DVD: THE DISTURBANCE

It seems as if I'd saved the best till last with the third and final DVD of the Rare Flix box set and it's surprising that this film isn't better known.

While playing beachball on a beach, the cosily attractive nice girl Susan (Lisa Geoffrion) finds herself drawn to the nearby geeky dude who's building a complicated sandcastle. Susan and Clay (Timothy Greeson) start going out which turns out not to be such a good idea. Clay has already been in a mental institution, he has hallucinations of a demon haunting him, he may or may not be committing a series of rape-murders (we only find out if these are real near the end), he has vivid and explicit sexual fantasies which we see, and his behaviour often otherwise odd. Once while he showers, he imagines his mother laughing at him and he attacks her with a pipe which isn't good news for the family cat. When Susan finally dumps him, he's incapable of accepting or even understanding what has happened but it does trigger the violent climax.

Given that this is cheap exploitation it's much better than you'd expect. Greeson and Geoffrion are both believable in their roles and the one explicit sex scene between is tender and touching rather than luridly gratuitous. Greeson is particularly good and the depiction of his madness and the terror of his delusions are light years from the usual drooling  psycho slasher fare.  He is truly insane but is portrayed as a victim of his madness than as monster. The lurches into hallucination are particularly well done and jarring, notably a scene on the beach when Susan is creating a sandcastle and Clay has to drag her violently away from it as an arm made of sand reaches out from underneath to grab her.

I've really rather enjoyed this Rare Flix collection of C-movies. While I can't honestly say that they are good movies, though The Disturbance comes pretty close, I've definitely found all three engaging in different ways and so I've ordered volume 2 from the States. If the standard is up these then I'll be well pleased.

DVD: POSED FOR MURDER

This is the second of the Rare Flix DVDs I've watched (see the cover on the previous post). This one is, I suppose, a slasher though, while there's lots of slashing, there isn't a whole lot of gore.

The setup is this: someone is very possessive about a pinup girl who is trying to become an actress and kills anyone who seems to be taking an unhealthy interest in her. Charlotte Helmkamp, the lead, actually is a former Playmate of the Month and knows a lot about nude modelling which she does very well on a couple of occasions during the movie and she plays a girl trying to get away from modelling and become an actress and during the early part of the movie she gets the lead role in a cheesy cheap horror movie entitled Machete Men from Mars. Is this meant to be post-modern irony? Nah, didn't think so. 

The first part is the setup where we meet potential slashers and potential victims. Who might it be? Well, there is some ambiguity as to the identity of the killer early on -I wanted it to be the best friend who secretly has a lesbian crush on Charlotte and is killing any man who shows an interest but as she gets killed early on it isn't her. In fact it quickly becomes obvious who the murderer is -DVD Delirium also annoyingly gave it away.

This isn't a bad bad movie, in fact it's mostly quite competent with some interesting bits in it and, like Death Collector, kept me watching. The DVD also has, like the other one, a selection of interesting (and different) trailers.

DVD: DEATH COLLECTOR

My favourite movie reference series is DVD Delirium vols 1-4. Vol 4 was only just released a month or so ago and I eagerly plowed through it looking for weird and wonderful DVDs to buy. The above set is about the second thing I've bought after The Dead Pit and The Hanging Woman and I watched the first one -Death Collector- last night and I wanted to share this with you.

Over the credits sequence are clips from old westerns but the film itself is set in the near future when the American economy is collapsing. Our hero comes over like a character from b/w 50's teen movie with his blonde hair and gee-tar as he sashays into a bar in downtown decaying Shithole, Nowhere and serenades the ladies who melt at his good looks, including our heroine who, unfortunately, is the doxy of the local ganglord, sorry, I meant owner of the local insurance company which, in the near future when banks sabotage each other, is the same thing. Just as our hero is about to get down to some serious shagging, the bad guys arrive and several people are killed including the hero's sheriff brother. However, as the bad guy is in charge it's our hero who gets sent down the river.

Five years later and just about everyone's bankrupt including the government, the prisons are shut down and our hero is released. Returning to the bar, with a gammy leg, he finds everyone sitting where he left them, dressed the same, with haircuts the same. It's almost as if the scenes were shot at the same time. Still, it's not long before he's wowing the ladies with his singing and gee-tar playing and pissing off the bad guy (to whom everyone pays life insurance premiums and owns the local economy) and his English chief henchman. (Don't ask me why the villain of Shithole, Nowhere would have an English henchman.)  There's an assault on the bad guy's place by our hero with the gammy leg, the heroine, and his ex-cellmate who proceeds to slaughter a massive number of well-armed guards.

(Talking of guards, I could have sworn, until I saw the credits, that one of the prison guards was Nathan Fillion wearing shades but, as the credits give a different name, it's not credited to him on IMDB, and he was only 18 at the time, I have to be wrong. Damn, I thought I might have a scoop.)

Badly-made and often badly-acted and frequently just badly bad, I was never tempted to skip through it and I sorta strangely enjoyed it.

DVD/CD REVIEWS

Here we have the protagonists from the Swedish film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which I watched last night. Like several people before me, I prefer the original title of the novel which translates as the far more appropriate The Men Who Hate Women. I've also read the novel, all three of the trilogy in fact, only a few months ago so they are relatively fresh in my mind which meant there weren't any real surprises for me in the film. More a case of: ah this where such and such happens.

It's a faithful, albeit relatively filleted, version of the book, excising major subplots such as the protagonist's complicated private life and numerous supporting characters, making it a two-hander and also a showcase for actor Noomi Rapace as the complicated and not a little disturbed Lisbeth Salander the genius computer hacker. Rapace is now poised as a breakout international movie star.

It's well-made with some lovely photography of the wintery Swedish countryside, the pace is sedate and action sequences are few and far between. I started watching the dubbed version because I thought I'd need to follow the plot quite closely without an added layer of distraction but quickly switched to Swedish with subtitles as I found the American accents just too irritating.

Like Let The Right One In (the brilliant Swedish vampire movie), it's currently being remade in America. Unlike that one, however, the location is staying the same which makes this remake even more redundant than the other.

This is the cover to Neil Young's Trans, one of his most critically derided albums, and one of my favourites of his. By 1982, no-one was sure what he'd come up next except that it would either be a rocker or a more acoustic folksy set or maybe a little of both. What no-one expected was a mostly synthesiser-vocoder dominated set which not only transformed Young's voice into something unrecognisable but also his guitar albeit less so. There are a couple of more standard Young songs such as the final Cortez the Killer style workout on the excellent nine-minute Like An Inca and the opening jaunty number Little Thing Called Love.

