This week, DC Comics completed the first phase of a controversial reboot of their entire line of monthly comic titles. August saw the final issues of all existing titles, with storylines rapidly concluded and a few titles unceremoniously 'disappeared', and since Wednesday 31st August they've been releasing what now amounts to 52 first issues.
These titles will comprise the so-called DCnU - or DC new Universe, differentiating it from the pre-existing DCU - and will incorporate into a single continuum popular established characters from DC-owned 'imprints' Vertigo and Wildstorm - essentially separate but closely-linked companies with their own editorial structure and creative pools.
Some of these 52 new series - Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash - existed before, but many of them are brand new. They've also stated that the issues will be coming out on a strictly regular monthly basis, regardless of creator lateness, so all #2s will be in October, #3s in November and so on.
On top of all that, one of the cancelled titles was Action Comics, which has been in print ever since debuting a little-known character call Superman in April 1938. This was canned at #904, just under two years shy of its thousandth issue. That's just vandalism - I remember when the world used to make sense, goddamnit!
The aim, at least ostensibly, is to pare down DC's offerings to their essentials in an effort to attract new readers. Everyone knows who Batman is, but DC editorial see his decades of back-story and labyrinthine continuity as a major sticking point when it comes to attracting new readers. A friend - let's call him 'Marzie' - who has only recently started making tentative forays into the dark world of comic collecting has confirmed that this is one of the main impediments to the medium's accessibility.
While this has been an incredible marketing coup that has generated an unprecedented spike in both interest and sales, in the long run this will result - indeed already is resulting - in the hasty assignment of fill-in artists and shoehorned backup features from one issue to the next. This, in turn, can only result in a total lack of aesthetic continuity when a series is reprinted in trade collections, which must be an essential parallel source of income for a wing of the ailing print publishing industry.
One of my favourite series of recent years - Planetary - is a case in point. Warren Ellis and John Cassaday were the respective writer and artist throughout 27 issues and some preposterous delays - most notably three years between the penultimate and final issues. Read in their collected form, however, their story is just sublime, betraying no hint of the real-time delays, behind-the-scenes editorial chicanery or wild speculation generated by the fanboy rumour mill. There's no way Planetary would be cropping up on anyone's Best Of list if it was subject to the whims of the DCnU, with last-minute artist replacements and fill-in issues interrupting the clarity of vision shared by a single creative team. Simply put, there's no place at DC Comics at the moment for a title as artistically valid as Planetary.
Using another example, while the root causes might not have been the same, editorial interference is precisely what killed The Authority - another one of my favourite series - with A-list artists like Frank Quitely and Art Adams jumping ship after being forced to redraw numerous panels - or worse, blurred colour filters simply being overlaid straight onto their artwork during the colouring process to obscure hyper-violent detail.
This would appear to be a direct response to those vocal elements in the fanboy community who seem to value punctual regularity above quality, and who continually bang on about the creator delays that now permeate the comics industry and how you never would have been allowed to get away with it in the '80s. When did that become paramount? Planetary, The Ultimates, All-Star Superman and many more maintained a single creative team through various delays, but will guarantee perennial reprint sales for decades to come. No-one's going to want reprints of this DCnU hodge-podge crap in even a year's time, and I'm going to have even fewer killer recommendations for poor 'Marzie'.
So I'm keeping clear of the DC reboot until the dust's settled. No doubt I'll pick up any collections of the series that are getting sustained rave reviews, but otherwise I can't help but see this as a perfect jumping-off point, which just so happens to have the coincidentally happy side effect of being a huge money-saving exercise.
Thanks, DC Comics!
Friday 30 September 2011
Thursday 1 September 2011
Jumped-Up Café Schmucks
Sometimes all you want is for people not to give you any shit.
I was running late and had to skip breakfast this morning, so as a special treat for having got to work on time and - rarity of rarities - logged in before 0900 hours, I decided to pop back out and get myself something from Costa. Costa is my massively overpriced high street hot beverage vendor de préférence and I never had any trouble with the staff in Lewes where I used to work.
However, since having been moved [without consultation - another story] to the Brighton office of the law firm that I used to but now sort of don't but ostensibly still do work for [see above], I've been introduced to an altogether different type of Costa employee: one who sees fit to lecture its customers on their pathetic ignorance of all things coffee-related.
My faux pas, if faux it was, was to order a flat white with an extra shot. A flat white, according to the girl who served me this morning, already has two shots of espresso in it, so the addition of yet more espresso would upset the delicate equilibrium of the perfectly balanced drink. It would make it more flat. Or less flat. Or something, I honestly neither know nor care.
"We can do it for you," I was told, "but it won't be the right taste."
I'm sorry: the right taste? It's a CUP OF COFFEE. Some people like their coffee strong, some don't. I happen to appreciate a hit of caffeine that would give a rhino a sweaty lip. It keeps me on the edge, where I gotta be. Woo-hah! [Bear in mind that I'm writing this under the influence of a flat white with an extra shot, just like I insisted on].
Get some perspective. You're not an artiste and despite all the shiny equipment and OCD procedural slamming and banging, this isn't a science lab. I could vault the counter and do what you're doing - immediately, without any training whatsoever. Given time and strategic use of a cattle prod, a chimp could do your job, although animal rights groups might have something to say about the steam scalds and the cheap labour implications. And very probably the use of a cattle prod on a higher primate. You're not even a 'barista', you're jumped-up café staff, so climb back out of your arsehole and MAKE ME EXACTLY WHAT I ASK FOR. WITHOUT QUESTION.
Then we'll make superficially polite small talk while I pay you.
Then I'll go away with my WRONG drink and you can curse me. Privately, and in your own thoughts.
And that, my dear, is how shops work.
I was running late and had to skip breakfast this morning, so as a special treat for having got to work on time and - rarity of rarities - logged in before 0900 hours, I decided to pop back out and get myself something from Costa. Costa is my massively overpriced high street hot beverage vendor de préférence and I never had any trouble with the staff in Lewes where I used to work.
