Archive for August, 2007
Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie talk ‘Lost Girls’ on SexTv
Here - definitely not safe for work….
Just one of those weeks…
Despite trying both the phone and the internet I wasn’t able to get arcade fire tickets.. Arggghhh
From the BBC’s ‘day in pictures’
Here are two photos that really caught my attention -
The lego man in Holland who just appeared on a beach - though I think that his front should probably say ”no more real than you are”
And pictures of some settlers in Isreal being evicted by the Israeli army - can someone explain to me how these people in the picture are any less dangerous fundamentalists than the suicide bombers next door (metaphorically speaking) to them?
I’m missing an issue of 2000ad. Damnit.
For the last week I’ve been waiting for the ‘latest’ (no longer so as of today) issue of 2000ad. For some reason prog 1548 seems to have disappeared from the Irish market in every form. Neither any of the shops I’ve called around to in Cork or Waterford have it and at the moment I’m considering trying Dublin in the morning and seeing if they would have the issue. Does anyone out there know what happened? The issue did exist - as the fact that the current issue finished up many storylines (in ways that make little sense to me as I haven’t read the penultimate chapter) so…
Also, as an aside and speaking of comic books - while the tv show ‘heroes’ is well done and so on, does every comic fan feel like they’ve seen everything that they’ve done already? I mean this episode (number 4 on the BBC) featured the ‘dystopian black clothed characters carrying weapons’ gig…
Anyway, real posting to come tomorrow morning I’d say…
Update: For some reason Ireland didn’t get any issues of 2000ad this week - which is bad business practice to say the least. Anyway, over to the 2000ad shop online I guess…
Europe: East and West by Norman Davies
While I ages ago got my hands on Davies best-known work ‘Europe:A History’, I’ve had some trouble getting through it - mainly because in its hardcover edition its the sort of book you could beat someone to death with. However, I recently came across a copy of what I suppose is best described as its ’sister’ or ‘companion’ book - ‘Europe: East and West’. For those of you with a general interest in European history, essay-style short articles or looking for a present for that history fan in your life its a definite purchase.
What Davies does in this book is provide some greater explanation and depth to many of the topics he covered in ‘Europe’ - especially his (not incorrect) contention that when we speak of ‘Europe’ we need to include to a greater degree those parts of the European continent that extend past Germany. But this book is not just one historian ranting about his hobby; Davies covers such topics as ‘England and the myths surrounding England and ‘Britain’, the place of both Muslims and Jews in history (not always the horror story that both are usually presented as) and even things like the entertaining story of how Poles and Germans (despite modern propaganda) actually get on quite well all things considered.
The only major flaw with the book that I could find was that while some of the ideas presented within the book are interesting - especially the call for greater emphasis on ‘complete’ European history as well as a greater amount of attention being given towards prevailing national myths (and their often harmful side-effects), some of them are well, unteachable. Or at least would be very difficult to do justice too. For example; while a greater awareness of ‘complete’ European history would all-in-all be a good thing, to do so would make even college courses too broad. As it was this year my European history course was extremely large - and that was just covering some Irish, some British and specific sections of French, German and colonial history. In many ways, to teach an inclusive model as envisioned by Davies would require a 3year degree (at least) in a few specific subjects.
But for the most part the book is quite interesting, filled with lots of interesting facts, like the fact that the biggest single terrorist attack in Israel was committed by Jews (the bombing of the King David hotel) or that Hungary was the second-largest Catholic realm of the Medieval era (which is part of his argument for why the way European history should be thought more inclusively, but anyway).
The titles of many of the chapters should give one a fairly good idea of the topics covered - here’s a short sample;
Western Civilisation versus European History
Not Forever England
1000 Years of Polish-German Camaraderie
The Politics of History
Included in this is my personal favorite essay - ‘Not Forever England’ dealing with amongst other things the fact that Charles (should he ever become king) should be ‘Charles the 1st’ not ‘Charles the 3rd’ as he will be the first king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, not the third king of England and that English people are not the natives of the British Isles, the only natives are the Welsh, who arrived sometime in prehistory. Frankly I’ve never seen a more entertaining demolition of a countries national myths.
But don’t let that somewhat jokey last paragraph of mine give you the impression that Davies is in any way approaching his work taking the piss. The history in this book is quite serious but done very well and in a very readable style. Its well worth a look for anyone interested in a good and easily read history book.
Perfect Blue
Just watched this ‘classic’ Anime - its been one of those films that I’ve been meaning for years to watch and seeing as I had the day off today thanks to the bank holiday I figured I had nothing better to do.
And to be honest, it wasn’t really worth it. The film isn’t exactly ‘bad’ - its just not very good. It has the same basic problems I have with a lot of Anime - the plot either is too basic or it doesn’t make any sense. In this case it actually manages to do both. The basic plot is a pretty basic, to the point where I’m sure I’ve seen it in an Inspector Morse/A touch of Frost/any other generic mystery show episode somewhere. It follows the lead character as she quits her band and then becomes an actress - where she starts to feel guilty about spending most of her time in rather ’seedy’ roles. On top of this she begins to get a stalker who it appears is starting to become violent.
