Jodorowsky's Nuts

It seems as though the legendary - and, yes, I do mean legendary - Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has a new film in the pipeline. It's a "metaphysical spaghetti western of gangsters", it's called King Shot, it's produced by David Lynch and, true to form, it already sounds buggier-than-batshit.

Jodo says:

"I think that gangsters are the most metaphysical characters. Take a look at the presidents, they are all gangsters."

Then later he says:

"The front elevation of the casino is an Egyptian church. For the Egyptians, the beetle was the symbol of the creator who transports the world in his ball of excrement. That is why I say that this is a film of the metaphysics of the gangsters."

Alejandro Jodorowsky was the first and only famous person I ever interviewed. You can see why I've never bothered interviewing anyone else. What's the point?

Jodorowsky isn't the most prolific of directors: when it comes to output he makes Woody Allen seem like Stanley Kubrick. He has, after all, only directed seven films during his fifty - yes, fifty - year filmmaking career, and his last pic was back in 1990. For Jodorowsky fanatics like me, then, King Shot is something of a Big Deal.

Still, I've heard so many rumours over the years about Jodorowsky film projects that never actually materialised (coughcough 'Sons of El Topo' coughcough) that I'm reluctant to get too excited. If its alright with you, I'll file King Shot in my Beleieve-it-when-I-see-it file until I actually, um, see it.

I used to say the same thing about Watchmen, of course.

AWOL

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted on here for a while, let me take this opportunity to reassure you that I'm not dead.

Clare, Lily & I are currently moving house. It all happened rather quickly, and seeing as the new place is currently sans phoneline I haven't had many online opportunities to pontificate in public.

Don't worry: it won't last.

11-11-11: Handsworth

(By way of a recap: on 11th November 2008 Clare & I embarked on a public transport-based Kerouacian Carousel around the City of Birmingham. I'm writing up the journey in a series of urban travelblogs that are insterspersed with low humour and the occasional knob gag. Think Bill Bryson meets the late Reg Varney.)

As we make our way out of Winson Green along Handsworth New Road, onto Boulton Road, across Soho Road and up Rookery Road, I notice ubiquitous fly posters advertising a Public Enemy gig at the Custard Factory in December.


Three things come to mind:

1. I like Public Enemy.
2. I'd very much like to see Public Enemy at the Custard Factory in December.
3. How come I didn't know about this already?
   

I consider saying to Clare in my wheezy, Old Git Tom voice: "Public Enemy, now that was proper hip hop. Chuck D not only articulated the righteous anger of a generation with his incisive, incendiary lyrics and toe-tapping beats, but you could hear every word he was rapping. Not like this modern rubbish you hear on the radio."

I decide to keep my mouth shut after Clare shoots me one of her impeccably-timed If you're going to say what I think you're going to say then you better not say it-looks. I'm not going to risk it: she's been right more times than she's been wrong. Besides, it's never a good idea to mock your older self. You'll only end up resenting yourself later.

But still, I want to know why I didn't know that Public Enemy were playing at the Custard Factory in December. Has this got something to do with the conspicuous lack of fly posters along the route I drive to work? Should I write a letter to the council, or would it be easier to change my travel arrangements?

Maybe, and maybe not. I've got a horrible feeling, though, that there's a lesson to be a learnt from all of this. Worse, it's one of those deeply ironic lessons that I really hate:

Has it taken a journey along Birmingham's Outer Ring Road to make me realise that I'm totally out of the loop?

Nick Horner's article in last week's Great Barr Observer about the virtual reconstruction of Kingstanding's former Odeon cinema will be of interest to those odd critters like me who have a weakness for magnificent old cinema buildings. I don't know what the technical term for this is, but I suppose you could call us necrocinephiles.

Anyhow, I posted about this recently, but in the meantime Nick has since done some proper journalistic legwork and uncovered some additional information. King's Visualisation Lab (KVL) created their VR Odeon Kingstanding in 2003 and their plan was to eventually construct a comprehensive database of virtually reconstructed British cinema buildings. Unfortunately, one of KVL's partners pulled out and the database has been on hold ever since.

According to Martin Blazeby, researcher and 3D modeller at KVL, the design team used eye witness accounts and even visited the art deco cinema-turned-bingo hall to take paint samples: "We found a specific type of green, Odeon green, which had been painted over when the cinema became a bingo venue."

If you happen to be a well-heeled necrocinephile with philanthropic tendencies, then this project needs you. You can contact them via this link.

Here's a couple of pics of the Kingstanding Odeon in its heyday. Firstly, an exterior shot courtesy of English Heritage's John Maltby Collection:



And here's the ornate lobby from Digital Handsworth:

Batman vs Batman

From Variety:

Batman has a new adversary: Batman.

The mayor of an oil-producing city in southeastern Turkey, which has the same name as the Caped Crusader, is suing helmer Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from mega-grosser The Dark Knight.

Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused The Dark Knight producers of using the city's name without permission.

"There is only one Batman in the world," Kalkan said. "The American producers used the name of our city without informing us."

JJ Abrams' Star Trek trailer

Yummy.

11-11-11: Winson Green

"The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on."

Lao-Tse - Tao Te Ching

At about 2.10pm the bus is driving through Winson Green.

For the uninitiated, Clare and I are indulging in a spot of guerrilla ethnomethodology aboard Birmingham's legendary number 11 bus. Some youths board the bus and sit behind us. This doesn't concern us, however, as everyone else on the top deck is sitting behind us, too. That's what happens when you sit on the front seat.

Before long, we notice a suspicious, burning odour coming from behind. This isn't the typical, pungent, herb-based burning odour that's commonly associated with philosophy students, jazz aficionados and the top deck of a double decker bus, though. This doesn't smell like anything exotic, illegal or monged. No, it smells like someone is baking a jacket potato.

"Kids nowadays," says Clare.

We're driving through Winson Green, and Winson Green - of course - is best known for its prison. In fact, to most Brummies, 'Winson Green' means prison. In this respect it joins a long list of locations that seem forever lumbered with deep-seated incarceration associations. Notorious places like Strangeways in Manchester, Alcatraz in San Francisco and Portmeirion in Wales.

