Script: Simon Furman Art: Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson
By implication following-on from The Enemy Within!, Raiders Of The Last Ark introduces us to two brand new characters, both of whom are then quickly written-out again to avoid any continuity issues with the concurrent US strips.
The first is "AUNTIE" – alias the Ark's computer system - who had already been mentioned back in issue #2, (reprinting the US #1) albeit with a slightly different spelling.
In this new story, AUNTIE's character gets, er... fleshed-out, with a face, a voice, and a whole deranged personality to go with them.
No wonder Megatron looks so unhappy. He's clearly furious at being remarketed as a toy for girls, judging by that heart the UK artist has drawn on his chest.
The second new character is AUNTIE's protector-bot. Watch carefully now – see if you can spot his name.
That's one fearsome-looking droid. He's enormous! Just how on Earth can Windcharger and Ravage possibly escape from this end-of-issue cliffhanger?
Oh, right, those are the only two panels he's in.
Well, they still have to cleverly outwit the all-powerful AUNTIE too.
Oh, right, she gets defeated in exactly the same way.
Well, you can hardly blame them for hurrying this plot along. This story was published at a point in time when Marvel UK were squeezing so many other strips into Transformers comic that the lead strip was becoming ever-shorter. That last episode was a mere five pages long – less than half the lead strip's length back in issue #1.
But then, what else can you expect from a 32-page comic packing-in a whopping six strips, plus adverts and features? The Planet Terry 'back-up strip' got nine pages! Maybe it was a costcutting measure due to the US material drying-up.
Although the comic itself was rearranging its parts and transforming into something new, I can't help thinking that what it really wanted to do was to change back.
The Transformers (G1, UK) #1-8: The Transformers / Power Play! / Prisoner Of War! / The Last Stand here. The Transformers: Man Of Iron (G1, UK) here. The Transformers (G1, UK) #13-17: The Enemy Within here.
Script: Simon Furman Art: John Ridgway, Mike Collins
Comic writer Simon Furman has done pretty well out of Transformers.
Contracted by Marvel UK to write filler-stories to pad-out the short-supply of US strips, Furman became so successful that he eventually landed the gig writing all the original US stories too. Ultimately (I gather) readers in the UK wound-up reading a US reprint by Furman, followed by an original UK story by Furman (which the Americans didn't get), followed by another US reprint by Furman.
Of course, like all good writers he began to stretch himself. He'd put stuff into the American stories specifically because he knew what was coming-up in the UK ones. While Marvel UK had a reputation for presenting incomplete runs, Simon Furman was making the polar opposite true. Truly, Transformers became a series that was much better collected in the overseas reprint. (so long as they were being published in the correct order) How many other titles can you say that about?
Yet, Furman's very first Transformers strip hits the ground by screwing-up continuity right from the second page.
According to the editorial pages, this story is supposed to be set at some point during the first eight issues. However, in just one panel at the start of the story, Megatron - the leader of the Evil Decepticons in those early issues - flatly challenges any such notion:
And there it is. According to Megatron above, the Transformers have already had their battle with Spider-Man (in issue #6), so that narrows the point at which this new story can take place to just sometime during issues #7 and #8. The final battle at the Ark takes place throughout #8, so that just leaves sometime during #7.
On the sixth page of #7, Ratchet departs from the Ark to take Buster and Sparkplug to the hospital, so for him to still be around to appear in this new story, these events must take place within pages 1-5.
However, as those pages feature Buster and Sparkplug continuously present at the Ark, while they are paradoxically absent throughout this story, then... then there's no point in the narrative at which this can take place. Even Skywarp, who was damaged in #6 and remained so throughout #7 and #8, is present in this one.
Best guess? The editorial was wrong. This is a story from their future. And I'm not going to read any of the later ones, so that settles it.
However there is another way of reconciling all this, and for this alternative we only need to turn over a single page from the Spider-Man reference to read this...
Yep, maybe the rest of this five-issue story is just Brawn's dream!
How else can we explain the sudden appearance in #15, for two lines only, of brand new Autobot character Ralph, sorry, I mean Red Alert?
And that's it, now he's gone, not to be seen again until #29. He's like Private Sponge on Dad's Army.
Who did you think you were kidding Mr Megatron?
;)
The Transformers (G1, UK) #1-8: The Transformers / Power Play! / Prisoner Of War! / The Last Stand here. The Transformers: Man Of Iron (G1, UK) here. The Transformers (G1, UK) #18-21: Raiders Of The Last Ark here.
Just as Doctor Who routinely recycles the same structure each season, I have been a tad disappointed to perceive season two of The Sarah Jane Adventures also recycling the same structure, together with the one from their own first season.
Therefore, before viewing the final story, I had little doubt that it would feature the return of the main villain from story one (Kaagh), together with the main villains from season one. (either the Slitheen or Miss Wormwood) If I'd been particularly observant, then I'd have also foreseen the second faction's unexpected return in the 'cliffhanger' at the end of the first episode.
