People say friends don't destroy one another - what do they know about friends?

[alexsarll]

Went with some chums to a young persons' rock club this week. It was meant to be an anti-Valentine's masked ball, but most of the young persons seemed to take theirs off as soon as they got in, and the burlesque, being aimed at an audience composed largely of young males, was perhaps not at the more finessed end of the spectrum. But, they were all very friendly and what impressed me most of all was, how catholic their tastes were. In amongst the Offspring and Metallica and Green Day, they were playing dance tracks. The Prodigy, sure - even in the nineties you'd get away with that at an indie club. But also drum'n'bass and dubstep - stuff which sounded right at home between metal and ska, but which ten years ago you really wouldn't have expected rock kids to *admit* sounded right at home there. Good work, rock kids.

If Ashes to Ashes weren't doing so well (I am incredibly glad about the period title sequence, one of the more glaring omissions in Life on Mars) then I could be worried about systemic flaws in BBC drama. This week's (terrestrial) Torchwood and the Phoo Action pilot both had the same very obvious problem - they were rush jobs. Yes, Torchwood's plot had been done before in Buffy, but ruling out plots Buffy has used would leave genre TV looking pretty starved. It's a good plot; you can do it as a stand-alone (Mike Carey and Jock's Faker), or in an ongoing series it's a good way of doing a character piece without being very dull and obvious about being The Character-Driven Episode. And yet, for all that potential, for all that it had some stunning moments (especially from Ianto) and the first real indication that Ryan Gorman can act, it didn't quite hang together. Bits were missing, bits were here that shouldn't have been, other stuff didn't quite link up right. Another draft of the script, a little longer on the shoot, and you'd have had something really rather good. As is...a misfire. And ditto Phoo Action. I've never knowingly read the strip on which it's based, but knowing Jamie Hewlett's work, I could infer how it was meant to go. I couldn't see it on screen, though. Imagine if Sin City had been done on a budget of about a tenner, with a director who was OK but no Rodriguez, and no time for rehearsals or extra takes. You'd have ended up with something this peculiarly leaden, this almost-fun-but-hamstrung. And it would be a real shame, as this was.

So what if "more quango members live in four London boroughs than the whole of the North of England"? I imagine those four London boroughs probably contribute more tax revenue to the Exchequer than the whole North as well, so it's only fair they have a greater say in how it's spent. And speaking of revenue, consider the neo-puritans' next anti-smoking proposal. Charming as ever, I'm sure you'll agree; the alcohol license will doubtless follow in about 20 years.

If you only know Howard the Duck via his film incarnation, then you don't know Howard the Duck. Like the Judge Dredd and Tank Girl films, if it's not quite as bad as its reputation suggests, it nonetheless missed the point of the exercise pretty thoroughly, and even having Grant Morrison's Invisibles Archons in can't fully excuse that. The point being, Howard's creator died this week. His name was Steve Gerber, and in amongst the usual interchangeable obituaries was one which said some stuff worth reading about him, and about comics in general.

Comments

[xandratheblue.livejournal.com]

Steve Gerber - http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02122008.shtml

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Fair. And kudos to a comedy strip for avoiding the obvious angle when the writer of Giant-Size Man-Thing died.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Which is interesting, because while one might expect the hearts of towns to be more cosmopolitan, they also have more potential to handle niche tastes.

It's not the atrocity a lot of people claim (the design in particular is as close to dead on as the FX of the day would allow), but it's still fundamentally flawed, from the whole dynastic angle being overplayed to the comedy sidekick to, yes, THE HELMET COMING OFF.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

1. Having caught up with Ashes to Ashes on the iPlayer (it's so much easier than watching television, plus you can stop it and go and do something else for a bit and then come back), and having never watched life on Mars, I have to say, I am hooked. This resulted in me buying the two series of Life on Mars so that I can understand the comparisons I am reading. I find DI Alex Kane ever so slightly irritating, but as the irritatingness resides essentially in the over the top superciliousness towards the 'imaginary constructs' and that superciliousness is also reflected in her 'mother's' mannerisms, I can only conclude that that's part of the plot - on a reviewing last night, she was displaying the same supercilious arrogance at the beginning, before she got shot. Wibble.

I do have to say that they have got the period clothing absofuckinlutely wrong, wrong, wrong. That off the shoulder stuff came much later (or maybe it just took a long time to go away) - and the new romanticism percolated into high street clothing around the mid eighties which is when you tended to get the bright blue things. The early eighties were very much a seventies hang over in office dress and the street clothes were post punk proto grunge apart from the small crowd of art school (St Martin's I think) students and ex-students hanging around squats and going to one or two night clubs. Not that I was there, I hasten to add, it's just that this sort of stuff is a hobby.

2. Don't you diss Tank Girl. I've based my life on Tank Girl.

edit: Oh, right, the film. That's OK, then.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, clearly the comic rocks! Whereas the film wastes loads of time giving her a backstory and an explanation she doesn't need. Once that's out of the way, and we get the basic GIRL WITH TANK set-up, it's OK.

I think the eighties anachronisms are also part of the plot. Whatever this is, dreamscape or otherworld, it's not the real 1981 - it's either her or the collective unconscious' vision of 1981.
(Which is also a really handy excuse for bad research, but what the Hell)

[kenix.livejournal.com]

I don't care because she looked REALLY GOOD in the blue off the shoulder thing with the red belt.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say no or anything, but I find the amount of lust in some quarters slightly puzzling.

[kenix.livejournal.com]

It's possibly related to my Helen Marnie thing. They are sort of similar-looking.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Not a connection I'd have spotted myself, tbh. But then I'm not sure if I've ever seen Helen Marnie move.

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

Oh god I forgot to tell Rhys I couldn't go to that!! Glad it was a good night though.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It was an odd night but yes, I am glad I went.

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

Yes, Torchwood's plot had been done before in Buffy

Torchwood's plot had been done before in Torchwood!

[pippaalice.livejournal.com]

hahahahahahahahahaha

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Which one? NB we are talking about Adam here, yes? I have not seen 'Reset' yet.

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you've not read Border Princes then?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Not yet, though it does look considerably more tempting than Slow Decay.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Phoo Action was... odd. Kitsch from Adam West Batman, fight scene camerawork from Christian Bale Batman. The former thing good (if you like that sort of thing); the latter was shiiit. The pacing of the direction was hopeless and it would have been very lightweight without Carl Weathers (in a literal sense as well).

Jamie Winstone was rather tasty in hot pants, but her character wasn't much more than 'petulant geezer-bird'.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

She should have been tasty, but somehow it just wasn't working for me (same goes for her Hercules & Love Affair video).

You're right about the Adam West factor; the problem was, we all saw that as kids, and now see it with a nostalgia filter. Make something looking like that now, and you've got a problem.
(See also: Banana Splits, for the look of the mutants)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have a Marvel Howard the Duck collection and it's pretty good. The more recent revival comic wasn't so good.

wrt Ashes2Ashes: I had the thought a while back that whenever anyone set anything in the '80s, they always had to go over the top with the visual references like Flock of Seagulls haircuts, stupid clothes, etc. (see the Wedding Singer or the Friends flashbacks) but really it was much more like Gregory's Girl or the Beiderbecke Tapes or Letter to Brezhnev, at least in the UK. Temper this with me not actually having watched A2A but you get the drift.