John Mortell’s blog

Just finished listening to this 3 disk set from Big Finish. I picked up their excellent (though somewhat unsuccessful I’d guess) series of 2000ad audio adaptions a year or two ago and have been quite interested in picking up this since. Seeing as I’m going to lack money for the rest of the year I decided I’d pick up a few bits and pieces like this before it became unavailable (as has happened to the Judge Dredd ones now according to their website).

Was it worth it? Yes with a ‘but’. The cd is nicely packaged and is well-produced with the sound effects being used sparingly. The casting is perfectly fine with a few minor exceptions – the main one actually being the placing of David Tennant (of Doctor Who fame) as Luther. Its not that there is anything wrong with his performance – its just that when you are playing a world-hopping superbeing with psychic powers and your best known for, well, playing a world-hopping superbeing with psychic powers the overlap (in my mind at least) between the two robbed the drama of its impact. I kept expecting to hear ‘exterminate!’ at any minute and the similarity between the two charachters meant that I was never able to get over that. Other than that my complaints were minor – mainly being that I didn’t ‘hear’ some charachters that way in my head. The inevitable problem with any transfer from page to audio/screen I guess.

As an adaption it works surpisingly well keeping the vast bulk of the comics plot (in fact the only thing that I remember being lost is the plot involving the American journalist which is hardly a major point) and oddly enough, though in line with my other complaints – I actually felt the kept too much of the original story. By this, I’m refering to the fact that in some cases they incorporated the dialogue as it was from the book. The same happens with the transferring of most of the storys scenes to the audio version. The end result of this I found was a sense of ‘seen this before’ which in some ways I had. If you compare the ‘Luther Arkwright’ adaptation to say, any of the ‘Judge Dredd’ ones – where they created whole new plots with familiar charachters, the feeling is that they stuck too closely to the original material. Granted, this is a bit of ‘armchair directing’ on my part – unlike Judge Dredd where there is a vast number of plot types to choose from (as an example one features Dredd on trial, other is a comedy ‘this is your life’ style episode) Luther Arkwright has only had two major appearences in his own series. I suppose in the end what I can say about the disks is that they work more like a ‘transcription’ from one medium to another rather than an adaptation – somewhat like the Johnny Depp version of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ – so much like the original that you wonder why you bothered watching (or in this case listening to) it.

Still though, if your a Luther Arkwright fan you will probably find a fair bit to enjoy in this and if your looking for something a bit different to listen to the comics on audio that Big Finish offer are not a bad place to start.

While I may not be wearing a pirate hat (the FSM forgives all) Here is a link explaining his Spaghetti Goodness and a video that explains everything very well

‘I also bought and broke down the — and it remains hard to believe I’m typing these words — erotic underground toilet that later sprang up to the west of my land, where I found two peculiar Italians whispering to each other that they could “probe things here.”’

‘A crossdressing rocambolesque zeppelin-piloting master criminal from a 1915 silent film–how fun is that?’

Disenchantment and growing irritation with the U.S. South could lead northern American states to seek a union with Canadian provinces, writes Stéphane Kelly.

Interesting stuff, highly dubious but interesting….

Thanks to Warren Ellis and his website for showing me this.

Absolute genius, or possibly idiocy. I can happily say that if you are one of those people who watch this seriously you need to be neutred for the sake of general humanity and the genepool of the species….

An oddity I was just listening to, this was a Columbia (I assume the precursor to the film company) production with Orson Wells and a broadway group of Dracula. Found it on a cd from a friend. It’s a bit short at only an hour but well worth a listen. Definately something for those who feel that ‘modern’ productions of classics are somewhat lacking….

Well, I got my ‘four faces of violence’ essay done – now onto the other four….

Heard an interesting discription of the effect that Sinn Fein people have last night ”they’re like syphilis – at the start its just inconvienient and then it begins to rot your brain”

My computer automaticaly updated my internet explorer – so it’s now exactly like firefox (well, obviously not, but close enough for me). So now I’m on firefox instead as it’s just easier than this new windows crap…

In other news, I realised today that I’m well behind with my work for college so I’d better start. Bugger.

And finally, it’s the internal UCC Philosoph competition tonight so there shouldn’t be any calls of libel as there was last week:).

More later.

So, Cian’s already covered this in a fair amount of detail anyway but I figured that I’d throw in my two cents into the conversation even so…

The basic facts first; George Galloway proposed the house motion “That this house believies US foreign policy is the greatest crime since World War II”. In opposition was the former Sinn Fein/ The Worker’s Party member and these days film producer Gerry Gregg. Gregg said something to the effect that Galloway had ‘never met a dictator he didn’t take to or take from’ and Galloway freaked out. This led to him walking out and taking a lot of people with him (though some of those I suspect just decided to leave now that Galloway – the main attraction, was gone).

Now, my opinion on this. Personally, I feel Galloway overeacted and was not exactly not being personally abusive himself. As such the whole debate took on a rather childish quality in my opinion. While obviously one has to defend their reputation Galloway’s method’s struck me as rather overly-aggressive and childish.

Will I go see Galloway speak again? Probably. Have I as much potential respect for him as I had before? I doubt it, even though in terms of his opposition to large areas of US policy and Palestine we are on the same page mostly.