"...volatile, self-obsessed, and I don't play well with others..."

So, over the last couple of days I've been catching up on the couple of superhero movie films I missed at the cinema... first up I saw the Avengers film, which was mostly really rather good. It was very, very, much a comic on the screen, and captured the flavour of said comic very well indeed. Best thing about it was, by some mile, Robert Downey Jr, who dominated any scene he appeared in. (Which reminds me; must get around to watching Iron Man 2 one of these days...) The whole thing worked really well, both when there were the big action set pieces, and when we had the more character based moments. Also, it had one of the very best Stan Lee cameos... talking of cameos, I loved the Harry Dean Stanton one as well. Overall a big, fun, movie...

And then there was The Amazing Spiderman. I would say it was rather like (warning; lazy comedy slag alert!) The Frustratingly Average Spiderman. Thing is, there were all sorts of elements to it that were great; Andrew Garfield was just perfect. We got Gwen Stacey from the start (one of the most notable annoyances about the Raimi trilogy...), and she was perfect. And Denis Leary was great as her dad, and Rhys Ifans made a wonderful Curt Connors.... but trouble is it all too waaaaaaay too long to get anywhere. For one thing... and thing is the biggest annoyance... we had the blimmin Spidey origin story again. I mean, surely by now every bugger out there knows how he gets his powers by now, and the whole story of how he could have saved his Uncle's life if he'd stopped the robber... yeah, it did things a little differently, but all the main story beats were exactly as normal. Although, was exactly was all that guff with Peter's parents? There was a really good movie trying to get out there, but it was bogged down by loads of guff. The frustrating thing is that it could, and should, have been a truly wonderful film; instead it was somewhat average. 

I have higher hopes for the sequel in that at least now all the origin guff is out of the way (must write a blog post about how superhero films should lay off the origin stories; 9/10 of the time they are not needed), it'll give a bit more space to the baddie of the film. Just one thing, though; if this is to be a trilogy, hold off with the Green Goblin until film #3, and bear in mind Amazing Spiderman #121. (If you don't get what that means, don't look it up; if they use elements of that issue it'll have more impact if you've not read it). 

In anycase, The Dark Knight Rises (one of the few films I did manage to see at a cinema) was better than both of them, despite not even being the best in its trilogy (#2). 

"...a rare gem..."

Back in... ooh... 1991 I think it was I picked up a magazine, and flicked through it. It was a mix of articles, and comic strips. I thought it must have been new, as I'd not remembered seeing it before, but no, it was issue #12. This zine was called "Deadline", and over time its most famous creation, Tank Girl, exploded over in to the mainstream even spawning a movie... but it was never Tank Girl that impressed me most with Deadline. There were a couple of strips that I always liked more, one was Wired World(1). The other... that was Hugo Tate.

The Hugo Tate story in issue 12 was a slice of brilliance. It was a slice of a seemingly ordinary person's life, and of love, and memories, and lost love... and it blew me away. And then there was the style of the art... intricate, and detailed, and beautiful... but hang on; Hugo himself. His head was drawn in a style with not much more detail than an acid house smiley face. But somehow it worked. It drew me in, and meant that I became a regular reader of Deadline. And, as each issue came out, the first thing I'd do would be to check that Hugo was in it. 

Eventually, Deadline ended. There was a collection of the latter, set in America, Hugo Tate stories, but not of the earlier ones. And I never saw a copy in the shops. (This was 1993. Years later when I tried getting a copy on the internet, it was surprising elusive.) There was talk of these being collected, but it never appeared. So, now it's nigh on 20 years later, and I never thought I'd get a copy...

....so, today I was in Waterstones in The Oracle, and was looking at the graphic novels. I had a quick check out of the second volume of Phonogram, and put it back on the shelves; I mean, sooner or later the stuff they missed out from the individual issues is bound to be re-released, either on its own or a new version of the second volume. I can wait. So, I walked around the other side of the stand, and a book with a bright blue spine caught my eye. There were four words on the side. 

"Nick Abadzis" and "Hugo Tate".

I picked it up immediately, and began to flick through it. As I did it sunk in exactly what it was... a new collection of Hugo Tate; not only was the American stuff in it, the earlier stuff was in there too...  I looked at the price... £14.99. My usual reaction in such times kicked in... "I wonder how much cheaper this is on Amazon...?" (2) But, then I thought... "No, sod it; I don't care how much cheaper it is on Amazon, I want this right now..." So I bought it, and I did something I haven't done in such a very long time. I went straight home, there and then, and read the whole thing from cover to cover. 

