was a fan of that from the first episode). While the leads were actually better than I expected (which was that I feared I might hate them) and quite likeable, meeting a new cast of characters every time and knowing that you're never going to see them again tends to detract from your (well, my) viewing pleasure, though Jeffrey Dean Stanton cropping up from time to time was a welcome bonus. Maybe things improve on that front in later seasons -I'll check Wikipaedia. A touch more humour would also help -it worked in Buffy.

I will probably buy season 2 when I'm a bit short of something to watch but right now I'm going to start on How I Met Your Mother season 6.

Superficial but fun.

4* review.

Basically this is a picture book for horror/monster movie fans. On that level it succeeds admirably containing a wide range of stills and movie posters -the latter often being better than the movies they are advertising. The short text accompanying each picture manages to be informative, sometimes critical, sometimes funny which is pretty good going when the entry is less than 50 words long.

For relative newcomers to the genre, this is a good, albeit far from definitive, guide providing a more than ample selection of movies you'll want to watch. For the long-time monster fan like me, it's a great piece of nostalgia with a complete list of all movies mentioned (and a list of names -mainly actors and directors) which is great because when I have a bit more time, I'm going to go through that list, count how many I've actually seen, and try and check out the ones which seem interesting from the remainder.

Landis loses a point for not including a section on monster plants like one of my favourites 'Matango, Fungus of Terror', though he does mention 'Day of the Triffids'.

The following image appears just because it was there.

And so does this.

And one more for luck.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: THE INCAL BY JODOROWSKY & MOEBIUS (2011)

2011-10-31T10:58:00.000Z

An Amazon 4* review.
Weird, wacky and sometimes wonderful

And often extremely strange.

But, and this is often overlooked, frequently funny and satirical. Jodorowsky the writer is also known as a maker of surreal blackly comic movies that are also extremely violent. The Incal, however, is Jodorowsky in a playful mood and were it not for the fact that the metaphysical aspects of this science fiction graphic novel seem to be played out with relative seriousness I'd be inclined to call The Incal a satire.

I can usually sit down and get through a graphic novel relatively quickly but, while enjoying it, I seemed only to be able to get through it about 10-20 pages at a time spread over a few weeks. This may be because I found myself not quite in sympathy with the fallible everyman protagonist (his name is appropriate) and the metaphysical or spiritual aspect of the thing. It has its moments, many of them but,while in part it deserves its reputation, I sometimes felt I was looking at the emperor's new clothes. Perhaps an introduction might have been useful.

As for the art, well it's by Moebius who is one of the greatest graphic story illustrators of the last 40 years. It's worth buying for the art alone and there should be more books by Moebius available. It is good but I feel as if I'm sitting on the fence somewhat.

RECENT AMAZON REVIEWS

2011-10-30T20:46:00.000Z

Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Edition 2012, DVD-ROM.
The best encyclopaedia in the world. 5* review.

But it doesn't have the best search engine. I'll come back to that.

The one outstanding feature of Britannica is, unlike Wikipaedia (of which, don't misunderstand me, I'm a fan and regular user), you can completely depend on its accuracy (at the time it was written). If Britannica says something is true, you can bet your house, your partner, and children on it (though I don't recommend gambling on principle). In the days before home computers became ubiquitous, Britannica used to be only available in massive multi-volume paper editions costing hundreds and hundreds of pounds and the publishers could afford salesmen as my 13 year old self found out when, after writing off for a brochure, I was woken up shortly before lunch by one knocking on my door (the salesman not the brochure which had arrived days before). Now you can have the entire thing, including multi-media, on one DVD-ROM for about the same amount as a young teenagers's weekly pocket money is amazing, at least to my aging eyes. That it also includes 3 age-related version is even more so. Plus you get online updates albeit for a not so insignificant sum. As a good all-round encyclopaedia Britannica is the best.

Technical detail. When loading it onto your hard disk, you have a choice of installations: with or without the media content. If you opt for the latter you'll need the disc in the drive to access the media content, if the former it doubles the amount of space you need. I chose the latter and it took round about 20 minutes to install. Once installed it worked perfectly.

But even Britannica does have its limitations. It can't contain all the knowledge in the world. I checked out some of my favourites -Blues music, Science Fiction, the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami- and found the entries to be relatively slight and really little more than a starting point. Admittedly, in the grand scheme of things, these aren't major topics and there is much in depth material on history and the sciences.

Now the search engine isn't very flexible. I typed in soccer and got soca. No hyperlink for the acceptable term 'football'. Also when I first started using it, it seemed to only recognise a personal name by entering the surname first. However, in between the last couple of sentences, I've double checked this and now it is recognising both ways of entering the name. Odd. I've also checked soccer again and this time it has come up with a hyperlink for football. So it seems as if Britannica is learning as I use it. Either that or I've been doing something stupid which, sadly, is also possible. I'd be interested to learn if this has happened to anyone else.

I was going to rate Britannica at four stars but in the light of the preceding paragraph, I've upgraded it. It really is the best encyclopaedia in the world.

Ho-medics CBS-1000 max shiatsu massaging chair.

A great product. 5* review.

The prime criteria for something like this is: does it work? And the simple answer is: yes, very well.

Once you've got it out of the box, it's relatively easy to set up, though the manual (what there is of it) could have had a little more detail. It isn't obvious at first whether it's switched on or not because the indicator is two very thin rings around the flat switch which go red but once you known what you're looking for, it's fine. The controls -a small hand held device- are easy to use.