Just for once, I shall skip dwelling upon the presence of a zombie (or character-who-is-not-under-the-control-of-who-they-appear-to-be) in all six stories, because, y'know, to mention it yet again might likewise sound a bit repetitive.
Following a formula doesn't generally leave much room for surprises...
Partly as a result of these things, I have found season two of The Sarah Jane Adventures to have fallen short of the higher-standard set by its preceding series, but not by that much.
After a strong start with The Last Sontaran and The Day Of The Clown, the remainder of the series never quite got it all together again. Three of the other stories feature a terrific part one, followed by a much thinner part two, while The Mark Of The Berserker was a dud throughout.
That's a total of seven good episodes, and five duds. Overall, a good average.
Despite the show's title, in the first season the lead character was arguably Maria, so I was pleased to see that her writing-out at the start of this one was handled so well. It's not simply a case of new girl Rani being another good brainy character who attends Maria's old school and lives in Maria's old house. It's also the way in which Maria left.
She made one exit story, and was then acknowledged throughout the rest of the series in simple cameos and offhand lines of dialogue. The characters remember her just as we do – great. This is much better than the way TV shows so often sweep the departing character under the carpet, hoping that we won't miss them. The characters here miss Maria along with us. There's even been an allusion to her returning for at least one appearance in season three. I look forward to that!
With it, I do hope that SJA manages to regain the ground that it's lost this year. There is some absolutely terrific writing on the show (see those five out of six part ones that I mentioned above!), but this has been sadly cancelled-out by the first-draft part twos and Mark Of The Berserker.
All right, let's get the zombie-count of the way first.
If you've read my other reviews this season, then you might just recall that every single one of those stories has featured at least one zombie. To be clear, I consider a zombie to be a character who is not under the control of who they appear to be. (maybe there is a better word for this)
So, with five stories in a row this season all fulfilling this criteria, would story six make it a full-house?
Right from the word go, here's Rani's entranced mum:
However although Gita is once more standing there like a zombie, fulfilling many other definitions of the word, she don't fulfil mine.
Gita isn't actually doing anything, so isn't, by the strongest definition, actually being controlled. She's really just asleep. So I don't, hand on heart, count her as being a zombie.
Whew!
Of course, then we meet these 'people':
(There are two others, but we don't see them transform)
So, yes, by my definitions, they actually did it. They actually made every single story this series, bar none, include a zombie, or at least a character-who-is-not-under-the-control-of-who-they-appear-to-be.
Letting go of that, ('cos I know I need to) what continues to compensate for The Sarah Jane Adventures' shortcomings for me, is the ease with which it embraces Doctor Who's wealth of mythology.
Scarcely a story goes by without a line of dialogue or a prop concealed somewhere that unobtrusively benefits from this. There's no patronising fear here that today's kids will be too thick to understand that fifty-something Sarah has a past.
This story features the most unashamed riff yet, with the reappearance of Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (Retired).
Beginning in The Web Of Fear in 1968, he was in the original Doctor Who series on and off for over twenty years, not to mention a heap of subsequent spin-offs. Here he gets called-in by Sarah to help her and Rani break-into UNIT's 'Black Archive' to get hold of an ancient scroll.
The very idea of two actors who used to appear together in the mid 1970s still continuing that act over 30 years later, in a show aimed at children who are far too young to remember the original, is exactly the sort of thing that usually gets stopped these days.
Then, and now:
I can't see the problem myself, and neither apparently can this team. Any kid with no prior knowledge of Who would surely have understood that Sarah had met this guy before, and just got on with watching the rest of the story as normal. A few of them might even have looked-up the old episodes afterwards.
His contribution over, the Brig then takes a backseat for the rest of the tale, which is probably lucky for him as, in a surprising break from the norm, this is not an end-of-season spectacular. It's much more low-key, focusing instead on Luke's having to choose whether to pledge his loyalties to Sarah (who repeatedly saves Earth) or the evil Miss Wormwood. (who... feels differently about it)
It's obviously impossible to accept that Luke has any struggle whatsoever with this choice, but it must be noted that in this script, he's just one of several members of the regular cast who suddenly lose much of that depth that they've been busily building-up for the past two years.
Aside from Luke's hard-to-understand confusion, the idea that Miss Wormwood might have some kind intentions is, well, a bit of a surprise, as is Clyde's disappointing regression back to his shallow identity from when he first joined.
Clyde: "So is this it - the day Clyde Langer finally hooks-up with UNIT? Locked and loaded – ready to fight the scum of the universe!"
(HE MIMES COCKING A SHOTGUN)
Sarah: "Haven't I taught you there are better ways of dealing with aliens than guns?"
While its plot just about holds, I'm afraid I found the overall script to be one of the weakest of both series, only beaten-into second-last place by the still-awful Revenge Of The Slitheen.