But after the deceptive opening we get Computer Age with terrifically Trans-formed vocals and nifty guitar work. After that we get a series of songs about transformational (computer) technology and what also seems to be a look into the soul of the machine. I think it works brilliantly and the songs are all of a high standard. I love it.

Oh, and the reason I'm reviewing it here and now is because I've only just bought the CD two decades after getting rid of all my vinyl albums. It's as good as I remember and hasn't dated at all which you might think it would bearing in mind that it's 28 years old. Young singing, while altered drastically, is still recognisable. I love it.

WHY I HAVEN'T BEEN BLOGGING MUCH LATELY

A DAY IN THE LIFE

4.00am. Wake up and go to the toilet. Try to get back to sleep. Daisy, the 6 month old kitten, climbs on top of me and purrs loudly.

 

5.00am. Ted wakes me up either by miaowing or touch my nose or both. I get up and let him out. Try to go back to sleep.

6.00am. Get up, go downstairs, let cats our, put outside any cat litter trays which have been heavily used. Put food down for cats. Eat cereal while trying to fend off Little Bob the 3-month old kitten.

 Little Bob 

 (handed in at the shop two weeks ago and taken home by me)

6.45am. Switch on computer and check emails for any overnight Amazon marketplace sales. Read the Daily Mail Online hoping to get righteously annoyed by some of their over the top right-wing pronouncements. "Red Ed, the new Labour leader, refuses to condemn all strikes outright!" I paraphrase but that is the gist.

7.15am. Get dressed, make Susan a cup of tea, let cats in, put down more food, clean out litter trays and replace litter. Collect cat from its overnight stay in a cage in the garage; clean out its used litter tray, put it in the van.

7.40am. Arrive at Raich Carter Sports Centre for a half hour swim.

8.20am. Drop off cat at Williams and Cummings vets for neutering.

8.40am. Pick up cat from Carol's and take to W&C to have staples removed from its tummy at 9.15.

9.30am. Put cat back in van and go back inside to wait for Susan who is bringing Little Bob for 9.45. Little Bob has been sick a couple of times and has developed extremely runny diarrhea and we're worried about him.

10.15am. Take cat back to Carol's and go home to clean out more cat litter. Do some housework. (Oh yes I do, Susan!). Check emails and potter about on the Internet checking some of my favourite sites.

12.00. Tired and decide to take a nap.

12.05pm. Phone rings.

12.06pm. Tired and decide to take a nap.

12.10pm. Phone rings.

12.15pm. Make a couple of sandwiches and have a cup of coffee.

 Most lunchtimes I watch an episode of a tv series I've taped (i.e. recorded on the black Virgin box's hard drive) from the night before. Currently recording as I'm typing this is Waterloo Road. Others include: Smallville (current series coming to an end), The Vampire Diaries (just started and much better than people who haven't watched it realise), True Blood (waiting for Season 3), Glee (waiting for Season 2), Skins (waiting for series 5), Castle (with the great Nathan Fillion without whom it probably wouldn't completed its first season and the only thing worth watching on the Alibi channel), and stuff I've forgotten.

1.45pm. Susan rings and tells me to pick up some stuff from a house round the corner. I call in at the shop before I realise she means that I have to get some  stuff from a house round the corner not pick up stuff from the shop to deliver to the etc. I get some bedding for Carol while I'm there and then go get the stuff which I take back to the shop.

2.30pm. I collect the cat from W&C and take it to Star Rescue (actually defunct but they still help out occasionally) at Seaburn from where it will be transferred to a new home  in Newcastle the following day. It's a nice little black and white two year old female in case you were wondering. Then it's back up the road to Roker Park Vets to collect two cats I'd left there the night before. One had tests of various kind. The other, Megan, a surprisingly active 21 year old (and that is not a typo) long haired tortoiseshell had a lump removed from her back which manifested itself as an open wound. The lump is probably cancerous but the operation will give her a few months more at the very least. she now looks like Frankenstein's cat having a bald central patch with a long stitch from her ribs, over the spine, and down to the other set of ribs. Both go back to Carol's where is pick up a dozen black sacks full of used smelly bedding and take it to the council tip. All this takes me up to-

5.00pm. Make a cup of coffee, feed the cats, clean up any used cat litter, check my email, etc.

5.45pm. Head off for Houghton-le-Spring four miles away to pick up a cat. To be honest, I don't usually have evening pickups to do but this is a fairly accurate record of my activities on one day this week. I collect the cat from an elderly lady who seems to take in local waifs and strays and take it back home to spend the night in a cage in the garage.

6.30pm. Can't be bothered to cook so I get some fish and chips on the way home. After eating it and watching a bit tv together, Susan goes upstairs to watch tv (Alibi channel or any crime series showing) in bed and I go on the computer.

9.00pm. Slide in a DVD and pour a glass of wine (and later a couple more). I'm currently rewatching the Firefly box set, Joss Whedon's brilliant. SF series. 

I could, if I had the energy or the interest do a blog called DVD A DAY as I do do that every evening at the same time (except on the couple of nights a month when I go out for a drink). I don't always watch a complete DVD disc every evening as it may be a tv series box set as in the case of Firefly (starring the great Nathan Fillion, see above) or Glee, but usually it's a movie which, if it's too long or I want to watch some of the extras (this latter being infrequent as I usually don't bother with them). Often it's Horror or SF or Fantasy but not neccessarily.

Here's what's on my to watch shelf: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish, read the book and its two sequels), Gone Baby Gone (thriller directed by Ben Affleck), Hard Revenge Milly (Japanese action/gore), Exte (Japanese horror), Red Cliff (epic John Woo Chinese historical), Ran (Akira Kurosawa's historical epic based on King Lear), The Good the Bad and the Ugly (and if you don't know what that is you're reading the wrong blog), The World At War (complete 11-disc DVD documentary series remastered and to be reviewed for Amazon Vine), and Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki's latest animation). But tonight, Firefly continues.

The crew of Firefly

Some time between 11.00 and 11.30pm I go to bed.

Post Script.

I've put in a couple of things that happened on different days and it might be a little more packed than a normal day but it really isn't untypical. It's a lot of little things separated by varying spans of time which aren't really long enough for me to settle down and get my head into doing something constructive (like actually writing more of the novel which I write mentally while I'm swimming, and blogging, and several other things I keep putting off doing).

