fire and forget

This guy is no more genuinely an English and Drama teacher than I am. Also, he should be ashamed of himself for mugging at the camera about how great Barclay’s new Personal Reserve option is. Basically it means if you go over your overdraft limit, Barclays charge you — revolutionary! — which Squinty McFucktard tells us is a personal favour from those kind-hearted multibillionaire dictator-sponsoring can’t-be-bothered-to-open-on-a-Saturday chiselling shitehawks.

I’m actually developing a grudging respect for Barclays: every time I think there’s no way they could make me hate them more, they pull something out of the bag. I’m glad I pissed that two grand they gave me up the wall. That’ll bloody learn ‘em.

“I ain’t gonna bury you again, you son of a bitch”

Came a bit late to this series, but I just tanned an Amazon voucher getting the first six trades. The series, written by Robert Kirkman and drawn mostly by Blighty’s own Charlie Adlard, follows the travails of a group of survivors in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. What I love about The Walking Dead is the juxtaposition of logistical trivia — how they get by on an everyday level — with extreme violence — headlopping the undead — and frequent crowning moments of awesome. Our nominal hero, down-to-earth small-town cop Rick, gets most of them: upon learning that his former partner, who had an affair with his wife and then tried to kill him, may have turned into a zombie and is probably buried (kind of) alive, Rick digs him up just so he can kill him again. Later, beating a child-murderer so hard he breaks all his own fingers is pretty grim, but still pretty bad-ass.

As much as I like Rick, it has to be said that the baddest crowning moment of badassery belongs to hammer-wielding Tyrese. After his daughter is killed in a botched suicide pact, the inexplicably calm ex-pro footballer decides to clear out a gymnasium full of zombies as a sort of catharsis. His friends carefully and methodically shoot each zombie — crucially remembering to stay near the door — but Tyrese gets hammer-happy and wades into the ghouls. He’s soon overwhelmed, and his horrified friends are forced to leg it. When this is related to Rick he demands to know if anyone actually saw Tyrese’s body, and busts into the gym. Where Tyrese sits, surrounded by a gym full of definitely-not-coming-back zombies: “What kept you?” Nails hard.

“A little fight in you. I like that…”

***SPOILERS!***

At the risk of harping on about The Dark Knight, I was reading the excellent Girl-Wonder.org, and it got me thinking about the gender politics of Christopher Nolan’s Bat-opus. I’m a sucker for masculine bonding and professional, or men-on-a-mission, stories. But why did Rachel Dawes have to die?

Skipping the snarky jokes about killing the Katie Holmes version being OK, it’s obvious in narrative terms why Dawes dies. She’s the one thing that all the characters care about. Harvey Dent loves her; Bruce Wayne sees her as symbolic of his someday/maybe release from the mantle of the Bat; and Jim Gordon trusts her, a pretty exclusive honour in this troubled town. And someone we care about has to die, otherwise the Joker’s sense of menace isn’t validated — killing faceless extras doesn’t carry the same weight.

Everybody loves Dawes, so her death has far-reaching implications. And she’s the only character not entrenched in the Batman mythos. Dent, Gordon, or Alfred can’t die because they can’t be replaced. Lucius Fox maybe, but as the most benign presence in the film that would just be cruel. So we kill the girl.

Because that’s what she is. She’s the girl. She’s the moral centre for the men taking care of business, but she has no role in moving the story forward except to provide motivation for the men. Holmes’ limp incarnation didn’t convince for a second that she was a crusading lawyer, so credit to Gyllenhall’s more authoritative take. Yet the one point when the script calls for her to do some lawyering, when she interviews Lau in the MCU holding cell, could have been given to Dent and the story wouldn’t have skipped a beat. As such, she’s replaceable.

Just as Vicki Vale, Chase Meridien, Julie Madison, Vesper Fairchild, Silver St. Cloud and the rest are disposable and replacable, Dawes is the only who can go. Then there’s Judge Freel, who gets blown up, and Ramirez, who is a corrupt cop. But not even a cool, badass corrupt cop, just one who loves her dear old mum, gawd bless’er.