Which is a bit of shame, really. If you manage to separate the word from its links with the local lock-up, then Winson Green itself is quite a pretty name for a place. It wouldn't seem out of place in Trumptonshire, alongside Camberwick Green and Chigley.

Of course, things like that are always easier said than done. This place and its prison seem to be neuro-linguistically fused in the popular imagination. It'll take more than Zen detachment and baked potatoes to sever those tethers.

The fact the 11 bus drives straight past the prison probably doesn't help.

11-11-11: From Bearwood to Edgbaston

By 2pm we've left Harborne. It happens to us all eventually.

After crossing Hagley Road (home to my old sixth form, St Philip's College), the number 11 saunters wistfully along the Bearwood High Street as another song comes to mind. This time, it's the sublime This is What She's Like from Dexys Midnight Runners' wilfully uncommercial and criminally underrated 1985 album, Don't Stand Me Down:



On the album version of the song, The Little Nibble café on the Bearwood Road gets name checked during some pre-song banter (legend has it that Kevin Rowland and his bandmates used to meet there for tea-dinking sessions). Sadly, The Little Nibble ceased trading in January, Dexys haven't recorded a studio album since Don't Stand Me Down and I've been sitting on the top deck of the number 11 for long enough now to start making connections.

We take a right onto Sandon Road and into Edgbaston, passing the former home of my good friend, the macaroon-chomping friend of Garfield Jez Higgins. I remember going to a barbeque there years' ago. Jez and his goodwyf Nat are vegetarians, so this - understandably enough - was a vegetarian barbecue. Our mutual friend - the talented comic artist and occasional thug, Tony McGee - arrived at this vegetarian event clutching a greasy megaburger in his mitts. I vividly remember him wantonly flaunting his tasty bovine-based snack with scant regard for the feelings of others. At least, I'm pretty certain it was Tony.

I hope it wasn't me.

11-11-11: Lost Souls and Plimsoles

Well we know where we're goin'
But we dont know where we've been
And we know what were knowin'
But we can't say what weve seen

Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere

It's about 1.50pm, Clare and I are still in Harborne and we're still sitting on the front seat of the top deck of Birmingham's legendary number 11 bus. We're sitting to the right of the bus, and - on Lordswood Road - a girl sitting to our left gets up and click-clacks her way down the steps in a pair of presumably-fashionable high heel plimsoles. This may seem fairly inconsequential to you, but for me it was the catalyst for a minor revalation: sitting on the front seat of the top deck might give you a great view of the road ahead, but when it comes to interbus people-watching it's far from ideal. Visibility is seriously impaired due to the fact that almost everybody else is sitting behind you.

It was, of course, Clare who noticed her shoes: footwear observations aren't exactly my forte. I wouldn't have clocked what was on her feet if she staggered past me in a pair of of Elton John's 4 foot tall Doc Martens.

I assume she's a regular passenger, not some eejit with a blog and a day off work whose partial to a bit of public transport-based sociological high jinks. This is someone with a destination in mind, who knows exactly where she's going. She's the kind of person who uses the bus to get from A to B, not someone who misuses the bus to get from A to A.

It's probably best if I don't dwell on the metaphorical implications of any of this.

New Watchmen trailer

Alright, I've been a bit sniffy about Zack Snyder's movie adaptation of my favourite goddamn superhero comic ever in at least one previous post, but - I must admit - the new trailer does look rather tasty:

11-11-11: From Selly Oak to Harborne

At 1.43pm we cross the Bristol Road and head down Harborne Lane. From the front seat on the top deck of the number 11 bus you get a great view of the still-under-construction new Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The futuristic, super sleek tri tower structure already looks so impressive you could be forgiven for thinking that the builders cut corners and used CGI.

Light dazzles my eyes, and I automatically reach up to pull down my sun visor. I remember that I'm in a bus and not a car, and realise that I now look like an idiot or, more worryingly, a Nazi sympathiser. Not that there's any difference, of course. I wonder if the new hospital will find a cure for stupidity?

By 1.50pm we're in Harborne. I look out for my brother whose doing some carpentry wrork in the area. I scan the suburban streets for him and his big-ass silver van, but to no avail. If you want quality carpentry work done at a competitive price, you can find his website here.

Tell him the idiot on the number 11 sent you.

11-11-11: From Cotteridge to Bournville

Two days later and so far I've only covered the first two miles. Typical.

We pass a fancy dress store in Cotteridge, where a plastic mannequin catches Clare's eye. A potential Christmas present? 'No,' says Clare, emphatically.

We hook a right onto Watford Road and pass a shop called Vis a Vis. "So that's what David Brent did next," muses Clare. I respond with a good natured 'Heh.' In truth, I only actually get the comment once we reach Bearwood. Boost bars really slow down the speed of my basic cognitive functions.

We're heading down Linden Road, now, and passing leafy Bournville. A line from an old Elvis Costello song springs to mind:

In Chocolate Town all the trains are painted brown
On the silver paper of the wrapper

At least it wasn't Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight.

JJ Abrams' Starship Enterprise

A quick break from this bus route blather:

I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to tampering with this particular fictional design classic, but at least it looks a damn sight better - and remains truer to the original concept - than some of the franchise's other misguided efforts...

11-11-11: from Kings Heath to Cotteridge

1.25pm: Kick off.

1.26pm: Boost bars are unwrapped.

We make our way down Vicarage Road onto Fordhouse Lane - from Kings Heath to Stirchley - as Clare writes: "I don't like Stirchley, or the innermost layer of a Boost."

By contrast, I'm inordinately fond of Stirchley. Having lived there during the mid-90s, I've always loved the fact that the nearest train station from my old stomping ground was Bournville. When you left the station you would look out upon this idyllic, picturesque vision of England. You'd see nice, polite chaps playing cricket while shoots of ivy climbed up the sides of their ornate red brick houses. It always seemed like a cross between The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society album and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Once you walked under the railway bridge, however, you were confronted with Stirchley, and the contrast couldn't be greater. You'd see disused factories, discarded pizza boxes and cars mounted on bricks. Compared to Bournville, this was urban and butal. It's hard to believe that two such different areas could be divided by a single railway line. I imagine an aerial photograph of the area would look a bit like like the face of Harvey Dent from Batman.