Today I took Daisy, our second newest cat to be neutered, then Carol rang and I had to take Clara (which recently had to have an emergency hysterectomy) to Roker Park as she thought there was something wrong with its side. The vet couldn't find anything but he did discover a very erratic heart rate and has kept her in overnight to X-ray her heart under anaesthetic in the morning.

There's always something unexpected.

(This is also being posted in my Cat Rescuing blog.)

DVD: MOON

 Rewritten and expanded from a 2-star Amazon review.

Caution, one spoiler is mentioned because otherwise I couldn't begin to explain why I didn't like this film and I am a fan of science fiction. No, make that complete spoilers are mentioned.

On the moon, one man monitors automated mining. He is coming to the end of a three-year stint and is shortly due to be taken back to earth. When he leaves his base to check on a problem, he has an accident from which he can not be rescued as there is no-one to rescue him. He then 'wakes up' back at the base and doesn't remember the accident.

What happens next is pretty obvious to anyone with even the slightest familiarity with SF, including the nature of the individual who wakes up. You can work it out without too much difficulty from the four sentence synopsis of the first 30 minutes. But, I'm going to do it for you.

The man who has woken up has to be a clone. If he is a clone then so is the first man. Why?  The main reason is that if you can make a clone with mostly intact  (plus false) memories of the original then there is no need (as we find out) to send the original in the first place. Also, because there is supposed to be no direct contact with Earth so Man 1 has only received relayed messages from his wife while we has seen/heard the computer talking directly to Earth. If he is on a 3-year cycle then the clone is programmed to die at the end of that period and be replaced.

All this is born out when Man 2 manages to get out of the base and rescues Man 1 who is deteriorating physically and mentally, far more so than his superficial wounds would cause. The interaction between the two clones plus the computer takes up over half the film.

This is a short film padded out to interminable length. While it does develop logically within its basic premise, sadly it is also boring and it is obvious and I really found it to be a big disappointment. It would have made an excellent 45minute tv drama but certainly no longer than that. 

BOOKS/DVD: MORE AMAZON REVIEWS

Killer Movie DVD 

Not bad but could have been better.

That said, the movie does have a fair bit going for it. Not least is that every time you think you know who the killer is, the real one promptly kills them. I was absolutely certain I knew who it was only for the guy to have his throat cut less than a minute after I'd definitely made my mind up it was him.

There is an attractive cast of good actors like the likeable Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory) playing an obnoxious actress, who I'm sure wasn't remotely based on L*nds*y L*h*n, who isn't as horrible as she first appears. Nestor Carbonell is great as a cynical agent and Paul Wesley of the Vampire Diaries is good as the lead. The rest of the supporting cast is fun as well particularly the actress who plays the utterly vile and predatory lesbian producer.

Much of the gore tends to be offscreen like the Cheerleader coach's encounter with a rotary saw (just when I decided she was the killer) or the beheading early on (when I'd decided that this character would probably be the Final Girl). Then there are more explicit bits like the throat slitting (see above) and hand amputation, so it isn't all bad. Plus there is a very high body count so that even at almost the very end you still just don't know who the damn killer is.

But I didn't find it very suspenseful and never remotely adrenalin-inducing. In fact it's oddly likeable for a serial killer movie and it is certainly surprising. Give it a try and it may surprise you.

Let's say the rating is three and a half stars. 

 

Robert Charles Wilson is one of the best Science Fiction writers around., 30 May 2010

This review is from: Blind Lake (Mass Market Paperback)

Or so I've come to believe after reading just two of his novels, the other being the award-winning Spin.

Like Spin, Wilson sets up a rather marvellous scientific problem against a very human background. Set several decades hence, three writers arrive at a scientific complex where, via a marvellous machine, humans can observe daily life on a planet over 50 light years distant. Then, for seemingly no reason, the complex is complete cut off with supplies arriving by a robotic drone. What the heck is going on?

This isn't action SF, instead we view events through the eyes of several characters, all of whom have problems which cause them to react differently to what is happening. Not a lot actually does happen but I was rivetted and really did not want to put this book down as I wanted to find out both the nature of the mystery and its effect on the protagonists. If I say much more I'll only spoil it for you.

So, after reading just two of Wilson's novels and immediately after finishing this one, I went and ordered four more from Amazon. I don't think I'm going to be disappointed. 

DVD: "A MAGNIFICENT MEGA-BUDGET MOVIE IN THE CLASSIC SCI-FI TRADITION OF 'PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE' AND 'ROBOT MONSTER'"

Yes, it's Battlefield Earth the movie.

But first, a history lesson. The original novel was a late piece of work by L. Ron Hubbard who, in the 1940's, produced some quite decent SF and Fantasy published mainly by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction and its short-lived but long-remembered fantasy companion Unknown. Hubbard stopped writing fiction when he took his own advice about how to make a million bucks by founding a religion when he published Dianetics which evolved into Scientology and made his rich beyond his own grandiose dreams as well as conning thousands of people world-wide who swallowed his mix of pulp SF and mysticism believing it to be real. Battlefield Earth was his late-flowering epic which I have read but remember nothing about, though I did finish it so it can't have been that bad.

This movie is the result of the efforts of that well-known Scientologist John Travolta who was one of its producers and almost the only thing in it which makes it worth watching, though Forrest Whitaker is pretty good too. The actor playing the hero, however, is useless (all three are shown above, though it may be a midget standing in for the hero) which may not be his fault as the role itself is pretty shitty.

The premise is this: a thousand years ago high-tech alien Nazis with a sense of humour conquered Earth and have been raping it ever since; mankind consists of scattered stone-age level tribes on a starvation diet and slaves of the aliens, also on a starvation diet.