However, since having been moved [without consultation - another story] to the Brighton office of the law firm that I used to but now sort of don't but ostensibly still do work for [see above], I've been introduced to an altogether different type of Costa employee: one who sees fit to lecture its customers on their pathetic ignorance of all things coffee-related.
My faux pas, if faux it was, was to order a flat white with an extra shot. A flat white, according to the girl who served me this morning, already has two shots of espresso in it, so the addition of yet more espresso would upset the delicate equilibrium of the perfectly balanced drink. It would make it more flat. Or less flat. Or something, I honestly neither know nor care.
"We can do it for you," I was told, "but it won't be the right taste."
I'm sorry: the right taste? It's a CUP OF COFFEE. Some people like their coffee strong, some don't. I happen to appreciate a hit of caffeine that would give a rhino a sweaty lip. It keeps me on the edge, where I gotta be. Woo-hah! [Bear in mind that I'm writing this under the influence of a flat white with an extra shot, just like I insisted on].
Get some perspective. You're not an artiste and despite all the shiny equipment and OCD procedural slamming and banging, this isn't a science lab. I could vault the counter and do what you're doing - immediately, without any training whatsoever. Given time and strategic use of a cattle prod, a chimp could do your job, although animal rights groups might have something to say about the steam scalds and the cheap labour implications. And very probably the use of a cattle prod on a higher primate. You're not even a 'barista', you're jumped-up café staff, so climb back out of your arsehole and MAKE ME EXACTLY WHAT I ASK FOR. WITHOUT QUESTION.
Then we'll make superficially polite small talk while I pay you.
Then I'll go away with my WRONG drink and you can curse me. Privately, and in your own thoughts.
And that, my dear, is how shops work.
Monday 4 July 2011
And Another Thing
My secondary school English teachers [or readers of this blog] might take issue with this, but I've always had a fondness for the robustness and versatility of the English language. This probably stems from a love of reading instilled in me from an early age by my parents, who patiently read stories to my younger brother and me every night. My partner and I are currently trying to replicate this with our son - this seems to be working, but until he learns to read we can't be entirely sure.
Chris Morris's surreal fake news satire The Day Today first made me consciously aware that you didn't have to use conventional syntax to convey meaning, peppered as it was with made-up words and inventive hyphenations. Having thought about it since, I'd managed to gloss over numerous other instances of linguistic creativity in the meantime - Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, for example, or the devolved Aboriginal dialogue of Mad Max 3 [itself appropriated from Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker]. This same mercurial approach to language is apparent at one end of the scale in the curmudgeonly creativity of Charlie Brooker, and at the other in the linguistic silliness of Adam & Joe, while Stewart Lee exhibits a clear love of often slightly antiquated language in his hilariously convoluted and meandering narratives.
You don't have to be a writer, journalist or comedian, though, to use language in a creative way, and I harbour a deep-seated distaste for those whose vocabulary lacks at least some inclination toward the inventive. Nothing encapsulates the object of my loathing more perfectly than the narrow aspirations and barren bleakspeak of the archetypal middle manager. Entirely devoid of creativity, their ungainly conversation creaks and groans under the weight of terrible set phrases: "singing from the same hymn sheet", "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes", the abhorrent "blue sky thinking".
Among other crimes against conversation:
"Thinking outside the box" Despite constantly boring people to death with various assertions to the effect that their wild intellects cannot be caged, middle managers are the squarest and most blinkered sort of person you are likely to encounter. They are about as likely to be struck by brain-fritzing inspiration as I am to win the lottery.
"Pushing the envelope" See above. You couldn't gather such a braying congregation of narrow-minded losers together under your own steam, but HR departments the length and breadth of the western world seem to do this as a matter of course. I would honestly rather buy and then fully honour a weekend ticket to a Star Trek convention than willingly spend any time with these people.
"It's not rocket science" AKA "It's not brain surgery". Combine to ephemerally amusing effect with "It's not rocket surgery".
"Let's touch base" Let's not.
These have all quite rightly - if somewhat more belatedly than any decent person would have liked - fallen out of favour over the last decade or so, even among the least imaginitive of managerial mudskippers. Unfortunately they've been superseded by a new wave of meaning-stripped verbal padding that can be heard on a daily basis in television and radio interviews with that other rightly derided group - politicians:
"Joined-up government" OK, this is a now out-of-use phrase bandied about by Tony Blair's lot in the heady early days of New Labour. Use of this phrase decreased with every war we blindly followed George Bush into, which may in retrospect prove to be the only good thing to have come out of those ill-considered politico-military debacles.
"It's a big ask" Only the bounder would consider 'ask' to be a noun. At a push I would accept that it's also a chain of pizza restaurants.
"Let's be quite clear" As if you needed to state that! No, no - much better to be unclear, surely? That's why we invited you on this nationally broadcast, publicly funded current affairs programme, so you could respond in a purposefully oblique manner.
"Going forward" Meaning "from now on". Are you H. G. Wells' The Time Traveller? Are you Doctor Who? Have you found some way to remove yourself from the unidirectional timestream, an act upon whose very feasibility even the most bleeding edge of theoretical physicists remain undecided, and somehow flit about like some twitchy, four-dimensional marmoset? HOW WOULD YOU GO ANY WAY OTHER THAN FORWARD, THEN?
I'm going for a lie down...
Chris Morris's surreal fake news satire The Day Today first made me consciously aware that you didn't have to use conventional syntax to convey meaning, peppered as it was with made-up words and inventive hyphenations. Having thought about it since, I'd managed to gloss over numerous other instances of linguistic creativity in the meantime - Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, for example, or the devolved Aboriginal dialogue of Mad Max 3 [itself appropriated from Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker]. This same mercurial approach to language is apparent at one end of the scale in the curmudgeonly creativity of Charlie Brooker, and at the other in the linguistic silliness of Adam & Joe, while Stewart Lee exhibits a clear love of often slightly antiquated language in his hilariously convoluted and meandering narratives.
You don't have to be a writer, journalist or comedian, though, to use language in a creative way, and I harbour a deep-seated distaste for those whose vocabulary lacks at least some inclination toward the inventive. Nothing encapsulates the object of my loathing more perfectly than the narrow aspirations and barren bleakspeak of the archetypal middle manager. Entirely devoid of creativity, their ungainly conversation creaks and groans under the weight of terrible set phrases: "singing from the same hymn sheet", "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes", the abhorrent "blue sky thinking".
