NEWSPAPERS: The Daily Mail & the Lesbian Teacher

I'm always willing to do a bit Daily Mail bashing as I dislike their right wing political stance and their conservative social views. These, to judge from email comments on articles I've read, tend to be out of tune with their readership which is more liberal (see earlier posts).

This time I'm focussing on an article about a 26 year old woman who had a consensual affair with a 15 year old pupil. Much to my surprise, rather than being censorious, the article was balanced and not without some sympathy for the woman, Helen Goddard, who is currently awaiting sentencing. The girl is, by all accounts, mature for her age, Goddard less so, and the girl wants to resume the relationship once she's 16. Goddard has, as far as the Mail knows, not had any prior lesbian affairs.

I emailed my own comment, which was duly printed-

Anyone who can't muster at least some sympathy for this vulnerable young woman must have a very cold heart. I do not believe she is a predator so much as someone who fell in love with someone and let her feelings overrule her common sense. She does not deserve a prison sentence.

However, for a change, the majority of Mail readers take a more censorious view, some commenting that the Mail would not have been so lenient with a male teacher doing this, indeed the paper would be calling for his head. My comments get a fair number of approving votes, but the majority would lock her up.


This doesn't mean I think she was right. She should not have had any physical contact with an under-age girl, especially her pupil. If they had waited a few months, she wouldn't be in this mess now. I hope both of them are going to come out of this okay, whether together or not.

DVD: TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1958)/INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE (1962), Something Weird Video 2001

What follows is copied directly from the back cover of the DVD because I simply could not do a better job of describing this movie. It begins with the movie's Swedish title (in English, in Swedish it's Rymd Invasion i Lappland).


SPACE INVASION OF LAPLAND
A glowing white spaceship lands under the snow above the Arctic Circle in the Lapland region of Northern Sweden. Believing it to be an unusual meteor, a team of geologist race to the site just in time to be menaced by a giant, furry, monster-faced something or other that looks like a drunken Chewbacca. The creature waddles around, wrecks a Lapp village, and makes like a puppy dog in heat for American figure skating champion Barbara Wilson. Carrying the gal in its hairy arms, the beast takes Wilson to the spacecraft where she has a close encounters with the spacecraft's alien inhabitants.

A Swedish-American co-production from the director of The Mole People and Sweden's first and so far only science fiction giant-monster movie, TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN was shot in English, features a surprise peek-a-boo nude scene and is presented in its original uncut version for the very first time in the U.S.

Plus INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE, the much different, much altered U.S. version from schlockmeister supreme Jerry Warren (Teenage Zombies), who cut and re-edited the original, changed the plot, and added new shot-in-LA footage featuring John Carradine as host and narrator, in addition to lots of utterly pointless scenes including an unbilled bit by Warren regular Katherine Victor (The Wild World Of The Batwoman) that will positively make your head spin.

Coming from cult company Something Weird, the DVD is packed with an hour's worth of extras: a 6-fingered handful of surprisingly explicit Swedish sexploitation trailers, a couple of shorts, and an unshown tv horror series episode, plus a photogallery and a director's commentary.

I've just watched the main feature which, while no means a good film, remains watchable (plus it's only 70mins long). This is helped by a sparky performance from the vivacious Barbara Wilson (see above), a 1950's Megan Fox lookalike. Inevitably, this being the 50's, when confronted with something strange like a monster, she screams and faints. The external shots look remarkably real, probably because they really were filmed on location in Lapland with what look like genuine Lapps as extras.

Don't you want to rush out and buy this DVD?

SOCIETY: THE BNP'S SUMMER CAMP FUN

Kudos to this Sunday's News of the World for infiltrating the BNP's weekend away and exposing their dastardly doings for all the world to see. The mock trial of a gollywog doll called Golly which was found guilty of being black and then burned in front of its happy 12 year old girl owner. The blatant Hitler worship. The anti-semitism. The cheerful admissions of hounding out non-English people who've just moved in. And more, which I really can't be bothered to list.