What's bad about the movie is pretty much everything. Johnny, our hero, from an isolated tribe who fears never seen demons, doesn't believe in demons and goes exploring. Within five minutes he's made a couple of new friends who show him a ruined city where they immediately get captured by the aliens (Psychlos). When Johnny figures out how to work an alien gun, Terl the head of security (Travolta) decides to adopt him as a pet and educate him so he and other humans can secretly mine gold. The training machine not only teaches him the Psychlo language, it also provides him with a degree-level education which includes Euclidean mathematics, though what an alien teaching machine knows about Euclid escapes me, and gives Johnny all  the basics he needs to rebel against the aliens. Not unscrupulous and intelligent Terl's best idea it would seem. He then teaches him how to fly one of their craft and leaves him and his buddies (who have increased in number as everyone recognises what an amazing fellow Johnny is) to mine gold. When Johnny cheats and takes some gold from Fort Knox, it never occurs to Terl to wonder where Johnny got the technology to turn the raw ore into ingots or even where it might be. Also during this two-week mining period, Johnny discovers nuclear weapons and learns how to use them, jet-fighters in pristine working condition and his buddies learn how to use them pretty quickly through a training simulator -remember we are talking people previously at a stone-age level of technology. So Johnny and his buddies learn how to use very high tech machinery, fly jets, launch missiles, explode a nuclear bomb, destroy the Psychlo's home planet with one and deceive a highly intelligent race, deceitful and unscrupulous by nature, which has been conquering planets for thousands of years.

And you wonder why this was hailed across the world as a giant turkey of a movie?

And yet, despite despairing of its stupidity, despite loathing Scientology and the idiots who swallow its total pigshit, an despite having barely skimmed the surface of its many stupidities, I really like this film.

I probably wouldn't if it hadn't been for John Travolta hamming it up for all he's worth as the jovial, venal, totally corrupt, egotistical, sadistic villain. He is magnificent in his over-acting, indeed it's almost a master-class in hamming it up. He transforms a truly awful film into a truly awful film that is, nevertheless, somehow endearing in its badness. It isn't just so bad it's bad. It isn't so bad it's good. But it is so bad it can be counted as a guilty pleasure.

Post Script.

Watching this reminded me of two other movies where Travolta plays the villain (thoughl, technically, in one he plays the hero and the villain and the actor playing the villain -Nicholas Cage- plays the villain and the hero). Respectively Faces Off and Broken Arrow, both movies directed by Hong Kong legend John Woo. I've ordered them both, and both are very cheap, today. Expect reviews quite soon.

DVD: KAGEMUSHA

Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior, 152 mins, 1980, is still as impressive as when I first saw it nearly 30 years ago, though perhaps less surprising given that I'm much more familiar with Japanese cinema than when I first saw it.

Now it seems almost like a stately fatalistic dance. Beginning around 1570, The Shingen, a powerful warlord who perhaps senses his impending death, takes on another impersonator to replace his tiring brother. This one is an actor and a thief, low-born from the north. The Shingen does indeed die and his chief aides put into action his plan to hide his death for three years. The actor has to pretend and fool both allies and enemies that he is The Shingen. At first it works but then it all goes wrong and The Shingen's son leads the clan into disaster.

This isn't a subtle film. While there is more depth than I've hinted at in the above brief synopsis, it still isn't a wordy film. It's power comes primarily from its succession of striking images. Some of this are filmed on location, others in the studio, often both are part of one scene. A dream sequence is rich in colour and particularly effective. But then so is the climactic battle when almost all the killing takes place off-screen as wave after wave of soldiers and cavalry charge into a killing field of artillery fire. The aftermath, however, is shown most graphically. The real tragedy is brought home as the now-disgraced impersonator wanders distraught through the killing field.

This is a visually gorgeous and emotionally heart-breaking film.

DVD: AKIRA KUROSAWA

I'm having an Akira Kurosawa season.

Kurosawa is regarded as one of the finest directors in movie history. He had an intensely profilic period from 1943 to the mid-60s which produced movies such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai*, Ikuru, Yojimbo, and Red Beard* (his last collaboration with Toshiro Mifune after 15 films together). After that he barely managed one movie every five years or so though they were generally worth waiting for and included Dodeskaden (1970), Derzu Uzala (1975), and his two late flowering masterpieces Kagemusha* (1980) and Ran* (1985). Of these, I've only seen Dodeskaden and Kagemusha before.

* These are DVDs I've bought and will review as I get through them. Unless, of course, I decide I've had a brainfart and wonder why the hell I bought them in the first place, though I hope not. Assuming I enjoy them as much as I anticipate, I may well be adding other titles.

Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai

MISCELLANY

Being a collection of bits and pieces, none substantial enough to have their own entry.

Music.

Not mentioned before but last week I bought Florence and the Machine's Lungs. I'd been waiting for the expanded edition to come down in price from around £12.00, but as it showed no sign of doing so I bought the ordinary edition for just over half that. I've been playing Dog Days Are Over since I first heard it on last year's Skins and caught other tracks as well. It's an uneven album (or that may be I just haven't got all of the tracks yet) but I particularly like the morbidly amusing and catchy My Boy Builds Coffins and the rather lyrically dubious Kiss With A Fist (A kiss with a fist/ is better than none). Love her voice. 

Been weeding out some CDs to sell on Amazon Marketplace. My criterion is: if I don't love it, it goes. So, two collections by Credence Clearwater (one sold within hours), two recent blues CDs by Gary Moore, The Best of Simple Minds double, Echo & the Bunnymen's 2003 Live at Liverpool, and an Ace compilation of 60's girl bands (as opposed to vocal groups) Destroy That Boy.

DVDs

Also going up for sale shortly, and surprisingly, is Kwaidan. It's a beautiful film which I haven't finished watching yet but it is just too slow for me and I'll know I'll never be watching it again. I'm sure this is my loss but there you go. I really hope I don't feel the same about Kurosawa's Ran which just arrived this morning.

Arrived yesterday was a cheapish 3-disc box set of Lugosi's Dracula (1931), Dracula's Daughter (1936) and House of Dracula (1945). But this so-called Dracula Triple is actually a Dracula Quadruple as it also (and rather more quietly contains) the Spanish version of Dracula which is the one I really wanted to see. I'd never heard of this until a few years when all the Uinversal b/w monster movies were re-released in fancy editions of coincide with Van Helsing which they hoped would set the world on fire but didn't. Anyway, this version was filmed at the same time, except at night, on the same sets as the Lugosi version, though the director was American and needed a translator. Barry Norton (as Juan Harker) is Argentinian despite the name, and the names of the female leads were also changed as well. It's also 29 minutes longer. Renfield (who goes to Transylvania, not Harker) becomes and major character and is played by an actor who goes over the top every time. Carlos Villarias is quite effective as an oleaginous and somehow rat-like Dracula. I rather enjoyed it but it did feel a bit too long. I'll watch the rest of the set some other time.

Politics/Society.

When I was out for a drink with Barry a couple of nights ago, he mentioned he'd taken the Political Compass test (see website sidebar) and, unsurprisingly  (to me) he ended up in the middle of libertarian left quadrant  where I found myself the last time I took the test a few years ago and not too far from Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama which is good company to be in.

