fire and forget

bond reloads, originally uploaded by fireandforget.

A pencil sketch of Daniel Craig as James Bond in Quantum of Solace, as referenced from a magazine about Omega watches. I had to monkey with the levels in Photoshop because the original didn’t scan very well (ie, my pencilling was a bit lazy), otherwise it hasn’t been cleaned up at all.

quantum chase, originally uploaded by fireandforget.

An inked sketch of Daniel Craig as James Bond from the opening scenes of Quantum of Solace — which is rubbish — referenced from a magazine about watches.

Last weekend’s epic tidy-up discovered my copy of Photoshop, so to celebrate I drew this last night, set up my printer and scanned it today, then added motion blur. Not bad for a couple of hours work.

Each season of The Wire features a different version of ‘Way Down in the Hole’, written by Tom Waits for his 1987 album Franks Wild Years [sic]. Here they are:

Season One: The Five Blind Boys of Alabama

Season Two: Tom Waits Waits also sang the extended version playing over the final episode’s closing montage

Season Three: The Neville Brothers This clattering take is my favourite

Season Four: DoMaJe Arranged and recorded specifically for the show, and performed by five Baltimore teenagers: Ivan Ashford, Markel Steele, Cameron Brown, Tariq Al-Sabir, and Avery Bargasse

Season Five: Steve Earle Earle, himself a former addict, also appears in the show as Walon, a recovering addict

Closing Theme: The Fall - Blake Leyh

In fact this whole post is one big spoiler, so if you haven’t got half-way through series 2 of The Wire then stop reading. If you’re watching on BBC2 right now, then step off this motherfucker. Serious, yo, back up or yo ass is gon’ get spoiled, f’real.

Still here? Well, don’t say you weren’t warned. The fact is, I still can’t believe they killed D’Angelo.

Sure, I know why Stringer did it, it makes sense in narrative terms — I’m talking about the writers of the show. Because to me, D’Angelo Barksdale was the heart and soul of The Wire. The show opened at his trial, and even though he left the courtroom he remained on trial, in a battle for his soul between the game and something better. I wanted him to be there until the end, because I was truly gripped as to which way he would go.

The other characters are, to some extent, locked into their roles. McNulty’s battle with his demons is compelling because of the vicarious thrill of watching his legendary exploits, but we know his drinking and whatnot can’t ever overwhelm his love for his kids, and his fierce and contrary desire for justice. I thought maybe Daniels’ ambition would cause him to betray the trust of the detail, but it doesn’t seem to be going that way. And the shark-like Stringer Bell is fascinating, but in his Shakespearean power machinations he’s more the calculating Iago than the tormented Macbeth.

The only other character with as much scope to go as far to either the light or dark side is Bubbles. I love Bubbles; his relapse at the end of season one was heartbreaking. From the spoilers of later series I haven’t avoided I understand that his progress both up and down — and further down — is central to the show. But somehow I can’t see his story being as compelling as D’Angelo’s. Maybe it’s the big soulful eyes, but D’Angelo just burned himself into my consciousness. Maybe it’s the soft-spoken speeches on chess or the Great Gatsby. But I wanted him to make it.

I understand why he was killed, in dramatic as well as narrative terms: it’s almost like the creators proving a point. Life is random, cruel, unexpected, and so is our show. Still, without him there’s a soul-shaped hole in The Wire.

Update: If you haven’t reached the end of Series 3, back the fuck up because there’s another big-ass spoiler pointed straight at your grill. Now they’ve killed Stringer! Two of the three who formed the psychological centre of the story are gone. Again, I understand the contrary desire to deprive us of resolution, but can’t they give us something! I’m dyin’ here! Now we’re stuck with Avon and Marlo, two characters who are pretty similar and not that interesting. I was expecting Avon to go next, in the next stage of Stringer’s machiavellian rise to power.

Still, in the way of light relief, I always crack up whenever Cutty introduces himself as Dennis Wise.

The other week I had the extreme good fortune to get 15 minutes chatting to Dave Gibbons, the thoroughly nice chap behind Watchmen, Martha Washington, Rogue Trooper and loads more. The interview appears at CNET UK: Crave meets Watchmen creator Dave Gibbons. This is the complete transcript:

You must be sick of talking about Watchmen…

No not at all. But I do feel that now the circus is leaving town.

Have you heard about the Judge Dredd movie?

Another one of these things that if it’s done right would be an absolute smash. The problem with the first one was that it was like Robocop had eaten Dredd’s lunch! And also the fact that there was a huge star who wanted to take the helmet off, and I really wish they could have done it without revealing that.

I think one of the successes of Watchmen is that the cast, although they’re wonderful actors, aren’t over-familiar. So you buy into the story, the scenario, without stopping to think “oh that’s that, y’know, the next Dustin Hoffman or Tom Cruise”. I wish the Judge Dredd movie well, I’d like to see it.

I think one of the keys to Dredd is that you never see his face, he’s like the Lone Ranger or something. He’s eternally masked and that’s the essence of his mystery

Are you pleased with how Watchmen turned out?

Very pleased. I feel so flattered that they stuck so closely to what Alan Moore and I did. I just think it’s wonderful. I’ve seen it a few times now. The first time I saw it I’m sure it would have been the experience of people much less close to it than me. It’s just “Oh my God — it’s really happening! It’s Rorschach! He’s gonna say that, this is the bit where this happens…” The second time I saw it I got over that. I saw it as a movie and for two-and-a-half hours I was lost in it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I’d paid ten quid to see it on a Saturday night I’d have been just thrilled.

Do you think it has brought in non-comics people?