Good for NOTW for standing up and deploring this behaviour but really, is anyone surprised at what they found?

You can raise pigs to live with dogs and they'll act like dogs, albeit with piggish tendencies. But put all the pigs together and they will, of course, all act like pigs. So of course the BNP, away from prying eyes, will behave exactly how you expect them to behave. The behave like racist, nazi, ignorant stupid morons which is precisely what they are.

Mind you, just because we expect it, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be as widely publicised as possible. There are people who are taken in by their relatively reasonable (note 'relatively') public pronouncements and their simplistic view of how to solve the country's problems. It serves to remind people that a BNP government would be a Nazi government and it wouldn't be long before we had concentration camps for ethnic minorities.

And by the way all you Scots, Welsh, and Irish -you're next, you non-English bastards taking our jobs and women with your big...

Finally I'd like to make a public apology to anyone reading this who thought I might be comparing pigs to BNP members. It was an analogy. Pigs are clearly superior creatures to BNP members both intellectually and morally, and quite likely hygienically as well.

CD: THE ESSENTIAL BYRDS (Columbia, 2003)

I'm not reprinting every review I put up on Amazon UK by any means, but I particularly like this one. This has had minor revisions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Pretty essential, 22 Aug 2009

I'm a big fan of Columbia's Essential series as it allows a music fan to build up a collection of classic rock at, if you shop carefully, a really very modest price. Sure, there are always going to be quibbles about someone's brilliant track X being missing but that is an inevitable part of any compilation. They are never going to satisfy everyone unless it's a massive 4-disc set and then it'll be hugely expensive and more than most people either want or need. There is, however, a way round that which I'll go into in a moment.

Now, The Byrds, essentially a folk group who decided they wanted to be the Beatles and more or less accidentally invented electric folk or, as it's also known, folk-rock. They started out well with a blend of Dylan, folk, Searchers-style jangly guitars, and unique harmonies mainly courtesy of Crosby and McGuinn. Then they got better and Crosby leaving didn't hurt one bit, not with Gram Parsons on the horizon to add a touch of country to the mix (thereby predating alt.country) and an openness to other influences; McGuinn's improving songwriting didn't hurt either. By the end of disc 2 on this set they'd never been better and that's probably a good place to leave them.

So what have you got: a portrait of an evolving band improving vocally and instrumentally as they go, a bucket-load of great songs which become more varied in tone as the band progresses through the 60's, and all in all two hours of some of the best 60's rock. Essential? Definitely.

Now to create your own definitively essential compilation, follow these instructions. Download (as I did) at least 'Lady Friend' (or others as recommended by reviewer Steve* according to taste and I don't doubt his is impeccable) as an Amazon MP3 to your Itunes, change the info to have the same title as this collection. Et voila! Your Completely Definitively Essential Byrds.

In the meantime this one will do very nicely.

*This refers to the only other review of the CD by 'Steve' who complains about various omissions in an otherwise favourable review.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURES -a batch of monster movie reviews

The first two reviews recently appeared on Amazon UK.

Sea Beast (2009, 87mins)
I gave it a 4-star rating in comparison to other creature features of its ilk, the sort you get on the Sci-Fi and Zone horror channels. It's not a great movie by any standards but it is a nice little thriller.

A good attractive Canadian coastal location that is well-photographed certainly helps. A competent cast of actors playing it deadly straight and characters that behave like real people is also a plus. The monsters, given the inevitable cgi, are relatively acceptable and there's a fair amount of gore -severed body parts and innards made outtards, plus one nice head biting off scene.

It's all very efficiently and capably done making this a good example of its type -the low budget made-for-cable horror movie. Undemanding fun for the monster movie fan of which I am unrepentantly one.