Whoever coined the phrase "The other side of the tracks" probably lived there, too.

11-11-11: Kings Heath departure lounge

Be warned: the following contains personal minutiae that might be deemed offensive or, possibly, inconsequential.

At about 12.45pm (-ish) Clare and I grab a bite to eat at the Wetherspoon's pub in Kings Heath. We swap Brum pub war stories, including my elaborate and unproven theory that the decline in the standard of the clientele at a certain city centre branch of a certain national pub chain was not unrelated to the filling-in of a nearby wino-infested traffic island subway. The food was tasty.



Clare decides that we should grab a pair of Boost chocolate bars from a nearby newsagent. At the checkout we're advised that Boost bars are part of a three-for-the-price-of-two offer. We leave the shop with three Boost bars. Clare scribbles note in my notepad: "3 for £1.09 on Boost Choc Bars - WHAT CREDIT CRUNCH??"



If you find anything in that last paragraph at all interesting you should be ashamed. I am.



At the 11C bus stop on Vicarage Road we see a man who bears a remarkable facial resemblance to the infamous Dr Harold Shipman. He walks past a clinic. We shiver.



Clare scribbles the following faux tabloid headlines in my notepad:

"Doctor Death Alive and Well - Walks Past Birmingham Clinic"

This is followed by:

"Woman in Large Hat or Small Head Mystery"

"Schoolboy Smokes Whilst Wearing Last Season's Trousers - 'Can Mother's Not Afford New Clothes?' Shocker"

'Teenage Parent Hides Complete Bus Stop in Pram WHILST SMOKING"

I don't think Clare is taking this seriously. Either that, or she's trying to get me to quit smoking. To be on the safe side I don't light up.



At 1.25 the bus arrives.

11-11-11: The Introduction

I said I'd do it and today I did. I took part in Jon Bounds' mad-but-inspired plan to spend eleven hours of the eleventh day of the eleventh month on Birmingham's number eleven bus. Much to my surprise, my significantly better half Clare decided to tag along, too. She enriched the day significantly by keeping me company, feeding me chocolate and providing a steady stream of comedy-rich comments and generous slices of fried gold observations. She really is much funnier than me and I have every intention to plagiarise her aplenty over the the coming posts. My people-watching partner in crime has already informed me that I'll be hearing from her lawyers.

We didn't manage the full eleven hours - there was the small matter of having to pick the Littlest Raindog up from Mandy the childminder - but we did complete a full 27 mile, bus-based circuit of the city. We boarded the 11C on Vicarage Road in King Heath at about 1.25pm and it brought us, by Joyce's commodious vicus of recirculation, back to Kings Heath and Environs about two-and-a-half hours later.

I thought of doing some kind of live blogging (a first for me), and even started setting up a Twitter account before we set off. Clare, however, took one look at my 4 year-old mobile phone and laughed. She's much more tech savvy than me.

In the end, I made copious notes in a notepad while Clare took some photos. I've yet to decide on how to structure this cavalcade of scribbles. Should I do it chronologically? Shall I do it thematically? Shall I just make it up as I go along? That's always worked in the past.

I am, as I have said elsewhere, an analogue man living in a digital world.

FFS

From Variety:

Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are in early discussions to collaborate on a remake of Chan Wook-Park's Oldboy. DreamWorks is in the process of securing the remake rights, and the new pic will be distributed by Universal.

Southland Tales

The other day I watched Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly's sci-fi slapstick satire Southland Tales. The reason why I watched it was because I'd recently bought it on DVD, and the reason why I'd recently bought it on DVD was because the Asda in Perry Barr were selling it for £3. In the days, weeks and months ahead this process may determine the future course and contents of my DVD collection.

Southland Tales received what you might call a fairly mixed critical response. The Guardian said it was "frustrating and finally rather pointless" while The Independent raised the stakes and declared it The Worst Film of 2007. I, by contrast, rather enjoyed it.

Like I said, a mixed response.

The Day of Reckoning

"I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumf***s that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president:

"'Any questions?'

"'Er, just what my agenda is...'"

- Bill Hicks, 1961-1994

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

I've been trying my best not to say any more about the cataclysmic faecal maelstrom that is the Ross-Brand-Sachs scandal. Too much had been said about it already, and by adding to the blogosphere's already hefty wordload on the subject I'm probably helping to validate a Daily Mail campaign and prolong the lifespan of a particularly nasty bout of mass hysteria. Only to a fairly imperceptible degree, of course, but it all adds up in the end. This one's like a bothersome dental abscess, though. I know I shouldn't, but I just can't leave the bastard alone.

Truth be told, I wasn't there at the very beginning. I first became aware of what would later be called Sachsgate whilst driving home from Kent last Saturday night and listening to The Russell Brand Show on Radio 2. By Gregorian standards that was a full calendar week after the previous show - the show - the one in which Brand and Jonathan Ross left their ill-advised messages on Andrew Sachs' answer machine. Still, I won't berate myself too harshly for tardiness. I might have turned up at the party late, but most of the people who subsequently complained arrived long after me.

Clare, Lily and I had gone to Hythe on Friday to visit Clare's parents. Clare and Lily were staying there for the half term holiday, but I had to get back to Brum the next day as I couldn't get the time off work. 'So it goes,' as Kurt Vonnegut used to say, at least before he died.

Anyway, after making a quick pit stop at Chorleywood to change my tyres, fix my engine and visit my old friend Nicky, I continued on to Birmingham. It was a long drive, I hadn't stuffed enough CDs into my glove compartment to last the journey, so I put the radio on. It was the Russell Brand Show, and the first I heard about the notorious lewd answerphone message scandal was when Brand apologised for them on air.