I started with the trial programme which I confess wasn't too comfortable. I felt like my back was being pulverised but you can either lower the setting or just endure the pain until you get used to it. Prior to this, I've just used wooden rollers or one of those things which heat up while you rub your muscles with it. This is way way better. I love it.

It also comes with a thin handy storage bag.

In short, this is a well-designed product which fulfills its purpose very well indeed. I can see me using it on a frequent basis.

One of the greats. 4* review.

There's no question that Berni Wrightson is one of the great horror story illustrators of all time and this is a good selection of his early work. Accompanying stories are numerous frontispieces from the two magazines mostly in colour, though the stories, with one exception, are in black and white.

What Amazon's blurb doesn't mention is that not all of the stories are actually drawn by Wrightson. Two of them are him inking Carmine Infantino's pencils to no great effect. Infantino being such a distinct stylist, there's no real apparent trace of Wrightson. Another is him inking Howard Chaykin. Although Chaykin's art is unmistakable, this is more of a collaboration with Wrightson's contribution being clearly visible and making it all the more interesting for it.

Many of the stories have been reprinted before but this is a nice collection to have.

Worth a try.

3* review expanded from original Amazon.

Nice to see someone trying something a little different. It's just before D-Day and in an attempt to divert German attention from Normandy, Allied Command have sent two New Zealand commandos (the film is from NZ) to a Channel Island to destroy a gun emplacement but they find something else. Beneath the emplacement is a secret laboratory where one of Hitler's secret supernatural experiments have been taking place. Specifically, they've been trying to raise a demon. Unfortunately for them, they've succeeded.

It's low budget and much of it's set in one room. For most of the running time there are only three characters. Most of the gore is in the shape of already dead and mutilated German soldiers. There are only a couple of notable onscreen kills. Okay, this sounds as if I'm trying to put you off but I'm not. What is so good about this film is the sheer tension the director builds up between the characters that you can't look away from the screen and you really do not have any idea of what happens next. You have two enemies trapped with a devious man-eating demon who becomes the person you love. It is genuinely suspenseful and scary. The World War 2 setting is also an interesting factor which makes this different from the usual run of horror movies.

HEALTH: ADVENTURES IN SOCIALISED MEDICINE

2011-10-19T20:55:00.000+01:00

I love that phrase socialised medicine. It had never impinged on my consciousness until all that fuss in the States about Obama's plans for medical reform. I think that socialised medicine in the UK -otherwise known as the National Health Service (NHS) was the greatest creation of the post-war Labour government. Free health care treatment for all funded by taxation. Health care not dependent on ability to pay. We are a society so why shouldn't those who have help those who have not? Why shouldn't we care for the weak and the vulnerable?

All of which is leading towards an anecdote of my recent NHS experiences.

A couple of months ago my dentist took an X-ray of my mouth and found some kind of black hole inside my jaw and she referred me to the Sunderland Royal Hospital for further investigation. Several weeks later (last Thursday to be precise) I turned up for my appointment and was duly X-rayed again (twice) and had a consultation with a doctor. The result of this was the decision that samples would be taken of tissue and bone (a minor operation involving local anaesthetic) which would take place in 4-6 weeks time. This would involved cutting and stitching and some discomfort for me later on. I suspected this to be an understatement but I'm phlegmatic about these things and didn't let it bother me.

Imagine my surprise when the following day I received a phone call from the hospital to say that a slot had appeared and they could fit me in the following Wednesday (today). Susan was somewhat apprehensive as she suspected the real reason was that it could be serious. I pooh-poohed that idea though I did begin to wonder. We were both wrong: as it would only be a short operation, when a time slot for that length appeared I actually was the next person in line.

So I turned up today at one o'clock, was taken to an empty room where my details were checked, my blood pressure and temperature taken and told I was the last of four this afternoon so there would be a wait and I was left alone. I did have the new Terry Pratchett book with me which I got out and started to read. For a time I went into a light doze. I used the toilet twice. Finally after a couple of hours, a nurse came in and told me to strip and put on a gown as the person before me was having her operation.

About twenty minutes later the young surgeon came in, shook hands, and explained that they wouldn't be going ahead today.

He'd only just looked at my x-rays and had decided there wasn't enough information to take the risk (the site was close to a nerve which, if damaged, could paralyse my jaw). Also he suspected that the black hole was something very minor which didn't need attention. However, to determine this or not I would have to have a CT scan in the near future before deciding what to do.

Fine. I wasn't disappointed despite having waited over three hours as I wasn't really looking forward to having my gum cut open and then stitched back shut. I rang Susan who came and took me home.

If I'd had to pay for the privilege of waiting three hours in the hospital I'd really have been pissed off. I heart socialised medicine. Socialised medicine (and the NHS) rule.

COMIC ART: BASIL WOLVERTON

2011-10-17T10:32:00.000+01:00

Basil Wolverton is pretty much unknown outside comics and even inside, he's known only by serious comic fans. Little of his work is currently available, most notably his illustrated Bible from Fantagraphics Books. This is rather ironic as Wolverton had an amazing imagination for grotesqueries. His art is so individual and so striking that it could never be mistaken for anyone elses.

The reason I'm mentioning him now is that I've just learned that Fantagraphics are printing two volumes of his work in August next year -a collection of science fiction stories and his Spacehawk series. Needless to day, I've ordered them both. Only 10 months to wait.