Never Cry Werewolf (2008, 90mins)
(Another 4-star rating for being good of its type.)
Probably first shown on cable in the States, this is a better example of that type of creature feature. Teenager Loren (well played by Nina Dobrev) finds herself the unhealthy obsession of her new neighbour whom she quickly realises is a werewolf. After a moderately paced start, it picks up well focussing on its core players of Loren, Jared the Werewolf, the kid brother who refreshingly for once is neither irritating nor cute, Loren's geeky suitor, and Redd the big game hunter (Kevin Sorbo)as the comedy relief.

While hardly original, the key cast give their all, especially Nina Dobrev as the gutsy heroine, and there's enough going on to make this a good fun movie.


Alligator/Alligator 2 -The mutation (1980/1983 approximately)

The original Alligator had a script by the legendary Indie genius John Sayles, though he's done better commercial writing. Still, it's good fun with some nice dialogue. Daughter's pet baby alligator flushed into sewers by daddy. 20 years later, daughter, now a herpetologist, unknowingly has to track down her monster ex-pet with rugged hero whom no-one believes until minced morsels are everywhere.

Alligator 2 is just a competent creature feature with decent actors. This time there's one at large in a lake. Passable timewaster.

King Kong Escapes (1968, 92mins, a Toho-Universal co-production)

This sequel to King Kong vs Godzilla is pretty much what you'd expect -dire. Kong's face is wrinkled rubber and horrible beyond belief. Why they didn't do a better job escapes me. This alone ruins it for me but don't worry, there are plenty more things which annoy me. Being a co-production, we have two male leads, the American one being the wooden Rhodes Reason, a b-movie lead who never made the big time and this movie is one reason why. The handsome Japanese lead is better with a sternish charisma. Linda Miller, the female lead, has an excruciating voice and seems to alternate flirting with the two men.

The villain is called Dr.Who which cheap laugh is the only thing which makes it remotely bearable. Personally, I reckon it's The Master pretending to be Japanese and adopting the name Dr.Who to smear the original. Or maybe not.

Dr Who has a robot Kong to mine a valuable rare radioactive mineral. This doesn't work too well so he decides he needs Kong. Kong lives on an island and sometimes fights Rubber-Tyrannosaurus Rex which regularly drop-kicks Kong. After the fourth time this happens you begin to realise that Kong isn't too bright. Mind you, he understands English pretty well. The rest is too tedious to relate. Suffice to say it ends on what looks like the Tokyo equivalent of the Eiffel Tower.

I only paid £1.80 for this including postage and that's more than it's worth.

DVD: Bargain of the Month

After picking up Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein and enjoying them a lot, I remembered that High Anxiety, Brooks' Hitchcock pastiche, was also pretty good. So I looked it up on Amazon with the intention of picking it up for less than a fiver and came across this -The Mel Brooks Collection- a whopping 7-disc set which included HA and another of his better movies To Be Or Not To Be, plus YF and four other lesser works of which only one -the appropriately named Life Stinks- I remember as being a stinker. Also included: Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie, History of the World Part 1 (but not, thankfully, the appalling Spaceballs). And all for £13.38 (original rrp £54.00). Could any sane person resist that? Besides, I can even recoup a couple of quid by selling my spare copy of YF on Amazon Marketplace.

Do excuse me, I may be gone for some time.

DVD/TV: Neverwhere (BBC, 1996)

Thirteen years old now and I hadn't seen it in that long. Surprisingly I enjoyed it more than I remember doing when it was originally shown on BBC. Albeit with reservations.

So, what's good about it? Short answer: lots.

The background setting with its weird and wonderful characters. I love the literal use of names. Blackfriars are black friars. The Angel Islington is an angel named Islington. Old Bailey is an old geezer called Bailey whose home is on top of -well, you figure it out.

I love the characters with their idiosyncratic dialogue, particular favourites being Croup & Vandemar and The Marquis de Carabas. The humour is dry and often deadly.

The actors are terrific. Especially notable in an early role is the young Paterson Joseph as the Marquis, a ripe part which Joseph grabs with both hands and runs away with to score the matchwinner. He's closely pursued by Hywell Bennett and the marvellous Clive Russell as Croup & Vandemar, two merciless long-lived thugs, torturers & murderers with wonderfully funny dialogue. There is also a selection of well-known British character actors doing their seriously good bit in a variety of minor parts.