It’s galling that a female character — the female lead, no less, can’t be more than the voice of reason who provides motivation for the men, by looking pretty and then dying. It’s called Girlfriend in a Refridgerator Syndrome.

What makes it worse in this context, is Gordon’s death. When Gordon dies, I felt that the gloves were off. Holy shit, they’ve killed one of the main characters from the comic! Anything can happen! Except, of course, he isn’t dead. The guys don’t die.

Incidentally, see if you can guess if Dawes shows up in IMDb’s memorable quotes from The Dark Knight, which is stuffed full of great lines. When a character called Tattooed Prisoner gets better dialogue than the female lead, there’s something wrong.

How to right this? Talia al Ghul kicking the shit out of everybody.

I love Frank Miller. But come on:

Tom Cruise as a Nazi might pique a bit of interest in Valkyrie, but seeing that it’s a Brian Singer film has got me fully on board, and the cast has officially elevated me to excited: Stephen Fry, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin McNally, Ian McNeice and more.

There’s also a bunch of German actors, including Christian Berkel from Black Book. Makes you think, if every actor over here gets a go on The Bill, does every German actor eke a living as Nazi soldiers? And which type are they?

***SPOILERS!***

Should Christopher Nolan have killed the Joker?

On one level, I absolutely loved the sense that The Dark Knight is turning into the Batman universe — that there is a rogue’s gallery running around, each doing their own thing for their own reasons and interacting in a grotesque parody of the criminal underworld, with the Batman at the centre as their catalyst and nemesis and best friend. This is way cooler than the previous films’ depiction of successive villains turning up, robbing stuff, getting beaten and that’s the end, then two years later the next villain turns up. Instead, Dark Knight creates Gotham as a living, breathing place. That’s why I love the Scarecrow’s cameo; it shows that Gotham continues between films, that Gotham needs the Bat every cursed, stinking, fear-soaked night, and not just when a celebrity cameo starts robbing socialites and making awful puns.

The thought of the next film opening with Harvey Two-Face running around pursuing his insane agenda and the Joker simmering in his insanity in Arkham Asylum, and– who? the Penguin? emerging as new underworld kingpin? Catwoman? Hush? — fills me with joy. But here’s the problem: the Joker isn’t coming back.

So maybe Nolan should have killed him. I’m not trying to be insensitive about Heath Ledger, who had a great career and seemed like an interesting guy. Nolan left in the scene with the Joker’s corpse in a body bag, so sensitivity shouldn’t be an issue. What’s the alternative? The Joker, who seared a scarred smile across Gotham and made the city — and the film — his own, simply disappears into an Arkham cell? No. Arkham cannot hold him. This Joker made one thing clear: he cannot be stopped.

The Joker’s final scene isn’t defeat, it’s an interlude, as he hangs upside down over Gotham, bloodied but unbeaten. It’s clear he will be back, probably worse than ever. But the actor is dead. If he’s coming back, someone else has to play him. Who? Someone brave, put it that way. Suggestions in the comments, Bat-fans.

Or, he could have been killed. After Heath Ledger died, a judicious recut would have seen the Joker plummet to his death. He plummets from the building, lands in a broken heap, and when approached by the SWAT team, finishes himself off to frame the Batman — like ‘The Dark Knight Returns’: “Whatever’s in him rustles as it leaves.” Or as the cops approach, a grenade falls from his grasp and there is an explosion. Or perhaps he falls, and his body simply… vanishes. Or maybe Harvey should have killed him, or even Jim Gordon.

But maybe the man himself had it right: “You just couldn’t let me go, could you?”

Christopher Nolan 2008

Pretty much faultless, apart from the slightly silly mobile phone sonar. There’s about three climaxes, each better than the last — although the ultimate denouement is a bit talky. And can you really trip over an articulated lorry? Anyway, fripperies aside, this is the most intensely character-driven action movie I think I’ve ever seen. The central relationship between Batman, Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon is a brilliantly-realised men-on-a-mission bonding triangle. But the film belongs to Heath Ledger’s lipsmackingly psychopathic Joker, a true “agent of chaos”. I came home and bought the soundtrack and listened to it all night. By the way they’ve extended the run at the IMAX. See you there.