And here is a selection of his work. It's only partially representative of his work as he was noted for his humorous cartoons which I've mostly ignored. Prepare to be amazed and stuff.

Basil Wolverton died in 1978

DVD: CHUCK SEASON 4.

2011-10-16T10:24:00.000+01:00

I Love Chuck.

An Amazon 5* review.

Surprisingly, this isn't what you think it is.

Truthfully I really love Yvonne Strahovski who is simply wonderful as agent Sarah Walker. She's absolutely gorgeous but not in a "I-know-I-am-so-worship-me mode" but in an appealing adorable way. That she can act and act well helps a lot (and does most of her own stunts). The only other actress I can think of who has that sort of appeal is Kaley Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory. But then the perfect casting of the three leads is one of the main reasons why this series is so appealing. Strahovski, along with Levi and Baldwin, have great comic chops which work by them playing it more or less straight.

What's also helped is the character development of the leads and the gradual unveiling of their various secrets which help keep things bubbling along. One thing I was concerned with after watching the first series was how the relationship between Chuck and Sarah would develop. After three seasons of the Castle the relationship between the two leads remains unchanged. That hasn't happened here. That relationship -romance, really- has grown as Chuck has grown in confidence as a spy. At the beginning he was gawky and unsure of himself, secretly pining for Sarah who couldn't bring herself to admit she had feelings for him. As this season begins, they are not only living together but Chuck is taking the lead on some missions. The romance sub-plot is now: will they get engaged and if they do, will they get married?

But of course there's also lots of spy work to do. This season we finally meet Chuck's mother (Linda Hamilton) who may or may not be on the side of evil Russian oligarch Alexei Volkov (Timothy Dalton), the season's Big Bad. Dalton is, unsurprisingly, brilliant as the manic murderous mastermind and he looks as if he's enjoying every minute of it. As usual there are plenty of twists and turns and surprise revelations and other guest stars.

Next season will be the last and a truncated 13 episodes at that and I'm actually glad. To be honest, I wouldn't have minded if this season had been the end as it would have been a satisfying conclusion. There's nothing worse than something good going on too long. A good show like this should finish at the top leaving nothing but happy memories in the minds of the audience. When I think of all the other drama shows on TV I like, I can honestly say that I enjoy this one the most. Yes, even more than Dr. Who, The Big Bang Theory, Castle, and How I Met Your Mother.

Oh, and the blooper reel is very funny.

BOOK REVIEW: 1001 COMICS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE (2011)

2011-10-08T11:58:00.001+01:00

5 star Amazon review.
Absolutely essential.

UK Cover

This book arrived in the same package from Amazon with another of similar size that had been ordered separately. There's a reason I mention this this but it will have to wait to the end of the review.

But first let's dispose of that stupid title. Unlike companion volumes in this series -movies, albums, songs- it is completely impossible for anyone to read all the comics listed unless: you have a lot of free time; a large amount of disposable funds; and are versed in numerous foreign languages. Many of the works are out of print and unobtainable except from national libraries; many have never been translated out of their original language. So forget the title, that isn't what this book is really about.

Essentially it's an historical survey of what the various writers and editor believe to be the best or most significant (the two are not necessarily synonymous) comics ever published. I'd argue that it's also polemical in that it's an argument for comics (by which the compiler includes newspaper strips, comics, graphic novels, manga or whatever form a narrative consisting of words and images appears in) as an art form. Comics are a medium just like films and novels.

It's also a reference book which is arranged chronologically. However, before the entries begin, there is an alphabetical list of titles and at the end an alphabetical index of author and illustrator which lists their included works. (You might not be too surprised to learn that Alan Moore has the most entries.) Include useful introduction and a brief guide to contributors and as a reference work it works very well. What you want to know is easily accessed.

It's enormously wide ranging which means people who read only superhero titles will find it quite disappointing, though the superhero genre is represented along with all the other genres from humour to social realism and all stops in between. It's international in scope which is sometimes frustrating as when a work looks extremely interesting but hasn't been translated into English. And it's also enlightening particularly when you come across something you've raved over but didn't believe anyone else had ever heard of. In my case it was The Chimpanzee Complex (UK, Cinebooks, 3 slim volumes), an amazing work of Science Fiction which I'd read earlier this year. Inevitably you won't agree with all the inclusions and will wonder why some of your particular favourites have been left out but that is all part of the fun of books like this.

The amount of text per entry is just enough to cover the basics of what you need to know about each work and it's up to you and me to decide if we want to dig deeper. There is often a cover or full page illustration to convey the flavour of a work but often there isn't. But then space is limited and the book is heavy enough and price is just enough too.

I do have one criticism to make though, admittedly, it is quite minor. A few more works could have been included by excluding multiple entries of a single title by the same creator (Asterix, Corto Maltese, Blake & Mortimer). This doesn't apply to series which have different creators (Batman).

Of course with books like this, because of the publishing lead-in time, they tend to be out date as soon as they appear. The book which arrived in the same package is Craig Thompson's new masterpiece Habibi, a truly remarkable graphic novel like nothing you've ever read and one that certainly ought to have been included but for its almost simultaneous publication date. And then I looked at the last entry...

US cover

DVD: MEGA PYTHON VS GATOROID

2011-10-08T11:47:00.000+01:00

Slightly revised Amazon 3-star review.
Bad, but in a good way.

And, no, I'm not apologising. The DVD cover is in the previous post.