And the memories came flooding back. With anything like this there's always a fear that the memory of something is stronger, and better, than the reality. I'd not read a Hugo Tate strip in something like a decade. But I didn't need to worry. I enjoyed it as much now as I did when I first read it. The #12 story, "Waiting in Vain", was just as good today as it was that day in 1991. Oh, I'd love to tell you all about this story... but you need to read it with as little foreknowledge as possible. It's a thing of beauty. Just this strip is worth the cover price alone...

Being able to read almost every (I'll return to this soon...) Hugo Tate strip, in order, in one volume just shows how much it developed; the way how Hugo develops, not only as a character, but in terms of the style in which he is drawn, is quite something when you see it as a single work, rather than a chunks over the course of a few years. As the strip progresses the level of detail in his face increases, going from the smiley face style of the early strips, to near fully detailed in the latter ones. 

I recall being disappointed with the latter episodes set in America back when I first read it; the "road movie" elements of it never gelled with me, and I missed the more ordinary settings of the  earlier, London based, episodes. However, I found I enjoyed it much more this time around. Yes, it's certainly true the London stories are, at least to my mind, the better material; but I think looking back there was an element of me disliking the American stuff because I was judging it on what I wanted it to be, rather than what it was. And that was something I did a bit back then; I had a similar reaction to the Twin Peaks movie.

I mentioned earlier that the book contains "almost every" Hugo Tate strip; there's a small number of short strips missing according to a footnote at the back. Apparently Nick A didn't have either the original art, or a copy of the relevant issues of Deadline in which they appeared. The note states that these were "...irrelevant to the main narrative and took place outside its continuity." It's a bit of a shame that a bit of effort wasn't expended to track these down; it wouldn't have been tricky to source copies of Deadline to scan them in... I mean, I've got every issue somewhere, and I really can't be the only one! But, really, this is a minor quibble. 

Also, at the back, there's an appendix with various bits of art; covers, a t-shirt design, and so on. There's also a handful of rough sketches, including a very rough drawing of how Hugo would have progressed had there been further strips. 

Frankly; if you have any interest in the medium  of comics, you need this book in your collection. If it's not, you have a large gaping hole that can only be filled by the purchase of this book. Just go and buy it. Now.

Notes:

1 - If someone can please publish a book with the words "Phillip Bond" and "Wired World" on its spine, I'd be most grateful... I recall the final Wired World being almost as good as the Hugo strip in #12.
2 - Turns out I'd only have saved £2.25 buying from Amazon. 

"...you are a pirate..."

I've been thinking about this the last couple of days since the closure of Megaupload, and the Wikipedia (et al) blackout protesting at the forthcoming Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Now, it's clearly obvious that those who create a work of art (of any type) should have the protection of that work to ensure that they receive the remuneration they deserve for it, and to ensure it is not used for purposes they deem inappropriate.

However, there are flaws at the heart of the any estimate of revenue lost to piracy. The figures quoted always seem to be based on the premise that every download of a copyrighted piece of work constitutes a lost sale. This is, of course, rubbish. To state that every person who downloads something without paying for it would have bought that work has they not downloaded it is clearly a massive overstatement. I do not deny that there will be lost sales there, but actually gauging the percentage of these downloads that would probably have cost a sale is quite probably impossible.

Anyhow. I'm starting to digress here from the main point I was really going to be making with this blog post, and that's to do with the question of the ethics of downloading from non-legitimate corners of the internet; when is it okay to do so, and when is it not okay to do so?

Now, I know there will certainly be some reading this who will say it's never ethically okay to download something from a non-legitimate site, and I respect that opinion. It is not an opinion I agree with, and here are some examples as to why not;

You will never be able to convince me that a person should not download a copy of an off-air recording of a TV show. If there's a TV show someone wants to see, and it's available as an off-air recording, then they're downloading it. This is no different to borrowing a VHS or DVDR recording from a friend. If it's the latest episodes of a US TV show not yet aired... well, again it's no different to a friend over there taping it and mailing it. It's all the same thing, just via a quicker, more efficient, method. In no way can the copyright holders be said to be losing out here. If something's broadcast on the television, it's going to be recorded, kept, and copied. It's inevitable.

You will note in the above I specifically refer to "off-air"; this is to differentiate between this and a copy of a commercially released DVD. The downloading of a commercially released DVD can never be justified; if you can't find an off-air of a show, and only a dodgy DVD copy you should go out and buy the DVD... No question. Ditto any material exclusive to the DVD release; you should buy the thing.