Still, some nice lines, ("Luke, I am your mother!") and another opening episode that was quite fun.
Fun action flick which misses its chance to double as a clever spy story.
There are a few too many moments when someone pulls-off a face-mask to reveal that they are in fact someone else. In the final scene therefore, I guess we could really be watching anyone.
It also suffers from the time-honoured appearance of a device that should really have been used already, but so what.
It delivers fun, action and excitement, so if that's enough for you, then great.
Review of preceding movie here. Review of following movie here.
Well-written and thoroughly absorbing sci-fi thriller, about a man caught-up in espionage between two rival computer-firms in the near-future.
Jeremy Northam plays everyman Morgan Sullivan, who passively finds a way to take breaks from his oppressive marriage by secretly becoming a spy for Digicorp. It's the perfect opportunity for him to live a double-life and play-around with dreaming-up a new identity for himself.
His job is easy – get flown around America to secretly audio-record events at meetings that he's perfectly entitled to be present at. You or I could do that, making Morgan easy to identify with. The trickiest part is explaining it all away to his wife.
Then he discovers that the audio-recorder / microtransmitter that he's been issued with has, all along, been a dud.
So... Digicorp must be flying him to all these meetings for another, private, reason then. But what?
When he discovers what is actually taking place, but still not why, he has to muster all that passivity he's so good at just to remain unnoticed and stay alive.
Then the only way out becomes to instead passively trust Digicorp's competitors. And so it goes on, as poor Morgan realises that there is just no escape from the enormous mindgames of the ever-multiplying factions around him, all of whom are so keen for him to continue playing-along with their equally-powerful competitors. He can't trust anyone, but he has to remain loyal to one of them.
There's so much twisting, turning, and rewriting of everything that's happened so far in this, that what impressed me more than anything else about this film was that I actually kept track of it all! That's quite a big complement I'm paying there to the writer – Brian King - and the director – Vincenzo Natali.
Natali's more famous work is Cube, which didn't quite all follow-through for me. As a result, this is automatically better.
There are probably holes in the plot that I haven't noticed, but until I do, this gets a 9.5.
Broadcast on 7:15pm on 1st January 1983 on Channel 4, this is the Barron Knights performing a mixture of live numbers and specially-shot videos to many of their well-known, and lesser-known, comedy-songs.
"Weird Al" Yankovic may have since cornered the market in famous song-parodies with new lyrics about food, but the Barron Knights were arguably there first, transforming Queen's famous Bohemian Rhapsody into a number all about overeating.
"I see you scoffing cream cakes and jam. In your mush! In your mush! Oh, where did that meringue go?"
Although many of the actual jokes are quite tame, the band's good humour and friendliness elevates almost every number to one that you can't help at least smiling at. For example, I didn't find 'Evolution' particularly gag-packed, but the fact that it's performed by a David Bellamy character, together with such a jazzy underscore, makes the whole thing feel like a sequence from The Goodies.
Some other tracks function perfectly well as serious songs in their own right, were it not for just the occasional bit of silliness creeping-in to scupper everything, often purely in the realisation.
One such song features a man singing of his heartfelt love down a telephone-line, only to keep-on getting cut-off every time his money runs out. It's tracks like this and 'Water' that demonstrate just how straight they'll play it for the sake of a laugh. At one point, there actually is a completely serious song, a revelation that somewhat confuses the context of subsequent numbers.
Having got first together in 1959 under the name "The Knights Of The Round Table", they changed their name to "The Barron Knights" the following year, and are still booked-out with live concerts of their catchy songs well into 2010.
With Peter Langford the only remaining member of the original line-up, at some point, it would be nice if he actually did get knighted.
It may have been 13 years since I saw the trailer to this, but one line of dialogue has resolutely remained in my head, in some form, the whole time...
"This whole operation was a decoy!"
Hardly a smart plot-development to give-away in a trailer.
But, y'know, with a plot this complex, maybe making it that obvious actually helped.
I've said it so many times on here, but I'm still no good at following murder-mysteries, a fact which, strangely, may be one reason why I enjoyed this.
For without the necessary brain-power to take the plot apart and try to understand it, I was able to simply assume that everything worked, and believe that this story was indeed as intricate and cerebral as it appeared.
I guess it helped that there are some terrific action sequences in here. The whole silent progression of events when Hunt breaks-into the CIA had my full attention, as did the final mad helicopter / train chase through a tunnel. If my assumption about the plot was correct, then this film had cleverness and brainlessness in equal huge amounts.
There's a little bit of emotional depth that threatens to get in the way, but fortunately not much. Mission: Impossible is hardly a touchy-feely franchise. These guys just get on with their jobs as logically as they have to.
In tone, I found this surprisingly true to the original TV series too, especially the opening case (in which they unexpectedly turn-out to have been set-up). Even the dreadfully-conceived face-masks are retained for this.