Undoubtedly. The thing that’s the key to that is the sales of the graphic novels. Sales of the graphic novel have gone through the roof, and those are people who’ve been intrigued by the trailers, intrigued by the movie, and then saw the graphic novel so I’m sure it brought a lot of people in. And it’s interesting, people seem quite divided on the movie: there are some true fans who like it, some who don’t like it. Some people had never heard of it and really really like it. Some don’t get it. But it’s those ones who weren’t aware of it and had seen it not knowing and got absolutely hooked on it, they’re the real victories.

You were involved with recolouring Watchmen for the Absolute Edition. Is that something you’d have considered before the digital age?

The way that the colour separation was done on Watchmen originally is almost like something out of the Victorian age. You had to do watercolour colour guides with every single area annotated, and it would be something like R2B2 — which isn’t a Star Wars reference, it’s 25 per cent red, 25 per cent blue: it’s a light purple. Every single area had to be coloured like that. It would then go to these ladies who would sit at their kitchen tables with sheets of acetate and they’d paint out all the areas. It was so inefficient.

Every page?

Every page. Three tones of every colour, three tones of red, yellow, blue, so there’s 9 sheets of acetate for every page in a 30 page comic. That’s nearly 300 sheets of acetate. But now of course it’s done by computer, so what John Higgins the original colourist on Watchmen was able to do was go back and correct the mistakes that had inevitably crept in the process. Also of course in the old process you couldn’t do anything subtle; you had to paint up to a line and if there wasn’t a line there they’d just put an edge on the paper. So he was able to get digital files that were exact reproductions of the original colours and then tweak those so that they looked right.

We didn’t make huge changes because we didn’t want to do new work. We wanted to do the equivalent of a digital remastering of a favourite song, where you don’t correct the bum notes but you take the hiss and the scratch off it. You restore it to what it was always meant to be.

When did you start using digital technology in your work?

I first got a computer for my work… Well, I got one to do word processing, an Amstrad, in the mid-80s. But I invested in some serious stuff very early in the 90s. Originally I would do typographic sort of things. Mechanical elements. Then I started to do colouring myself, for which it was wonderful. And now I use it in all kind of ways: I write my scripts on the computer, I do a lot of my rough drawing on the computer because you can be so loose and free on it — you can re-size stuff and move stuff round. I’ve recently got onto a Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet, which is one of these wonderful things where you literally draw on the screen, and that’s just… that’s magic.

So I’ve used a computer increasingly since then. Things that probably wouldn’t occur, things like getting photo reference. You have to have lots of reference when you’re drawing comics. It used to be a trip to the library. Now Google it, and you haven’t got one shot of the car you want, you’ve got 100 shots of the car you want. So, on every level.

One of the main challenges of comics is you have to draw things repeatedly from different angles so 3D modelling programs are very useful there — not making finished models, but models that are good enough to draw from. So there isn’t an area of what I do that hasn’t been improved by technology.

So in theory you can do a comic without putting pen to paper at all?

You can. I’ve done bits of artwork where nothing has ever been drawn. On the computer I’ll do the roughs, then the pencils, then the inks, then the colour, and, y’know, it feels strange to begin with… And of course, the one downside is you’re not left a piece of original artwork that you can sell! But it certainly saves a hell of a lot of time, particularly if you ever have to do any correction or any redrawing. I’m moving increasingly towards ‘the paperless studio’.

Did publishers embrace that kind of technology?

There was resistance, because I think in a sense publishers liked to see what they’d paid for. They liked to have a page of original artwork, and actually a physical object. I think it’s a thing that had to reach a critical mass: a friend of mine called Richard Starkings, who runs a company called Comicraft who do digital lettering, he had terrible trouble with DC Comics, trying to get them to accept digital lettering. What he used to have to do was do it digitally, then print it out and cut and paste it physically onto the artwork.

But then Marvel Comics embraced it, because of course in production it’s a huge time-saver. Someone can do the pencil drawings, and they can be lettered while somebody is inking the pencil drawings, and they can be coloured while they’re still being inked. So it absolutely streamlines the whole production process. And it actually means that there is no longer the liability if original artwork that it might get lost or damaged, the problems of storing it. I think all the publishers prefer digital now.

Were British and American attitudes different? Because they’re such different systems for making comics.

I think everything’s becoming kind of global, so many Brits work for American comics, and so many British comics like 2000AD are virtually exclusively coloured digitally, the lettering’s now done on computer so the fields are interchangeable. The other thing is you can quite happily live in England and work for America — or live in California and work for England, because transfer is instantaneous. I’m of an age where, when I first started making comics, there was no such thing as Fedex. There certainly wasn’t such a thing as a fax machine. So if you wanted to send a page of script then you had to get it physically delivered to the guy. Now, as you know, it’s the work of a moment: you write it, you send it. You draw it, you send it.

That must have been difficult with Alan Moore’s scripts being so famously dense — must have been some big packages arriving…

That’s true, and also what used to happen when Alan was really under a lot of deadline pressure he wasn’t able to do an entire script. I have had two sheets of typing paper delivered from Northampton where Alan lived, delivered to Hertfordshire where I live, in a taxi because there weren’t any fax machines

That must have made for a white knuckle experience…

Yeah! He said that the money he spent on taxis was god’s punishment for making him rich.

He could have been richer if he’d been more involved in the films, but obviously… (I tail off, wishing I hadn’t said that)

Well, that’s true, it’s… he’s had a real bad time with Hollywood and he didn’t want to repeat it with Watchmen. He does get royalties on the sales of the graphic novel which is right, but yeah… I’ve had a very good experience on the movie, I perfectly respect his decision not to be involved with it, and we’re still friends which is the most important thing to me. But I do think of all the movies that have been made of Alan’s work this is the one that comes closest to the spirit of the original.