It was the night before the story broke in the Mail on Sunday, and he must have known they were onto him because this is what he said:

'I would like to remind the Daily Mail that whilst it is a bit bad to leave a swear word on Andrew Sachs' answerphone, what's worse - leaving a swear word on Andrew Sachs' answerphone or tacitly supporting Adolf Hitler when he took charge of the Third Reich?

'When he became chancellor in the late 1930s, the Daily Mail printed a letter from a Lord going "This Hitler might be all right". And once old Blackshirt Oswald Mosely came to prominence in this country the Daily Mail went, "Hurrah for our blackshirted chums".'

Although Brand's apology was widely publicised, the links he made between the Daily Mail and fascism weren't. It was a pretty snappy and articulate comeback, but unfortunately he wasn't dealing with a drunken heckler at a comedy club: he was up against with an unstoppable media juggernaut with a time-honoured political stance that's just to the right of Genghis Khan.

Of course, that doesn't mean to say that what he said wasn't true.

At university I read a book by Richard Griffiths called Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-1939. This introduced me to the whole sordid world of British upper class Nazi-sympathising twits like Daily Mail co-founder Lord Rothermere. Every time the Daily Heil launch a sanctimonious 'moral' campaign like this, I feel the urge to re-read it. Unfortunately, it was a library loan back then and its out of print now.

So, once again, it goes.

According to Griffiths' book and numerous other sources, Lord Rothermere was a friend and an active supporter of both Hitler and Mussolini and, in the years leading up to the Second World War, the Daily Mail was the only British paper to consistently support the Nazi Party. According to a Guardian story published in 2005, Rothermere had written to Hitler in 1939: "My Dear Führer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country."

In the same year, The Indepenedent reported that "the former owner of the Daily Mail wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating Germany on its annexation of Czechoslovakia, and urging the Führer to march into Romania, British secret service files, released by the National Archives for the first time today, reveal.

"Lord Rothermere even hired a glamorous German spy to introduce him to leading Nazi figures in the run-up to the Second World War. MI5 papers reveal how Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, paid Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst to further his contacts with Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The Austrian-born princess, described as London's leading Nazi hostess, was closely watched by the secret services after she arrived in Britain in the 1920s and began "worming her way into society circles". (For the sake of political balance, I should also point out that the same story was reported in the Daily Telegraph)

Of course, as Russell Brand mentioned in his 'apology', the Daily Mail also had fascist affiliations that were a bit closer to home. In 1934, Rothermere penned an article for the Mail entitled 'Hail to the Blackshirts', in which he praised Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists. In a contemporary article, the American news magazine Time reported:

'Off galloped the London Daily Mail, lead horse of Lord Rothermere's huge team of British newspapers, last week on a Fascist crusade. Pear-headed Lord Rothermere wrote the Mail's clarion call to young Britons "to break the stranglehold which senile politicians have so long maintained on public affairs." The man to do it. he said, is Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, leader of Britain's Fascist Black Shirts, a man '"willing to act with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Mussolini and Hitler have displayed." Predicted Lord Rothermere who has long felt like playing Dictator himself: ''There will be a prolonged swing either to the Right or Left. At the next vital election, Britain's survival as a great power will depend on the existence of a well-organized party of the Right."'

The Daily Mail likes to present itself as the moral guardian of Middle England, but once you do a little digging you'll soon find that this "moral guardian" has a rather shady past. Last Saturday, Russell Brand invited listeners to text in to his show saying:

'On one hand you have upset Manuel, on the other you have millions and millions of dead people supported by a powerful media institution. It's up to you, the listener, to decide which is worse: offending Manuel, for which I apologise, or tacitly supporting the death of millions.'

He might be paid a lot of money to be rude, obnoxious and controversial, but I think he might have a point.

Sachsgate

This morning I paid a visit to the corner shop to get some milk, bread and Marlboro Lights. As usual, I made a beeline for the fish 'n' chip paper rack and scanned the headlines. The one on the Daily Mail jumped out at me:

THE DAY OF RECKONING

Holy shit, I thought, it must be Election Day in the US. Had I really overslept by a week? Of course, it wasn't and I hadn't. The Daily Mail headline - in fact, the front page story on every tabloid, broadsheet and freesheet this morning - wasn't about the US elections, the violence in Congo or anything really important. It was about two famous blokes who get paid a lot of money to be rude, obnoxious and controversial getting into a lot of trouble for being rude, obnoxious and controversial.

I quite like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, but on this occasion I think they acted like a pair of thoughtless and sadistic eejits. Broadcasting a series of lewd messages left on a 78 year-old veteran comedy actor's answermachine is not what you might call best foot forward behaviour. Of course, the production team didn't help matters. They might have been trying to repackage Derek and Clive for the iPod generation, but I'm sure the producers of Ad Nauseam and Come Again were savvy enough to keep Pete and Dud away from the telephones.

I hate to think that I agree with anything the Daily Mail has to say, but I do think its right and proper to treat older people with a modicum of respect. I suspect, however, that the relentless media shitstorm they've kicked off has less to do with respect for our elders than it has to do with feeding our atavistic resentment towards highly successful people. I guess that means that I can carry on respecting old people, then.

In any case, the next time high profile iconoclasts feel compelled to piss off the Daily Mail by verbally abusing a senior citizen might I suggest they pick on a target that's a bit more deserving than Manuel from Fawlty Towers? Perhaps, say, a ruthless military dictator, a power hungry press baron or maybe even a former prime minister.

There's plenty of names that spring to mind.

No, I'm Bill Murray

I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing, but Bill Murray is God and this flash animation is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages.

Wait until the very end - it's worth it.

Thanks to the public spirited souls of the Brum Bloggers Meet for the heads up.

Dunkirk

From 4Talent:

Film Dash took place over 48 hours in Birmingham, with teams putting together films of less than five minutes in length, in a competition organised by Created In Birmingham’s Chris Unitt, honouring the memory of Birmingham-born Ealing comedies producer Michael Balcon. 4Talent Commissioning Editor Catherine Bray was one of three judges.