However the inclusion of the TV show's longest-running lead character - Jim Phelps - is also the film's biggest clanger.
The original actor – Peter Graves – quite understandably refused to appear upon learning that after six TV series, he was to now turn evil and get killed-off. Incredibly, the film's producers somehow thought that Mission: Impossible's audience would disagree with him, and even went to the extent of casting a brand new actor in the same role.
Really – if they can change the morality of a lead character for whom we've rooted for so long, then we can hardly root for Tom Cruise's character either. He could likewise suddenly turn-out to be evil at any moment. Duh.
Even renaming the new Phelps character "Dan Briggs" (his predecessor from the very first season) would have been a more respectful solution.
Anyhew, the accidental benefit of this central howler is that it's very much up to the viewer whether this film counts as 'real' Misson: Impossible or not. If you do like it, then this is 'the' Jim Phelps, only played by a different actor, continuing the same role. If you don't like it, then the new actor clearly proves that this is a reboot, and can be dismissed as outside the main canon.
Me? Well I obviously didn't like Phelps' treatment, (as if you hadn't worked that out above) but I did like the rest of the movie. So, I'd really like to suppose that 'Jim Phelps' is simply the position's codename, which maybe several different agents have operated under...
(brief review of Mission: Impossible IIhere) (brief review of Mission: Impossible IIIhere)
It’s official - Red Dwarf is the Lazarus of TV science-fiction.
No matter how long it's gone off the air for, it's always managed to claw its way back, and this time, after waiting an incredible ten years for it, thank God it finally has.
Not that this 'eleventh series' was especially good. It's just that Red Dwarf has reinvented itself so much over the last 20 years, and inevitably made so many mistakes with it, that my expectations of this series were apprehensively low.
Easy to satisfy then! :)
Sure enough, they've ignored the cliffhanger at the end of the last series, wordlessly swapped new Rimmer for the old one again, and once more jetisoned Kochanski and Holly. They've also gone back to the cold filmic look, and even rashly done away with the laugh-track. Add to that the vague title (they're always getting back to Earth), the slow pacing, (audience-laughter would have tightened that up) and the number of holes in the story, and we have a series that I've thoroughly enjoyed simply because it is, inarguably, Red Dwarf.
After all, with this show, getting the obvious things wrong is part of the norm. (still wish they'd given it a laugh-track though, really, it just doesn't feel funny without it...)
For all that, most of my internal plot-concerns were resolved by the events of part three, which is classic stuff, and enthralling as a result. Even if the whole thing is just a long remake of Back To Reality.
The scene in part two when Rimmer zooms-into three reflections in a photograph in order to read what's written on a piece of paper facing away from the camera is sheer genius.
I would still like to know how the Cat hid a baby despair-squid on Starbug for the whole of seasons 6 and 7 though. :)
And so, once more, we dig our heels in and wait for news of when the BBC might yet deign to make a few more episodes of this series that so many of its viewers actually want to watch, even despite its sprawling quality and haphazard style.
Maybe they never will. The BBC seem far more interested in creating new series that have no guaranteed audience. Still, at least this was a much better way to go out than the end of season eight.
An opinion that, apparently, the programme-makers share.
It took a bit of doing, (well, 999 bits actually) but this morning I published my 1,000th blog post.
As I've taken 15 posts down over the years for the odd random reason, today's clips-show is a complete index of the remaining 984 entries, broken-up into the sections that they seem to have naturally fallen-into.
Some fell-into more than one category, while anything that seemed miscellaneous I just lumped in with 'autobiographical', which they all are, really.
Without a doubt, the posts that I have enjoyed writing the most are the autobiographical ones. For better or worse, my life is a little less-eventful these days, so those pieces have accordingly dried-up lately. I find this a shame, because without them I just wouldn't bother.
So - are 1,000 blog-posts something to be proud of or not? Should I punch the air at such an achievement, or curl-up and hide my shame at having wasted so much of my life on such introspection - worse, introspection on the flipping internet?
I just don't know, but I'm glad to have spent that time actively writing 1,000 articles, rather than more passively, say, watching 1,000 movies or TV programmes. (today's list proves I've only watched 400) ;)
(there are other websites out there that one can spend this amount of time on, with much less to show for it afterwards)
In fact, this index page has been a long time in coming. I've been aware for a while that the only search-devices on here have been the text search-box at the top, and the monthly archives in the side-bar. Not much good for browsing. The milestone of the thousandth post has simply given me the motivation to finally put it together.
For anyone who's interested, I compiled the list by copying and pasting all the hyperlinked titles into an OpenDocument spreadsheet, which allowed me to save them all as html code. Then I simply rearranged them all into order.
Nearly all the 50-odd hits that this blog currently gets each day are for posts from the past, so maybe, just maybe, this will enable casual surfers, be they Bible-Readers or Doctor Who fans, to see what else on here might be of some vague interest.