Mind you, sometimes the off-air version of a show is superior to the version released on DVD; music substitutions sometimes blight a release with inappropriate music used in place of the originally aired songs. (In extreme cases, it can lead to whole scenes - sometimes important ones - being excised from the DVD.) The wrong music may seem a minor, trivial, issue; but it can have a massive impact on the scene. A notable example being the replacement of the song Georgia On My Mind with some generic plinky-plonking in the episode of Quantum Leap called MIA on the US DVD release; it completely ruined the impact of the scene, which is one of the most tender, sad, moments in the show. Fortunately, the UK version had the correct song intact.

And music... Music is a veritable minefield, but there are certainly examples that can be cited. Most notable is when you're a dedicated fan of a particular band. You'll want everything they release, and you'll buy it all. But there will come a time when there will be things unreleased. Those obscure radio sessions. Bootlegs of gigs. Interviews. Live TV performances. Now, being the dedicated fan that you are, if such goodies were released you'd buy them in a shot. But they're not... so, really... realistically if you find a website with those rare, unreleased, not repeated for 20-odd years, Peel Sessions (for example) are you really going to say "ooh, no; mustn't download these, must respect copyright..." Nah... of course not. You'll be downloading them in a shot. As a dedicated fan you just must have copies.

I would also say it's possible to mount a defence for downloading an album to see if you like it. The outcome here is obvious; if you decide you like the album, you buy a copy. If you don't like it, you delete it. I would suggest this is defensible purely on the basis that this is not really any different from borrowing a copy from a friend. Of course, if you decide you like it and don't buy a proper copy, keeping the dodgy one, you're clearly in the wrong. Obviously, opinions will vary here...

The trouble is, copyright is so often seen as a black and white issue, with no shades of grey in the middle. This is unfortunate, as it's clearly not an issue that can be polarised like this. Yes, there will be those people who never pay for any of the media they consume, and this is clearly wrong. But I do put it to you that there are examples - some of which are outlined above - where although copyright is breached there is no financial loss to the copyright holder, and these should not be bracketed with those breaches of copyright where the intent is to deprive the copyright owner of the remuneration they are due.

One final thought; there are currently 106 episodes of Dr Who missing from the archive. There are vast numbers of episodes of other TV shows missing, too. Loads of early Peel Session. Virtually everything the Beatles ever did for Top of the Pops.... I could go on... Just think... if the means and methods we have today for "breaching copyright" were available back then, the gaps in these archives would have been so much smaller...

"...come on..."

Here's a question for you; is it possible to find an artist a reprehensible, loathsome, person yet still enjoy their art? It's a question that came to mind yesterday, when it was suddenly all over the internets that Gary Glitter had set up a Twitter account, and was talking of a book, new material, and gigs.

Now, no-one is suggesting that we should make light of what Glitter was convicted of doing. But does the fact that he has committed these acts change his songs at all? Should it stop us singing along to Rock and Roll part 2 (though, all the cool kids obviously sing the KLF's version of the words!) or The Leader of the Gang? Do Glitter's actions stop us enjoying his song?

Or is there a line? If a person does something very bad (as Glitter did) you can't enjoy their art, but if the thing they do is somewhat lower level is that okay? What if someone were a shoplifter? Would that be serious enough for a person to have their work consigned to the dumper?

It's a very thorny debate. If we do accept the premise that if a person commits a crime that this must mean their art is suddenly taboo, we then get in to the semantics of which offences are so bad to make this happen. If this is the standpoint you have, then where the line is drawn will end up coming down to a personal opinion as to what is beyond the pale. Most with this opinion would end up putting Glitter in to this category due to the serious nature of his offences. But, how many would place the shoplifter in that category? If you do... well, you'll have to avoid ever watching Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Star Trek (2009) as these contain a convicted shoplifter... so, where would you draw the line?

Then there is the issue of the rehabilitation of the artist; surely if a person commits a crime, have been punished, and puts that part of their life behind them they should be able to live as close to a normal life as possible? And again, as above, the question of where the line is drawn will come in to play. Whereas a rehabilitated shoplifter would be very likely to be readily forgiven, the comments on Twitter would suggest that the prevailing view on Glitter is that his offending was so beyond the pale that this could never happen for him. The opinion of Glitter as a person is overwhelming the opinion of his songs.

That Glitter's music isn't exactly the greatest in the world may very well play a part in this, as well as the size of his fanbase. By the time of his initial conviction, his career was already on the wane. He was a bygone relic from the 70s, someone who had a handful of hits and hadn't done anything of note for some time. It was easy for his music to be boycotted; I mean, can you recall the last time you heard his music on the radio? (As an aside; it'll be interesting to see if BBC4 edit his performances out of their repeats of 1977 Top of the Pops shows.)