The winner was Dunkirk, by Rachael Marchant, Danny Smith and my old mate Pete Ashton. The film is a five minute Brum-based saga about love, loss and urban decay that features a rather groovy Bleep Labs' Thingamagoop synthesiser as its protagonist. In what will surely be its breakthrough role, Thingamagoop effortlessly combined fragile empathy with a captivating sense of wonder. It's only a matter of time before Hollywood comes knocking on it's door.

Pete's done a production diary here, here and here, and the film itself is here:


Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

The Virtual Cinema

Following on from something I posted fairly recently - and blathered on at great length about at last night's Brum Bloggers Meet - King's Visualisation Lab at King's College London seem to be working on a virtual reality reconstruction of Birmingham's magnificent Kingstanding Odeon. This, of course, would be a VR simulation of its glory days as a cinema, not a VR simulation of its subsequent life as a bingo hall. There's currently no need digitally reconstruct bingo halls, although if attendance figures continue to slide there might well be soon.

There's more (but not much more) about it here.

PJANG

"People Just Ain't No Good" is a. a song by Nick Cave & Bad Seeds, b. a catchy mission statement for misanthropes, and, c. the title of a UK small press vet Rol Hirst's excellent comeback comic.

As you might expect from the title, the three stories that make up PJANG serve up a not altogether sunny-side-up view of the human condition. That's not to say it's a depressing read - there's plenty of wry humour and at least one happy ending to be found amongst its three stories - but the overarching theme is that we're living in a world full of no-good shits. Of course, you can't really argue with a theme like that. In your hearts you know it's true.

That being said, the three stories that make up 'PJANG' are very different beasts. The first, Grotesque, features nicely atmospheric art by my erstwhile drinking buddy Mr Tony McGee. A time-lapsed tale of infidelity born from insecurity, it's harrowing stuff.

Next is Get Creative! a blackly comic tale about an advertising exec who turns (a gun) on his industry and embarks on a Bill Hicks-inspired killing spree. It's vicious, funny, has a great twist at the end and features some lovely, stylised art by Andrew Cheverton which reminded me a bit of the work of 2000AD legend Mike McMahon.

Finally, there's Rooms for Writers by Rol and Kelvin Green. Despite it's subject matter (it's about what happens to writers after they die), it manages to end on uplifting, optimistic note that suggests (to this reader at least) that Lord Hirst of Slawit is not quite as gumpy a Yorkshireman as he sometimes makes himself out to be.

PJANG is very good, costs £1.75 and is available from here. Don't be a tight-arse - go buy it now.

For fear of obliterating my last and, frankly, endangered shreds of credibility, can I just say - for the record - that I am now, officially, getting rather excited about JJ Abrams' forthcoming Star Trek movie.

Here's a few reasons why:




Call me shallow, but it's those old-school, Original Series' uniforms (complete with obligatory miniskirts) that are doing it for me. Not so sure about the design aesthetic of the bridge, though. It looks like the kind of place you'd go to buy an iPhone.

Let's hope there's a sequel. I for one would like to see a young Kirk, Spock and McCoy go head to head with Javier Bardem as Khan...

Images via Ain't it Cool News, UGO & MTV.

"All that is, is metaphor"

From YouTube, a condensed version of Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic DVD:

"RAW talks about the sanity of using maybe, E-Prime (the english language without IS or Being), imprinting and conditioning, optimism, awakening and how 'the map is not the territory'."

Well, whaddaya know. I didn't even know there was a Maybe Logic DVD, let alone a condensed version of it.

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) will always be one of my favourite writers. I spent a large chunk of my 20s trying to hunt down and devour just about every goddamn book he ever wrote. In the days before Amazon, this was no mean feat. By contrast, I stumbled upon the above clip after spending ten minutes or so loitering on the superinformation highway.*

It's at times like this that I love YouTube.



* Is it still called "the superinformation highway"? I've got a feeling that I just made myself sound very Windows 98.

Thor Blimey!

It's not every day you see an item of news that will excite fans of Marvel Comics, Norse mythology and popular Brummie playwright William "The Bard" Shakespeare.

Here's something from Variety that might:

"Kenneth Branagh is negotiating to direct 'Thor' the next Marvel Comics property that will be turned into a live-action film by Marvel Studios. Pic will be released in 2010."

Well, maybe not the Norse mythology crowd. They're never easy to please.

The prospect of Kenneth Branagh directing a big-assed superhero flick might seem like the maddest idea since, I dunno, Ang Lee directing a big-assed superhero flick. Then again, this one's about a hammer-wielding God who's partial to a bit of blank verse blather. It might not be too much of a stretch.

I suppose that over the coming months there'll be all sorts of feverish speculation amongst fanboys as to who should play the God of Thunder. Me, I don't particularly care - I'm more interested in the supporting cast. I'm hoping that Branagh once again calls upon his regular company of performers to lend a bit of much-needed gravitas to the project. I want to see Thor's dad Odin played by Richard (The Good Life) Briers. I want to see stately, plump Volstragg played by Brian (Z Cars) Blessed. But most of all, though, I want to see Thor's arch nemesis played by a truly great British performer. Someone who has worked with Branagh before. Someone who'd be perfect for the role. Someone who was born to play an evil trickster god.

I want to see Ken Dodd as Loki.

The letter writing campaign starts NOW!

Bank Bailout Scheme “To Be Extended To Riverbanks”

Fot the first time in ages, I've submitted something to the satirical website Newsbiscuit. Here it is:

Financial markets were in turmoil this morning following news that the British government will soon be extending their momentous £500bn bank rescue package to include ailing riverbanks. This comes in the wake of the Irish Government’s controversial decision to prop up the banks of the River Liffey

The news sent shockwaves through the financial markets both here and abroad. Following the announcement, the FTSE 100 share index plunged by a staggering 20%, setting a new record as its largest inter-day drop since Tuesday lunchtime. Transactions were suspended throughout many of Europe’s derivative exchanges as “absolutely bloody gob-smacked” Futures Traders were forced to spend much of the morning frantically rewriting history.