Among other crimes against conversation:
"Thinking outside the box" Despite constantly boring people to death with various assertions to the effect that their wild intellects cannot be caged, middle managers are the squarest and most blinkered sort of person you are likely to encounter. They are about as likely to be struck by brain-fritzing inspiration as I am to win the lottery.
"Pushing the envelope" See above. You couldn't gather such a braying congregation of narrow-minded losers together under your own steam, but HR departments the length and breadth of the western world seem to do this as a matter of course. I would honestly rather buy and then fully honour a weekend ticket to a Star Trek convention than willingly spend any time with these people.
"It's not rocket science" AKA "It's not brain surgery". Combine to ephemerally amusing effect with "It's not rocket surgery".
"Let's touch base" Let's not.
These have all quite rightly - if somewhat more belatedly than any decent person would have liked - fallen out of favour over the last decade or so, even among the least imaginitive of managerial mudskippers. Unfortunately they've been superseded by a new wave of meaning-stripped verbal padding that can be heard on a daily basis in television and radio interviews with that other rightly derided group - politicians:
"Joined-up government" OK, this is a now out-of-use phrase bandied about by Tony Blair's lot in the heady early days of New Labour. Use of this phrase decreased with every war we blindly followed George Bush into, which may in retrospect prove to be the only good thing to have come out of those ill-considered politico-military debacles.
"It's a big ask" Only the bounder would consider 'ask' to be a noun. At a push I would accept that it's also a chain of pizza restaurants.
"Let's be quite clear" As if you needed to state that! No, no - much better to be unclear, surely? That's why we invited you on this nationally broadcast, publicly funded current affairs programme, so you could respond in a purposefully oblique manner.
"Going forward" Meaning "from now on". Are you H. G. Wells' The Time Traveller? Are you Doctor Who? Have you found some way to remove yourself from the unidirectional timestream, an act upon whose very feasibility even the most bleeding edge of theoretical physicists remain undecided, and somehow flit about like some twitchy, four-dimensional marmoset? HOW WOULD YOU GO ANY WAY OTHER THAN FORWARD, THEN?
I'm going for a lie down...
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Moan Moan Moan
I've always been a fairly uncharitable person when it comes to other people's failings, and one of things that's struck me about getting older - as well as the encroaching aches and pains [predominantly in the back, shoulder and right knee, thanks for asking] and the all-consuming feeling that I have yet to achieve anything worthwhile - is quite how pronounced my intolerance has become since my comparatively free-and-easy youth.
These deep flaws of character or action invariably strike me as so blatant that the transgressors must surely be cultivating them with malicious intent, deliberately inconveniencing those around them for their own twisted amusement. The only alternative - that they are utterly oblivious to their shortcomings as either a valid member of society or a human being - is simply too hideous to contemplate.
But contemplate it I shall, and that is one of my own many flaws. Hey, at least I can recognize them.
As I trudge, resigned, through yet another soul-sapping round of daily mundanities, I can't help but notice that there is a distinct absence in those around me of any of the qualities inherent to a social conscience. Everywhere I turn, I'm confronted by a wall-eyed mob of bubblebrained losers - scattering litter hither and yon, howling obscenities and/or threats and actively encouraging their dogs to carpet the walkways with 'dirty eggs'. Some days I'd swear there was more shit than pavement around Brighton, penalty notices affixed to lamp posts offering scant deterrent to those dog owners apparently determined to acquaint shoe owners with the intricacies of their tread patterns. Girls not yet old enough to leave school dress as if they're on their final verbal warning from a particularly volatile pimp. Youths strip to the waist, the better to display a malnutrition-defined physique and de rigueur faux-Maori neck tattoo, maintaining malicious eye contact in the hope of rendering their afternoon marginally more enjoyable.
Even the basics of politeness seem anathema to the hoi polloi. It no longer appears to be the done thing to indicate gratitude for someone else [OK, me] having held open a door or stood aside on a narrow pavement. Indeed any verbal interaction with strangers is to be avoided, lest, one can only assume, this encourage the natural progression to an unsolicited physical inconvenience - a right good stab in the guts, for example, or one of these new-fangled 'head butts' I've been reading about in the news. Stick these bozos in a car, one hard outer casing further removed from the proximity necessary for meaningful social interaction, and the shortfall in manners becomes even more apparent.
One of David Cameron's governmental tenets is that of the 'Big Society', a concept that would have been derided as typically loony, left-wing, pie-in-the-sky idealism had it been mooted by the opposition. The idea is that we, the unwashed masses, would, in a fit of unprecedented altruism, automatically take it upon ourselves to fill the gaping voids left in our social services by the withdrawal of public funding; services that we have been coddled - coddled, I say! - into believing we should be perfectly entitled to in return for our more-than-reasonable taxes.
The real and unadvertised reason is that whoever takes charge is staring national bankruptcy in the face and unprecedented savings need to be made across the board. Naturally they want to spin that as a good thing, rather than the really bad thing it actually is, but there's absolutely no way on Yahweh's good Earth I want either a] to do it myself - I've got little enough free time as it is, and I'm not one of those people who's always putting themselves forward for Residents' Associations or Boards of Governors, any of that nonsense - or b] to let any of these hooting numbskulls take responsibility for maintaining our precious and fragile infrastructure. That, in its essence, is why we pay taxes - so someone will scoop up all our crap for us and whisk it away in a flurry of pixie dust.
If people already felt invested in their society then Cameron's crazy scheme might just work, but all the signs are pointing contrary to that assumption.
These deep flaws of character or action invariably strike me as so blatant that the transgressors must surely be cultivating them with malicious intent, deliberately inconveniencing those around them for their own twisted amusement. The only alternative - that they are utterly oblivious to their shortcomings as either a valid member of society or a human being - is simply too hideous to contemplate.
But contemplate it I shall, and that is one of my own many flaws. Hey, at least I can recognize them.
