Rob – Page 82 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

A New Phase

This landed in my Gmail today, with no further commentary.

What are we to make of this, Readership? Can it be that the years-in-the-making docoBANKSY has finally reached the point of completion?

What we seem to have here is a scan of a new sticker design, different to the Di-faced tenners that have been popping up worldwide for the past couple of years. This has to mark a new phase in the project.

Perhaps at last that damned elusive docoB has decided to share his vision with the world. As with everything that comes out of his SEKRIT lair, we will just have to wait and see. But I recommend you keep an eye open for the new stickers. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of them very soon….

The Warrior’s Code: X&HT Watched Captain America: The First Avenger

NewImage — Give me a tweaked uniform over spandex any day...

Captain America: The First Avenger is not a superhero film. There, I said it. Oh sure, it’s got a superhero in it, and a supervillain, and a lot of the trappings and furniture of your average cape film. But what we have here is more akin to the legend of America’s most decorated soldier, Audie Murphy.

Like Steve Rogers, Murphy struggled to get enlisted, a puny, underaged dweeb who just wanted to serve. But heart, soul and tenacity succeed where all else failed, and Murphy would eventually go on to fight throughout Europe, winning the Medal of Honour, Legion of merit and the French Legion of Honour along the way. He went on to be a film star, musician and advocate of veteran’s rights – a true American hero whose image was used extensively in the post-war years as a positive national self-image.

Steve Rogers is a lot like Murphy. Fearless, determined to serve, always conscious of the need to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming evil. He gets the superserum and (eventually) the suit, but he gets them because of who he is on the inside. It’s a fairly typical wish-fulfillment strategy, based on the old saw that you can get what you want as long as you want it badly enough, but it works in this context. In a way, he has Murphy’s career backwards. Captain America is a propaganda asset long before he gets a chance to fight.

To reiterate, I look on Captan America as a pulpy war movie with SF trimmings rather than your bog-standard superhero joint. Director Joe Johnston understands this kind of material well. He helmed “The Rocketeer”, after all, still one of my favourite movies. He brings the same design flair and sense of fun to Captain America. It’s a good looking film, with a good-looking cast that understands the light touch required to make period SF work. Chris Evans fills the uniform out nicely, Hayley Atwell shines as the kind of glamourous Girl Friday that Cap would come to depend on in the 60’s, Tommy Lee Jones is a delight as the gruff-but-fair colonel in charge of the missions. Hugo Weaving was really the only choice as the Red Skull. Even under a thickness of makeup that would make Julia Roberts blanch, his villain skills shine through.

It’s a shame then, that even though Johnston has said in interviews that Captain America would be the stand-alone piece in the jigsaw of Marvel films that will piece together to form next year’s Avengers movie, the ending hauls it into line. Up to that point, the film had stood on it’s own two feet. You didn’t need to know who Howard Stark would sire, or where the cube came from that gave the Skull’s infernal devices their power. They were Easter eggs for the fans, but didn’t spoil the flow. The last five minutes, in which Steve is brought brutally up to date, are clangingly out of place with the tone and feel of the rest of the film. It was the kind of scene that would have been better suited to a post-credit vignette. It’s a real shame, because up to then I had really enjoyed the ride.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Captain America: The First Avenger. It’s pretty, funny and sharp. Good, pulpy fun with enough to keep both the fans and the non-comic reader happy. The ending aside, it’s a great summer movie.

The Wisdom Of A Dog: X&HT Watched Beginners

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A couple of weeks ago, The Corpus Crew decided to get our script looked at by a professional script consultancy, just to poke under the bonnet, kick the tyres and let us know if there was anything that needed tweaking.

It was an un-nerving and humbling experience, to put it mildly. Everything had problems. The film was structurally weak, had no real flow, the dialogue was mannered and out of place. We left the meeting feeling as if we’d been repeatedly kicked in the nuts. We got what we wished for, I suppose.

I wonder, then, what the consultancy guys would have made of Beginners, a film that seems to have no real structure, uneven flow and deeply unrealistic dialogue. I guess I’d be no good at the whole script breakdown lark, because cards on the table right here and now: it’s instantly one of my top five films of the year.

Beginners is a film about transformation. It’s about how radical change can bring on radical change in all kinds of other directions. It’s the story of Oliver, a David Shrigley-style artist, still numb with grief after the death of his father, Hal some months earlier. He meets a French actress, Anna, a Manic Pixie Girl with troubles of her own. As she enters his life, we find out that Hal had gone through changes himself, coming out at the age of seventy-five.