Okay, neither Tiffany (who is sort of attractive in a sleazy overweight tattooed red-headed busty kind of way) nor Debbie Gibson (skinny blonde who hasn't worn well and looks more like an aging hooker than a scientist) can really act. Both their characters in the film act behave with astonishing stupidity and so does the rest of the cast. The story doesn't always make sense -like how come no-one noticed for months that the alligators and their deadly enemy the pythons were growing in size and why had they suddenly stopped killing each other? The CGI, as usual, is pretty crap.

But who cares when there's so much fun to be had. The two women's characters hate each other which leads to a cat-fight in the middle of a fund-raising party for the swamp where punches and cream cakes are thrown and, without them even noticing, the rest of the guests start getting eaten by monsters, following which one of them says, "I think we're alone now," and the other replies with the next line of the song. Mickey Dolenz has a surprise and funny cameo and gets (spoiler warning) eaten. Sorry was that too late? Well, it was obvious anyway. The DVD cover art doesn't exaggerate by much. There are not just two monsters but dozens of them. Most of the cast gets eaten.

It really is a bad film but I was too busy enjoying myself most of the time to notice.

MUSIC: LISTENING TO JOE MCELDERRY IN THE BATH

2011-10-06T13:43:00.000+01:00

But not through choice!

Susan bought the CD and plays it at every opportunity.

Perhaps a word of explanation to those of you who haven't heard of Joe. He won X-Factor about three or four years which means normally he'd be completely forgotten about by now. However, he went on a show called (I think, I didn't watch it though Susan was a fan) Popstar To Operastar and won it. Apparently he trashed all the competition, being later revealed that he got more votes than the other singers combined in every show he appeared. To be fair, that is a genuine achievement and the lad really can sing. Oh yes, and he's also local, from South Shields, four miles up the coast from Sunderland. Anyway, the CD above is pretty much based on his winning that and the songs are most light opera or operacised standards.

Me, I just don't get opera. It's not a musical genre I have any appreciation for or understanding of. So for Susan to play this any time she can requires some considerable forbearance on my part as me playing a single guitar chord by Jerry Garcia on a Grateful Dead song causes screams of "Turn that down!" no matter how quiet it is (usually not very to be fair).

She'll even get out of bed at 7.30 in the morning, which is almost unheard of, to switch it on. Which is what she did this morning. She asked me to do it but I refused. Mind you I was in the bath at the time; which is where the title of this post comes in. I've lost rack of how many times I've heard bits of it and I'm getting worried. His version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow with its unusual arrangement (i.e. nothing like either Judy Garland or Eva Cassidy) has actually started sounding not completely hateful to my ears. There's also an Italian-language operacised version of Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On which might be good if it had been sung in English and de-operacised.

I'm getting ear plugs.

(Aside: Hearing that version of the Dion song made realise I didn't have the original. While it's a bit middle of the road for my taste, there's no doubt it's a brilliantly crafted song and sung beautifully by Ms Dion and it's deceptively difficult to sing causing dozens of singers on X-Factor to fall flat on their faces. So I downloaded it from Amazon about half an hour ago and I'm playing it now. For the fourth time.)

ON-LINE SHOPPING: CONFESSIONS OF A COMPULSIVE CONSUMER

2011-10-05T14:07:00.001+01:00

It's really too easy buying stuff online and you end up with more than you can read, watch, or listen to because there's always something else new and exciting and reasonably priced. Here are four items that came in the post today along with my justifications for buying them.

A few days ago this was mentioned on the comics and media website Bleeding Cool (see sidebar) as being available from HMV online for £16.99. That's all the original versions plus director's cuts, or with additional material, a shedload of extras on each disc, plus two additional discs of supplementary material -an absolutely massive amount of stuff, plus it's in Bluray. How could any horror/sf movie fan resist it even if they had (or used to have) VHS video versions and DVDs? Look man this is a real no-brainer, especially when I'm one of those who think Alien Resurrection is completely under-rated -yes, I love that film.

If you've read my reviews of the previous three seasons you'll know how much I love this series and I'll be watching no other DVDs until I've finished watching all 24 episodes and extras.

Regular readers will know what a big fan of Osamu Tezuka I am even if just from a recent review by another blogger I reprinted here. Helen McCarthy's coffee-table book The Art of Osamu Tezuka is one of my favourite books ever, but I wanted something a little more in-depth and found this one.

So there we are. I'm sure you can understand how I couldn't really resist buying these things.

What? There's only three there? Ah, well, yes. Um. I was hoping you wouldn't notice. Look, it's no big deal really. I mean it only cost £2.99 and that's the release price and it got a decent review in Horror Movie A Day website (see sidebar). Oh very well, here it is.

Look it has 80's teen pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany in the lead roles and they have a cat fight at a garden party (I've seen the clip). You dare try and tell me that that doesn't automatically qualify this Syfy-produced monster movie for cult status!

While we're on the subject, Horror Movie A Day also reviewed a DVD today which sounded like a lot of fun and was also only £2.99.

Oh get lost. So I like dumb daft horror movies. Sue me.

On Monday I got two extremely thick and heavy books which were ordered separately but have a link between them. That, however, is going to be the subject of a different post.

DVD: FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (2008)

2011-10-03T17:56:00.000+01:00

Okay, I bought this because it stars Jason Segel (who also wrote the script) from the TV series I love How I Met Your Mother. I think he's a very talented comic actor. That it also starred Kristen Bell from another favourite TV series -Veronica Mars- didn't hurt either. That it included Russell Brand wasn't, however, a selling point but in the event he was pretty good.