As I trudge, resigned, through yet another soul-sapping round of daily mundanities, I can't help but notice that there is a distinct absence in those around me of any of the qualities inherent to a social conscience. Everywhere I turn, I'm confronted by a wall-eyed mob of bubblebrained losers - scattering litter hither and yon, howling obscenities and/or threats and actively encouraging their dogs to carpet the walkways with 'dirty eggs'. Some days I'd swear there was more shit than pavement around Brighton, penalty notices affixed to lamp posts offering scant deterrent to those dog owners apparently determined to acquaint shoe owners with the intricacies of their tread patterns. Girls not yet old enough to leave school dress as if they're on their final verbal warning from a particularly volatile pimp. Youths strip to the waist, the better to display a malnutrition-defined physique and de rigueur faux-Maori neck tattoo, maintaining malicious eye contact in the hope of rendering their afternoon marginally more enjoyable.
Even the basics of politeness seem anathema to the hoi polloi. It no longer appears to be the done thing to indicate gratitude for someone else [OK, me] having held open a door or stood aside on a narrow pavement. Indeed any verbal interaction with strangers is to be avoided, lest, one can only assume, this encourage the natural progression to an unsolicited physical inconvenience - a right good stab in the guts, for example, or one of these new-fangled 'head butts' I've been reading about in the news. Stick these bozos in a car, one hard outer casing further removed from the proximity necessary for meaningful social interaction, and the shortfall in manners becomes even more apparent.
One of David Cameron's governmental tenets is that of the 'Big Society', a concept that would have been derided as typically loony, left-wing, pie-in-the-sky idealism had it been mooted by the opposition. The idea is that we, the unwashed masses, would, in a fit of unprecedented altruism, automatically take it upon ourselves to fill the gaping voids left in our social services by the withdrawal of public funding; services that we have been coddled - coddled, I say! - into believing we should be perfectly entitled to in return for our more-than-reasonable taxes.
The real and unadvertised reason is that whoever takes charge is staring national bankruptcy in the face and unprecedented savings need to be made across the board. Naturally they want to spin that as a good thing, rather than the really bad thing it actually is, but there's absolutely no way on Yahweh's good Earth I want either a] to do it myself - I've got little enough free time as it is, and I'm not one of those people who's always putting themselves forward for Residents' Associations or Boards of Governors, any of that nonsense - or b] to let any of these hooting numbskulls take responsibility for maintaining our precious and fragile infrastructure. That, in its essence, is why we pay taxes - so someone will scoop up all our crap for us and whisk it away in a flurry of pixie dust.
If people already felt invested in their society then Cameron's crazy scheme might just work, but all the signs are pointing contrary to that assumption.
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Friday 25 March 2011
HoooOOOOO!!! Part 2
Jaguar Skills
Thursday 24th March - Concorde 2
Support: Tek One and Boycom
Jaguar Skills is a truly impatient man. Clad in a full-face black ninja mask, gold medallion flailing in the wake of his restless movements, Jag bombarded a mad-for-it crowd with a truly dizzying motorway pileup of party tunes, interjecting the floor-filling bangers-du-jour half knowingly, half reverently with the accepted jump-around classics. A mashup master with an extreme case of ADD, Jag's staccato tour of culturally popular music took in hip hop, hard house, dubstep and quite a bit of drum'n'bass, never sticking with one track for more than 30 seconds and seasoning this unholy audio gumbo with countless samples, sound effects and throwaway gags. His is a world where the recording of an actual police raid morphs into the siren whoop of KRS-One's Sound Of Tha Police, which segues seamlessly into the faux-reggae of The Police's Roxanne. Hendrix, Motörhead, Guns'N'Roses, Blur, Musical Youth - even the A-Team and Countdown themes got a decent look-in through the soul-shaking bass and urgent drum beats. They should wring the gallons of sweat from this man's ninja mask and sell it to aspiring DJs - God knows they could use some of what he's got.
Tuesday 8 March 2011
Monday 17 January 2011
Sheersy's Top Five: Films
Hey, it's my first 'regular' feature! Woo hoo, break out the Cherry Lambrini.
Probably as long as I've been reading books, I've been watching films [or 'movies', as our Atlantically-challenged cousins refer to them]. While I don't remember the actual occasion, I'm assured by my parents that I was taken to see Star Wars [it is called Star Wars, not Episode Whatever] in early '78, shortly after its UK cinema release, and the superlative space opera trilogy was an overriding obsession for a sizeable chunk of my formative years.
George Lucas shrewdly secured the rights to any and all associated merchandising - board games, action figures, clocks, mugs, duvet covers and so on, judged by 20th Century Fox to be entirely worthless - in lieu of a standard director's fee, netting hundreds of millions of dollars as a result and pretty much enabling him to self-fund the sequels. This may explain why subsequent films have become an ever more cynical exercise in toy marketing. Nevertheless, my brother and I shared a fairly comprehensive collection of the figures, vehicles and playsets released to accompany each of the first three films, so at least part of Lucas's unsightly Jabbajowls - barely concealed behind an outsized-but-still-far-too-small goatee - was constructed directly from our pocket money.
Our collection included most of the elusive Last 17, the final limited distribution run of niche interest figures [obscure Rebel pilots, Jabba's courtiers, Imperial dignitaries and second-string Ewoks], which we snapped up during a family holiday to Belgium in 1985. I should admittedly have known better by that age than to continue chucking good money away on plastic crap, but partial vindication came years later when I was able to eBay a single Yak Face figure - in good nick, but without backing card or accessories - for £60. Sixty smackeroos! For a little plastic man with the face of a yak! I should have invested in a whole boxload of Belgian Yak Faces. Stupid hindsight.
So, yes, films.
My criteria for this Top Five are films that particularly struck me on first seeing them - so much so that I will have obsessively rewatched each of them several times since. They have informed my cinematic tastes and represent my personal benchmark for films of their genre. While they may not offer any surprises to those familiar with my tastes, I like to think they showcase my geek cred in a straightforward and unpretentious way.