The fact that there's constantly something interesting happening. There are none of the longeurs you often get in tv series (or another form of fiction come to that); it's a constant hustle and bustle and changing scene.

It's really really great fun from start to finish. But it isn't perfect.

So, what's wrong with it?

Some of the characters are leadenly written and badly acted. The Hunter's dialogue is absolutely excruciating to listen to and it would have taken a very skilled actor to pull it off, but then any skilled actor would have read their lines and handed the script back to Mr Gaiman with pair of long-handled tongs, so they ended up with someone who wasn't skilled and couldn't pull it off. Gary Bakewell as the hero is crap and there's no other way of putting it. Supposed to be an everyman, he nevertheless is unable to display the remotest trace of charisma or steel when the story demands it. He fails utterly to find the required strength within the character. His climactic act of bravery should have some transforming effect but it doesn't.

It was done on the cheap and often looks it. As another reviewer commented, the savage beast of under London which has been built up throughout the series looks like nothing more than a Highland cow. To be fair, the production team did wonders with what they did have but it just scrapes by.

What this really needed was another draft of the script and more money put into it. Much as I enjoyed it I have to say that ultimately it's an honourable failure.

This is a shame because it could have been so good and I'm inclined to think that, after 13 years, it might be time for a re-make, or a re-invention, or, perhaps, a sequel. A new threat has appeared. This time we get David Tennant as the hero (same character, better actor), Paterson Joseph returns as the Marquis; or Lenny Henry who could always do the comic side but now has proven Shakespearean chops. Given how good special effects can be done on relatively small budgets these days, it wouldn't even cost too much. Neil? Lenny?

RECENTLY ACQUIRED: Books & DVDs

Brief Notes

The DC Vault is a kind of informal history of DC comics with the emphasis on rare graphics and reproductions of various artifacts like memos of historical interest, pencil artwork, and a whole mess of stuff. I got it for about a third of the normal price from a professional American Amazon marketplace seller.


Young Frankenstein & Blazing Saddles are both cheap special editions of two movies I love and Mel Brooks at his best.

Love & Rockets X is a short graphic novel from Gilbert Hernandez set mostly in LA and deals with the effects of different cultural groups meeting & is more fun than that sounds. I read bits of it in magazine form but never the entire story before.

Omaha the Cat Dancer, another graphic novel, dates from 1978 and is the first in a soap opera type series with anthropomorphic animals and a strong explicit sexual element. I was disappointed with the story side. It may get better but I don't feel inclined to spend more money finding out.

The Sinbad Triple is, of course, three vintage Ray Harryhausen fantasy movies with his trademark and much -loved stop-motion animation. Creaky now, they still have a certain charm and I look forward to watching them for the umpteenth times.

Zack & Miri Make A Porno is Kevin Smith's latest movie. Despite not being his best, it's still good rude fun and, despite the title, it's a love story.

All these DVDs cost less than five pounds which is a lot of good entertainment for the money. I've also got a couple of cheap creature features winging their scaly way from the States plus a doublepack of Alligator/Alligator 2 from Amazon.

CD: Muddy Waters -Hoochie Coochie Man: The complete Chess masters volume 2, 1952-1958

If you only own one Muddy Waters album, you should be ashamed of yourself. At the very least you need volume one of this series, plus a selection of mid to late 60's material and a compilation of the Johnny Winter sessions. However, if you're just starting then this is the place to start.

It goes without saying that the music is brilliant. Here is Muddy at his best, laying down tracks that will become classics and hugely influence British Blues fans like Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and so many more and end up transforming the face of popular music. He is backed by some of his best sidemen ever -Little Walter (harp), Walter Horton (harp), Jimmy Rogers (guitar), the great Otis Spann (piano), Fred Below (drums), and the ever-present on Chess Blues recordings with a finger in every pie Willie Dixon (bass). You can read all about this in the booklet.