The plot is pretty basic. Composer of music of hit TV crime series is dumped by his girlfriend who is also the star of said series, and goes to a hotel in Hawaii to forget about it all only find his ex is there with new boyfriend but there is the distraction of the friendly and pretty girl (Mila Kunis) on the reception desk. I think you can work out from the above photo who is playing whom.

I did watch the uncut version which I assume, apart from slightly extended scenes, there are more and longer shot of a naked Segel exposing his todger. (Note: todger is a slang British synonym used by a person who is too embarrassed to write the word penis.) If that in fact is the only difference, I would rather have watched the original. There's plenty of sex and female nudity (breasts), notably early on when Segel is trying to drown his sorrows in casual sex, usually for comic effect so no-one can say that it's just to show attractive naked women. Not that I'm complaining.

There's a little bit of meta-fiction as the part Bell plays is of an actress who learns halfway through the film that her TV series has been cancelled and she has to try for film roles. This is the exact situation Bell found herself in when Veronica Mars was sadly cancelled and, talented as she is, she hasn't exactly set the film world alight.

Brand is rather likeable as the completely amoral British pop singer and he provides a nice counterpoint to Segel's serious and overemotional musician. Kunis is fine too and there are several good supporting characters.

The overall result is a rather enjoyable quirky romantic comedy with fine performances all round. There are nits to pick but I can't be bothered and I've just ordered (for 36p plus postage) another comedy with Segel in the lead role.

COMPUTER CRIME: I'VE BEEN HACKED - UPDATE

2011-10-03T17:23:00.000+01:00

I've just received an email sent to Susan Hardy (my wife, in case you're a new visitor) which couldn't be delivered and it's actually the email which was sent to everyone on my contacts list. I hadn't actually seen it before. Even Barry, with whom I've been in regular phone and email contact about this over the weekend, had deleted it.

Hi

My regrets for this sudden request, I have been involved in a robbery
during my trip to Madrid, Spain. I got mugged and all my belongings
cash, mobile phone and credit cards were all stolen at gun point. I
need your help as am trying to raise some money.

I've made contact with my bank but they are not providing a fast
solution. I need you to lend me some money to sort my self out of this
predicament, will pay back once I get this over with.

Please let me know if you can assist me in anyway so i can forward you
details to effect a transfer. You can reach me via email or the
hotel's desk phone (deleted)

I can see how my friend was fooled by this as he didn't know where I was -though a phone call to my home would have told him. There are a couple of minor mistakes (grammatical, typo) but these could be put down to me being in an emotional state. It's not like one of those letters from Nigeria. It's concise and coherent.

Bastards.

I wish upon them to become victims of the most vile acts they can imagine.

COMPUTER CRIME: I'VE BEEN HACKED!

2011-10-03T16:00:00.000+01:00

About 3pm on Friday afternoon I discovered I'd been logged out of Google. I tried to log in and couldn't. I couldn't use Google as a search engine. I couldn't use my Gmail account. And I couldn't get in to my blogs -I could read them, I just couldn't post anything.

Half an hour later I got a phone call from a colleague who'd' received an email from me saying that I was stuck in Madrid and needed money urgently. Not being an idiot and working on the IT side of things, he realised my account had been hacked and had called to warn me. This wasn't the last call I received on the subject.

I still didn't suss out exactly what was happening as it had never happened before. After trying and failing to log on to Google, I was informed I'd tried too many times and couldn't retry my password until the following day i.e. October 1st. October 1st and 'Google' didn't seem to realise it as it wasn't until the afternoon before I was allowed to try again. I get blocked. There was also alternative @ymail I could use which I now realise was part of the con.

In the meantime I'd logged on to Yahoo, which I used as a temporary homepage instead of my customised iGoogle, and did some searches under Gmail account hacked, visiting several pages before finding one where I could contact Google via a form. I also created an email account at Yahoo so I had some means of contacting people and being contacted. I had to allow 24 hours so I allowed more before nothing happened and sent another one. This time I did get a reply which I found when I got back from empyting the donated petfood bins from three local superstores -Asda, Sainsburys, and Morrisons- which had been kind enough to let us have them. So followed the instructions which resulted in me having to fill in another copy of the form. But this time after submitting it I was directed to a different web page and shortly after that I regained control of my account. Hence this posting.

However, there were consequences. Any emails I'd received since Friday had disappeared for good, though the spam hadn't been touched. I had to restore my contacts list which was actually no bad thing as I had to access the list and tick those addresses I wanted restored resulting in trimming it down from over 230 to a mere 40.

And this morning I found out that someone (whom I'm not going to identify had been taken in by the con and had actually sent money -he wouldn't tell me how much. He hadn't thought, he admitted to me, he'd just reacted. He'd seen that a friend was in trouble and did what he could to help; without thinking. What a lovely person he is. Not that I didn't know that already. Anyone who knows him knows that and it makes me sick to my stomach that these scum have conned someone like that. I hope that lots of really bad things happen to him/her/them and that they suffer.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: AYAKO by OSAMU TEZUKA (VERTICAL, 2011, serialised JAPAN 1972-3))

2011-09-29T13:35:00.000+01:00

The following review was written by Jeff Alford and appeared here: http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/graphicnovels/fr/Ayako-Osamu-Tezuka.htm

I haven't been able to contact him to ask his permission to reprint it, so my apologies for this lapse. I wouldn't have done so had I been able to write a review even half as good of this book.