You’ve worked with Frank Miller as well. What do you think it is about their work that makes them so attractive to Hollywood?

Well I think they’re wonderful writers. For a start, their characters and their stories are of huge interest. Y’know, Frank I think has always been directed at Hollywood, that’s always been part of his plan to end up in Hollywood. He’s a visual storyteller and he can write and draw both, so… I just think they’re very talented people. But their approach is completely different. Alan is like Mozart, everything’s like a symphony. Frank is like jazz, he kind of jumps about, it’s improvised.

William Friedkin 1985

I bloody love Michael Mann-style neo-noir crime dramas. For some reason I actually thought To Live and Die in LA was a Michael Mann film, but it is in fact written and directed by William Friedkin (based on a novel by real life Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich). For the earlier sections of the film, the Miami Vice-style flashiness looks kind of dated, drenched in some really hackneyed cop-macho bullshit lines. But underneath the 80s glitz, Friedkin’s ’70s nihilism is lurking, especially in the risky “What just happened?!” ending. It’s also possibly the only crime thriller ever made with a contemporary dance sequence.

CSI’s William Petersen (having already appeared in Mann’s Thief) is cocksure, ego-driven obsessive Treasury Agent Richard Chance, determined to avenge the death of his partner at the hands of Willem Dafoe’s kinky counterfeiter Rick Masters. John Pankow turns in a realistically panicky performance as Petersen’s new partner John Vukovich, and I’d have liked to have seen more of him: apparently in a deleted scene he attempts to reconcile with his ex-wife, which would have added more weight to the ending.

We also get John Turturro as more of a tough than he usually plays, Frazier’s Jane Leeves as a lineless lesbian dancer, and Dean Stockwell as a conniving lawyer.

The film has dated badly in some ways. There are a lot of contemporary-feeling elements, like the technical exercise that is the counterfeiting sequence: we follows Masters’ funny money printing process in extreme detail, momentum building to the point that Wang Chung’s driving soundtrack is perfectly synchronised with the clanking of the printing press. It’s the sound of the 80s: drum machines and money and excess.

The opening credits, with their garish global hypercolour neon fonts, should look dated but actually add to the sense of place. It’s the dialogue and some of the early plot elements that look awful now: from the tacked-on, no-relation-to-the-rest-of-the-story opening sequence involving a suicide bomber and a reeeeally cheap explosion, to the impending retirement (and therefore grimly-inevitable murder) of the hero’s partner. With three days to go before he gets to spend his days fishing, Chance’s partner, mentor and best friend drives out into the desert to follow a lead. It’s not a spoiler to say the daft old bastard doesn’t come back. I had the same feeling as when I watched the pilot episode of Mann’s Miami Vice: that this was a slick, stylised new form of crime drama that hadn’t yet shaken off the plot clichés.

The film kicks into gear later, when Chance and Vukovich rob a fence to acquire front money to trap Masters. Needless to say, things go downhill from there. There’s a car chase that doesn’t have quite the visceral immediacy of the French Connection, but has obviously learnt some tricks from that film and in some of the camerawork may even be technically better. One shot in particular grabbed me, a stunning tracking dolly in which we follow Chance’s speeding car, then rise to an overpass to seamlessly meet the pursuers, before Chance screams back into shot and blasts off up a sidestreet.

I won’t say much about the ending, except to note that it almost comes from a different film than the beginning. The nearly-retired murdered partner is such a hackneyed cliché - surely even in 1985! - that I was considering turning the film off. But by the climax, To Live and Die in LA has raced into twisty noir territory and out the other side, into a bleakly brutal shock ending and a psychologically sophisticated final moment. You won’t see it coming.

Is there a name for that game with the marbles where you build a massive tower and stick a marble in and it’s different every time? Is that even a game or am I reaching for a metaphor? Anyway, I’m writing this to explain how I find people on Twitter, and to point you at this post for future reference if I have followed you.

Number 1 criteria for me following you:

YOU RULE.

Hellz yeah you do. I don’t believe in reciprocal following, so if you follow me and I don’t follow you back, it’s because I’m not that keen on all your @replies or all your links or your being dull. Sorry. It’s not you, it’s me.

But if I’m following you and you don’t know where I came from, it’s because of the marbles thing. I sometimes pick someone I think is cool/witty/hella smart and look at their followers — because if this person is cool/witty/hella smart then the people they follow must be fucking cool/extra witty/hella fricking smart, right? I then hit follow A LOT and then look at their followers and just follow the marbles wherever they cascade because I’d rather be a part of your stream of consciousness for a bit than never know you at all.

So if I stumble into your circle of friends without knocking, no offence. It’s only ’cause you look like the cool kids and I’m bored of hovering in the kitchen. This is me saying Hi. HI. Who’s for Jäger shots?

With the news that Google is cutting Jaiku loose, I thought it was time to rescue my review of Reading 2007 (the reason I signed up in the first place, because Twitter wouldn’t work with my phone) before it disappeared into the ether, typos and all…

Thursday, 23 August 2007

Starting as I mean to in on: failed to get a haircut, go to the post office, or eat. But i do have wellies. Wellies! In August!

The last pair in Forest Hill Garden centre, no less.

Waiting by the gate for tickets. Enterprising souls have just sold me 2 tall Buds for 1 pound

We’re about to get on a boat and cross the River… Reading? There better be beer on the other side.

Tent is up! Beers on board!

Beers onboard! Have stolen some guy’s Becks while on a boat. Still wearing wellies.