According to waterways campaigner Canal Phoenix, Britain’s riverbanks had been hit particularly hard by the credit crunch. “High Street banks aren’t the only victims in all of this,” claims Phoenix. “Thanks to global warming, there’s just not as much water out there as there used to be. Britain’s riverbanks are facing an unprecedented liquidity crisis.”

“Industrial pollution has always been a problem for our riverbanks,” claims Phoenix. “Over the last year, though, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of toxic assets. You should see how many dead cats, used prophylactics and broken bicycle parts we’ve dredged up.”

A global collapse of the riverbank sector will have a devastating knock-on affect for other industries. “Riverside taverns, fishermen’s pubs and boat hire firms will all be affected,” claims Phoenix. “The sub-prime mortgage crisis has really hit property development along popular riverside locations. You have to remember, in this part of the world ‘sub’ usually means ‘underwater’”.

Opposition politicians, however, were quick to condemn the bailout. Jodie Marshland, Shadow spokeswoman for Riverbanks, Tow paths and Global Financial Catastrophes said: “While we sympathise with the nation’s riverbanks, throwing taxpayer’s money at this problem is no solution. If you ask me, the prime minister has behaved like a bit of a riverdunce.”

“This reckless policy decision has set a dangerous precedent. It has, quite literally, opened the floodgates. Where will it stop? What other bank-related institutions will British tax payers be bailing out next? Will we be offering emergency financial assistance to Jodrell Bank? To sperm banks? To England footballing legend Gordon Banks?”

Phoenix, though, is adamant. “Action has to be taken now. Nobody wants to see a run on the banks, but a run on the riverbanks can be far more dangerous. It can be very slippery and can result in drowning. You should always walk at a leisurely pace.”

In a related development, many of the world’s great rivers are currently involved in merger talks with former rivals. The US Mississippi has confirmed that it is in advanced talks with the Latin American Amazon which could lead to the creation of the world’s first super megariver, which will be known as the Ms. Ippi.

Artful Dodging

While we're on the subject of credit crunch-themed neologisms, here's another one I made up:

Faginomics (ˈfā-gən-ˈnä-miks), noun

Controversial economic recovery strategy designed to alleviate the self-inflicted hardships of the rich and powerful few by surreptitiously removing money from everyone else's pockets.

Schadenfreude, Baby!

As I've mentioned elsewhere (and even elsethere), I'm into neologisms in a big way. When I get bored, I make up a new word. Last week I wasn't bored, but someone invited me to make up a new word all the same. That's never happened before.

The author Laura Lee invited me to take part in a neologism contest on her blog. She's written a book called Schadenfreude, Baby! and as 'schadenfreude' is one of my all-time favourite German words, I thought I'd give it a go. Schadenfreude, in case you don't already know, is usually defined as deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others. See, I told you it was a great word. Once you know what it means you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. According to Laura:

'The kind of Schadenfreude many of us have been feeling in the wake of the financial crisis has a different quality and character than the celebrity downfall gazing of a year ago. It's darker, blacker and angrier. Over at Psych Central John Grohol is talking about his emotions: "I find a strange melancholic amusement to learn that many of these investment banks’ CEOs and boards of directors — people being paid millions of dollars every year to purportedly know what their own companies are doing and how they make money — didn’t have a clue as to how deep their companies were into questionable financial practices."

'I'm looking for suggestions for a new word that encapsulates this "melancholic amusement"- Schadenfreude tinged with a touch of sadness and foreboding.'

The word I came up with to describe this strange mix of emotions was:

SADENFREUDE, noun

An emotion that combines joy in another's misfortune tempered only by the overriding sense that the misfortune is going to have some serious and sad consequences.

See what I did there? I created a new word by amputating two letters from a preexisting one. Nifty, eh?


Believe it or not, I won the contest.

Thanks for the good news, Laura. I look forward to reading your book.

Les Ross vs Hardeep Singh Kohli

Today's random ideomotor response generator is a BBC Radio WM interview between legendary local radio jock Les Ross & writer/broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli.

Your toes will curl.



From Tom Watson via Birmingham: It's Not Shit

Paradox on the Buses

I'm perversely tempted to take part in the indefatigable Jon (Birmingham: It's Not Shit) Bounds' demented-yet-delightful bus-based social experiment, 11-11-11:

On the 11th of November let’s create a modern ritual, a post-millennial cultural cult.

Eleven hours on the eleven bus — join us.

The rules:

• Get on the 11C at 11am (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• Get off the 11C at 10pm — 11 hours later — (or as near as dammit) on 11/11.
• You can get on and off the bus as many times as you like (don’t spend more than an hour off bus).
• Document your journey; photos, film, writing, cross-stitch, knitting, amigurumi, poetry, blog, twitter, however you like.
• Meet up with others as mad as you, if you want.

I'm up for a bit of that. I quite like the idea of donating some bandwidth-by-proxy to such a bold, civic-minded endeavour, particularly when it’s a public transport-based collective metamedia travelogue. It'd make me feel like a walking, talking, head-on collision between Bill Bryson, Marshall McLuhan and, perhaps, Reg Varney.

More importantly, though, it'd give me plenty of potentially juicy things to write about on here. Not only is the Number 11 the longest urban bus route in Europe, but every time I've been on it I've witnessed something odd, weird or mad as a bungee-jumping bishop in a ballgown. They don’t call it an "Out-Patient Ward on Wheels" for nothing.

All this talk of buses reminds me of several things.

For the sake of clarity, brevity and sanity, however, I’ll narrow it down to one. Long ago and far away (which, by my calendar, makes it approximately August 1996) I witnessed a Hofstadter Strange Loop in action on the Number 45. Being a part-time philosopher and half-arsed science geek - which I define as someone who read about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider before Dan Brown wrote about it in Angels and Demons (which, of course, I don’t plan to read) - I had a basic grasp what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was. For the sake of clarity, brevity and charity, however, I’ll just say that a Hofstadter Strange Loop is a sort of elaborate definition of a paradox. You can find a proper definition on Wikipedia, but for me its best summed up by the art of MC Escher or that memorable line from the 80s video classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension:

“Wherever you go, there you are…”

Indeed. Anyway, while I had a reasonably firm grasp of what a Hofstadter Strange Loop was, I never knew what one looked like. I certainly didn’t expect it to resemble a grumpy old fart with a tartan shopping trolley.