179, originally uploaded by goodmorningmidnight.

Jenny has added some pictures of us enjoying the sun at the Ben and Jerry’s Sundae. Which was on a Sunday, d’y’see?

A character in Eastenders has just looked at a generic, any-resemblance-to-real-products-is-purely-coincidental, other-products-are-available book called ‘The Tough Guide to Travel’.

Can confidently predict this will be the best film of the year.

Charlie’s War. In the hype surrounding Watchmen and the Dark Knight, and the consequent attention to Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen, and Miller’s Dark Knight and Batman: Year One, and even Millar’s Wanted for Drokk’s sake, I just wanted to say that if you have even the slightest interest in comic books you have to read Charlie’s War. Written by the legend that is Pat Mills, and drawn by Joe Colquhoun. Frankly if anyone can think of a reason why Joe Colquhoun isn’t as legendary as Brian Bolland then they need to rethink their entire life. I cannot overstate the beauty and the tragedy of Charlie’s War. If you have a son, stop reading this shit and give them a copy right this second.

Just come back from an extremely interesting panel discussion involving comics legend Pat Mills, Nikolai Dante creator Robbie Morrison and 7-year 2000AD editor Matt Smith at the BFI. The focus was split between the history of 2000AD and the possibility of the galaxy’s greatest comic on film. Cyber-Matt was a bit cagey about details of upcoming projects, but apparently a new Judge Dredd film may be in the offing…

Smith made a great point about Judge Dredd being a straight man to the insanity of the world around him. That made me realise that suspension of disbelief works with Dredd in almost the opposite way to the usual: instead of placing a changeable character in a believable world, with its own internal logic, Dredd is a fixed point in a world where pretty much anything goes.

Morrison’s recollection of a Dredd story in which Brian Bolland conjures up Hammer horror with a story of waxwork robots escaping into a peasoup fog evokes Dredd’s ability to span genres and styles without sounding a wrong note. Something that has always mystified me about why Dredd endures as a character even though he has almost no character arc now becomes clear to me: he is near-incapable of change, and as such he will always be our fixed point of reference in a world of everyday criminals and aliens, psychos, psychics and super-fiends.

My friend and chief red biro-wielder Nick made an excellent point over a pint or two later, that Dredd is also about the British relationship — or perhaps more accurately, fascination — with American fiction. It occurred to me that Dredd is less about the gap in time between his world and ours, than the gap in space between us and the incipient violence of the States. Dredd was partly inspired by Dirty Harry — or his comic book counterpart, One-Eyed Jack — which suggests that Dredd’s creators weren’t commenting on the crypto-fascist ultraviolent urban hell that could happen way off in the future, but on the crypto-fascist ultraviolent urban hell that was already threatening way off across the Atlantic. And, most importantly, what that means to us.

The Art of the Title Sequence - is a blog with Quicktime movies of interesting title sequences. Particularly interested is the Alien movies intros compared.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to rehab.”

After turning up drunk to a business meeting, acid-tongued and alcohol-soaked matriarch Lucille Bluth is tricked into rehab by her kids. They promptly have to bust her out when Kitty, company secretary-turned-blackmailer, demands to turn over a cooler of evidence to no-one but Lucille. Meeting in an Orange County beachfront bar at the height of spring break, the two women have a drinking contest for the cooler.

Warming up with a cheeky shot (”That one didn’t count”), Lucille ends up waltzing away — still clutching a glass of red wine — leaving Kitty on the table, to the appreciation of the whooping crowd: “She’s in rehab! WOOOO!”

so much blue pt2, originally uploaded by fireandforget.

One of the pictures I took during a recent trip to Monte Carlo to see some new Panasonic Lumix cameras in my role as CNET.co.uk’s camera wonk.