Basically rather than do a simple left/right, they do a grid with four quadrants of 10*10 squares per quadrant (using geographical terms) authoritarian is north, libertarian is south, left is west and east is right. So, as I said, Barry found himself in the centre of the libertarian left quadrant with an approximate score of -5.00 and -5.00 for his political and social views. Someone completely centrist would be 0.0/0.0.

So I thought I'd take the test again and found it had changed somewhat since the previous time, presumably being refined over the years. This time my score came over as Economic lLeft/Right at 6.38 a little more to the left than before but not by much) and  for Social Libertarian/Authoritarian scale scored -7.38 which represented a noticeable increase in the radicalism of my left libertarian views. I should emphasise here that it is social libertarianism not the American equivalent. It's almost impossible to find yourself in the social libertarian/right quadrant because the two views are impossible to reconcile.

If this doesn't make sense, do please check the website out because it is genuinely fascinating.

BOOK, GRAPHIC NOVEL, DVDS: RECENT AMAZON REVIEWS

Rating: 5 stars. 

From 1938 and the golden age of aviation comes -The Rocketeer. The Rocketeer is another wonderful example of the flowering of the graphic novel which began in the 1980's with Moore's Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen, Frank Miller's Ronin and The Dark Knight Returns, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez Love & Rockets, and Howard Chaykin's American Flagg, several of which I've reviewed for Amazon. As different from all of these as they are from each other, The Rocketeer is a pulp adventure romp which moves from the dry sunny skies of California to the dark underworld of New York and it's a delight from start to finish.

Firstly the art by Dave Stevens is delicate in line, detailed and accurate in its portrayal of the period, wryly humorous, almost unique its depiction of people who look real, and particularly gorgeous in its portrayal of beautiful woman. Betty, the heroine, is modelled on the legendary 1950's glamour and exotic pictures icon Bettie Page. I've no doubt that Stevens, who later became a friend of Page, did much to bring her back into the limelight again. But I digress, in the unlikely event that you aren't taken with the story, it's impossible that the art will fail to enchant you. It has also been recoloured, in accordance with Stevens' wishes (though tragically he died of leukemia before he could see it), by Laura Martin one of the very top colourists in the business and whose skills have enhanced many graphic stories. Also reprinted are the many covers of the various magazines in which this story appeared.

As for the story itself, stunt pilot Cliff Secord gets his hands on jet pack stolen by Nazis from its inventor who isn't, as one character thinks, Howard Hughes but a very famous character from the pulp magazines of the period. Lots of action ensues with Cliff distracted by his stunning girlfriend and her career as a glamour model. All doesn't end well and Secord chases her to New York to try and prevent her from going to Europe with her sleazy-sophisticate photographer mentor. There he is befriended by another pulp hero with a very sharp nose as dark secrets of Secord's life are brought into sharp threatening life.

I love this book. I love it for its beautiful art. I love it for its high adventure and thrills. I love it for its humour and I love it for its detail and for so many other reasons. And I love it because I have it in this definitive beautiful hardback edition. And I'm pretty sure you will love it too.

And here are a couple of other images, just because.

Is that goregous artwork or what?

 

Rating: 5 stars.

This is the fourth book from the new Angry Robot imprint which I've been sent for review. Two I didn't like much, one I did, and this... This stands head and shoulders above the one I did like and both, curiously, deal with alternate worlds.

The Bookman's setting is a Victorian Britain where Moriarty is the Poet-Prime Minister, Gilgamesh is an immortal down and out who lives under a bridge, a sentient automaton of Byron conspires, clowns verbally assault Oscar Wilde, America is known as Vespuccia, a Martian probe is about to be launched (though this is in fact a lie), The Bookman is a menace to society, and Queen Victoria is a lizard. And that is just the start.

Following the death of his beloved at the hands of The Bookman, our hero Orphan (he has no other name, though he gains one) is caught up in a maelstrom of conspiracy and strangeness as is the reader as we and Orphan begin to discover the strange and sinister secrets (and there are many as the tale twists and turns) of this unusual world. And all this is helped by marvellously evocative prose which creates this strange living world we find ourselves in, a style, readable yet ornate, which matches the content.

This is Tidhar's first novel, though he has written much short fiction, and he has set himself quite a standard to live up to. A sequel is in the offing and I can hardly wait. I could write much more but I want you to discover this novel's delights for yourself. Do I need to add that this is highly recommended? 

 Rating: 4 stars.

Good grief!

Just to the right of the 18 rating on the back of the box are the words: Contains frequent strong violence, gore, sex, and very strong language. This is not an overstatement and it doesn't mention the copious amounts of female nudity. If anything the text should much larger, in bold, and with a dozen exclamation marks following it. And to think that I thought its predecessor, the simply named Crank, was over the top when in fact it is almost restrained compared to its sequel. Good grief. It isn't so much over top as fits a rocket to its bottom and flies over the top at a thousand miles an hour. Just watching this is exhausting.

I loved it, of course. And it's also very funny if you get the joke, otherwise you'll run away screaming 'I repent! Bring back the censors!'

If you like 'frequent strong violence, gore, sex, and very strong language', then you'll love it too.

Jason Statham as Chev Chelios is a near unstoppable superhuman agent of chaos and mayhem as he maim, mutilates, kills, and destroys anything and anyone which gets in his way. His motivation is his search for his missing heart. The mcguffin is that he has to generate static electricity for his artificial heart by friction, and also any other means. He does this by rubbing up against other people to plugging himself directly into a power plant.

Plus there's the gorgeous Bai Ling as a totally manic hooker and the gorgeous Amy Smart as his girlfriend. And if that doesn't convince you to get this DVD, nothing will.

Good grief! 

Rating: 4 stars.

In which calling women 'maneaters' is not a metaphor

Director Jake West is noted for two previous micro-budget high-gore cultish horror movies. This time he ups his game with what actually looks like a decent budget, employing decent actors like Noel Clarke, has an interesting script, and moves rather creditably into Shaun of the Dead territory.

I'm not completely sure whether this is a celebration of male chauvinism or a cheerful mocking of it -probably the latter- as he has a bunch of mates escaping from shrewish wives or girlfriends or 'I'm sorry, I know we've been out twice, but what's your name?' for a weekend of male bonding and excessive alcohol intake at a dump of a village in the middle of nowhere where Noel Clark's character has an away granny with a cottage. They're not the brightest bunch you're likely to meet but they are pleasant and likeable enough, some of them with reasonably enlightened attitudes towards the opposite sex.