Cut to: one sunny Saturday afternoon in 1996. There I was, sitting on the lower deck of a number 45, heading home from somewhere I can't remember and reading a book I can’t recall when the bus got itself stuck in a traffic jam along the Pershore Road. It was a particularly vicious and stubbornly viscous strain of traffic jam, even by the standards of the Pershore Road. I didn't mind, though: it was a pretty good book.

Sitting in front of me was a grumpy old man with a Tartan shopping trolley who spoke in a Birmingham accent that was so strong that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bad parody of a Birmingham accent. I couldn't be forgiven for thinking this, of course, as I've written so many bad parodies over the years' that I wouldn't get away with it. A fairer description would be to say that the old man spoke in that rarest strain of the Brummie accent, the raw, unrefined, undiluted Brummie accent that these days only exists amongst scattered pockets of traditionalists and in certain parts of the BBC Radio WM schedule.

As the traffic jam slowly eased its way into a terminal case of entropic paralysis, the man and his trolley huffed, puffed and fumed with increasing bile and volume. I tried to ignore them, but it wasn't easy. These things rarely are.

Eventually he stood up and marched over to the bus driver: "Ooroyt, mucka – what’s gooin’on with the traffic, then?" he asked. “It’s a bloody disgrace, that’s what it is – a bloody disgrace!”

The driver explained that some Reclaim the Streets protesters were exercising their democratic right to park their derrieres on the tarmac up ahead.

The old man seemed to explode with rage. Innocent bystanders were maimed by shards of herbal cough drops. The shopping trolley spewed its contents out in sympathy. “Bloody protesters?” he roared, “bloody protesters? You mean to say we’re stuck here on accounta bunch a BLOODY PROTESTERS?” He was disgusted. He was outraged. He was possibly vitriolic with fury. You could feel his vile, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

“I’m sick of these bloody bastard protesters”, he continued, now addressing the entire lower deck of the bus. “Bunch of arf-soaked, scruffy, workshy bastards with nothing better to do, the lot of ‘em. If they’re not out saving the whale or banning the bomb or getting there knickers in a twist they’re holding things up for the rest of us.”

"That sort of thing should be against the law," he said. "People shouldn't be allowed to protest."

I looked up from my book, but decided to say nothing.

Paul Newman, 1925-2008

Sad news in the papers this morning. Paul Newman was that rare combination - a monumental movie icon, a brilliant character actor and - to the best of my knowledge - a thoroughly decent human being. This was, after all, a Hollywood A-Lister who remained happily married to the same woman for over 50 years. I always loved that line he used when a Playboy reporter asked him if he'd ever been tempted to stray. "Why go out for hamburger," said Newman, "when you can have steak at home?"

Many of his films have become cinematic classics and many of his performances contain moments that have burned their way into several generations worth of collective imaginations. The egg-eating contest from Cool Hand Luke springs to mind, as does the beautiful, fatal freeze frame from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. My favourite Newman moment, though, comes from The Sting, which Philip French mentioned and, unless I'm mistaken, misquoted in this morning's Observer. While sizing up an opponent, Redford's Hooker turns to Newman's Gondorff and says: "He's not as tough as he thinks."

Newman replies: "Neither are we."

Moby Dickheads

From Variety:

Universal Pictures has made a splashy preemptive buy of "Moby Dick", a reimagining of the Herman Mellville whale tale that Timur Bekmambetov ("Wanted") will direct.

Studio paid high six figures to Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to pen the screenplay.

The writers revere Melville’s original text, but their graphic novel-style version will change the structure. Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael, who observes how Ahab’s obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain.

This change will allow them to depict the whale’s decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab’s Pequod, and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive.

"Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s ‘Moby Dick,’ " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story." ( My italics)

Roadkill

I was sitting at my desk today, doing some work and trying to mind my own business. Some colleagues sitting across from me were talking about Roman roads. I don't know why, they just were.

Against my better judgement, I decided to elbow my way into their conversation: "Is that Roman roads you're talking about?" I asked, rhetorically. "Do you know that substantial parts of one of Birmingham's major 'A' roads - the A38 - follow the course of a famous Roman road? Between Worcester and Birmingham - and again between Lichfield and Derby - the A38 follows a route built by Roman invaders over two thousand years ago."

There was a pause. I did that to prime them for the punchline:

"Of course, back in those days the Romans didn't call it the A38. They called it the A XXXVIII."

The sudden outbreak of silence distracted everyone.

I heard from my very good friend and former small-press comics collaborator Phil Walsh at the weekend. It had been way, way too long since we'd last had a chat, but we more than made up for lost time by having an impassioned natter on the blower about films, comics, books and a veritable plethora of other shared obsessions. It was very therapeutic for me and probably did Phil the world of good, too, but our respective girlfriends are probably still scratching their respective heads in bemusement. So it goes.

Anyway, after chewing on the geekazoid gristle and lancing a multitude of fanboy boils it was time to move on to proper, grown-up subjects. I was reminded that I hadn't been to see Phil and Beth's baby boy Alfie yet, so I plan to do something about that as soon as goddamn possible. Phil also told me that he and Beth are planning to get married next year.

They've asked me to be Best Man.

I can't begin to explain what an honour this is.

Football isn't something I tend to talk about on here. Come to think of it, football isn't something I tend to talk about anywhere. For once, though, I'll make an exception.

If you feel an urge to annoy, perplex or provoke a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur today simply ask them the following:

Q: "What was Obi Wan Kenobi's brother called?"
A: "Too-Wan"

It works a treat.

You have been watching

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is regarded by many as one of the greatest rock albums ever. I'm not here to defend, deny or debunk its status. I'm very fond of it, many people I know are very fond of it, but there's one thing about it that has always niggled me ever so slightly:

Is it just me, or do other people find that the first few seconds of the classic intro to B-side opener 'Money' bears a remarkable similarity to the first few seconds of the classic theme to saucy 70s sitcom 'Are You Being Served'?