Contrast this with the case of Michael Jackson, who was accused of some very serious offences, on a par with Glitter. At the time the allegations first came out, and when the trial was on, there wasn't anything like the vitriol towards him. There was some, don't get me wrong; but his fans fought back at them, defending them to the hilt. And his music continued to be played on the radio...

I have a feeling that an amount of distance can help as well; if it were to come out, after a person's death, that they had been responsible for some bad, bad, things this will certainly have a lesser impact. They'll no longer be around to either commit further offences, or to earn money for their art. Say, for example, it was found out that Shakespeare had murdered three people around the time he was writing his best plays would that make people stop enjoying his work? Would the Royal Shakespeare Company disband because they didn't want to associate with a murders work? No. Of course not. Nor should it. But... if it were someone contemporary... that would be rather a different matter.

It's a very thorny issue, and realistically it has to come down to personal tastes and opinions, and whether a person thinks that artist and art are capable of being seen as discrete entities.

[I apologise for the rambling nature of this post, but it's something I've been mulling over in my mind, and I don't think I've come to any sort of conclusion. I may return to this subject again in the future...]

"...you turn if you want to..."

I should start off this review of The Iron Lady by stating that I'm not exactly what you would call a fan of Margaret Thatcher; I was reasonably sure that, before I went to see it, I would come out of the cinema ranting about it. In the end, I came out thinking it was an uncomfortable film, that was deeply flawed...

The Iron Lady has one of those trailers that, essentially, cons you; it makes you think you'll get one sort of a movie, and ends up delivering a completely different one. Which, if the movie it delivered was a better one that the one you imagined would be a very good thing. However, this is not the case.

The trailers, and indeed all the clips I've seen of it, emphasize the years when Thatcher was at the very height of her powers. When she was in charge, and everyone was terrified of her. Even many within her own party. But those moments are really only half the movie, as the framework in which these extracts of her life are placed are being recalled as memories by the aged, dementia ridden, Thatcher of the present.

We start off with Thatcher, having somehow evaded her protection team (which all ex-Prime Ministers have), slipping to the shops to buy a paper and a pint of milk, expressing shock at how much it is; grocer's daughter see, and a contrast with a later scene in the film where she rants at members of her cabinet who are out of touch and quotes the price of a pack of half a dozen different types of butter. This is a Thatcher who is in the advancing stages of dementia, who forgets that her husband, Dennis, is dead and has imaginary conversations with him about all sorts of things, including the old days. This provides the framework for the film as she recalls how she started in politics, her rise to become first Leader of her party, then of the country.

Frustratingly, too many moments are briefly glossed over, and the impression is one of just glossing over the surface of each event; there's never any real insight in to how her mind worked. Every time you hope for a little depth, we're pulled back to the modern day, and the "framework". And this is really the biggest problem with the movie, in that it's really rather less a movie about Thatcher's life in politics than that of a person who can't let got of her dead husband; this is the emotional centre of the movie, and really, it doesn't work. There were too many moments during these sequences when I was squirming, and feeling really uncomfortable. This isn't to say such a story shouldn't be told, just that it should not have been used as the framing story for a movie about Thatcher.

I think a better framing device for the movie would have been to have used the events of November 1990, when she was ousted as a result of a leadership challenge. Have that playing out with her remembering her rise, and her glory days, as she comes to the decision that she can't contest the second round of the ballot. That would have made for a much more powerful film, in my opinion.

Some have cited historical inaccuracies in the film, but I'm not sure these really matter too much; the framework here makes it clear that the events were are seeing are as Thatcher remembers them. This is a different thing to how something might actually have been (I'm remembered here about the comment's Bill Pullman's character makes in Lost Highway about how he dislikes video cameras...). Memories are not perfect. Mind you, the "rose petal" sequence had me rolling my eyes...

The actual performances in the film are pretty good. Streep's Thatch is played really well, and you do feel a sense of sympathy for her in the framework scenes. Many of the historical figures barely get a shoo-in. Anthony Head and Richard E Grant do little more than cameos as Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine respectively; I would have loved to have seen many more scenes with both in. And the chap playing John Major doesn't even get any lines, or even a credit... (well; at least I thought it was John Major, could really have been a random grey cabinet minister in glasses, I guess...!)

I think this was one of those films that I'm glad I saw, but I don't think I actually got anything out of it. A biopic should give you an insight in to that person, what makes them tick, what motivates them; but here I don't think we got anything more than what we already know, from the public image, of Thatcher. I don't feel at all enlightened, nor do I get any sense of how she conducted herself as PM. It really was a misfire on pretty much all sides, bar the actual performances. I would probably have preferred an approach similar to that taken by The Queen; where rather than a whole life biopic, we see the events around a single, specific event, to really get under her skin to see how she worked.