#5 - Star Wars [1977]
OK, I've already been banging on about this in the above pre-amble, but my denigrations didn't really address the film or its seismic impact on global cinema. George Lucas had initially wanted to revive sci-fi action hero Flash Gordon, but the property wasn't available at the time; instead he and collaborator Gary Kurtz cooked up their own take on the Universal and RKO serials of the '40s and '50s. Shamelessly incorporating elements [the plot, for instance, and the characters] from Akira Kurosawa's samurai adventure Hidden Fortress, and infused throughout with a World War 2 aesthetic - from the battered and rusting utilitarian retro-tech to the crisply starched uniforms and fetishistic battle armour of the baddies - Lucas and Kurtz created a cosmic vision at once comfortably familiar and strikingly unique. While the overarching theme of fresh-faced good triumphing over coolly self-assured evil might just as well have been stamped out on a production line, the execution itself was genuinely fresh and exciting.
The film explores the nuanced inequalities of a robotic slave underclass and the credible mundanity of interaction between alien races, as well as ensuring a place in escapist entertainment history for incredibly cool-sounding lightsabres, Darth Vader's sinister breathing, the Death Star and the delectable Princess Leia's Belgian bun hairstyle. Spot-on casting choices across the board lend some much-needed depth to the template action-adventure characters - who among us doesn't immediately warm to bad boy anti-hero Han Solo, who, straight off the bat, shoots a debt-collecting alien thug in the knackers under the table? - while the rugged visual design, state-of-the-art special effects [that still stand up today] and sound effects flawlessly coalesce into a vision unlike any other cinematic sci-fi on offer at the time.
The only glaring weakness in the Star Wars franchise - somewhat fundamentally - is George Lucas himself, who seems unable to either write or direct anything worthwhile without the tempering influence of other, more competent talents. The Empire Strike Back, generally held to be the most mature of all the Star Wars films, shared four or five directors - none of them Lucas - and the story was heavily influenced by Kurtz. As soon as Lucas took direct control, the schmaltzy feel-good elements were ramped up to 11 and toy sales began to lead the story. There was absolutely no need to revisit the original trilogy equipped only with a mid-life crisis and barely-adequate CGI. Ardman Studios could have knocked a more convincing Jabba together with Plasticine. Don't even get me started on the prequels.
#4 - Withnail and I [1986]
Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, who based the film on his own experience of living among the low-end boho set in London during the late '60s, Withnail and I boasts an entertaining array of picaresque characters, including Richard E. Grant in his breakthrough role as the aggressively forthright Withnail, Richard Griffiths as larger-than-life faded thesp [and "raving homosexual"] Uncle Monty and Ralph Brown as drawling, yellow-eyed drug dealer Danny.
This pre-eminently quotable loser lifestyle bible relates the misadventures of two impoverished, out-of-work actors, who go on holiday "by mistake" to the rain- and windswept Lake District. In between vain attempts to secure work through their agent, they alienate the locals, harass the well-to-do customers of a posh tea rooms, go fishing with a twelve-bore shotgun and find themselves obliquely menaced by a local poacher. As well as offering a uniquely British and hilariously grotty slant on the buddy comedy format, the film also acts as a thoughtful epoch end marker for the Summer of Love and all the political and artistic revolution it initially promised. As Danny laments towards the end of the film, "They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths, man."
Withnail and I also forms the basis for a famously gruelling drinking game, wherein one has simply to match Withnail drink for drink throughout the film. In the course of 90-odd minutes, the successful participant in this impossibly toxic endeavour would be expected to imbibe nine and a half glasses of red wine, a pint of cider ["ice in the cider"], two and a half shots of gin, six glasses of sherry, thirteen shots of whisky, half a pint of ale and a slug of lighter fluid. The Camberwell Carrot is optional, but to be quite honest after that lot you'd be hard pressed to fulfil even the most basic of motor functions, much less engineer a jumbo bifter.
#3 - Evil Dead II [1987]
Sam Raimi has gone on to direct much slicker Hollywood fare since his days as a guerrilla Michigan film-maker, but much of the trademark stylistic trickery learnt during those early days is still apparent in his current output. Having already been responsible for the notorious '80s video nasty The Evil Dead, Raimi experienced unwelcome studio meddling during the production of follow-up noir comedy Crimewave, which prompted him to return to his self-produced roots.
A sequel-cum-remake of the original feature, Evil Dead II features the same location - creaky old cabin in the woods - and a similar initial setup, but quickly moves into fresh new areas of no-budget cinematic creativity. Stop-motion animation, latex prosthetics and a dizzying array of simple-but-effective camera tricks collide to create a disorientating barrage of intense horror action; in the absence of a prohibitively expensive SteadiCam, Raimi instead improvised the ShakyCam - a plank of wood with a camera fixed to it, supported by a person at each end - to obtain swooping shots through the fog-shrouded forest. The production crew consisted of a hardcore of Raimi's multi-tasking close friends, who were willing to spend months being spattered with fake blood in sub-zero temperatures for no pay. As filming wore on, several cast members were unable to cope with the abysmal working conditions and dropped out - they were replaced on film with back-of-the-head shots of Raimi's wig-wearing brother, Ted.
The first half an hour hinges on a bravura performance by Raimi's high school friend and B movie god Bruce Campbell, during which he is subjected to sustained psychological and physical assault by otherworldly demons. This outrageous one-man performance is two parts Three Stooges slapstick to one part grisly splatter horror and sees Campbell's character, Ash, fending off various attacks by his decapitated girlfriend, taunted and strangled by his own reflection, menaced by animated furniture and literally thrown around a kitchen by his own possessed hand, which he finally amputates with a chainsaw while cackling maniacally and screaming "Who's laughing now?"
Evil Dead II at once lampoons and reveres the clichéd tropes of the genre, restructuring them with manic energy into an influential horror masterpiece, the distinct flashes of which can be seen in the early work of such directors as Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright.
#2 - Duck Soup [1933]
When it comes to naming the best Marx Brothers film, aficionados tend to be split between Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. Admittedly A Night at the Opera is a more polished production, but the shoehorning in of a straight romantic sub-plot, replete with lengthy Marx-free song-and-dance routines, is a resolute strike in the 'Cons' column. Conversely, Duck Soup is an uninterrupted stream of comic dialogue and quick-fire gags from start to finish, and while there are several musical numbers, they are uniformly ridiculous and exist solely to showcase the zany antics of the Marxes.