The film pings backwards and forwards in time, letting us see the changes in Hal and Oliver evolve, and how they come to life in the midst of tragedy and newly discovered love. Batting around the timeline makes perfect sense, and this lack of linearity never feels forced or cripples the storyline.

The acting is uniformly excellent. Ewen McGregor still can’t do an American accent, but that really doesn’t matter here. He’s open and vulnerable without being a damp rag. Christopher Plummer is an old-school delight, raging against the dying of the light. Melanie Laurent is a revelation as Anna, vibrant and unpredictable but never kooky. She was a fearless standout in Inglourious Basterds, and she is equally brave and luminous here.

Beginners is also the first film since Up to get away with a talking dog, and not have it come across as cutesy or irritating. In fact Arthur is a pivotal part of the cast, and his (oh, alright, subtitled) dialogue is on the button. But Cosmo, who plays the lonesome pup, gives an informed and naturalistic performance. Yes, really. Not bad for a Jack Russel from a rescue home.

Beginners is an autobiographical film, based strongly on writer/director Mike Mill’s relationship with his father. It’s filled with little flashes of memory and recollection. It feels like a scrapbook, or a compiled reel of old Super 8. Bopping between the 50s and the present day opens up the storytelling, allowing the performance and script room to breathe.

You could argue that the film is slow in places, perhaps a little mannered, but if you’re in the mood for an antidote to all the summer blockbusters, you honestly couldn’t do better than this lovely, vibrant, life-loving film. It certainly got me thinking about the biology of film-making, the bones and spine that have to be in place before you can give a script heart and guts. Beginners may seem scattered and haphazard on the surface, but every shot has a place and reason. It’s assured, grown-up film-making that shrugs off tired ideas about structure in favour of a pleasingly freeform approach. It hit me right in the sweet spots.

Don’t miss this one, Readership. It’s equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, joyful and sorrowful, tart and tender.

A Lot Of Sustain: X&HT watched Sex, Food, Death … and Insects

I have a longstanding soft spot for Robyn Hitchcock. He’s one of our greatest songwriters and a godsdamned National Treasure. I have seen him live, covering Sgt. Pepper in it’s entirety, a gig notable for the moment when he knocked the jack out of his Telecaster and I handed it back to him.

You could, I suppose, if you’re feeling lazy, tie him in with the great wellspring of British eccentric artists that tracks through William Blake and Lewis Carroll, through Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the Bonzos, Ivor Cutler, Spike Milligan. Surrealism and humour backed up by a steely determination to tread one’s own path, and talent and ability up the hoozit. Long time fan and collaborator Peter Buck off of R.E.M. has said that he can’t understand why someone hasn’t taken his songs and made big hits out of them. I’d love to see one of the X-Factor clonoids do Brenda’s Iron Sledge or (probably more appositely) Sheila’s Having Her Brain Out, but I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

The 2006 documentary Sex, Food, Death … and Insects follows Hitchcock, Buck and other musical collaborators as they work through the songs that would make it onto the Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three albums Olé Tarantula and Propeller Time. These songs mark a continued resurgence in Robyn’s fortunes, and are equal part rippling psychedelia and heartfelt pop-folk. It’s tough to write a song that can sound warm and tender while keeping in the weird angles and off-note touches that make Hitchcock’s stuff so much fun. These songs nail it time and again.

The documentary has a pleasingly intimate air, bringing us into Hitchcock’s rambling house, where Olé Tarantula was recorded. The process is ramshackle, ad hoc and spontaneous, leading to songs filled with happy accidents and unexpected guest turns. John Paul Jones drops in for a cuppa and a couple of chiming mandolin solos. Robyn’s niece Ruby Wright adds lovely, quavering musical saw to the proceedings. It feels like a delightful way to make an album. Defences drop. The famously grumpy Peter Buck airs his grievances about being part of one of the biggest bands in the world, and how much more he prefers the Venus Three. Certainly, his guitar work evokes R.E.M. at their jangly, shiny best.

But Hitchcock is the revelation here. Wise, centered and at peace, he seems the very opposite of the stereotypical eccentric. He observes things in a different way to most of us, certainly. But because he is so observant, he has a well-stocked cupboard of imagery to play with, and it’s the way he recontextualises these that brings up the surreality in his songwriting. When he talks about rotating elephants in the song Belltown Ramble, he’s talking about a sign he saw above a Seattle car-wash, in the district of the title. There’s reason and method to everything he does. The insight we get from these moments, along with the wonderful music are what make Sex, Food, Death … and Insects such a satisfying watch.

