Days Gone By

[alexsarll]

The TV version of The Walking Dead is very, very well-done but - for my purposes - entirely pointless. I'm way further on in the story than this early, funny stuff. I want to know what happens to Rick next, not see a variant edition of what happened to him way back when. Perhaps if the comic ever ends and I'm not getting my regular fix, I'll come back and watch the DVDs, but for now? Surplus to requirements. Obviously I'm glad it exists, earning the creators money and getting new people into the comic, and I'm not faulting the craftsmanship, but I won't be persevering, and I suspect that after this experience I also won't be bothering with the TV Game of Thrones.

It was a good weekend for picnics, but I also made one deeply peculiar trip to Acton (which is essentially a small provincial town that happens to be on the Tube). I assumed the pub the Indelicates were playing would be something like the Windmill, but it was a quiet, wooden pub downstairs with the gig in a function room up top, and at first I thought I had inadvertently wandered into a private party for children. I briefly thought I might not be the oldest person there, before realising that the chap with the impressive 'tache was the promoter's dad, and he was going downstairs for a nice quiet pint. The supports were both fairly generic, but that's forgivable in teenagers, and they had good enough voices that hey, maybe in two bands' time they'll be worth another listen. I got ID'd, simply because they were IDing everyone, but my weary, disbelieving glare was apparently sufficient proof of age, so I got my black wristband OK. The DJs did play some young people's music, but a lot of it was stuff like Cornershop, which I suppose is the same to them as the Clash were for clubs in my teens. And then there was the bit where a girl who didn't like the moshing came to stand with us, and we were a bit puzzled at the proximity until we realised she was swallowing her pride and going to stand with the grown-ups where it was calmer...I mean, as if I hadn't been feeling old enough already from having met my Cthulhuchild in the afternoon (and presented him with a cuddly Cthulhu - you know how some third-rate religions don't like their deities depicted? That's 'cos those religions' deities know they don't look cool enough). And it hit me during conversation with Simon that I have now lived for longer than there was between the end of World War II and my birth. Bloody Hell.
So the set...I think it was the first time I've seen 'Roses' live, and it didn't disappoint. Given the crowd I was surprised they didn't play 'Sixteen' or 'We Hate The Kids' (even though these were clearly nice kids, they could have done with the warning about their peers and their future). The absence of 'Jerusalem', though, made perfect sense, given most of the crowd would have been too young to vote in last May's debacle.
In summary: dear heavens I felt old. But cool old. Mostly.

The Runaways is not entirely free of the standard rock biopic and My Drug Hell tropes. But coming straight after attempts to watch Synechdoche, New York and Outkast's Idlewild, both of which have a bit of novel surface detail but are otherwise almost wholly cliche, it at least felt lively. Yes, I may be biased in favour of a film which has scenes of punked-up, drugged-up sapphism set to songs from the first Stooges album, but I still wouldn't have expected two Twilight alumni* to be quite so convincing as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. Svengali Mick Foley isn't bad, either. Well, he is - he's a diabolical sleazeball, but still someone I could see myself taking as a management guru, especially when his heckler drill for the girls in the band is so reminiscent of the wrenches scene from Dodgeball.

*Of whom Dakota Fanning was also Satsuki in Totoro, which when you see her using her impossible platform boots to crush up pills for ease of snorting, and inevitably looking like a great ad for drugs while she does it, is really quite wrong.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Acton (which is essentially a small provincial town that happens to be on the Tube)

This is view always gives me an IRL LOL. I would love to know what bit of Acton everyone is looking at to get this impression- it's one of the few places in London I ever feel unsafe by default and definitely one of the areas I consider ugliest and most urban-sprawly. And y'know, I used to live in Shepherds Bush. Chiswick and Ravenscourt Park are small towns, yes but Acton has the Australian gap year students of W12 with the public urination of Elephant and Castle.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

At least on a Saturday night, the undercurrent of impending violence and police looking that little bit too alert on street corners were a key factor in my thinking 'Hey, this is just like a provincial town!' See also: having four pubs which clearly appeal to very different crowds, all cluttered together around a small section of main road.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Oh, right- yes, the extreme social problems mixed with high house prices cocktail there. Am surprised the police were bothering, mind you, a couple of years ago they were refusing to go in to the South Acton estate after dark. (Not without reason, although simultaneously totally uselessly)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

We were going via Acton Town, so barely skirted that bit. Although most of England's small towns have an estate of that sort tucked somewhere out of visitors' way.

[adamw]

I did wonder what you'd make of The Walking Dead after our conversation yesterday about it...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Of course, given I know the outlines of the story, I suppose I could always dip in and out of it. Which is not something I usually do - what I watch, I watch religiously - but might be the best option for something that is essentially a re-enactment.

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

Apparently it veers off entirely during the course of this season to become its own beast. I can already see character differences in Lori certainly.

But yeah, I certainly read that, by the final cliffhanger it is off comic plot to some degree - making it worthwhile for all, I guess. They were never going to do all the swords and spoons stuff anyway, so a different path needs be found.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's different, but so far it only feels different in the way that eg the retellings of Superman's origin that come out every couple of years feel different. That's clearly less of a problem for me than A Game of Thrones following the exact lines of the original - but nonetheless, I feel like I'm already getting my Walking Dead serial needs met. If only there were more hours in the day, then maybe.