The prescient plot - the Nazis came to power that same year - concerns a personal feud between Rufus T. Firefly [Groucho], the new leader of the bankrupt state of Freedonia, and the dastardly Ambassador Trentino of neighbouring Sylvania, which through various convoluted misunderstandings spirals out of control and plunges both countries into conflict. Matters are further exacerbated by the incompetent duplicity of two Sylvanian spies, Chicolini [Chico] and Pinky [Harpo], who make no secret of the fact they are working for the other side and even treat their own court martial as a forum for more buffoonery.
The film features several classic set pieces, including the dialogue-free 'mirror' sequence, where Harpo attempts to match Groucho's every movement in an ultimately vain effort to convince him that he is Groucho's reflection, and the film is punctuated with throwaway visual gags, such as Groucho sporting a different military uniform in every scene during the final reel. Even Harpo's usual tiresome harp interlude is limited to a brief plucking at the strings of an open grand piano, the lid of which is quickly slammed shut on his fingers.
Duck Soup was the Marx Brothers' last film with Paramount Studios and wasn't particularly well received at the time of its release, but in recent years it has been critically reappraised as a mischievous satire on the absurdity of war and on the self-important men, ill-deserving of the power they wield, who determine the fate of their fellow countrymen.
#1 - Dawn of the Dead [1978]
George A. Romero had altered the landscape of horror cinema a decade earlier with his low-budget, high-scare indie feature Night of the Living Dead. In a plot that has since become a staple of the genre, the recently dead inexplicably reanimate with wall-eyed murderous intent; a few desperate, ill-matched survivors barricade themselves in a remote farmhouse and attempt to repel the ghouls. The impact of Romero's film can't be understated: it fully explored the practicalities of survival in such a situation, employing a near-documentary approach to great effect, replete with convincingly realized news reports and 'shit-has-definitely-hit-the-fan' emergency broadcasts. It was also one of the first mainstream American films to feature a black lead, opening up a new level of critical interpretation within the context of America's burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
Dawn of the Dead picks up where the original left off, even starting inside a panicked, claustrophobic TV studio that's transmitting the type of broadcasts received during Night of the Living Dead. Tensions are running high among the station staff and there is much whispered talk of fleeing the city. Traffic news helicopter pilot Stephen and his station staff girlfriend Fran escape, along with two hardened S.W.A.T. cop acquaintances, in the network's chopper, eventually setting down on an out-of-town shopping mall that swarms with the undead. They tentatively assess the situation and soon decide that the mall will offer the reliable security and abundant supplies they desperately need. Barricading the centre against further assault, they dispatch any zombies already inside, then settle down for the duration with their every material desire catered for. Weeks of seclusion take their psychological toll on the small group, however, and as well as the hordes of the undead clawing relentlessly at the reinforced glass doors, they also face danger from roving gangs of human looters eager to plunder the mall's resources.
Much like Night of the Living Dead's subtle Civil Rights message, there is an intelligent subtext embedded within Dawn of the Dead's ostensibly gory exterior. Here, the comment is on the vacuousness of consumerism, as evinced by the zombies thronging in their almost pitiable confusion to that shameless cathedral to Mammon, the visceral carnage incongruously soundtracked by upbeat glockenspiel muzak. As Stephen says, while contemplating why so many zombies seem drawn to the complex, "Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives." It's testament to the film's influence that the shopping mall has subsequently become a recurring feature of zombie apocalypse films and videogames.
Dawn of the Dead is not without its flaws - there are confusing jumps and cuts throughout, making it unclear exactly what's going on at certain points [unless, like me, you've watched it more times than you'd care to work out] and the acting is solid for a '70s horror but was never going to win any awards. Tom Savini's make-up effects, too, are good for the time but extremely dated by today's standards, the grey-blue foundation applied uniformly to hundreds of extras intermittently enlivened by explosions of bright red fake blood, an unnatural palette that lends the film a hyperreal quality [Savini redeemed himself a few years later with his truly gruesome make-up effects for Romero's Day of the Dead]. These are negligible quibbles, however, for those of us who see the appeal of the zombie apocalypse film, and what really marks Dawn of the Dead out as a classic is its deadly serious, pragmatic approach to an unthinkable doomsday scenario: what would you do if civilization collapsed overnight?
In the last few years the zombie has become as ubiquitous as the vampire, thanks to films like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland and a fairly decent 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, books such as Max 'son-of-Mel' Brooks's The Zombie Survival Guide and follow-up World War Z [not to mention the tongue-through-cheek genre mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies], a wealth of comics - most notably Robert Kirkman's sublime ongoing saga The Walking Dead - and more video games than you can shake a brain-and-hair-caked stick at [Resident Evil, House of the Dead, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead]. Clearly there's something in the idea of the reanimated, cannibalistic cadaver that fires the popular imagination... and that's a good thing.
Honourable mentions: Seven Samurai, Mad Max 2, Midnight Run, Aliens, Millennium Actress
Probably as long as I've been reading books, I've been watching films [or 'movies', as our Atlantically-challenged cousins refer to them]. While I don't remember the actual occasion, I'm assured by my parents that I was taken to see Star Wars [it is called Star Wars, not Episode Whatever] in early '78, shortly after its UK cinema release, and the superlative space opera trilogy was an overriding obsession for a sizeable chunk of my formative years.
George Lucas shrewdly secured the rights to any and all associated merchandising - board games, action figures, clocks, mugs, duvet covers and so on, judged by 20th Century Fox to be entirely worthless - in lieu of a standard director's fee, netting hundreds of millions of dollars as a result and pretty much enabling him to self-fund the sequels. This may explain why subsequent films have become an ever more cynical exercise in toy marketing. Nevertheless, my brother and I shared a fairly comprehensive collection of the figures, vehicles and playsets released to accompany each of the first three films, so at least part of Lucas's unsightly Jabbajowls - barely concealed behind an outsized-but-still-far-too-small goatee - was constructed directly from our pocket money.