If you're completely unfamiliar with Tezuka, please read my review of The Art of Osamu Tezuka by Helen McCarthy which is reviewed elsewhere in this blog. He is (or rather, sadly, was) one of the very greatest creators of graphic novels of the 20th century. As a writer/artist he is simply without peer; a creator of graphic stories for children and adults, he possessed a vividly fertile imagination and very strong sense of morality. One of these days, I'll write a proper appreciation of his genius in this this blog.

How long does a war really last, and how does a society become "post-war" after the smoke finally clears? Set in rural Japan, Osamu Tezuka's Ayako follows the deeply troubled Tenge clan as their household (and country) attempts to regain its footing after World War II. Spanning twenty-five years and seven hundred pages, Ayako unfolds like a Victorian novel by way of Alfred Hitchcock: dark family secrets collide with political espionage and create one of the most layered and nuanced graphic novels to ever reach our shores.

The drama in Ayako is pulled between two opposing forces, one of family honor and one of political onus. The end of World War II drew a line between these two themes, and the characters in Ayako struggle to decide which entity's protection is a more honorable cause. The novel begins with Jiro Tenge's return home from the war, who learns very quickly the despicable practices that his family had fallen into during the past five years. Jiro is surprised to see a new child in the Tenge household. Four-year-old Ayako is revealed to be the offspring of Jiro's father and his sister-in-law, a sexual arrangement made by Jiro's brother in an attempt to secure the Tenge inheritance.Jiro's political background is similarly murky, and although the war is over he is still working for the
GHQ, aiding in assassination plots against local leftist party members. After a particularly bloody task of evidence tampering (disposing a corpse on nearby train tracks), Jiro is seen by Ayako and the family maid trying to secretly clean bloodstains from his clothing. Soon after, the Tenge's maid mysteriously drowns. Although Jiro is suspected to be involved in both deaths, the Tenges are more concerned with their family's incest going public with the looming shadow of police investigations. After painful deliberations, it is decided that Jiro flee the village and Ayako be "taken off the books" and permanently sequestered in the building's basement.

Ayako finally escapes after twenty years and journeys to Tokyo in search of Jiro. Due to the absence of any social interaction during her upbringing, Ayako has grown into a relentlessly uninhibited woman and clashes with the social mores of contemporary Japan. Tezuka masterfully presents a country that has evolved faster in twenty years than Ayako herself has matured. Although newly independent, Ayako's existence is so tightly connected to pre-war Japan that she's unable to fit in to a world so desperately trying to move on.

Ayako is an exquisitely composed novel, furiously balanced between the personal and political. However, this may not be one of the rare crossover graphic novels that will pull in new readers from the realm of contemporary literature. Despite the thematic density of the book, the actual dialogue of Ayako at times deflates the mature themes into a gentler, comic-like tone. The members of the Tenge clan all speak in a rural dialect that is often difficult to take with the appropriate gravitas. For instance, during the pivotal meeting that ultimately decided four-year old Ayako's fate:

"As y'all knows, there be a rumor that O-Ryo was killed by somebody. Ayako's actin' scared ‘n hidin' from somebody…she knows somethin' but she be too scared t'talk. Howev'r, whatev'r it be, I betcha it be somethin' dat shall stain the Tenge Clan's name if she were ever t'talk."

Whether this in an issue of Ayako's translation or Tezuka's original intention, Ayako's aural tone will surely have some readers divided. Ayako is so close to being the kind of graphic novel that transcends its intended audience and introduces new readers to the form, but instead will simply remain proudly on the shelves of comics and manga enthusiasts.

DVD: ALFRED HITCHCOCK SEASON -TORN CURTAIN (1966)

2011-09-27T19:49:00.000+01:00

Hitchcock didn't get on with his method-actor lead Paul Newman who kept wanting to know what his motivation was and wasn't satisfied with Hitchcock's answer: Your cheque. Hitchcock wanted Eva Marie Saint but had big star Julie Andrews forced on him. The script was a mess and British writers Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall had to do extensive and uncredited rewriting before it was even barely filmable. Hitchcock had a bust-up with long-term musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann over the score and even after a second attempt by BH, Hitch hired someone else for the final version. And just to put the nail in the coffin, there is no discernable chemistry between the two lead actors.

Despite all that, it's actually quite a watchable film if you can ignore the various stupidities of the plot. The standout scene is the extended killing of Newman's East German minder in a farmhouse which was intended to show how hard and how grisly it is to actually kill someone. Shocking at the time, it now seems relatively tame but does retain a certain emotional impact.

Aside: Newman plays a scientist visiting a conference in Denmark, with fiance Andrews, when he defects to East Germany where she follows. It's a con of course as he's really there to steal an important scientific secret which will help his own work for the US government. When the East German authorities realise there's something amiss -like finding the dead body of the minder- Newman and Andrews go on the run.

Now, the most painful plot stupidity. Newman loses his minder and goes to visit his contact. Where is the contact? In a seedy hidden backstreet in East Berlin? No, it's in the country, on a farm, which neccessitates him taking a taxi. Spotted the weakness in the plan? Yes, the taxi driver can, and does, identify him and tells the authorities where he went. While at the farm, he and a woman murder his minder (see above). Now where is the body (and the motorbike) buried? Is it miles away? No. Is it on the farm where the authorities can easily find it (them)? Yes. Superspies these people aren't.