Sadly, and mild spoiler warning here, the government has just tested a biological weapon on the unwitting villagers of Moodley which causes severe brain damage to the women and induces a cannibalistic appetite for male flesh. Within a few minutes of their arrival they begin to notice that something is a little wrong. It might be the scattered body parts or the crazed woman in a bridal gown munching on some raw flesh. The rest of the film is devoted to the group's manic and funny attempts to escape.

And this is a very funny film, partly due to the dialogue (between the all male group, the women just growl) and partly situational (the incredibly obese woman diving from a rooftop onto her prey -you just going to have to trust me that this is funny, or watch the movie). While very gory, it is downplayed by the fact that it consists mainly of body parts laying around, the kills themselves are relatively tame (note: relatively), and the blood is coloured black not red which undercuts the horror somewhat. The women just stagger around growling and screaming and using whatever weapon is appropriate -the hairdresser's (an unrecognisable Emily Booth) twitching hands hold scissors, an old lady uses a shopping trolley, and if the place had been big enough for a library it would have had a librarian attacking with overdue letters and a date stamp.

All in all, a rather jolly affair and for once an ending which just stops rather than concludes seems quite appropriate. Warmly recommended.

WARNING! BAD MOVIE ALERT

An article on the Rotten Tomatoes website today focussed on the best 25 worst movies ever. To my shame, I have seen eight of them such as Robot Monster, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Road House (starring Patrick Swayze & Ben Gazzara), The Giant Claw, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (starring John Barrowman), Batman & Robin, and The Giant Spider Invasion. Now while I can't understand the inclusion of Road House (not great but great fun nevertheless), I have to admit that the rest are so bad that they are entertaining in a perverse way, though I have no intention of ever seeing any of them again.

With one exception.

The one I haven't mentioned thus far.

"Can you guess what it is yet?" Catchphrase copyright Rolf Harris.

Of course you can because I opened this post with a still from it. It's -

-Battlefield Earth, a movie so shat on because it's held as being so bad it's utterly utterly bad. But I disagree. Reminded of it, I decided I had to have a copy and immediately ordered one from Amazon Marketplace for the total cost (including postage) of £3.69.

So, I give you fair warning. This metricious masterpiece of kitsch (a phrase I must use again)  will be reviewed here in the near future.

DVD: INFESTATION (2008) , SHOGUN (1980)

  (Two Amazon reviews)

Invasion of the Large Blind Alien Super Beetles from Outer Space

So, in Small City USA (or Bulgaria to be truthful) an accident wakens our unheroic hero from a cocoon where he'd been anaesthetised to keep fresh for later munchies by Large Alien (well, see my title to this review), along with, as far as we know, the rest of world. Along with a motley crew of people whom he wakes up (and they always throw up when first awakened -there's a lot of vomiting in this movie), he attempts to stay alive.

Although this isn't a comedy, there is as much humour as there is action and gore which is quite a lot, most of it (the humour) springing from the interaction of our slacker 'hero' and the prickly heroine he has the hots for. The small cast is largely well-characterised i.e. a mixed bunch and not the usual stereotypes. Any alpha males who get woken up don't last long mainly because they're stupid. Despite the various surprises along the way, the plot is fairly simple: get out of the city while trying to avoid the bugs, find our non-hero's military father while trying to avoid the bugs, then rescue a certain person from the bug's nest. There are lots of encounters with bugs, which are a creditable mixture of animatronics and cgi, and lots of splatter both bug and human.

This is a highly likeable and very entertaining creature feature from writer/director Kyle Rankin. A sequel with the same cast (well, the survivors at least) would be welcomed, Mr Rankin. Asap, please.

The greatest tv miniseries ever?

James Clavell's original novel is one of my all-time favourites, a magnificent epic tale packed to the gills with high adventure, the darkest deceit and treachery, tear-jerking love, nobility, and so much more. It's also a fascinating study of alien contact as Japanese society was so utterly different from that of Western Europe at the time and it is for a large part the story of an Englishman' growing understanding of his new home.

Even at eight and a half hours, a tv series couldn't begin to do more than scratch the surface of this massive and clever novel. That it does so as well as it does is little short of a miracle and it does so by focussing, albeit not completely, on the Anjin-san's story and his part in events. The script is good, the performances are good, the photography is good. Richard Chamberlain is surprisingly good, albeit less working class and gruff than Sean Connery (the ideal choice for the role, at the time) would have been. One the other hand, he's more convincing than perhaps Connery would with the more gentle side. But it's Yoko Shimada as Mariko who is the revelation and the best thing in it. Small and delicately beautiful, she exquisitely displays vulnerability but also the steel spine deep within. I defy anyone not to fall in love with her and it's the moving love story between Mariko and Anjin-san which is the core of this version of the story.

The presentation itself is nicely done. We have the opening credits at the beginning of Disc 1 and the closing credits at the end of Disc 4. None in between, no annoying recaps, just the full uninterrupted drama. Excellent. The behind the scenes stuff is also nicely done.

That said, it hasn't worn as well as it should. On a visual level, the background landscape is far from sharp though people are much clearer. John Rhys Davies as Rodrigues the Portugese pilot is as over the top as he always is (about one decibel below Brian Blessed), George Innes as Vinck also similarly stands out particularly in his excruciating going mad scene. Much of the subtelties of the novel are inevitably lost. And it just feels dated. It makes me think that it's time for a remake with all the sex and violence and cgi muscles that are available to today's audiences. There is certainly no shortage of decent macho alpha male actors available, though finding another Yoko Shimada might prove much more difficult.

But, in the end, is Shogun the greatest tv miniseries ever? Well, I watched the first two hours on Saturday evening and finished the remaining six and a half the following day. So, yes, it is, but of its time.

DVD: DEAD SNOW

A slightly expanded Amazon review.

This movie was made for the horror movie fan.

It hits all the traditional notes perfectly while managing to be quite individual, though not orginal, on its own. So, what's good about it? The setting, well-photographed beautiful snow-covered tree-dotted Norwegian mountains. The group of amiable medical students who want to spend Easter in the snow in a lonely cabin miles from anywhere. The spooky opening kill. The horror movie references both obvious and subtle. The settling in to the cabin and the interruption by the local with a sinister tale to tell which is shortly followed by his swift despatch by person, or creatures, unseen. The sinister build-up as one of the group disappears. The half-seen Nazi zombies night attack with its first gross-out shot. Then daylight and the Nazi zombies properly emerge and all out war begins. The escalation of carnage to ludicrous proportions as limbs fly across the frozen landscape, blood spurts from gaping wounds, entrails litter the ground, and our heroes display remarkable fighting skills even when suffering from horrendous wounds as the movie goes so far over the top it ends up nearly out of sight and hilariously funny. 