Tell you what, have a couple of clips.

Thanks and blessings to the inestimable Timothy P. Jones, without whom this documentary would not have hit my DVD playing machine.

The Face Of Dredd

The release yesterday of the first real look at Karl Urban as Judge Dredd sent a certain portion of the nerdiverse, myself included, into geekgasm. It’s great to finally see the character up close. Every still we’ve seen up to now, coupled with Alex Garland’s taut, claustrophobic script, shows that Dredd The Movie is going to be a grim and gritty affair. The man in his scuffed bike leathers and stubble owes as much to Mad Max as the version we see every week in 2000AD.

I still think the helmet’s too big. But then, in the comic it has to serve as the top half of his head. Some artists have drawn it as so close-fitting that it would be impossible to get off. Either that, or Joe Dredd has made the ultimate sacrifice, and shaved off his ears. Urban’s hat is as close as dammit to the one that I have been drawing since I was 9, with the obvious exception of having to serve a real world purpose.

Of course, we’re now a world away from the Stallone version with the spandex and gold-plated plastic and the talking gun and flying bike. I cannot in all honesty defend the 1995 movie, although the first ten minutes is a very fine adaptation of the “Block War!” story. And goddamn, Stallone has the chin for the job. But I’m a purist, and the moment the hat came off was the moment that I lost interest.

Of course, you could argue that Dredd has taken his helmet off and we have indeed seen his face. At which point I’d note that you can’t fool a fanboy, because it’s clear you’re talking about The Dead Man. This was a spin-off strip set in The Cursed Earth that followed a drifter, burnt beyond all recognition, who is taken in by a friendly family of mutants. But the man has a past, and it hasn’t finished with him. The big reveal, that few readers saw coming was that The Dead Man was an amnesiac Dredd, left for dead by The Dark Sisters Of The Apocalypse.

This story is a major milestone in the Judge’s long history, and I’d argue it ties him much more explicitly to the fictional exploits of another iconic loner, Clint Eastwood. If Dredd in MegaCity is Dirty Harry, then in The Dead Man he has become, quite literally, The Man With No Name. Scarred and haunted, he becomes a clear analogue to the ghostly avengers of westerns like Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter. The look, though, is clearly based on William Munny in Unforgiven. His return to Megacity and Judgehood is marked by reconstructive surgery. The glimpse at Dredd’s face that we get in The Dead Man is fleeting and illusory. For the most part, we are left with the early legend that he is simply too ugly to be looked at directly.

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The fact that we never see Dredd’s face is kind of the point. He was imagined as an avatar of justice, soul-less, almost machinelike in his single minded dedication to The Law (always capitalised, as much an abstract concept as a set of rules). Through the last 34 years and thousands of progs, he has become much more, while still staying true to the core idea. He’s a cipher, on which any number of stories can be hung.

I’m pleased that the makers of the movie have embraced the unwritten rule of the character, and the helmet will be staying firmly on Karl Urban’s head. besides, as any fan knows, the face of Dredd is not the most important part…

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Six Thousand Days

To be accurate, six thousand, two hundred and six. There’s probably some flexibility in there to allow for leap years and other temporal shenanigans. Let’s stick to my back-of-an-envelope calculations for simplicity’s sake, then do a little division to come up with a rounder figure.

Seventeen years and a day ago, I stood up in front of a friendly looking registrar and a bunch of friends and family, and made a promise. I’ve broken many pledges since that day, whether by accident, spite or sheer laziness, but this one has been kept.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have someone beside me to help do that, and I would no more let her down than I would choose to stick my right arm into a wood chipper.

It all seems so mind-bogglingly simple to me that I find it hard to write it down without relying on mush and platitudes. I made a pledge. I kept and continue to keep it. in that simple act, I have found contentment.

I won’t dispute that I have been lucky, that I married my best friend, muse and lover. I do not consider the alternatives, all the choices and decisions that had to fall the right way to lead us to a bright room in the West Midlands six thousand and some days ago. I simply remain grateful that they happened in the way they did.

Seventeen years can seem like a long time. A lot of things have happened. A lot of things have changed. But the promise, and everything we have built using it as a foundation, remains unbroken. I intend to keep that promise, in the same way I always have. Day by day.

Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow?