Just one other thing. Hitchcock was known for making a brief appearance in every film he made and as a result this little piece of vanity lead cinema-goers to watch out for his appearance. They didn't have to try hard to spot him hear because the music blasts a loud cue that he was associated with from his TV show. They may as well have had a giant cardboard arrow onscreen pointing at him. It completely takes you out of the film.

(As usual, thanks to Wikipaedia for some details.)

RECENT AMAZON BOOK & DVD REVIEWS

2011-09-26T17:22:00.000+01:00

A Town Called Eureka - Season 4.0 [DVD]

Good, but I'm still going to grumble. 4* rating.

The obvious grumble is splitting Season 4 into two parts which I find very annoying and feels like squeezing the fan's plastic. However, at least where the break is makes sense.

The new season opens with our five (guess who? -hint: see above) core characters travelling back to 1947. It ends with a reprise of the same adventure but from a different perspective which makes it thematically satisfying. Plus the results of the initial trip back reverberate for the rest of the season as its caused a number of changes to the present. This is all done very well and serves to refresh the series which might have been in danger of going stale.

And this is where my next grumble comes in. Two of the characters going into the past -to a Eureka which is still a military base- are black. Racism was endemic in the USA at the time, particularly in the army. Many black American soldiers based in Britain during the Second World War were amazed to be treated as equals by white people for the first time in their lives. But at the Eureka army base there isn't a hint of racism. Not even when a white soldier kisses a black nurse at a dance. Okay, I know this is light entertainment but this, very ironically in the context, really is rewriting history. A hint of realism wouldn't have gone amiss.

Otherwise it maintains the standards of previous seasons and the history changing gives it an added fillip especially with the addition to the cast of James Callis as a scientist from 1947 whose intentions towards Allison are strictly dishonourable and he emerges as a rival to the sheriff for her affections. If it wasn't for the grumbles this would have been close to getting a 5-star rating from me. Recommended.

Ghost of a Smile (Ghost Finders Novel) (Paperback)

Second success in spooky series. 4* rating.

Looks like Green has settled on a format (or should I say formula?) for this effective supernatural series about government ghost hunters. Start with a novella to introduce the characters, keep the cast small, segue into the main story, set it in one location and don't leave it until the end. Fair enough. It worked the first time and it works this time as well.

The small cast of characters is fun: JC the cocky leader, Melody the cynical mechanic, Happy Jack the unhappy telepath, and Kim the ghost (who is on the book cover, not Melody), and JC's phantasmal girlfriend, who wants to be a real girl (unofficial member); and their interplay is fun. The menace is interesting, partly because the reader is never quite sure which of the various people and creatures who appear really are the menace -is it a scientific experiment gone wrong, or a creature from the outer darkness, or both? Don't worry, our fearful heroes will find out whether they like it or not. (Hint: just don't trust anyone or anything.)

This is lightweight spooky fluff, ideal for when you're in the mood for light entertainment, spooky or not. I'll be back for the third installment. Chances are you will too.

DVD: ALFRED HITCHCOCK SEASON -TOPAZ (1969)

2011-09-26T16:30:00.000+01:00

Before I start the review, here's a list of Hitchcock films in, respectively, the box sets The Masterpiece Collection (14 films) and The Signature Collection (7 films). I've already reviewed two, the rest will be reviewed over the next few months in between other films and TV box set series.

Family Plot, Frenzy, Marnie, Psycho, Rear Window, Rope, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble with Harry, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Vertigo.

Dial M for Murder, I Confess, Stage Fright, The Wrong Man, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest.

This is the American edition with 9, not 6, films.

Again, the American edition. The British version has an incredibly dull cover (just his name and a signature) and is very flimsy.

This is the Masterpiece Collection cover and, seeing as we're on the subject, this edition of the film includes material which Hitchcock deleted after a series of disastrous previews. This isn't mentioned anywhere on the cover and the running time given is that of the original release, so it's wrong. It also includes three different endings, none of which are particularly good. The music is sometimes oddly inappropriate as when a father and daughter run upstairs concerned about the daughter's husband and then back down when they think he's been thrown out of a window. The accompanying music is almost jaunty rather than dramatic and suspenseful.

There's a half hour long extra of Leonard Maltin attempting to defend Topaz. He argues that one of the problems is that, despite the good cast, the film contains no stars who could grab the audience's attention. This is true. He also argues that it's a very European film in terms of structure and pacing and would probably have done better if previewed at an art house. This may well be true but it would also defeat the object as Hitchcock made films for mainstream audiences, albeit with intelligence and sophistication -he never pandered to the lowest common denominator. Maltin also focuses typical Hitchcock touches. Just to give one example, and it is a good one: a man is holding a woman, he shoots her and she slowly sinks to the ground, her purple dress slowly flowing outwards as a symbol for blood.

None of this addresses the fact that it is over-long, dull and rambling. I fell asleep after about 75 minutes. Admittedly this was around 10.15 at night and by then I'd drunk half a bottle of wine, but still... So I'm going to have to go along with the consensus that this really is one of Hitchcock's least effective films and it actually made me appreciate the skill that went into The Trouble With Harry (see earlier post).

Next up, if the DVDs don't fall out of the box onto the floor as they did a few minutes ago, is Torn Curtain (another apparently problematic film) followed by Rope. They will appear, but don't hold your breath.