And what a booklet, though the word diminishes the actual artifact. This is one of the best presentations of Muddy's music I have ever seen. At first glance, crude and simplistic, it looks like a letterbox-format book, just a little larger than a DVD box, no picture just artist and title impressed onto thick grey card. The CDs themselves are in wallets stuck to the inside front and back of the card covers and are a little difficult to extract. Then we get a short but informed and informative essay by Mary Katherine Aldin, a veteran of Blues writing, which is followed by a selection of contemporary photographs (colour and monochrome) of Muddy, and finally detailed track listing.

51 tracks of Muddy Waters at his best, presented in an attractive and durable format. Sheer unmissable magic.

This review also appears on Amazon UK.

DVD: Black Sheep (2006)

I bought this over a year ago when the price had come down and quite enjoyed it and was in the mood for a piece of daftness so I watched it again. The question is: should you bother to see it all?

Well there are: naive environmentalists, evil genetic experimenting scientists, a wicked farmer, sibling rivalry, (wait for it, I'm getting to the good stuff -now) carnivorous sheep, hungry sheep foetuses, mutant and mutating man-sheep (think wolfman without the fangs), the tender love between a man and a sheep (tastefully done), severed body parts by the bucket load, and all the entrails you can eat, and a sheep-o-phobic hero.

The only problem is that no matter how much gore you fling at the audience, killer sheep just aren't scary and neither are the human-into-sheep hybrids. So: funny, yes; gory, yes; scary, no. But it is a lot of fun.

MUSIC: Luther Allison

Luther Allison (1939-1997) is little known outside Blues circles which is a shame. Even more of a shame is that he died just as he'd begun to establish himself as one of the very best of modern bluesmen and when he was writing, singing, and playing electric guitar better than he had done in the rest of his life.

He started early in the 60's but did nothing of note until the 70's when he became the only bluesman ever signed by Tamla Motown. Despite recording some pretty good albums, they didn't do good business, and he was dropped. Following tradition, like many other black bluesmen (and while there are genuine white bluesmen they are few and far between), he buggered off to Europe and lived in France for a number of years where he recorded for several labels. Always a good live performer, many of these were live albums.

But his real talent only final burst into flame when Bruce Iglauer signed him for legendary label Alligator -an independent blues label with a wide definition of what constituted the Blues and the source of many of the greatest Blues recordings in the last 30 years -check out any of their many compilations. When he signed for Alligator, Allison became a man on fire as his blend of blues, rock, funk, and even reggae electrified audiences. His voice roared, his songs were great, his guitar playing brilliant, his backing band hot. His 2-disc live album for Alligator -Live in Chicago- is one of the greatest live Blues albums ever.

Luther Allison was flying until his cancer-ridden body finally failed. But he died as one of the greatest Bluesmen of his time.

DVD: Watchmen -The Director's Cut, Blu-Ray 2009

This arrived from Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago and, having watched it once, I've put it up for sale on Amazon UK.

Surprisingly, it isn't because I didn't like it. I think it's an amazing film which just about scrapes by at doing the graphic story justice. It lacks many of subtleties of the graphic story but that is by way of the nature of the two very different media. Film moves, graphic stories create the illusion of movement but because it's an illusion a single moment in time can be studied in depth. One panel of the Moore/Gibbons graphic story (from now on:GS) can contain a vast amount of information which can not be shown in film and neither can it be depicted in prose. Significantly there has not been a novelisation, primarily because I believe that would be even harder to achieve successfully than a film. Watchmen the GS is a paradigm of what can be achieved in the medium which actually makes the medium unique as a genuine art form in itself. Thousands of words can be spent in analysing almost any panel of the GS.

So, Watchmen the Editor's Cut is almost uniquely successful in what it achieves. This extended edition, taking the running time to 3 hours, is just as riveting as that shown at the cinemas, though I can understand why it was shortened. It still doesn't insert most of the stuff which was originally left out instead adding 'beats', additional character moments and the like, mostly seamlessly.