All of a sudden it’s nighttime. We have wristbands, so let’s go to the leisure centre for a indiedisco!

The noise! Reading is loud. I am old and I may in to bed

Friday, 24 August 2007

Gah. I had forgotten about the wondrous experience that is waking up in a tent with 8 beers clamouring to get out.

Arena isn’t open yet. No-one’s going anywhere.

Big in Reading: Writing swearwords on your tent. Writing swearwords on your arm. Swearing.

Fuck yeah.

It’s only the first morning and I feel like my whole body is covered in a fine layer of grit. Especially my eyeballs.

It’s easy to be cynical about the Pipettes, but there picture-postcard pop has am irresistably breezy charm. I’m in love with all three of them.

I don’t have Little Man Tate as much as I want to. Sure they have the posing Northern swagger and a tendency to insert swearing into their song titles, but those songs are actually quite hummable.

That’s meant to be “I don’t hate…” of course.

The Riverboat Gamblers are every bit as sleasy, bluesy and raucous as the name suggests, but Jasper H. Crisp, what’s with the sightlines in the LockUp tent?!

The Sounds are a scandodisco party in your pants and everyone’s invited! It’s like the ’80s, only sexy.

I tried the King Blues because I heard their uke. Then they revealed themselves to be a reggae band, of all tings. I’m off.

The Long Blondes have choruses that grab you by the immaculate ponytail. So why are the rest of the bits so anonymous?

I’m supposed to be getting batteries, but i’m enjoying the blue collar riffing of the Street Dogs too much.

For the girls: oversized shades and undersized shorts. For the boys: shit slogan t-shirts

It’s about four seconds before Beth Ditto’s dress is up sound her waist. All hail the Gossip!

That’s meant to be “around her waist”, obv.

Stumbled into Alberta Cross, all surging redneck rock. For the first time, I forget where I am. Which is awesome.

Maximo Park leap, twitch and jerk into our hands with their fistful of great tunes. I’m singing along - Well, I say ’singing’…

I think ATP may have spoiled me. I’m not enjoying the crush. At least in the Radio 1 tent you can see

Youth Movie Something kind of rock. Aha! I must be drunk, I see multiple people…

Youth Movie Soundtrack, of course.

EnterShikari bring the motherfucking house down. A to the power of Awesome!

Razorlight? Are you fucking kidding? Back to my tent!

Saturday, 25 August 2007

I seem to be spending half my life in queues: for water, for beer, to get in the arena, to get out of the arena, to go the toilet. At least I’m not in the giant queue to, get this, charge your phone. Dumbasses!

I later joined that very queue, inevitably. Or rather I loitered about pretending to look for someone until I could push in.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? are teh awesome. They’re a vocoder stomping rave riot in a speak’n’spell factory. Awe, seriously, sum

Those typos are deliberate. That’s how the kids talk.

Mute Math make a howling racket, a wig-out that involves the drummer taking his skins and climbing the keyboards. A show!

Bought an awesome jacket for the cashback and I’ve just discovered it’s reversable! Cashback!

God knows where that jacket is now. Probably on a nightbus.

Nine Black Alp actually look about nine years of age. But they make a great squalling racket

Nine Black Alps, of course.

Metronomy: Fisher Price Kraftwerk. Look Ma, I’m dancing!

Metronomy: Kraftwerk doing big beat sea shanties

Panic! At The Disco have just bored the shit out of everyone.

Silversun Pickups are a cheerful bunch making a noise like the world is ending, with a bang and a shower of sparkles.

Battles is the sound of a supercomputer being dropped down the stairs and mysteriously being endowed with the funk.

!!! have everyone moving like a dance-off in a special needs home.

Sunday, 26 August 2007

Sat by the river in the blazing sun, drinking chilled beer. If only life was always like this

Me and Craig left the site, desperate for ice. We got drunk by the river by about 11 before heading back.

I really wish Clare was here

Well, I did.

Billy Talent! Er, that’s it

I was wankered by this point, and it was only about 2. After this I fell over and didn’t bother getting up for several hours, and only then because I really wanted to see the Cold War Kids even though all available evidence suggested I was about to die.

I’ve come home drunk and the Cold War Kids have pushed me down the stairs. Spiteful.

I like Fall Out Boy and everything, but is there any need for three covers in one mid-afternoon set?

A Vimto ice lolly has literally just saved my life

Thought I was going to die for a minute there. Even Jamie T couldn’t help.

My hair is so greasy I actually thought I was wearing a hat. lolz!

I also saw Charlotte Hatherley, the Noisettes, the Subways and loads of others but evidently couldn’t be bothered to Jaiku about them. Photos are here.

Caught in Session - Snuff
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
Mars: Bringer of War - Gustav Holst
Saturn V - Inspiral Carpets
The Rockford Files - Mike Post

Frank Miller 2008

‘Comic book movie’ can mean two things: a movie based on a comic book, or a movie that follows the kind of broad entertainment value, gravity-free logic and near-slapstick violence most people associate with comics. Some movies, like Ghost World, A History of Violence or Road to Perdition, fall into the first category but not the second. Some fall into the second, like Con Air (or just about any action movie that involves people shooting oil drums to make them blow up, then walking away from the explosion in slow-motion) without any evidence that they’re working from a printed script, let alone a printed comic. Some movies, especially in the superhero genre, fall into both. The Spirit is both, and takes the concept of a comic book movie to the extreme.

We’re launched straight into the story of Central City’s masked crimefighter the Spirit (Gabriel Macht) as he takes on mad scientist and drug-peddling villain the Octopus (Samuel L Jackson). Our hero is Denny Colt, a rookie cop presumed dead but still capable of charming the ladies, including his boss’ daughter Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson) and old flame-turned master-thief Sand Seraf (Eva Mendes).

