Archive for October, 2007
As if I needed another reason not to pick up 2000AD any time soon:
some character is walking around with his cock out. It’s not even an average sized cock in the style of Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen but a disproportionate one, perhaps even semi-engorged. Around the time of prog 259, subversion meant witty analogies of the Catholic church and contemporary governments without losing sight that this was a comic for children, but prog 1559’s idea of subversion is to get its smelly cock out and wave it in your face. What age group is 2000 AD aimed at these days? I ask because it can’t be under sixteen year olds, because of the cock, and it can’t be adults, because of its proportions. What are we going to see next? Judge Dredd shitting into Judge Anderson’s mouth?
Quite.
From the 2000AD Prog Slog.
Robert Vaughn was shooting the movie The Bridge at Remagen in Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the country was invaded by the Soviet Union. His experience and escape are now the basis for a play, aptly entitled Solo Behind the Curtain being broadcast next month:
Vaughn was placed under house arrest in his hotel room as tanks swept through the streets. He ultimately planned a daring escape with Ben Gazzara that rivaled anything his character Napoleon Solo would have attempted on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Vaughn was presented with the script for the radio play by the writer Tracy Spottiswoode with a request for him to narrate the story. Vaughn so loved the script that he ended up agreeing to playing himself in the play. Broadcast is set for November 5 on BBC Radio 4
Cool. And a lot more interesting to listen to than fireworks.
Note: As a follow up to the post about the Aliens gun you may be interested to know that Napoleon Solo’s gun now has its own website (and here’s the spy car).
And this is kind of sad: You can now hire Vaughn, William Shatner and erm… Erik Estrada.
Their appearance here at the same as the army attack was one more of the many coincidences which some readers of my biographer’s novels have found incredible. These people do not not know that some men are not only endowed with “animal magnetism,” but some men also have what I call a “human magnetic moment.” That is, some men, of whom I am one, are the focus of unusual events, of mathematically unlikely coincidences. They radiate something - a quantity, a “field,” which pulls events together. The field slightly distorts, or warps, the semifluid structure of occurrences, of space objects intertwined with the time flow.
Lord Grandrith, Apeman of the Jungle, explains the coincidental nature of events in the lives of men like himself and Doc Caliban in A Feast Unknown by Philip Jose Farmer.
In a perfect world I wouldn’t even be aware of Radiohead.
Like everyone else, somehow I have a copy of OK Computer on CD. Unlike the rest of the world I think it’s a piece of shit. I have no idea how I ended up with the CD, but then again I have no idea how I ended up with a large brick with the word ELECTRICY written on it either.
Over the last few years I’ve found it quite easy to avoid mediocre crap like Radiohead - I don’t listen to the radio and avoid buying anything from quality music outlets like Tesco or service stations.
Long story short I don’t care about their fucking stupid new album and the ‘innovative’ way they released it.
Now I can’t turn around without hearing or reading about it (small mercies, I haven’t heard any of the actual whining on it) which seems to me a little unfair.
But I have a solution.
On their website you need three options. One button that says ‘Download and pay fuckall because I have a low IQ but I’m not THAT stupid‘, another button that says ‘I’m a moron so I’ll download and pay something I feel is hip‘ and a third button for people like me that says ‘We’re sorry for annoying you. Please press here and we’ll deposit $10 in your Paypal account for the inconvenience caused by our parents and their fear of contraception‘.
Someone drop me an email when it’s done, ok.
There’s an excerpt from the new Hunter. S. Thompson biography, Gonzo, up on the Smith magazine website:
We broke into liquor stores. We’d jimmy a lock or break a window. I never paid a hotel bill when I was with Hunter, and it wasn’t his initiative as much as mine. We’d just go out the window or the fire escape. That was just normal.
After reading it I’m not sure I’m too taken with the oral history style… I much prefer and enjoy the gonzo-style biography Hunter by E Jean Carroll in which Hunter keeps the author trapped in a pit for a while.
I also dismissed the Steadman book The Joke’s Over, but will probably pick it up in paperback. What I’m really looking forward to is Hunter’s final collection of collected letters, The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005.
Only due out in February though…
After putting the Miike quote up the other day I was wondering what he was up to right now. Most of the buzz right now is about his weird Django rethink with Tarantino stuck on the wrong side of the camera again, but honestly I’m more interested in the smaller movie he’s managed to make on the side: Detective Story (Tantei Monogatari).
I found this synopsis:
Private detective Kazama Raita (Nakayama)’s new neighbour is a dude with same name, Takashima Raita (Maki). From the moment he moves into the apartment next door, Takashima finds himself being tailed by the shady Kazama. One night, a female client of Kazama’s is found dead minus her liver, followed by a second and a third victim, one with their kidneys ripped out and the other sans lungs. The two Raitas attempt to uncover the truth, which has something to do with a tragic genius by the name of Aoyama Yuki…
Good stuff. I’m working on a couple of large projects right now, but as they take time I’m hoping to get a couple of smaller things out of my system on the run… can’t guarantee any missing organs though.