A short Twitter conversation the other night about Richard Hammond’s tv show Journey to The Centre Of The Planet had me musing on the state of science programming. It’s not great, to be blunt. Hammond’s show was damned by knowledgeable observers like X&HTeam-mate MadameWDW…

A problem with Hammond's appalling Centre of the Planet programme is that it's relying on its audience being thicker than the earth's crust

— WDW Kate (@Wetdarkandwild) July 19, 2011

She echoed the consensus.

Science shows seem to fall into camps nowadays. You have the big specials, filled with expensive CGI and hosted by a housewives’ favourite, full of sound and fury and very little content. I’d roll the James May show where he plays with oversized Lego into this camp, too. You have shows like Spring/Autumnwatch, cosy and cute, slipping in odd bits of science amidst all the cute wittle chickywickies and a disturbingly gleeful focus on hedgehog poo.

Then you have Bang Goes The Theory, a more polite version of Discovery’s Mythbusters and a direct descendent of Hammond-hosted shows like Blast Lab and Brainiac. You could maybe parse two minutes of interest out of these shows. They’re light entertainment disguised with a white coat and protective goggles. Not that I have a problem with blowing things up on camera in the name of science, but the shows are painfully thin on actual content. Finally, god help us, the hipster Top Gear that is The Gadget Show. It’s thin gruel, but on occasion rolls out an innovation or two amidst the endless competitions and tests of the top five waterproof cameras.

There’s a hole in the schedule.

I mourn, Readership, for a memory. I mourn for a show that combined raffish charm with excitement and enthusiasm for the science of the day. I mourn for a show forged in the era of the white heat of technology, that is ever more needed in this most sciencefictional of centuries.

I miss Tomorrow’s World.

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, TW had the sort of sway, impact and viewership that was only topped by shows like Top Of The Pops. It was slick and glamourous, and not afraid to talk to it’s audience like grown-ups. It was wide-ranging, yet capable of bringing depth and focus to a subject when it was needed. It roamed the world, from the science parks and boffins of rural England to the rocket jockeys of the California deserts. In William Woollard it had a genuine, frequently shirtless sex symbol. In Raymond Baxter, a Chairman Of The Board, a smooth-talking master at the tricky job of making science approachable. You never felt you were being talked down to. Tomorrow’s World was pacy, newsy and in the right place at the right time. It was at the forefront of the computer boom of the early eighties, showed us the first home video cameras and recorders, and was all over the launch of the shuttle Enterprise. As Atlantis touched down for the last time, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge that the Tomorrow’s World team weren’t there to welcome it home.

As science becomes increasingly under threat from swivel-eyed fundamentalists and swingeing budget cuts, I think the time is right for a revival. A weekly science-based magazine show would be a great way to spark interest in the field. We need the legacy of Baxter, Woollard, Michael Rodd and the others more than ever. Let’s celebrate the world of tomorrow, with a show that will give us up-to-the-minute updates in the fast-moving field of science and technology. Boing Boing TV, anyone?

(Speaking of Boing Boing, they’ve posted some background to the picture that heads up this post. Short version: the lady, Jane Root, was a test subject into early prenatal gender screening in the 1950s. She’s just been told she’s having a girl.

I suggest that you show that picture to the next person that tries to tell you that science is a soul-less, uncaring endeavour, and then tell them to go gruff in a hat. I love this picture. And I fucking LOVE science.)

A Portrait

TLC is famously camera-shy, especially when it comes to whacking photos of her up on the interwebs.

Who can blame her. I hide behind a cartoon rabbit avatar, after all. There’s a lot of discussion around about privacy on the net, and how far that extends into how we present ourselves online. Should we be compelled into an internet profile that consists of our own faces, our real names? For the kids growing up with Facebook, privacy seems to be a thing of the past. Everything about you is shared, without a second thought. All your indiscretions, your saddest, silliest moments, those face-pulling pics, the whole shebang. Your life in all it’s wobbly-eyed, crazed magnificence.

If you want to do that, fine. Not my bag. I cringe and run for my privacy settings whenever Facebook roll out a new feature. I know a few people that are moving to Google+ for that very reason, one because Facebook would not allow him to post under an pseudonym. The point is, freedom of expression also means freedom to express yourself as much or as little as you want, and the presentation of your online self is a vital part of that. Identity can be currency in the 21st century, and I think it’s good to be careful.