In the Spirit comic, Will Eisner pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the comic book form, and invented many sophisticated techniques still used today. Director Frank Miller shoots for this kind of invention, crafting the film from digital elements, his high-powered cast placed on a green-screen background and echoing many of the comic’s iconic shots.

It’s a bold approach, bringing the live-action film-making process of the comic book movie (the first kind) as close as possible to comic creation, where the only special effects budget is the creator’s imagination. Robert Rodriguez made it work in his shot-for-panel adaptation of Miller’s Sin City. Sadly, in this case it just doesn’t work.

The reason Sin City worked is because, per the title, the location was a character itself. The brick walls framed the chiselled granite toughness of the men, the stark chiaroscuro lighting echoed the beauty and darkness of the women, with everybody mixed up like cats in a sack in that crazy burg. It’s a trick honed from Eisner’s trailblazing use of the location as part of the framework of his comic, and vice versa. Where Sin City’s location and look defined the book and the film, The Spirit fails to repeat the trick. For all of the lead’s tortured voiceover about ‘his city’ we never get a sense of the place. Apart from generic (if exhilarating) rooftop-jumping, the backgrounds are often unclear and open. With greenscreen providing an option to place the characters anywhere that can be conceived, all too often the cast feel like they’re standing on a soundstage accompanied only by a smoke machine.

The film also takes the anti-logic of the comic book movie (the second kind) to extremes. Eisner’s Spirit was an ordinary joe, unlike Superman’s superpowered alien or Batman’s millionaire gadget-fetishist. Eisner’s Spirit’s only crime-fighting equipment were his fists, yet he seemed capable of taking regular beatings that should have seen him in a (second) early grave. Miller latches onto this, adding a superhuman element to the Spirit’s toughness, and making a plot point of the extended scraps between hero and similarly-endowed villain. Miller has thankfully toned down some of the excesses he apparently had in mind, and the conflict between Spirit and Octopus actually works well, with Sand Seraf’s subplot intertwining nicely.

But once again a lack of context hamstrings the story: we know the Octopus is a drug dealer from a throwaway line, rather than a visit to the seedy side of town that would have both established his villainy and given us a glimpse of the city’s character and texture. Miller seems more interested in giving the Octopus a series of non-sequitur costume changes, which are fun but overly long and talky, and ring hollow in the absence of context. Is the Octopus a Nazi? No, he just likes the uniform.

Macht does reasonably well with his square-jawed milk-and-cookies hero, his compulsive womanising staying the right side of innocence in his wide-eyed expression. Miller is willing to have fun with the character (”Somebody bring me a tie… and it better be red!“) but gives Jackson too much rope without any really killer lines to shout (instead barking tosh like “C’mon… Toilets are always funny!”). The highlight is another entrancing turn from Eva Mendes, whose ruthless yet smoulderingly fragile thief deserves her own movie.

Den of Geek has a list of movies that don’t have endings. Rather than trying to think of suggestions they might have missed, I started thinking about movies that have too many endings — and as such, spoilers abound — prompted by…

Air Force One
…because it was on last night. Russian dissidents hijack Vietnam vet Harrison Ford’s plane, and he fights back in his signature rumpled everyman style. Aside from having an astonishingly high number of innocent people getting wasted, there’s not much noteworthy about this Die Hard 2 clone (yes, it’s not even a Die Hard clone!) until we get to the end. There’s a final showdown in which a shifty Brass off of CSI shows he’s a patriot after all by throwing himself in front of a bullet destined for President Han Solo, complete with slow-motion roar. Then there’s another fight in which chief villain Gary Oldman is tossed out of the back with the last parachute by President Jack Ryan (”Get off my plane!”), but that’s not the end. There’s a MiGed-up dogfight which culminates in a random fighter jock shows he’s a patriot above all by throwing his plane in front of a missile destined for President Indy, complete with slow-motion roar — but that’s not the end either. The plane still has to be landed, and at least here the film sidesteps talking-down-the-inexperienced-pilot-from-the-tower cliché by knackering the plane’s engines. Instead we get a protracted sequence of characters ziplining to another plane, at which point a traitorous Secret Service agent reveals his hand, despite the fact that he’s totally escaped detection* and has no actual reason to kill President John Book. He shoots loveable William H Macy — another example of how callous this film is with its supporting cast — before President Richard Kimble beats him up and jumps out, leaving Air Force One to ditch in the sea. Which, with plenty of support on hand, may not actually have been the worst thing in the world. I wasn’t timing, but it seems like a good twenty minutes of faffing about after Gary Oldman’s scenery-chewing baddie is dispatched, and that’s just not on.

*although frankly, the mere fact that he’s Xander Berkely should have set alarm bells ringing in the Secret Service. On the form you have to fill in to get into the Secret Service, it should say at the top ‘Are you Xander Berkely? Yes/no’. Even above ‘name’. It should say ‘If you answered yes, get on your knees, interlace your fingers behind your head, and wait to be carted off to whichever third world country we’re currently carting wrong’uns off to. If you answered no, go to question 2′.