Our collection included most of the elusive Last 17, the final limited distribution run of niche interest figures [obscure Rebel pilots, Jabba's courtiers, Imperial dignitaries and second-string Ewoks], which we snapped up during a family holiday to Belgium in 1985. I should admittedly have known better by that age than to continue chucking good money away on plastic crap, but partial vindication came years later when I was able to eBay a single Yak Face figure - in good nick, but without backing card or accessories - for £60. Sixty smackeroos! For a little plastic man with the face of a yak! I should have invested in a whole boxload of Belgian Yak Faces. Stupid hindsight.So, yes, films.
My criteria for this Top Five are films that particularly struck me on first seeing them - so much so that I will have obsessively rewatched each of them several times since. They have informed my cinematic tastes and represent my personal benchmark for films of their genre. While they may not offer any surprises to those familiar with my tastes, I like to think they showcase my geek cred in a straightforward and unpretentious way.
#5 - Star Wars [1977]
OK, I've already been banging on about this in the above pre-amble, but my denigrations didn't really address the film or its seismic impact on global cinema. George Lucas had initially wanted to revive sci-fi action hero Flash Gordon, but the property wasn't available at the time; instead he and collaborator Gary Kurtz cooked up their own take on the Universal and RKO serials of the '40s and '50s. Shamelessly incorporating elements [the plot, for instance, and the characters] from Akira Kurosawa's samurai adventure Hidden Fortress, and infused throughout with a World War 2 aesthetic - from the battered and rusting utilitarian retro-tech to the crisply starched uniforms and fetishistic battle armour of the baddies - Lucas and Kurtz created a cosmic vision at once comfortably familiar and strikingly unique. While the overarching theme of fresh-faced good triumphing over coolly self-assured evil might just as well have been stamped out on a production line, the execution itself was genuinely fresh and exciting.
The film explores the nuanced inequalities of a robotic slave underclass and the credible mundanity of interaction between alien races, as well as ensuring a place in escapist entertainment history for incredibly cool-sounding lightsabres, Darth Vader's sinister breathing, the Death Star and the delectable Princess Leia's Belgian bun hairstyle. Spot-on casting choices across the board lend some much-needed depth to the template action-adventure characters - who among us doesn't immediately warm to bad boy anti-hero Han Solo, who, straight off the bat, shoots a debt-collecting alien thug in the knackers under the table? - while the rugged visual design, state-of-the-art special effects [that still stand up today] and sound effects flawlessly coalesce into a vision unlike any other cinematic sci-fi on offer at the time.
The only glaring weakness in the Star Wars franchise - somewhat fundamentally - is George Lucas himself, who seems unable to either write or direct anything worthwhile without the tempering influence of other, more competent talents. The Empire Strike Back, generally held to be the most mature of all the Star Wars films, shared four or five directors - none of them Lucas - and the story was heavily influenced by Kurtz. As soon as Lucas took direct control, the schmaltzy feel-good elements were ramped up to 11 and toy sales began to lead the story. There was absolutely no need to revisit the original trilogy equipped only with a mid-life crisis and barely-adequate CGI. Ardman Studios could have knocked a more convincing Jabba together with Plasticine. Don't even get me started on the prequels.#4 - Withnail and I [1986]
Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, who based the film on his own experience of living among the low-end boho set in London during the late '60s, Withnail and I boasts an entertaining array of picaresque characters, including Richard E. Grant in his breakthrough role as the aggressively forthright Withnail, Richard Griffiths as larger-than-life faded thesp [and "raving homosexual"] Uncle Monty and Ralph Brown as drawling, yellow-eyed drug dealer Danny.
This pre-eminently quotable loser lifestyle bible relates the misadventures of two impoverished, out-of-work actors, who go on holiday "by mistake" to the rain- and windswept Lake District. In between vain attempts to secure work through their agent, they alienate the locals, harass the well-to-do customers of a posh tea rooms, go fishing with a twelve-bore shotgun and find themselves obliquely menaced by a local poacher. As well as offering a uniquely British and hilariously grotty slant on the buddy comedy format, the film also acts as a thoughtful epoch end marker for the Summer of Love and all the political and artistic revolution it initially promised. As Danny laments towards the end of the film, "They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths, man."
Withnail and I also forms the basis for a famously gruelling drinking game, wherein one has simply to match Withnail drink for drink throughout the film. In the course of 90-odd minutes, the successful participant in this impossibly toxic endeavour would be expected to imbibe nine and a half glasses of red wine, a pint of cider ["ice in the cider"], two and a half shots of gin, six glasses of sherry, thirteen shots of whisky, half a pint of ale and a slug of lighter fluid. The Camberwell Carrot is optional, but to be quite honest after that lot you'd be hard pressed to fulfil even the most basic of motor functions, much less engineer a jumbo bifter.#3 - Evil Dead II [1987]
Sam Raimi has gone on to direct much slicker Hollywood fare since his days as a guerrilla Michigan film-maker, but much of the trademark stylistic trickery learnt during those early days is still apparent in his current output. Having already been responsible for the notorious '80s video nasty The Evil Dead, Raimi experienced unwelcome studio meddling during the production of follow-up noir comedy Crimewave, which prompted him to return to his self-produced roots.
A sequel-cum-remake of the original feature, Evil Dead II features the same location - creaky old cabin in the woods - and a similar initial setup, but quickly moves into fresh new areas of no-budget cinematic creativity. Stop-motion animation, latex prosthetics and a dizzying array of simple-but-effective camera tricks collide to create a disorientating barrage of intense horror action; in the absence of a prohibitively expensive SteadiCam, Raimi instead improvised the ShakyCam - a plank of wood with a camera fixed to it, supported by a person at each end - to obtain swooping shots through the fog-shrouded forest. The production crew consisted of a hardcore of Raimi's multi-tasking close friends, who were willing to spend months being spattered with fake blood in sub-zero temperatures for no pay. As filming wore on, several cast members were unable to cope with the abysmal working conditions and dropped out - they were replaced on film with back-of-the-head shots of Raimi's wig-wearing brother, Ted.