Oh, it is just me.

Danse Macabre

"Sometime in mid-July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman stepped into the street and started to dance."

There was a fascinating piece on this morning's Today Programme about a historical curiosity I'd never heard of before. This dancing woman was soon joined by others - men, women and children - and by the end of August 1518 there was more than four hundred of them. This was no lavish, Busby Berkeley production number, however: these people were in the grip of some mad, uncontrollable compulsion. They danced all day and all night and they danced against their will. It was a sweltering summer, and it wasn't long before some of them started to die...

"This was not the first outbreak of compulsive dancing in Europe. In fact, there had been as many as ten dancing epidemics before 1518, one in 1374 engulfing many of the towns of modern day Belgium, north-eastern France and Luxembourg."

Well, fancy that. John Waller, a British historian of medicine and author of the recently published book on the subject, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die, discussed and dismissed various theories on this phenomena - including the ingestion of psychotropic substances and heretical cult high-jinks - before settling on 'mass hysteria' as the most likely cause. This collective brainwrong of toe-tappery was fuelled by an acute state of psycho- and physiological stress (the city's poor were in the grip of a particularly nasty famine) coupled with a superstitious belief in Saint Vitus, who - as all good Roman Catholic former-altar boys like me will tell you - is the patron saint of jive, throwing shapes and causing mayhem on the dancefloor.

Waller concluded:

"In the long run, the fervent supernaturalism of the medieval world had to make way for the rise of modern science and rationality. The dancing madness was effectively starved out of existence. Even so, half a millennium later it still serves as a reminder of the ineffable strangeness of the human brain."

Maybe so. Waller's conclusion seemed to encourage us all to feel ever-so slightly smug and superior: those 16th Century eejits - with their crazy medieval theological hang-ups - might be susceptible to a terminal outbreak of the Martha and the Vandellas, but that sort of thing couldn't happen here. Thanks to the Enlightenment, the Renaissance and Sky Plus we're all way too smart to behave quite so stupidly.

Maybe, and maybe not. Sentiments like that may pander to the prejudices of certain types of Radio 4 listener, but I don't quite buy into them. Our belief systems may have moved on a bit (although some times I wonder...), but I'm inclined to believe that our capacity for buggier-than-batshit crazy acts of mass hysteria remains the same.

As an Orson Welles fan, the reported incidents of widespread panic in the US following The Great Round One's 1938 War of the Worlds radio play spring to mind. But there are plenty of other examples. Here are just a few:

The Taginyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962. This was a more recent variation of the dancing mania described above, except instead of doing it mid-80s, what-were-they-thinking, Jagger & Bowie-style this time it involved a particularly bad case of the giggles. This "Laughing Matter" took place in the vicinity of the village of Kashasha in what is now called Tanzania and according to its Wikipedia entry:

"The epidemic seems to have started within a small group of students in a boarding school, possibly triggered by a joke. Laughter, as is commonly known, is in some sense contagious, and for whatever reason in this case the laughter perpetuated itself, far transcending its original cause...

"The school from which the epidemic sprang was shut down; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off."

The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic, 1954. Here's another example, this time from CSI - the scourge of Robert Anton Wilson, the publishers of the Skeptical Inquirer and the artists formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal:

"On March 23, 1954, reports appeared in Seattle newspapers of damaged automobile windshields in a city eighty miles to the north. While initially suspecting vandals, the number of cases spread, causing growing concern. In time, reports of damaged windshields moved closer to Seattle. According to a study by Nahum Medalia of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Otto Larsen of the University of Washington (1958), by nightfall on April 14, the mysterious pits first reached the city, and by the end of the next day, weary police had answered 242 phone calls from concerned residents, reporting tiny pit marks on over 3,000 vehicles. In some cases, whole parking lots were reportedly affected. The reports quickly declined and ceased. On April 16 police logged forty-six pitting claims, and ten the next day, after which no more reports were received.

"The most common damage report involved claims that tiny pit marks grew into dime-sized bubbles embedded within the glass, leading to a folk theory that sandflea eggs had somehow been deposited in the glass and later hatched. The sudden presence of the 'pits' created widespread anxiety as they were typically attributed to atomic fallout from hydrogen bomb tests that had been recently conducted in the Pacific and received saturation media publicity. At the height of the incident on the night of April 15, the Seattle mayor even sought emergency assistance from President Dwight Eisenhower."

And here's another:

The Monkey Man of New Delhi, 2001. Reports began to circulate in May 2001 of a strange, monkey-like creature that was scaring the blue bekrishna out of the good people of New Delhi. According to Wikipedia:

"Eyewitness accounts were often inconsistent, but tended to describe the creature as about four feet (120 cm) tall, covered in thick black hair, with a metal helmet, metal claws, glowing red eyes and three buttons on its chest.

"Theories on the nature of the Monkey Man ranged from an avatar of a Hindu god, to an Indian version of Bigfoot, to a cyborg that could be deactivated by throwing water on the motherboard concealed under fur on its chest.

"Many people reported being scratched, and two (by some reports, three) people even died when they leapt from the tops of buildings or fell down stairwells in a panic caused by what they thought was the attacker. At one point, exasperated police even issued artist's impression drawings in an attempt to catch the creature. Many people today still believe this 'monkey man' continues to haunt the streets."

Would you like to see a police artist's impression of the Monkey Man? I'm sure you would:



I regret to say there were no sightings of accomplices, although I'd like to think that a fish, a pig and a foxy monk were somehow involved.

This all illustrates - to my mind at least - that really bloody odd acts of mass hysteria are not confined to some bygone age. Others may argue, of course, that these bizarro events may have taken place in modern times, but only in the strictly chronological sense of the term. They all occurred within cultures where the "supernaturalism of the medieval world" was still hard-wired into the local consensus reality. Over here its different. The sort of archaic mindsets that would cause a mass of people to act as an irrational whole is not part of our world.

These people obviously don't read the financial pages.