Your pseudonymous life doesn’t have to be completely fictional, of course. That way can lead to disaster. A carefully chosen avatar, a handle to which you’ve given a little thought, can give a flavour of your character. It’s up to you how much, or how little, you choose to show to the world.

With that in mind, then, here’s a pic which sums up TLC and her sweet, gentle nature perfectly – to me, at least.

A Sorry Excuse

The thing about apologies is that you have to mean them. Or at the very least, make a decent effort at looking like you mean them. I don’t think anyone’s convinced by the half-hearted mumbless that Rupes, Red and the rest of the crew have made about the ongoing debacle/funniest story of the year that threatens to engulf News International, in the same way that a hungry squid will go at a bag of doughnuts.

To me, the full-page apology and the press statements we’ve had up to now read like the sort of thing you’d get from a ten-year old that’s been dragged up to your front door by his dad after being caught scrumping apples.

“Say you’re sorry, Rupert.”

“msrry.”

“I don’t think the nice man heard that, Rupert.”

“I SAID I’M SORRY, ALRIGHT? I’M SOOOREEEEEE. Cuh, you deaf, or what?”

That Murdoch kid needs a good clip round the ear.

Anyway, the problem is that we now see anything coming out of the News International Eye of Sauron as inherently untrustworthy. Even if the apology published yesterday was heartfelt, that’s not the way most of us perceived it. Tied in with a self-aggrandising interview Rupes did with one of his own papers, the Wall Street Journal, in which softball questions were gently lobbed and batted away, and you have the prime example of Journalistic Crime Numero Uno.

The whole situation isn’t helped by the Murdoch’s magnanimously agreeing to give evidence at the upcoming Select Committee – after receiving a parliamentary summons which meant they couldn’t really say no. That’s going to be an absolutely prime moment of comedy television. I’m thinking about setting up a drinking game. Take a shot every time Rupes, Red or Spud say “I don’t recall…” or “I have no knowledge of…” I think we’ll all be very drunk, very quickly.

To sum up the whole sorry state of affairs, I can’t really put it any better than this.

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Big Society Blues

With all the hoopla, furore and general whoop-te-doo surrounding the Murdochs, Sky and a newspaper industry that’s looking more like a badly run spy network everyday, it’s important to keep your eyes open for the other news announcements. The ones that get sneaked out while everyone’s looking somewhere else. Even if they’re not bad news, you have to wonder why the story has to come out at that moment.

The latest example of this has been David Cameron’s renewal of the Big Society pledge. This is the coalition’s attempt to bring public services up to speed by allowing volunteer, charity and business interests to compete for their provision. Competition is, after all, a good thing, leading to more choice and value for money.

Well, yes and no. I agree wholeheartedly that the volunteer and charity sector is vital to the well-being of the country. I’m completely behind the notion that communities should help each other out, that local knowledge trumps diktats from a remote central office. And I also believe that we can see when there is a need for community action, and are able to quickly unite to solve problems. We Brits are also a charitable bunch – look at what we do every year for Comic Relief, for urgent DEC fundraising efforts in places like the Sudan. Frankly, we already get The Big Society.

The thing is, I’m not sure that Cameron and the coalition government do. Savage cuts to council funding have already started to bite the very groups on which this new strategy is supposed to depend. Across the country, these groups are scaling back services or are forced to close just at the point when they are being asked to take on a more frontline role.

And that’s the thing that worries me most. Charities and volunteer groups should enhance and complement, not replace existing local services. When councils decide to displace, for example, trained professional librarians with a squad of volunteers, there’s clearly no understanding that it’s a complex and labour-intensive job. It’s not simply shelf-stacking, and you can’t pick it up in an afternoon. Worse, what is supposed to happen in deprived areas where people simply can’t afford the time to help out?

I’m not alone in thinking this either. Oxfam’s trading director David McCullough has already spoken out on the issue after the charity was approached by other councils for advice on using volunteers. He says:

“A vibrant, engaged community starts from an investment in infrastructure and skills, which can then be supplemented with a willing volunteer base. Cutting jobs for trained staff and hoping to fill the space with volunteers will not deliver a stable, long-term solution.”

I think that while there is nothing wrong in principle with The Big Society idea, there are big problems in the way it’s being implemented and managed. And I also can’t help but agree with critics who suspect at a time when local councils are having to cut budgets by 27% over four years, placing responsibility on local residents is just cover for cutting council services. When the budgets for the groups who are supposed to take up the slack are being cut as well, you have to wonder who’s in charge, and what they think they’re playing at.