But still – a thousand? Maybe the time taken to write all that is hard to justify.
The only explanation that I can offer is that I write because, as a writer, I have to.
Is that really such a bad reason?
Fig. 1: In Howick in March 2006, looking forward to celebrating my 1,000th post in three-and-a-bit years' time.
I've written before about church services that I've been to in the UK recently which, for some hard-to-define reason, have slightly irritated me.
The same church runs a couple of services during the week aimed at retired people, or as they're called, "seniors". I've been to a few of these, and actually quite like them. There was one recently that featured a guest-speaker talking about how his organisation goes out to equip Anglican ministers in Africa. This week it was a video about hearing dogs for the deaf, complete with guest dog. Afterwards I usually chat to people, and get to help clear-up, which is what I tend to feel most at home doing.
Last Thursday I missed their healing service due to meeting David for a coffee at Starbucks. Afterwards I was poking around W H Smith, when I spotted one of the ladies from the group, who uses crutches. We had a brief chat, and she asked why I'd missed that morning!
Then on Saturday, on my way to the BFCC, I found a guy holding-onto the side of Richmond Bridge for support. He was drunk, and I realised I'd also seen him singing around the riverside a month or so back. I chatted to him, and got him onto a bus home.
Tonight I went to a PACT meeting at the church. ('Prayer and Action Changes Things') I was deliberately half an hour late as usual, because I know how church-groups usually spend that first half-hour.
We watched a video about water and sanitation in the third world, prayed, signed postcards and wrote campaign letters. (I'm going to fax mine)
Throughout the meeting, there was a homeless guy asleep in a chair next to me. Locking-up, we had to ask him to leave. It was even harder than that – his ankle and shin were wrapped-up in bandages. Bandages that had brown stains, and not because he'd spilt any of the coffee on offer down them.
Having listened to him for a bit, including his understandable concerns about amputation, I said "I'm not a doctor, but even I can see that that needs redressing." He agreed to let us phone for an ambulance, and I realised I was a bit useless without a mobile.
The ambulances, as it turned-out, were backed-up, so there would be a long wait of an unknown duration.
I was impressed with the way a girl there sat listening to him with such an overwhelming amount of sympathy. I was impressed because of my disconnection from any feelings for his plight. When she went outside to look for the ambulance, I took her seat again and got chatting with him about movies like Get Carter.
It was getting closer to midnight. I seemed to be the only one left without work in the morning, so in the end I took him on two buses across town to get to the A&E department of West Mid hospital.
Despite the full waiting-room, a nurse called him in instantly, however this initial examination was only a precursor to an estimated four-hour wait to be seen by a doctor. Well, I wasn't hanging around for that.
I walked back home, getting-in at about 1am.
Once more assisting, or maybe just talking to, individuals on the street holds the comfort of familiarity for me, but in all honesty, it's not something that I have a burning passion for. I see it as being a bit like doing the washing-up – it has to be done, so you do it on autopilot.
Basically, I have no love.
So according to that famous piece in 1 Corinthians, all my efforts are useless, right?
But then on the other hand, I like to think that my lack of any actual feelings for the guy also enabled me to be somewhat authentic with him. That girl who had been giving him so much sympathy, well I'll take that at face value and assume that she was being authentic too, but in a different way that I can't.
I feel the same way about the seniors' services that I've attended. I do like helping-out, but I've no real underlying passion. Or if I have, I can't feel it.
As the title suggests, this Saturday afternoon I went along to the 57th British Film Collectors' Convention at Ealing Town Hall.
Okay, so that sentence was a bit of a mouthful. It's a six-monthly convention for people who collect old movies on actual movie-film.
I'm actually not much into that, but I do have an active interest in shooting new productions on those gauges, so after I'd paid my usual half-price for my usual late arrival, I took-in my usual brief circuit of the second-hand equipment tables.
Not finding anything I was interested in, I quickly made my way downstairs to the real reason for my presence there, and snuck-into the back of the darkened cinema. I may not be much of a film-collector, but I do quite like watching them, and here was where they spent the whole day projecting oddities from yesteryear – often stuff that you just can't see anywhere else.
As I crept-in, they were approaching the end of a reel of material in 3-D, which I gather had earlier included footage they'd shot at the previous convention.
So, donning the free-to-borrow red-and-blue glasses, I found myself enjoying the end of the Chip'n'Dale cartoon Working For Peanuts.
This short was made over fifty years ago in 1953, and its inherent 3-D-ishness has rendered it fairly unwatchable ever since.
As I now took-in the contrasty colours of the 1953 version, I was in no doubt that the 2007 updated 3-D system had wiped the floor with the old one. How terrific that the advances in technology had not destroyed demand for these old productions, but rather blessed them with a new lease of life.
In the break before the return to two-dimensional reels, I nipped back upstairs to get a doughnut and a tea, before returning for the next vintage picture.