Con Air
Now I think about it, this seems like a problem endemic to a certain brand of pre-Bourne action movies, which attempt to top the pyrotechnics of the first ninety minutes in the last twenty minutes. So after Speed’s repeating the bus bits on a subway train (”But I’m taller!”) we get perhaps the nadir of this trend: Con Air. After all the plane-related banging and crashing we get a messy landing right on the Las Vegas strip, from which John Malkovich, Ving Rhames and a big redneck escape in a fire engine. John Cusack and Nic Cage give chase, there’s an overblown but dull scrap, and the fire engine crashes into a bridge. My problem is the number of ways Malkovich is offed: he’s thrown through a glass bridge, electrocuted and finally has his fucking head flattened to a pulp by some kind of construction equipment that seems to have the sole purpose of sitting around waiting to squash somebody’s fucking head. And that’s not to mention the frankly insane ending where paedophile mass murderer Steve Buscemi just gets away!**

**Although it would have been totally awesome if Xander Berkely had just got away.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
The king of films that never fucking end, that is. Oh. My. Gollum. There’s a big battle. That’s got to be the end, right? Oh no, there’s like an hour of Sam and Frodo crying on each other as they try to deny that they’re totally hobbit-hot for each other’s hobbit bottoms. And then there’s the bit with Liv Tyler getting on a boat but wait she’s not getting on the boat aaaagghjesusmakeitstopineedafuckingppppiiiisssss!

Any more suggestions in the comments. But don’t go on too long.

So I’m facing an hour on the tube and I don’t particularly want to listen to my thoughts, because what do they know? It’s the sort of mood that needs music, but the wrong music would be even worse, and I really don’t want to spend the journey fighting with the skip button. Maybe I should just pick something. Off the top of my head I think Ladytron? In masochistic rebellion my finger plays Russian roulette and hits shuffle.

There are 14 Ladytron songs on my iPhone, out of 2096 songs. That’s a 1 in 150 chance of Ladytron being the first song to play.

Runaway fills my ears. I nearly cry.

Runaway - Ladytron
So Lonely - The Police
Jump They Say - David Bowie
Been Training Dogs - The Cooper Temple Clause
There Only Is - Vendetta Red
Pressure On You - Duels
Lend Me Your Face - Fight Like Apes
Hi Fi Killers - Laptop
Hang Me Up To Dry - Cold War Kids
Worst Thing that Can Happen - A
Yeah You - Embrace
Mungo City - Spacehog
Freefall - Audioweb
Miserable - Lit
Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime - Glasvegas

</emo>

2008. Completed my first year at CNET UK, moved from Forest Hill to Clapham Common, did more travelling than in my entire life before, broke up with my girlfriend, and said things like this…

CES Las Vegas

Facebook says Rich has just been choppered out to the Grand Canyon.10:16 PM Jan 6th, 2008

Rich had breakfast at Denny’s, Las Vegas Boulevard, and dinner at the chippie on Devonshire Road. 7:17 PM Jan 9th, 2008

All Tomorrow’s Parties

ATP! After a bloody tortuous journey, I’m in Butlins, I’ve got a beer in my hand, couldn’t be happier 6:29 PM May 16th, 2008

They let us in&out with glasses, & our chalet is twenty yards away-are you thinking what I’m thinking?7:56 PM May 16th, 2008

Facebook says Rich is having an absolute fucking blast at ATfuckingP. 5:49 PM May 17th, 2008

Saul Williams is a BizarroWorld Bowie, a glam-hop fly dog backed by psychotronic ‘frobots 4:31 PM May 17th, 2008

it’s 50/50 between having a great day and just curling up into a ball and whimpering somewhere 2:44 PM May 18th, 2008

Battles are kind of like Adam Ant being raped by Marilyn Manson - only 15x more fun 2:21 AM May 18th, 2008

Southland Tales is Terry Gilliam and Warren Ellis’ Marx Bros porno in the City of Lost Children 10:11 PM May 21st, 2008… May be a jodorowskyesque gothoperapocalypse, but it does have a certain demented symmetry 11:13 PM May 21st, 2008

Facebook says Rich has just got two free Crunchies from the vending machine for the price of one! Jackanackanory! 5:25 PM May 23rd, 2008 from twitterfeed

Rich salutes the Feast, king of choc-ices. 9:42 PM Jun 21st, 2008

Facebook says Rich has run out of things to do on his day off. Another wank? 5:19 PM Jul 24th, 2008

Epson trip to Hong Kong, China and Japan

Rich is just nipping out to China. Back later. 12:44 AM Aug 20th, 2008

Rich is towering 42 stories over Tokyo. Like Godzilla in brothel creepers. 11:45 AM Aug 22nd, 2008

There are upsides to being ill: any day without trousers can’t be all bad 5:27 PM Oct 9th, 2008

Force Quit means Force Quit, like right now. Why does End Task mean keep acting the twat for another ten minutes? 3:56 PM Oct 14th, 2008

Apparently, being Icelandic in May was pretty brilliant: http://bit.ly/1j0vae 1:08 PM Oct 15th, 2008

Well I never: The Japanese invaded Alaska in 1942: http://bit.ly/I07cR 1:31 PM Oct 17th, 2008

Wolverine healing factor? Mario mushrooms? Bollocks. Nothing beats the healing power of a Frank’s lasagna and chips carbopocalypse 5:45 PM Oct 17th, 2008

You know you’re reaching a certain age when the conversation can segue entirely seamlessly from hard drugs to soft furnishings 6:40 PM Oct 20th, 2008

Apparently in the US they say “Liquor and beer/have no fear”. I’m getting this tattooed on my nutsack 1:12 PM Oct 23rd, 2008

Today I have used the phrases “sex-grenade” and “stabbing himself with his own todger” on the site. Truly, I am a serious writer 5:16 PM Oct 23rd, 2008

Twitter does not have to be reciprocal. You do not have to follow me if you think I am a tedious arse - and vice versa. That is all. 6:25 PM Oct 24th, 2008