The first half an hour hinges on a bravura performance by Raimi's high school friend and B movie god Bruce Campbell, during which he is subjected to sustained psychological and physical assault by otherworldly demons. This outrageous one-man performance is two parts Three Stooges slapstick to one part grisly splatter horror and sees Campbell's character, Ash, fending off various attacks by his decapitated girlfriend, taunted and strangled by his own reflection, menaced by animated furniture and literally thrown around a kitchen by his own possessed hand, which he finally amputates with a chainsaw while cackling maniacally and screaming "Who's laughing now?"
Evil Dead II at once lampoons and reveres the clichéd tropes of the genre, restructuring them with manic energy into an influential horror masterpiece, the distinct flashes of which can be seen in the early work of such directors as Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright.#2 - Duck Soup [1933]
When it comes to naming the best Marx Brothers film, aficionados tend to be split between Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. Admittedly A Night at the Opera is a more polished production, but the shoehorning in of a straight romantic sub-plot, replete with lengthy Marx-free song-and-dance routines, is a resolute strike in the 'Cons' column. Conversely, Duck Soup is an uninterrupted stream of comic dialogue and quick-fire gags from start to finish, and while there are several musical numbers, they are uniformly ridiculous and exist solely to showcase the zany antics of the Marxes.
The prescient plot - the Nazis came to power that same year - concerns a personal feud between Rufus T. Firefly [Groucho], the new leader of the bankrupt state of Freedonia, and the dastardly Ambassador Trentino of neighbouring Sylvania, which through various convoluted misunderstandings spirals out of control and plunges both countries into conflict. Matters are further exacerbated by the incompetent duplicity of two Sylvanian spies, Chicolini [Chico] and Pinky [Harpo], who make no secret of the fact they are working for the other side and even treat their own court martial as a forum for more buffoonery.
The film features several classic set pieces, including the dialogue-free 'mirror' sequence, where Harpo attempts to match Groucho's every movement in an ultimately vain effort to convince him that he is Groucho's reflection, and the film is punctuated with throwaway visual gags, such as Groucho sporting a different military uniform in every scene during the final reel. Even Harpo's usual tiresome harp interlude is limited to a brief plucking at the strings of an open grand piano, the lid of which is quickly slammed shut on his fingers.
Duck Soup was the Marx Brothers' last film with Paramount Studios and wasn't particularly well received at the time of its release, but in recent years it has been critically reappraised as a mischievous satire on the absurdity of war and on the self-important men, ill-deserving of the power they wield, who determine the fate of their fellow countrymen.#1 - Dawn of the Dead [1978]
George A. Romero had altered the landscape of horror cinema a decade earlier with his low-budget, high-scare indie feature Night of the Living Dead. In a plot that has since become a staple of the genre, the recently dead inexplicably reanimate with wall-eyed murderous intent; a few desperate, ill-matched survivors barricade themselves in a remote farmhouse and attempt to repel the ghouls. The impact of Romero's film can't be understated: it fully explored the practicalities of survival in such a situation, employing a near-documentary approach to great effect, replete with convincingly realized news reports and 'shit-has-definitely-hit-the-fan' emergency broadcasts. It was also one of the first mainstream American films to feature a black lead, opening up a new level of critical interpretation within the context of America's burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
Dawn of the Dead picks up where the original left off, even starting inside a panicked, claustrophobic TV studio that's transmitting the type of broadcasts received during Night of the Living Dead. Tensions are running high among the station staff and there is much whispered talk of fleeing the city. Traffic news helicopter pilot Stephen and his station staff girlfriend Fran escape, along with two hardened S.W.A.T. cop acquaintances, in the network's chopper, eventually setting down on an out-of-town shopping mall that swarms with the undead. They tentatively assess the situation and soon decide that the mall will offer the reliable security and abundant supplies they desperately need. Barricading the centre against further assault, they dispatch any zombies already inside, then settle down for the duration with their every material desire catered for. Weeks of seclusion take their psychological toll on the small group, however, and as well as the hordes of the undead clawing relentlessly at the reinforced glass doors, they also face danger from roving gangs of human looters eager to plunder the mall's resources.
Much like Night of the Living Dead's subtle Civil Rights message, there is an intelligent subtext embedded within Dawn of the Dead's ostensibly gory exterior. Here, the comment is on the vacuousness of consumerism, as evinced by the zombies thronging in their almost pitiable confusion to that shameless cathedral to Mammon, the visceral carnage incongruously soundtracked by upbeat glockenspiel muzak. As Stephen says, while contemplating why so many zombies seem drawn to the complex, "Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives." It's testament to the film's influence that the shopping mall has subsequently become a recurring feature of zombie apocalypse films and videogames.
Dawn of the Dead is not without its flaws - there are confusing jumps and cuts throughout, making it unclear exactly what's going on at certain points [unless, like me, you've watched it more times than you'd care to work out] and the acting is solid for a '70s horror but was never going to win any awards. Tom Savini's make-up effects, too, are good for the time but extremely dated by today's standards, the grey-blue foundation applied uniformly to hundreds of extras intermittently enlivened by explosions of bright red fake blood, an unnatural palette that lends the film a hyperreal quality [Savini redeemed himself a few years later with his truly gruesome make-up effects for Romero's Day of the Dead]. These are negligible quibbles, however, for those of us who see the appeal of the zombie apocalypse film, and what really marks Dawn of the Dead out as a classic is its deadly serious, pragmatic approach to an unthinkable doomsday scenario: what would you do if civilization collapsed overnight?
In the last few years the zombie has become as ubiquitous as the vampire, thanks to films like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland and a fairly decent 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, books such as Max 'son-of-Mel' Brooks's The Zombie Survival Guide and follow-up World War Z [not to mention the tongue-through-cheek genre mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies], a wealth of comics - most notably Robert Kirkman's sublime ongoing saga The Walking Dead - and more video games than you can shake a brain-and-hair-caked stick at [Resident Evil, House of the Dead, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead]. Clearly there's something in the idea of the reanimated, cannibalistic cadaver that fires the popular imagination... and that's a good thing.Honourable mentions: Seven Samurai, Mad Max 2, Midnight Run, Aliens, Millennium Actress
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