This was the final episode (the first had been shown in the morning) of a Saturday-morning adventure serial from 1945 entitled The Purple Monster Strikes. Yep, despite the title, this print at any rate was in black-and-white. The echoey acoustics of the room didn't do the dialogue any favours either, but the pictures were entertaining enough on their own. (a complement someone once made of some of my own films!) At the end, the hero actually used ciné-film to defeat the villain!
Next up was a Three Stooges short from 1933 entitled Nertsery Rhymes. Plenty to note here – it's only the second film they made, still has Ted Healy in it (the guy who they were originally stooges to) and, despite being from 1933, is in colour!
Their obvious familiarity with their roles, together with the film's palette, initally led me to suppose that this was a later outing, but of course they'd already been playing these roles for years in vaudeville.
Another curiosity was that their banter looked like just umbrella-scenes written to fit around some song and dances that they don't even appear in. Checking Wikipedia afterwards confirmed this - Nertsery Rhymes was MGM's way of using-up footage from their unfinished musical The March Of Time.
After that was a European Technicolor 'puppetoon' short from the 1930s by George Pal. This featured stop-motion figures portraying an opera, which itself told the story of a singing princess, whose performances ultimately get broadcast on radio and TV. Or, more accurately, on Philips radios and TVs – yes, the whole thing turned-out to be an old ten-minute publicity-film!
Despite that, it's a breathtaking little movie in its own right. It's all gorgeously shot, with no actual dialogue, and I was astounded to learn afterwards that, technically, it wasn't actually animated, in the usual sense of the word.
Pal used "replacement" animation, which rather than requiring him to subtly bend each model between frames, instead meant he had to preproduce thousands of almost identical models of each character, each one forged in a slightly different pose. Then, between each frame, Pal would just replace the model with the next, slightly different, one. To see camera-angles swooping past huge crowds of such beautifully-designed characters is mind-boggling, and thoroughly enchanting too.
Then there were two Tom & Jerry shorts - Little Runaway and The Cat And The Mermouse. The former of these included a shot of Tom having a birdbath bowl land upside-down on his head, making him look like a Chinaman in a coolie hat. Again, thanks to the all-knowing Wikipedia I discovered afterwards that this shot has recently been cut from airings on the Cartoon Network.
Finally there was a 35mm scope reel of Spider-Man 2. This is still an absolutely brilliant movie. I completely forgot where I was.
Heading home afterwards, I'd had a great couple of hours.
There is talk of not running the event again due to lack of numbers.
Tonight I pinned the above two 70s-era badges to my West Ham t-shirt, (and otherwise dressed as I normally do anyway) as I was meeting-up with Perry, Bish and Amber to see "The Flaires" – a 1970s tribute band who were giving a performance in Molesey to raise money for Street Child Africa.
Lots of great numbers, loadsa fun, and outfits so loud that even the digital video-camera couldn't handle them. Just compare the threads in this photo with the same ones in the footage below it! :)
More smooth seventies sounds here. (I recommend 'Waterloo')
Low-budget remake of the famous 1958 film, this time directed by David Cronenberg, with a lot more eww factor.
And Cronenberg sure knows how to do this well. The first half-an-hour, despite knowing how inevitable the main protagonist's fate is, sticks strictly to grounding the story in the real world. Seth Brundle's research on matter-transportation, whilst a standard science-fiction concept, is presented within such mundane scenes of everyday life, that it's very easy to take that small step into believing in it.
Likewise, when his equally-ridiculous transformation into a human-fly hybrid begins, it's a gradual series of further small steps, each one taking us just a little further on from the last one we acquiesced to believe.
The only development that really jarred with me was the syntax with which Brundle interrogates his computer, which rather reminded me of Funky Squad.
The cast is tiny, the effects minimal, (there's only one monster who's not really in it that much) and it's played with depth all the way through. Even Jeff Goldblum's usual muddled delivery is just the sort of impurity that makes something on film appear imperfect enough to be real.
Hour-long doco chronicling the man in black's singing career.
As someone who's played a bit of Cash on the radio, I found this a welcome opportunity to gen-up on an icon whose name is maybe 50% of what I actually know about him.
What comes across loud and clear from the library of brief clips on show is, not unexpectedly, the man's voice. After what I said yesterday about Elvis not knowing how to sing a song badly, I find myself reaching for those exact same words again to describe Cash...
So, if there was a contest between Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, who would win? Well, I guess Presley would have the natural grace to bow to Cash's natural authority. In a real sense, they'd both be winners.
Scuppering such a ridiculous comparison, it's a real shame that Cash's voice cannot then be made-out on the infamous Million Dollar Quartet tapes, which feature Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Cash is present in the photos of this session, and in the personal accounts of those present that day, but paradoxically inaudible throughout the actual tape. I don't personally reckon he hung around after the photographer left. After all, how on Earth could a strong voice like his not come out on the recording?