In short, I loved it.

Which begs the question: then why am I selling it?

Simple answer. Although I have a blu-ray player on my pc which plays blu-ray discs, it doesn't play them to their best effect. I would have been better off getting the standard Region 1 disc. So I'm selling it.

And now I have no excuse for not buying the deluxe 5-disc set in December, but not the blu-ray version.

DVD: I Am Legend

Having seen the previous two versions of Richard Matheson's classic SF novel, I had to watch this despite low expectations, though I waited until I could get the DVD for less than £4.00. And...

It's well made, no question about it. The scenes of an abandoned New York are very impressive with its herds of deer and predatory prides of lions roaming the streets. Will Smith is always a likable, watchable and very competent actor. Here he portrays an intelligent, capable, and sensitive man finally beginning to fray around the edges as loneliness and paranoia set in.

I suppose the degenerate humans are more plausible than novel's virus-created vampires but they would have been better if real actors rather than cgi had been utilised because the cgi monsters just look just like cgi monsters. Although the altered humans seem as if they may be developing some kind of intelligence most importantly, in the book and both previous movies, they never lost it in the first place and nothing is made of it here.

But the worst thing about it is the ending which is completely different from the book's and which is the entire point of the book (and the first movie). On this double-disc, the alternative ending is even worse -Neville doesn't even die. It's like doing a movie of the New Testament and having Jesus avoid being crucified and living happily ever after with Mary Magdalene. (Hmm, is there a story in that I wonder.)

Basically this is just an uninspiring post-apocalypse piece without a trace of the powerful and poignant resonance of the book. This Neville isn't legend, he's just a very nice boy.

BOOKS: I Got It Today -More Books

Odd coincidence, two books about my favourite band The Grateful Dead, both ordered from Amazon Marketplace -one dealer in the UK, the other in the States- arrived together a few minutes ago.

More books to add to my reading pile. Memo to self: must stop doing this.

I'm nearly halfway through Chris Mullin's diaries of his years as a junior minister and they are very interesting. Mullin, MP for Sunderland South where I live, I considered to be a very moral man of the utmost integrity but a bit too left wing for me. Ironically over the years he's represented us he gradually drifted somewhat to the centre while I've gone strongly leftwards. He's been a good MP and I'm sorry he's standing down at the next election. Men of his character are few and far between.



















No, I didn't get this one, the picture just came up while doing a search for the Rock Scully book and I couldn't resist it.

WHAT I'M GOING TO DO TODAY

Probably not a lot as, so far, there's nothing on the horizon. Mind you, it's only 8.04am as I'm typing this. But there's no real shopping to do. Nothing scheduled for animals apart from several visits to Grace, the whole way to the garage. Susan, no doubt, will have some job for me though.

It's also my 61st birthday and the first anniversary of my retirement from Sunderland library services. So, a brief reflection on the past year.

Generally it's been an enjoyable one even though I haven't done everything I intended such as joining the Sunderland Ramblers and helping out with computer courses at Age Concern -AC never got back in touch. I have, as this blog shows, been very active on the animal, mainly cat, rescue front. I've done a fair bit writing, initially with my efanzine and then for this blog, plus more reviewing for Amazon UK. But no fiction which I'm a bit disappointed in but it's something I can't force -I'll either do it or I won't.

If I haven't gone out walking, then at least I'm managing a reasonable amount of swimming, averaging, over several visits, nearly a mile and a half a week.

I could, to be brutally honest, be doing a lot more. I spend too much time fruitlessly pottering around on the net when I could be exercising or doing something creative or practical or even reading more books -lord knows I have plenty to read. I tend to have an afternoon sleep most days of anything from a 30 minute nap to an hour or more and then waste the rest of the time.

Now that's out of the way, it's just a normal Saturday. Maybe I should make a resolution to spend the second year of my retirement being more active in at least one or two new areas.

Don't hold your breath.