Just one example. One of the two survivors gets bitten on the forearm by a zombie. Having seen too many zombie movies, though there's no evidence to suggest it here, he's convinced that he'll turn into one. So he chainsaws his forearm off. Moments later a zombie erupts from the snow beneath and bites him in the groin.

And more. Great entertainment.

Lots of extras including subtitles which helps as the dialogue is in Norwegian. I'll be watching this a lot more than once.

DVD: THE SONNY CHIBA COLLECTION

An Amazon review.

Packed into this relatively slim-line box set are six movies. All are contemporary thrillers, that is contemporary for when they were all made, that being the mid-70's. Chiba himself is only the main character in three of them. In two, he's a supporting character and in one I can't even remember seeing him though he is listed in the cast. All are, however, generally entertaining and I certainly enjoyed them all. The nudity and sex in some of them surprised me and the violence is often brutal -please note, this is not a complaint.

Bullet Train appears on two discs, in the English language 115 minute version, and the Japanese with English subs 145 minute uncut original. This is by far the best film of the six by a very long long way. It's an ensemble piece which ratches up the tension but finds time to explore the background of the would-be bombers who are portrayed more sympathetically than you'd expect. It's an exceptional film by any standard. Chiba plays the train driver but it's one of the lesser roles and any competent actor could have played the part.

Golgo 13 has Chiba in the lead as a hitman for hire. It's set in Hong Kong, filmed in Mandarin or the other main Chinese language (my apologies for not remembering it), dubbed into Japanese but has an English language track, and is generally good fun.

In Karate Warriors, Chiba is a thug for hire. Arriving in town, he has to decide which gang to go with. Both gangs are after a hidden stash of heroin. You expect that Chiba will be revealed as an undercover cop but her isn't, he's just an efficient fighter with an only slightly higher moral sensibility than the people he works with. English language version only.

The Bodyguard has a daft opening filmed purely for this version in which two American martial arts experts fight a bit and extol the virtues of the movie's hero who goes by the name of -Chiba! Chiba!, who casually kills half a dozen would-be hijackers on an aircraft just to get the movie warmed up, states on tv that he will personally bodyguard anyone who wants to grass on drug dealers. So of the course the first person to come forward is female and sexy and as obviously corrupt as the gangsters who want to kill her. This doesn't seem a problem for Chiba!

Dragon Princess and Sister Street Fighter both feature young attractive female leads. One is out to avenge the death of her father, the other to rescue her undercover cop brother. Again both English language versions and packed on two Grindhouse Experience discs with the previous two movies.

If you haven't seen any Sonny Chiba movies before, he has a strong solid prescence for a big man and looks effective in action. That said, I reckon either Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan could have taken him out without breaking sweat.

DVD: IAN'S SLASHFEST 2009

(No photos because for some reason my right mouse button has stopped working.)

Three slasher movies in three days. Having read a variet of reviews the consensus seems to be that they are all deserving of a decent reputation. Note that I use the word consensus and not uniformity of opinion. They are looked at in viewing order.

First off is The House on Sorority Row (1983). The DVD is a cheapo  no frills, no subtitles, region 0 edition.

Plot in a nutshell: 20 years earlier baby experiments go wrong; sorority house end of year; party planned; house mistress horrible and dies when a prank goes wrong; killer kills at the their party; final girl kills him/her/it; last scene, 'dead' killer opens eyes. Very formulaic.

What I liked: generally okay but nothing worth singling out.

What I didn't like: there are no twists, not a one. Is the house mistress dead or not? Answer: dead and stays that way. Is the killer one of the girls? No. Is the killer the final girl's blind date? Can't be, too obvious, must be a red herring. He's a red herring. Is the killer anyone we've met? No. he's the house mistress's deformed locked up son. Decent gore: no, relatively tame and despite mild nudity the 18 rating is unwarranted.

Friday 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986).  Trailer, subtitles.

Plot in a nutshell: you mean you don't know? Okay. Idiot who killed Jason years ago digs him up to burn the body; resurrects Jason; spends rest of movie evading the police who think he's pretending to be Jason; real Jason kills lots of people at camp.

What I liked: the first part which is a horror-comedy. "I've seen too many horror movies not to know that a man in a mask is not going to be friendly," says a soon to be victim. The gravedigger on seeing Jason's dug up grave turns to the camera and says, "The things that some people consider entertainment." Jason's encounter with a group of screwy paint-ballers, where he acquires a nice shiny machete to replace the spear-like cemetery railing he'd been using, is very funny. The sight-gag of the camera panning over sleeping pre-teens clutching teddies, picture books, and one bespectacled girl with an arm over a novel by John Paul Sartre.

What I didn't like: very little, it's just the rest is the usual unimaginative stalk and slash. Sometimes something like an unexpected severed head will raise the game a little but otherwise it's nothing you haven't seen before. The worst thing is a room lacking a body but absolutely drenched in blood leaving you to shudder at what might have happened there. Most of the killing is done in a cut-away shot which reduces the impact.

The Burning (1981). No frills DVD, no subs.

Plot in nutshell: Hideously scarred after a camp prank went wrong and finally released from hospital after five years, Cropsy heads back and begins killing the current group of campers.

What I liked about it: pretty much everything. This is it! This is what a slasher should be. The director piles on the tension, so much so that for the first in ages I was peeping nervously around the corner of a DVD case. Explicit graphic gore, but not really vilely hideous but bad enough, courtesy of Tom Savini. Good cast who portray believable varied interesting shaded characters. Kids act like kids. These aren't formula stereotypes but people you can believe in and care about. It is genuinely scary and for the first time in ages I was actually scared rather than amused by a horror film. I'd nearly forgotten what that was like. I'm keeping this one and will be watching it again.

What I didn't like about it: missing Holly Hunter. Apparently it was her first movie and I was looking out for her but never noticed her. Darn. Oh and maybe they could have shown the hideously scarred killer more than the one brief glimpse near the end.

And so ends my slasher infatuation. If they were all as good as The Burning, I'd be digging out more of this genre but they aren't and so it's back to monster horror movies (see recent posts). However before I leave you, there's this.