Story idea: WAX is a washed-up cop- WAYNE is a going-nowhere stoner. Apart, they’re trouble. Together, they are: WAX & WAYNE! Da-der-derr!! 11:25 PM Oct 26th, 2008

If it gets any colder in the office, we’ll have to eat the huskies. 2:25 PM Nov 3rd, 2008

“Granddad, what were you doing when Obama was elected?” “Yeaaahhh… I was watching Crank” 10:26 AM Nov 5th, 2008

defenestration (dē-ˌfe-nə-ˈstrā-shən) n. throwing of a person or thing out of a window 3:39 PM Nov 7th, 2008

defrienestration (dē-ˌfre-nə-ˈstrā-shən) n. removing a friend from your profile on a social network3:41 PM Nov 7th, 2008

@CupCate S’OK, I’ll slip you the answers: 1.Cricket 2.Bangers’n'mash 3.Jeremy Kyle 4.Old Compton St 5.Paying over the odds for everything 11:17 AM Nov 19th, 2008 from web in reply to CupCate: Have just found out I have to pay £700 to extend my Visa, as well as taking a test on life in the UK. Thanks Home Office!!!!!!

Carter USM

Carter USM: hooks to take your eye out. Housebricks in the pick’n'nix 9:48 PM Nov 22nd, 2008

Next LifeOnMars spin-off: some cunt off Hollyoaks goes to 1992. EMF beat him to death with a cricket bat and a 303. SOLD 8:31 PM Nov 22nd, 2008

And yes, I appreciate the irony of Twitter scraping my blog slating @ replies while in the middle of an @ conversation 12:00 PM Nov 26th, 2008

Have decided I want a tattoo of the swearing from Asterix: skull and crossbones+dagger+lightning bolt9:04 PM Nov 28th, 2008

Last night: bounce-punk of A, pedal-to-the-floor gonzo-rock of the Wildhearts. Tonight: Jarvis Cocker & Mary Margaret O’Hara… carolling? 6:02 PM Dec 11th, 2008

Notice secret service didn’t break speed records leaping in front of Bush. Honestly, who throws a shoe? 10:44 PM Dec 14th, 2008

Love stickers in gym: “Limited to 20 mins @ peak times”. If I’m on an exercise machine longer than 20 minutes it’s because I’ve died on it 1:13 PM Dec 17th, 2008

Tempted to spend 3 days living off champagne & sleeping on escalators in Westfield neonoptican as practise for CES 6:22 PM Dec 17th, 2008

Nailed by Internet commenter: I am not only a “sanctimonious nutter”, but also a “deranged far-left lunatic”. Hurray! http://bit.ly/jDu3 3:05 PM Dec 18th, 2008

Rich is giving up drinking for 1 year after CES. For reals this time. 3:57 PM Dec 30th, 2008

http://twitter.com/rich_trenholm

Well blow me down: Popeye is out of copyright as of a few hours from now, reports the Telegraph. I’m tempted to make my own Popeye comic. I loves Popeye.

Elzie Segar, the Illinois artist who created Popeye, his love interest Olive Oyl and nemesis Bluto, died aged 43 in 1938 and an EU law that protects the rights of authors for 70 years after their death is about to end….

Mark Owen, an intellectual property specialist at the law firm Harbottle & Lewis, told the paper: “The Segar drawings are out of copyright, so anyone could put those on T-shirts, posters and cards and create a thriving business. If you sold a Popeye toy or Popeye spinach can, you could be infringing the trademark.”

“Popeye is one of the first of the famous 20th-century cartoon characters to fall out of copyright. Betty Boop and ultimately Mickey Mouse will follow.”

Eh? While Segar sadly died young, Betty’s creator Grim Natwick lived to the ripe old age of 100. That means, as I understand it, Betty Boop won’t be available for anyone to fool around with until 2060. I hope I get to have a crack at her.

Oh, and Uncle Walt died in 1966, so anyone who isn’t that keen on the mouse should sharpen their pencils and their wit in 2036.

Right, that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more…

Status: Rich is giving up drinking for 1 year after CES. For reals this time

And I wasn’t even drunk. And I think I mean it. The thing is, everything that I’d like to change about my life can pretty much be traced, either directly or obliquely, to the amount I drink.

I’m always skint: because I spend most of my money on going out drinking. I don’t take holidays, rarely buy clothes, books or CDs and then usually second-hand, I eat reasonably cheaply and I don’t have any expensive hobbies… except going to the pub. Spending thirty to forty quid a time on a night out, including breaking out my cash card to buy a round at last orders, is not healthy.

I’m in debt: because I spend most of my money on going out drinking. See above: this is why I constantly teeter on the edge of an overdraft. I don’t owe a huge amount, ignoring student loans obviously, enough that I could probably pay it off in a year or two, but enough that I’d have to make a fairly drastic lifestyle change to do so. Plus, I now pay interest on my overdraft, and I’m sick of paying those chisellers at Barclays over the odds.

I’m not in great shape: because I drink too much beer. I’m happy with what I eat, it’s reasonably healthy and in reasonable amounts, and I’ve cut right back on fast food. I lost a stone this year and off and on I’ve been getting to the gym fairly-regularly. Now I’m back to ‘normal’ I want to actually get in trim. Cutting out beer and getting to the gym proper-regularly will sort me out.

I’m always hungover: because I spend too much time going out drinking. I like having a bit of a reputation, but I don’t like my colleagues commenting when I’m clear-eyed and fresh-faced because it’s so unusual. I also don’t like never getting enough sleep, and waking up late so I can’t get to the gym and have to get on the Northern Line at the busiest time, and still ending up late for work. Edit: Plus, I’m always slightly ill. In 2009, I’d like to give my immune system a fighting chance.