Anyhow, the end of this documentary gets a little confused. After so many poor-quality archive clips (even the more modern footage looks rough), we're treated to the first verse of the video to his cover-version of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt, which itself features many snatches of old footage, some of them the same ones. As a result, this appeared to be a round-up of the documentary, rather than the personal epitaph that his daughter had been talking about Cash having apparently put-together himself. Perhaps they should have made that clearer before running it.
For all that, it's such a haunting video. The sight of such a seriously old guy still tremoring away is one which I wish we saw more often. If only there were a few more record producers like Rick Rubin, who not only recognised the ongoing appeal of lifers like Cash, but also 'got' his stuff, and nourished with such an empowering work ethic: encouraging Cash to not simply press his 'next' album, but his 'best' one.
I suspect the real reason for the shift in tone of his later work may simply have been one of greater freedom to follow his own convictions, rather than just those ones that agreed with his employers'.
Curiously disjointed TV special, which features a heap of specially-shot stand alone sequences, stuck together with sellotape.
There doesn't seem to be much order or context to proceedings. Some feature the Pelvis lip-syncing in some slightly trippy sketches, while others find him performing to an assembled audience.
Another scenario that we cut back to finds Elvis and his friends performing unplugged. Even here though, it's a shame to witness the trappings of TV creep-in to spoil what should be a great piece of raw footage, as the soundtrack repeatedly features an appreciative audience significantly bigger than the one we're looking at.
And you have to wonder if even the crowd we can see is genuine. In the mimed pieces he coincidentally has some 40 extras performing with him! Hmmm...
For all that, there doesn't seem to be a single dud number in the entire show. Elvis just doesn't know how to perform a song badly, and even his prerecorded medleys carry an uplifting zest that makes you wonder just how on Earth he did it.
The gospel medly particularly, is one that I've heard a coupla' times before on my Peace In The Valley 3CD set, when I was convinced that he was live. I mean it has all the energy of a live track!
That, and the chance to see him joking his way through familiar numbers in real-time, while kidding around with the audience, make this one surreally spectacular show, and a nugget of gold that TV archives were surely begun for.
Story: Bill Mantlo Art: Sal Buscema & Gerry Talaoc
Despite the cover, this is one of those rare Spidey / Hulk crossovers when the two of them never come to blows, or even meet.
In fact, out of the whole 40 pages, Spidey appears on only two!
As I turned these pages, I had to wonder just how any magazine could run for an (erm) incredible 300 monthly issues, with a lead character so at odds with reason or thought.
I mean, stories about the Incredible Hulk hardly have the same dynamic as, say, Superman, who's typically solving crimes and fighting the good fight. The Hulk is just a raging monster.
Ahhh, but not always...
Narration: "Perhaps you felt compassion for that accursed creature you knew as the Hulk. He was not a monster, you might once have said, but a poor, tormented titan within which was trapped a poor tormented man.
Understand then, even as these terrified policemen are now coming to understand, that the Hulk you knew is dead and gone...
... and only a bludgeoning, brainless behemoth remains to take his place."
In addressing the reader directly, the narration in this ish reads a bit like a throwback to the sixties, but it maintains the tone of hopelessness throughout this 'special'.
Despite Bruce Banner's recent successes at controlling his alter ego, specifically managing to retain his own persona whilst in the body of the Hulk, by the start of this issue that identity is no more. Bruce Banner's mind has been destroyed forever, so what we are left with for this issue, and by implication forever, is the mindless, rampaging Hulk. Nothing more.
For this battle, then, there's an interesting shift in the other Marvel heroes' perspective. Previously they've always felt some sort of responsibility to Dr Banner, aware that killing the Hulk will also kill an innocent person. Now however, the Hulk has no mind. He can never become anything other than the raging miserable monster which is tearing up New York, and killing people. Without any purpose for their compassion, there's an uncomfortable sense that killing him might actually be the right pre-emptive thing to do.
Mostly, then, this is 40 pages of "Hulk sma-a-ash!", as he indeed does to an apparently endless supply of heroes.
This special 300th issue features a gaggle of guest-heroes, all attempting to stop, and very possibly kill, the title-character, in the name of right. Who on earth are we supposed to side with? Anyone who says comicbooks are clean-cut hasn't acquired much of an overview of them.
Even Power Man and Iron Fist join in the fray, although this is a rare day on which Luke Cage fights without drawing any parallels between the frustration of his predicament and his favourite Christian holiday.
On another subject, look at how scared these people are on the opening page:
You have to wonder why, in the face of so much super-crime, for so many years, so many people still choose to live and bring their families up in such a dangerous part of the Marvel world. Manhattan gets evacuated in this, although as we can see above, many citizens need no encouragement.
Like the wording there too – VREEESHTROOM! "RRAARRGHH!" "MA-MAAAAA!"