Addendum

Frightmare (1974, UK, dir.Pete Walker). DVD: commentary, trailers, subs.

This is part of a cheapo 4-DVD pack of British exploitation maestro director Pete Walker's early 1970's efforts. All his movies were cheaply and quickly done using good, but mostly then-minor, British actors. They boasted lurid titles -Frightmare means absolutely nothing in the context of this film. It is, however, a genuinely grim and disturbing piece of work. Released after 15 years in a mental hospital, Sheila Keith soon reverts to her homicidal cannibalistic ways, unknown to her loyal husband Rupert Davies. His daughter by a previous marriage lives in London with the couple's tearaway daughter who believes them dead. When the former's boyfriend starts investigating it builds to one of the most fucked-up vile conclusions to a movie that I've ever seen. This has more genuine emotional impact than the three previous movies put together. There is gore but it's more emotionally horrifying that anything else.

All I can say it that I hope the other three in the pack aren't this grim.

DVD: MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981), MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D (2009)

 

 

Now here's an interesting thing. I've recently watched the 1981 slasher and then two weeks later (yesterday to be specific) the remake in heart-stopping (this may be an exaggeration) 3-D. And, just to spoil the ending -of this post, not the movies- I enjoyed them both. Equally? Well, we'll see.

Now a low-budget early 80's slasher is not neccessarily a movie I'd normally be interested in despite my love of horror. However, Stacie Ponder writing on her Final Girl blog (see sidebar) mentioned it en passant in a complimentary manner and provided a link to her earlier review. I checked it out, it sounded fun, so I ordered it from Amazon marketplace for around a fiver and discovered that, gosh, Stacie was right.

It is a low budget movie and that is quite obvious but it is relatively well-made within its limits. It's also not about screaming teens. The set up is this. It's a small mining community and twenty years before the story proper, a mine explosion traps some miners of whom only one survives because he's eaten the others, presumably after they were dead of natural causes. The survivor, Harry Warden, goes on a rampage and kills those responsible for the disaster. He also leaves a warning that if there's ever a Valentine's dance -the disaster happened on, oh you guessed- he'll be back. Despite being incarcerated, there isn't a dance for 20 years when.... Yes, you guessed right again.

Our core characters are TJ (who has just recently returned after being gone for a few years and become a miner again), Axel his best bud (who is also going out with) Sarah (the girl TJ left behind), and sundry other male and female buds also in their mid-twenties who, at various times, end up playing corpses, but then you knew that too.

 

They may carry pickaxes but Harry has one specially for each of them

Harry Warden (or is it?) despatches various people involved in the dance until it's cancelled so the young people decided to hold a dance in, and you'll never guess, the mine! Oh, you guessed that as well. Needless to say it's pickaxe time and Harry (or is it?) goes to town -well, the mine actually, that was just a figure of speech and you guessed that as well. Bugger!

 

The gore is fairly tame, though enough to justify the UK 15 rating, and was reputedly trimmed. There is no sex except for an early scene where a woman strips down to her bra and panties but doesn't get involved with hanky panky. I guessed who the killer was about 15 minutes before the end but I'm not going to spoil it for you. And generally the movie plays fair with, in hindsight, several clues as to his/her identity planted. It's not a great movie but I had fun and I'll be watching it again.

Sarah and pickaxe fodder

The remake rings several changes not least by reversing the order of the climactic set piece. After a brief establishing setup, we have the Valentine's party in the mine and Harry Warden (who had earlier survived a disaster, not by cannibalism, but by killing his workmates so they wouldn't use up the air) gets busy slaughtering any teen he can find. Axel, Axel's gf, and Sarah (TJ's gf) escape but leave TJ at Harry's not so tender mercies but he survives and buggers off. It also disposes of the Valentine's Day theme apart from the heart-shaped boxes of chocolates with real hearts in them.

Ten years later, Axel is chief of police, Sarah is his wife, his ex-gf is a slut, and he has a bit on the side. TJ, who now owns the mine following the death of his father, arrives purely to sell the mine. Tensions between Axel and TJ arise as the former thinks the latter is after his wife. Oh yes, and Harry Warden (or is -okay, we've already been there) starts killing people only in a much gorier fashion than the earlier movie but then this is 18 rated. There is also a lot of explicit sex and nudity, but it's all in one scene.

I guessed who the killer was within a few minutes of the start of the 'present-day', though I changed my mind several times backwards and forwards. I wouldn't have been uncertain if I'd been able to figure out one thing which I won't mention.

Despite numerous reviewers on Amazon telling people not to watch it in 3-D because it was crap compared to the cinema, I persevered through the whole thing. I will watch it again sometime but in normal 2-D (a copy of which is on the reverse of the double-sided disc). Although better made, I didn't quite like it as much as the original because neither Axel nor TJ are particularly likeable so you can't really root for either of them.

But still, I had a good time. Thank you Stacie Ponder and you, yes you, go check out her blog.

RECENTLY ACQUIRED: CD/DVD/GRAPHIC NOVEL

This is the super deluxe everything but the kitchen sink lavish expensive £25 plus change (pre-ordered, the price has since gone up by £7) edition. It's the remastered orginal album, the alternative & unreleased & live stuff, and the DVD which includes their Live Aid show which I vividly remember. I'm playing the main album as I type and it's wonderful. But then I'm, as you probably know, a big fan of U2, well the earlier stuff. Though I have most of their later albums, it's the early period I prefer and in recent months I've been picking up the special, but not super deluxe, 2-disc editions of Boy, War, October, and The Joshua Tree.

It's all magical stuff. Bono may sometimes come over as a prat but he has one of Rock's most distinctive and effective voices. The Edge is a genius on guitar in terms of what he does with them and the rythm section is first rate. When you add a string of heartfelt anthemic memorable songs and brooding mysterious slower ones, there is nothing else quite like it in Rock.

I haven't seen this yet but I'm really looking forward to it, a sendup of -well I don't need to spell out that, surely?- set in Mongolia in the 30's which has garned rave reviews from all over the place and the trailer I saw looked pretty damn good. Gonna watch it tonight.

Of course I have the original comics but this is one of those I've decided to have in a nice edition. This one, just released, is the first of three in a deluxe edition. This means it's bigger than the standard hardback from DC but not by half the price as fancy as the Absolute editions. I'm working on an article about Alan Moore for this blog and cover Tom Strong in detail so I'll save any further comment until then.