And the biggest reason: I never do anything. I’ve been going to the opening of an envelope most weekdays for the past eighteen months, and every action having an equal and opposite hangover the weekends have been pretty unproductive as well. So my long-planned webcomic lies half-finished, my attempts at writing a novel never get off the ground, and I hardly ever blog.

Disclaimer: I will be drinking at Paul’s stag do in April and wedding in May because he’s my best mate and it would be rude not to. Also I might fall off the wagon on press trips, as long as it’s not beer. Finally, a warning to all my friends: I will be dull as shite this year.

There are some who say I can’t do it (mostly my friends, thanks guys) but that’s not what I’m worried about. The real kick in the the teeth would be if I knocked the booze on the head, and discovered that yep, I’m just lazy. That could drive me to drink.

I actually don’t remember that much about my first gig. It was the Longpigs at the Royal Court Theatre, in Liverpool. Travis and Embrace supported, neither of whom we’d heard of at the time. I thought it was a school night, because I remember explaining to my Mum that gigs finished at 11, but according to the Internet it was the 8th February 1997, and that was a Saturday, although I’m not convinced by this review because I was yelling for Jesus Christ all night and I’m sure they played it near the end. If they did play it first I must have looked like a colossal wanker. Embrace were in the NME On section, like, that week. That was when they were the next Oasis. Everybody loved Embrace — the Fireworks EP was later NME’s single of the week, long before they became a ladrock laughingstock — but I preferred Travis’ rockier stylings, and also partly wanted just to disagree with people. There’s that contrary streak. God knows what went wrong with Travis — well, actually they found a formula and stuck with it. The first album still stands up: U16 Girls, All I Want To Do is Rock, and the superbly-appropriately-titled Tied To The 90s.

It’s a bitter irony that Travis came up with the money-spinning indie ballad formula and then had to pack it in, only for Coldplay and Keane and that ilk to steal their thunder. To be fair, Coldplay give better indie ballad than the turgid shite Travis used to peddle. And then there’s all those perfectly decent indie bands who are great when they’re going fast but only have hits with ballads and so keep churning them out, like Snow Patrol.

Um, what was I talking about?

Just finished Barbarians at the Gate, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. It tells the story of the largest-ever Wall Street takeover deal, in which several billions of dollars were thrown at tobacco and food company RJR Nabisco. Although it takes a bit of wading through, it’s a fascinating study of the Mad Men-style thrusting young managers of the ’60s becoming the “greed is good” masters of the universe in the ’80s, told in an accessible and off-hand way.

What struck me — apart from the astronomical sums of money involved — was how the personalities of the men involved shaped the deal. You’d think that when people are dealing with companies and money on that scale, they’d be able to set aside their egos to do the most sensible thing. As highlighted when Linda Robinson, the PR guru and the only woman to play a major part in the fracas, intercedes after she decides that:

…the whole fight - the name-calling, the finger-pointing, everything - was getting out of control. There was no earthly reason Kravis couldn’t do this deal with Shearson and Salomon. There was every reason he should.

It was all about egos, Linda Robinson knew. She considered herself highly attuned to the ways of her swaggering Wall Street clients. As so often happened, Peter Cohen and Tommy Strauss and Henry Kravis had lost sight of their of their real objective, RJR Nabisco. Their disagreements had nothing to do with with shareholder values or fiduciary duties. It was a all a test of wills among an intensely competitive clique of macho, Park Avenue bullies… Each was determined to be King of the Sandbox.

The book was the basis of the first ever HBO TV movie, starring James Garner. Lovefilm, added.

The Casio Exilim Pro Ex-FH20 is a superzoom that shoots a gobsmacking 40 frames per second. Yes, it takes 40 full-sized photographs in one second. It also shoots video at 1000 frames per second, and I was keen to show off this cool slo-mo feature in our video review. I went in search of party poppers — y’know, those little tiny things that limply pop a bit of paper — but was seduced in the shop by something a little bigger: a foot-long confetti cannon.

And so this turned into the most fun video review I’ve done, and it’s one of the videos that we at CNET are most pleased with. Bruno Dinis and Chris Beaumont did an awesome job shooting and editing it, and thinking on their feet in the studio to make this such a great video.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In which case I guess I should be extremely flattered by TechRadar’s 7 ways to make your PC look like a Mac article, posted yesterday by Adam Oxford. The suggestions:

1. Move your taskbar to the top of your screen
2. Install a dock like ObjectDock
3. Get Expose with Switcher 2.0.0
4. Throw in Widgets such as Yahoo! Widgets
5. Completely reskin Windows using StarDock’s WindowBlinds or OSX clone FlyAKite
6. Get some Spaces with DeskSpace
7. That’s the look - add themes

1 and seven are new to me, I must give them a try. Thanks, TechRadar! But hmm, something about the rest seems familiar… can’t put my finger on it… Oh yeah, I remember: this time last year I wrote an article for CNET UK called Mock OS X: Five ways to make your PC more like a Mac. My suggestions:

1. Install a dock like ObjectDock
2. Get Exposé with MyExposé
3. Throw in Widgets such as Yahoo! Widgets (then called Konfabulator)
4. Get some Spaces with DeskSpace
5. Completely reskin Windows using StarDock’s WindowBlinds or OSX clone FlyAKite

My article had a better title, spelt Exposé right and drew a metaphor with the oyster scene from Spartacus. See? Completely different.

Rhett Butler may have been based on a real chap named George Alfred Trenholm, but frankly, I don’t give a monkeys.

Source: The Word From Beacon Street