I'm not sure who scripted this, as while there is a credit for Bill Mantlo's story, no-one seems explicitly credited for the text.
This is ironic, as the credit-box manages to sneak onto four separate pages.
What I mean is, you know how some comics will bury the credits in the details of the artwork? You know, the opening page will feature a close-up of a newspaper or something, with the strip's credits hiding-away in the other headlines? Well that's always bothered me. If those people's names are written on the front page of the Daily Bugle, then doesn't that mean that everyone in New York can read them too?
In this issue, most of the credits, along with the strip's title, are up on a gigantic metal sign that the Hulk is ripping-up on pages 2-3.
Prompting the question, can those extras running away actually read the words "Days Of Rage!" too? What does it mean to them? Why is the sign there? Is there a shop below it called "Days Of Rage!", which has been standing there for many months, maybe years, before this issue takes place? Or is it advertising this very comicbook?
Or, to their eyes, does the sign actually say "K'Mart" or something?
Finding out the answer is not that unlikely. Throughout this issue, the extras are helpfully verbose. Several scenes feature a crowd working together to drive the story, which is handy given how the lead character isn't too keen on explaining things.
Here's a section of page 3 above again, only enlarged so that you can see just what a friendly conversation it's possible for seven apparent strangers to have:
I really want there to be an eighth extra, who responds to extra seven's line "Buddy, the headlines were wrong!" with "The only headline I'm bothered about is that one up there with all those names on!"
But, as this issue makes clear, the Hulk doesn't like too many words. In another post-modern moment (to be clear - I jest), he apparently chooses to hurl half the sign up at the narrator when he gets a bit too chatty...
Yep, the word 'RAGE' is still there on the sign, but Jim Shooter and Carl Potts' credits were apparently only visible earlier to comicbook readers! (I should have paid more attention back on page 1)
You have to hand it to Marvel. They mark their 300th issue of this title, not with a happy celebratory tale, but by actually killing-off its main protagonist (Bruce Banner), making its title-hero the villain, and ultimately winding the whole story up by banishing the Hulk to another dimension for the rest of his existance.
I mean I know it was all probably reversed in a later issue, but the sheer finality of the Hulk's fate here really makes the whole thing feel like it's the last issue ever.
And if that's not a cliffhanger that will bring 'em back again next month, then I just don't know what is.
Who said regular audiences like happy endings?
"True, the Hulk as those heroes assembled for his passing knew him – and as you knew him, reader – is dead and gone.
But somewhere in the spaces between dimensions, if you cock an ear and listen carefully, you'll hear a howling so horrible as to chill your blood, a screaming fit to freeze your soul.
It is the cry of the Hulk you hear, a bestial cry, the cry of an animal abandoned and alone. It is the bay of a beast banished from the only reality he has ever known...
Film-making
Radio
Acting
Still photography
Teaching
I’ve travelled a bit
I like diversity
I’m a good listener
I can spell millennium
I buy fair trade coffee and free range eggs
I exercise
I’m positive-minded
Honesty and doing the right thing are more important to me than anything else, although I consistently fail at them
Some things I'm still working on:
All of the above
I have difficulty remembering names and faces
I have little sense of geographical direction
Time-management (I need deadlines)
I rarely get to bed early
I’m not very good at making things happen
I sometimes get annoyed at computers
I don’t like confronting people
I find it hard to tell people ‘no’
Sometimes people disbelieve me
I was unpopular at all my schools, and had to move because I wouldn't hit anyone back
I find prayer difficult
I sometimes mistrust God
I've never seen Lord Of The Rings or The Empire Strikes Back, so please don't tell me what happens. :)
Neither here nor there:
I like plain white or loud colours
I’m always busy
I'm quiet in a crowd
I don’t like using the phone
I've never been on a date
Yes, that has always hurt
This is what I look like when I'm very tired:
:)
Archives:
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Current favourite Bible verses:
I may promise life to a good man, but if he starts thinking that his past goodness is enough and begins to sin, I will not remember any of the good he did. He will die because of his sins.
Ezekiel 33:13
I may warn an evil man that he is going to die, but if he stops sinning and does what is right and good - for example, if he returns the security he took for a loan or gives back what he stole - if he stops sinning and follows the laws that give life, he will not die, but live.
Ezekiel 33:14-15
If he changes the way he thinks and acts, forgive him.
Luke 17:3b
The word of truth lasts forever,
but lies last only a moment.
Proverbs 12:19
Be honest and you show that you have reverence for the LORD;
be dishonest and you show that you do not.
Proverbs 14:2
You should each judge your own conduct. If it is good, then you can be proud of what you yourself have done, without having to compare it with what someone else has done.
Galatians 6:4
In the event that you consider there to be a work of yours quoted on here which you'd rather wasn't, please do just let me know - thanks. In over nine years of blogging, just one person has done this, and I complied immediately. Images have been used according to 'fair use' laws.
:)
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