Really, this was a wasted opportunity.

"...only in dreams..."

Over at one of the forums I post at, I was asked for advice re which David Lynch films a person who has never seen a David Lynch film (except Dune) should see should they venture to the BFI for the Lynch season at the BFI, which is showing almost everything he's done so far. This is a rejigged version;

I guess it depends on how many you have the time to see, but the following is how you should prioritise, if you can only make some;

1 - Blue Velvet. Best movie ever made, IMHO. However, be warned; it is not an easy watch. There are some scenes that really push you to the extreme. Dennis Hopper's character is genuinely scary. It's a movie that expects you to keep up with it. I found it hard to follow some aspects the first time I saw it (I think I was still shellshocked in places by how far it goes), but the actual plot is pretty straightforward.

2 - Eraserhead. Lynch's first, and most surreal. Seen it several times; I still do not have a clue what the heck it's about. It's more of an experience than a film, but it's an experience worth having. Jack Nance is quite, quite, brilliant. Nance, of course, pops up in most of Lynch's films. Also, you get to see three shorts, The Grandmother, The Amputee and The Alphabet...

3 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I disliked this when I first saw it, but then that was because it wasn't what *I wanted* the Twin Peaks movie to be (it'd take too long to explain). It'd be interesting to see the response of someone who's not seen the TV series, and how well it hangs as a movie if you don't know who all of the minor characters in the movie are... though, if you are planning to watch the TV show, and don't want to know the answer to the question "Who killed Laura Palmer?" it might be best to avoid.

4 - Lost Highway. I've still not got the hang of this one. Every time I think I've got a handle on it, a thought occurs that just makes me question everything. There's some great stuff here, and what Mr Eddy does to the tailgater should be required viewing for anyone that takes part in such behaviour. The comment made by [someone] about never getting more than halfway through it is very interesting... but I'll not comment further... *spoilers*

5 - Mulholland Drive. This one was a failed TV pilot that Lynch managed to get the funds to make in to a feature film (you can tell certain bits that were from the film version even if you've never seen the TV edit...!), most notably the scene that Rago would most want to see on the big screen... : ) It's another one that seems to be complex and tricky to understand, but I think it can (albeit briefly) be explained using three words... which I'll not mention here.

Then, after these you've got;

The Straight Story; which does exactly what it says on the tin. Even though the subject is nothing like a normal Lynch film, and there's no out and out weirdness in it, it has the usual Lynchian feel running right through it...

Wild at Heart; one of the most straightforward movies. Reminded me a little of True Romance. Probably the best performance you'll even see from Nic Cage. Better, even, than his performance as Cameron Poe in Con Air. It's that good.

The Elephant Man; you know, biopic of Mr Merrick. It's a pretty decent film. But, it's many years since I last saw it, so really can't comment further..

Dune; nothing to say here... : ) Worth noting that it's the only Lynch movie for which he didn't get final cut. It's also the only Lynch film I've not seen, despite having got a free DVD with the Grauniad some time back.

Which leaves...

Inland Empire. Oh. My. Word. When this was out in the cinema, it wasn't showing anywhere around here. So, me and a fried travelled in to London to see it (at the Odeon a few doors from Forbidden Planet). Even now, over 5 years later, he still talks of me dragging him along to see that terrible film...

I mean, I've left Lynch movies before thinking "what the heck was that about?", but it never mattered, as the actual experience of the film was an enjoyable one; that you leave the movie not understanding everything about it isn't a bad thing as it makes you think, makes you wonder, and makes you want to see the thing again.

With Inland Empire I left thinking "what the heck was that about?"... but the experiece...? Oh, no... not enjoyable at all. Trouble was, it just did not feel like a Lynch movie at all. Whatever equipment (some digital camera, and not HD; he doesn't do HD...) he used often made it look like camcorder footage, with terrible pixelisation, in some place (but not others). He'd seemingly randomly spliced in footage from his web Rabbits thing. Scenes just seemed completely random in nature, which is no great surprise as he was making the whole thing up as he went along. He'd write a scene (or group of scenes), film it, and then write some more. If that had been the first Lynch movie I'd ever seen, I swear I'd never watch another one. It was that bad.

Put it this way, if I had the choice to watch Inland Empire, and any other DVD; the other DVD would win almost every time. The only time Inland Empire would win would be if it were a choice between Inland Empire and Simply Red: Live in Concert.

I did actually buy the DVD of Inland Empire. Just to give it a second chance. Put it in the machine, and it was out again within 15 minutes... Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.