And that’s it.
The rest of the film (which is fairly short) simply is more confusing than interesting. While it is a time-honored tradition in films where theres a ‘are they crazy or not?’ vibe to screw around with the audience this film goes waayy too far in its attempts. The end result is that I just stopped caring. But still it was only 80 minutes so if your looking for a fairly ok thriller you can do worse I suppose.
Anyway, I found this clip for a fake trailer for the movie on youtube. Done as a ‘romcom’ it’s actually more entertaining than the fillm:
Want to see Mickey Mouse try to kill himself?
I have to admit, nothing has made me laugh as hard as these strips - especially the fact that they are appearently ‘real’, i.e. not ‘remixed’ or ‘faked’. Here is the main page for them. Thanks to the always enjoyable ‘Comics should be good for these ‘gems’…
Fangoria presents; Bump #2
My local ‘big’ bookstore also does a small amount of comic books - nothing major, just the Panini editions of the US comics mostly, but occasionally they do get in very, very random comics (mostly due to shipping errors but..). An example of this was the brand-new Fangoria Comics title ‘Bump’ issue 2. While I had (kinda) heard of Fangoria I picked up the title sight-unseen simply just out of my comic book fan curiosity.
So, was the book worth the €4.38 I paid for it? Yeah, mostly.
As the cover will probably give you a clue towards the book is a horror comic. Written and drawn by the (unfamiliar to me anyway) Mark Kidwell it does what is very hard to do, actually provides some scares. Warren Ellis in one of his ‘William Gravel/Strange Killings’ books once pointed out that horror in a comic book doesn’t work because the nature of the comic means that you can look at any image, no matter how disturbing, and analyse it. And once that is done the image loses its power. Therefore any horror comic book must rely on a good plot and disturbing ideas if its going to be in any way effective. Thankfully this book provides both.
I suppose the best compliment I can provide to this book is that while I was reading it the first time I found myself thinking ‘this would make a good slasher-type horror movie’. Upon rereading the book I found that this is ’soon to be a major motion picture from director and special effects legend Robert Kurtzman’ (who’s name again is familiar but I don’t remember why).
We are not given any sort of a recap page when we start the book, which I have to admit to not being too happy about as it means that you start the story cold, but the plot from what I can figure centers mostly on ‘Jackie’ and his family(?) who have camped (I don’t think they own the place based on various things said/seen in the book) in a house called the ‘Dill place’. Jackie is called from his bed by an evil looking puppet who convinces Jackie to follow him (this is ‘horror-movie logic at its best/worst as that doll makes me want to scream by looking at it so how a young(?) kid is not scared by it is beyond me). But anyway.. we then move over to sheriff Gil who happens to be out ‘because he couldn’t sleep’ and we get some of the back story. The sheriff and ‘Bob’ appearently are not exactly saints and have done something that means that when Gil hears that some lady (who while it isn’t clear from the dialog may be Bob’s wife) may have gone over to the house he decides to go but is interrupted by a ‘krrunch’…
In the meantime Jackie has been led to a a brick wall by the puppet and begins to tear down the wall - which has the puppet holding a scissors and a decayed skeleton behind it. Now at this point I have to confess the comic loses me a bit.
Jackie’s mother(?) seems to wake up and somehow ‘know’ that Jackie is with the puppet (which leads to the ‘money shot’ of the issue which thankfully takes place ‘off camera’) and a few pages later we get back to the sheriff who is now shooting a ‘woman’ who seems to have a wood body (the solicitation for the next issue identifies them as ‘treehuggers’). When I first read this I thought there were pages missing, now I’m inclined to think that the book is doing a ‘jump back and forth trick’ with the story and that the start of that scene with the sheriff for example begun last issue. I’m partly basing this on giving the author the benefit of the doubt and partly because the sheriff seems to know the creature and not be surprised by its presence. Also I tend to doubt that the artist would have missed the chance to establish the splash page of the creature jumping at the sheriff.. Meanwhile Jackie is now in the walled-up area (which has ‘rewalled’ itself in the intervening pages) and begins to transform into … something. Cue much death and mayhem as the members of Jackie’s ‘family’ are killed or injured. JD, one of the ‘family’ puts up a bit of a fight while the other members run. The rest of the issue covers this with some of the ‘family’ barricading themselves away while JD looks set to face some of these ‘treehuggers’…
All in all an entertaining comic, the oddness’/weakness in the plot I’m willing to assume are the end result of having come into the story in the second issue and the art is actually quite good. Kidwell possesses a clean and easily followable art style, though JD and the Sheriff do look a bit too similar and the last two pages look a bit different from the rest of the issue which is distracting. If your local comic store has the two issues published so far and you like your horror movies, take a look - you shouldn’t be disappointed.
you’d have to wonder at times…
Today I found myself having a conversation/argument about how Jesus Christ, Jack the Ripper and Santa Claus are three fictional characters based on history..