SHOPPING ONLINE: SMUG GIT HAS THE TABLES TURNED ON HIM -AMAZON UK vs AMAZON USA REVISITED

2011-09-23T08:23:00.000+01:00

In August I wrote a post about how it was sometimes cheaper to buy from Amazon.com than Amazon UK and cited the example of a new Grateful Dead live album.

I wrote:

I checked the Az UK price -£19.65- which struck me as a little expensive for only a 2-disc set, so I checked Az.com.

I was quite shocked to find that their price was only 12 dollars and change. I added it to my basket and went through the procedure until it put on the postage which I then converted into pounds and it came to £12 and change. a saving of seven, or more than a third. Naturally I went ahead and confirmed the order.

So, there you have it. It pays to check Az.com prices for some items now and again as you could save yourself some money.

I got an email to say it had been dispatched and checked AZ.com for reviews, then the UK site to see if any had appeared there. And, guess what, the UK price had dropped to £9.99. Also I must have made a mistake with converting the dollar price because when I checked again, after receiving an email from AZ.com to say the price had gone down by three dollars, it had still ended up costing me £15.40.

Boy, do I feel stupid. Still, I've learned something: in future cases when it looks like the American site is significantly cheaper for an item, wait until the damn thing is actually released to make sure it's stayed that way.

MUSIC: CDs OR DOWNLOADS? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

2011-09-22T15:41:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday the following 5-CD box set arrived from Amazon.

It cost me £24.99. A download, which did not include a bonus 5th CD (stuck on the front of the box) but just the four CDs in the box would have cost me £14.99. Was I so desperate for the extra CD (with a running time of less than 40 minutes) that I'd pay a tenner for it? Actually, no I wasn't. However, as I immediately copy music to my computer and then on to my Ipod Classic and never listen to the CD again, yesterday (Wednesday) I put up the box set on Amazon Marketplace for two pounds less than Amazon's price with the description played once from new, sold it today and have just got back from posting it. After Amazon's cut and the postage, I got £18.00 back which meant that the music effectively cost me £7.00 and included the bonus CD.

Now this was what I consider a good bit of work but it doesn't always come out as well. Sometimes the download is considerably cheaper as when I recently bought So Many Roads by The Grateful Dead as a download when the original box set was out of print and fetching over £130.00 new.

But mostly my CDs end up in the loft where every so often I weed them out on the basis of -do I really want to keep this? I'm now starting to ask myself the question -how few of my CDs do I really really want to keep? I won't lose the music unless the house burns down while I'm and haven't taken my Ipod with me which is pretty unlikely and then the CDs would have gone as well. Apart from keeping the music on my Ipod, I also regularly make an external backup copy of all data on my hard drive to a 1 terabyte Toshiba hard disk which fits into my pocket. I hope I'm not tempting fate by saying this, but effectively the music lasts forever.

In theory, any new CDs I buy I should just copy and then put up for sale immediately on Amazon Marketplace where I could recoup about half the cost which is still cheaper than the download. Unless, of course, the cost of a download is still cheaper than that which does happen occasionally. In practise it doesn't neccessarily work out like that as there may not be a download available or the CD is just too damn cheap as in the case of-

This one, including postage from an American marketplace seller, new cost me £4.06 with the Amazon UK price being over a tenner. At that price it's just not worth selling it.

And then there's the box set which includes a DVD. This isn't always worth as in an older post I mentioned saving over £20 by buying just the download of a Rolling Stones box set. And then there's this which only arrived this morning so I haven't a chance to listen to or watch it-

This amazing piece of work by the brilliant guitarist Rea consists of a music CD of the above title, a documentary DVD about bullfighting plus a CD of Chris's soundtrack to it, a second DVD which appears to be a sort of spiritual journey plus, again, a CD of Chris's soundtrack to it. For, and you'll laugh, only £12.99. For a Chris Rea fan like me that's just a no-brainer. A string of five star reviews also suggest it's pretty damn good. I only came across it by accident on Amazon as it wasn't included in my recommendations.

So the answer to the question -CDs or Downloads? -is, for me: Yes, please.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: ECHO -THE COMPLETE EDITION by TERRY MOORE (2011)

2011-09-19T11:12:00.000+01:00

An Amazon 4* review.

How do you follow up an acclaimed epic saga of modern relationships -the landmark Strangers In Paradise- which took you 13 years to write and draw? In Terry Moore's case, he spent a mere three years creating a 30-issue series (translated into this 600 page graphic novel) and has done a pretty good job on it.

The basic story is fairly simple. A young woman gets her body covered in a magic metal. The bad guys want it back. Assorted good guys help her. The existence of the world is at stake. But needless to say it is a lot more complicated than that. The characters are extremely well written being very human and very fallible and although there is a core protagonist it is nevertheless an ensemble piece and will satisfy fans of Strangers In Paradise. It's actually set in the same world, though you don't need to have read SiP to appreciate it, more that it's a little nod to SiP fans. It's a very strong character piece as well as being a satisfying work of contemporary science fiction. Moore has done a lot of research for this book and it shows without every getting in the way of telling the story (well, once maybe). I really don't want to say any more as I don't want to spoil the many pleasures Echo has in store.

Artistically, Moore isn't one of the greatest stylists, though he's a more than adequate artist. His backgrounds have just enough detail to create a scene. But then his real interest is in character and reactions and he is excellent at drawing people, faces in particular, and at conveying body language.

Not quite a five star book but highly recommended all the same.