Off to see Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises with hubby:
I don’t mind him having a girlfriend as I serve a different set of needs. Mainly Ukrainian in scope.
Some of my friends on Twitter prefer to talk only to people they know or who have proved themselves interesting. Me? I don’t give a fuck who you are. And if someone adds me on Twitter I add ‘em right back. They then have maybe a week’s grace to prove themselves not a fuckwit. Far from a perfect system, it hasn’t stopped me being bored to tears, hit on and occasionally disturbed over the last year*, but it works for me.
So today (if you follow me) you would have seen this:
Following only half a conversation can get a tad frustrating, eh? What George and I were talking about was this:
I’m as much of an Aliens fan as the next guy, but seriously… if you need a working LED ammo counter that counts your ammo usage while blasting in the general direction of imaginary monsters then fair play to you.
*much to my surprise I’ve been using Twitter since November 2006 and have around 170 pages of tweets trailing behind me.
I tend to go into press screenings blind. This means any production notes or press packs I get handed go straight into my bag or pocket until I’ve had a chance to check out the movie. Sometimes these are lavish affairs often better produced that the movies themselves and some are just badly photocopied Word documents. Occasionally (as was the case of at least one movie this festival) they make a whole lot more sense than the films I sit through.
This afternoon I saw Shotgun Stories and after a pretty bleak festival it was a breath of fresh air and something that I thoroughly enjoyed. Once home I dug out the day’s press crap in order to find out what exactly Jeff Nichols had done previously, as I was keen to see what he’d cut his teeth on to get to this great little movie. I was shocked to find that this was his first full length feature.
It’s a remarkable achievement. The film is a sober and refreshing look at revenge and shows a maturity that makes me want to see everything that Nichols has been involved in. Here’s what he has to say about Shotgun Stories:
There is no victory in revenge. This is an idea I chose to explore with Shotgun Stories, a film tracking a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. So often in literature, film, politics and society, revenge, and more importantly the execution of revenge, is considered success. Whether it’s Edmund Dantes fulfilling his pledge to ruin Danglars in The Count of Monte Cristo or Hans Gruber falling to his death in Die Hard, the euphoric feeling we get as an audience watching the villain meet his or her comeuppance is undeniable. With Shotgun Stories, I wanted to work against this notion. I wanted revenge to be an awkward thing to exact and a cause not necessarily championed by the audience. Violence is an unusual task for these characters, just as it is for most people. Their anger and emotions are validated, but their reactions to those emotions are not precise. My hope is that Shotgun Stories gives an honest portrayal of normal, hard working people responding to the pain and heartbreak they find, and at times create, in their own lives.
I noticed that he’s also worked on The Rough South of Larry Brown which makes perfect sense as the film evokes the work of Brown very well, especially something like Father & Son. I’d love to see Nichols go on to adapt his work or even some early Cormac McCarthy.
While this seems to be a career best for Michael Shannon he’s surrounded by a great cast (the actresses are all especially good) and Nichols knows how to frame a shot. Sometimes dwarfing the actors in the landscape, the film was shot in 35mm and looks beautiful throughout. Plotwise it revolves around slowly unwinding tension and violence between two sets of half-brothers. The stark drama serves the action well and it has a suitably masculine feel about it, with things not said sometimes proving more powerful than the very authentic dialogue.
One of my favourite movies so far, it plays on the 19th and 21st of this month at the London Film Festival. If it doesn’t get a decent wide release after that then there’s no justice.
This relates to everything:
“We have to change the negative things into positive. In today’s Japanese film industry we always say we don’t have enough budget, that people don’t go to see the films. But we can think of it in a positive way, meaning that if audiences don’t go to the cinema we can make any movie we want. After all, no matter what kind of movie you make it’s never a hit, so we can make a really bold, daring movie. There are many talented actors and crew, but many Japanese movies aren’t interesting. Many films are made with the image of what a Japanese film should be like. Some films venture outside those expectations a little bit, but I feel we should break them.”
– Takashi Miike
I stole it from Ben who grabbed it from Warren. It struck me as a huge idea when I first read it and then prompltly forgot all about it because I’m an idiot. For me and a few others, Ben probably included, it’s a nice manifesto for 2008.
I met Ben this weekend by the way. He crashed here on Saturday and brought a large amount of alcohol and cool books with him. Took far too long for this to happen, especially as if we’ve been in touch now via email for around 2 years.
Meeting people like Ben, Corran and all the other good friends I now have who started off as nothing but screen names is the reason I’ll continue blogging (despite my recent lapse). It’s also why I’ll always fall in love with new apps like Twitter that act as friend generators.
Facebook, on the other hand, can still fuck right off…
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