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Early bird
Interesting Bright Club for June, on 'Science and the Media'. Not all of the acts had that much to do with the ostensible theme (plenty, including Strawberry and Cream, just went for innuendo-going-on-outright-filth, not that there's anything wrong with that), but those who did, the tech journalists...the self-disgust was palpable. They don't enjoy producing the reports which annoy Ben Goldacre any more than Ben Goldacre enjoys reading them. I doubt the editors and picture editors enjoy demanding them, either. It's just another of those messed-up Wire-style systems which screws everybody without anyone even enjoying the process. Which obviously we should have known in the first place, but the confirmation is welcome nonetheless. My other recent night out raised questions of its own: how can Jonny Cola, who has grown into a pretty good frontman, be so atrocious at karaoke? Why does a performance poet who looks like the poet in question does think that his work will in any way be enhanced by nudity? And why must the St Aloysius close when, based on my three visits there, it is a home to such reliably surreal entertainments?
I've started watching Castle, even though it isn't very good. A bestselling crime writer helps the cops investigate crime? Exactly the sort of 'high'-concept tosh the US networks churn out all the time. But when the writer is played by Nathan Fillion...yes, I'd rather he were still making Firefly. From interviews I've seen, so would he - he says he'd buy the rights if he won the state lottery and fund production himself. But, alas, he is not. So if we want to see him on screen, Castle is what we've got. And the bastard's charming enough that he can make me overlook everything I don't like about the show (which is pretty much everything else, especially the James Patterson cameo as himself) and keep going. Though I may just be saying that because at times Fillion seems to be auditioning for the role of me. Hell, I'd give him the job.
Because man cannot live by imported US crime dramas on Five alone, even though the summer schedulers seem to think otherwise, I also continued with my project of watching all the surviving Who I've not seen. This time: the surprisingly good Enlightenment, probably the most eerily Sapphire & Steel the show has ever been. Though I say that having only watched the special edition, which uses new CGI and cuts about 20 minutes from the running time - and you don't feel you've missed anything in those minutes, because old Who stories can be added to that long list of things which, though great, no one ever wished longer. As for what Eighties special effects made of the haunting central image of sailing ships racing majestically through space, I dread to think.
And then there's comics. Oh, comics. I love you, but you're getting me down. I bought three new comics yesterday, and bear in mind these were not just random, flailing picks, but carefully chosen on the basis of the writers' past work. Well, two of them were. The one I pretty much suspected was going to be dreadful was Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing. The title's a hint, isn't it? But it features the return of John Constantine to the mainstream DC universe, where he originated but from which he has spent many years separated by editorial fiat. And that's the problem here - it's not a comic which seems driven by a story the writer needed to tell, but by editorial - or maybe, worse, branding. Even since the preview DC had in almost all of their comics last month, details have changed, dialogue and art been altered to bring in different characters, and that is very seldom a good sign. And the writer charged with handling this exercise, Jonathan Vankin, comes in with this weird Ray Winstone-meets-Dick van Dyke speech style for Constantine. It is, in short, hideous, and does not bode well for DC's forthcoming universe-wide relaunch, which again looks to be an editorial decision at best. And in the wake of which all the other DC titles are winding down with stories which feel all the more pointless for looking likely to be erased from continuity in three months. Though Paul Cornell's current Superman tale felt pretty bloody pointless even without that looming. You may know Paul Cornell from his many fine Doctor Who stories, or 'Father's Day', but he's also done some very good comics. Having spent a year handling Action Comics (the original Superman comic) without Superman, he'd told an excellent little epic in which Lex Luthor wandered the DC world, meeting its other great villains, in pursuit of the power with which to rival Superman. Except then Superman came back in for the conclusion in issue 900, and everything fell apart, and now we've got a story in which Superman and his brand extensions are fighting the boring nineties villain Doomsday (back then he killed Superman - guess what, it didn't stick) and *his* new brand-extension clones. This is the sort of comic which makes people give up on comics.
And then, away from DC, there's Ultimate Spider-Man, which Brian Michael Bendis has been writing for 160 issues (plus various little spin-offs). And aside from occasional blips, he's kept it interesting that whole time. His alternate take on Peter Parker is still in his teens and, fundamentally, is less of a slappable schmuck than the classic take. Bad things happen to him, he makes bad decisions like teenagers do, but he never seems quite the self-sabotaging arse that the classic and film versions of the character usually do. But now...in a heavily trailed story, he's been killed off. Except I don't buy it because it's only a couple of years since, in a heavily-trailed crossover, he was killed off. Except he obviously wasn't, and just as he supposedly drowned when New York was flooded, and I didn't buy it for a minute, nor can I feel anything about his apparently bleeding out in the arms of Mary-Jane and Aunt May, because even by comics standards it's obviously not a real death. When Bruce Wayne or Captain America got killed off, you knew they'd be back, but enough effort had been put into the deaths that you could believe in it for the purposes of the story, and look forward to the ingenuity that would be needed to retrieve them. Here? Not so much. Which means all the issue can be is an extended smackdown between Spider-Man and the Goblin, ending with both apparently dead but neither convincingly so. Yes, it has the nice scene where Mary-Jane rams a truck into the Goblin, but that wasn't a patch on last issue where Aunt May pulled a revolver out of her handbag and wasted Electro.
I've started watching Castle, even though it isn't very good. A bestselling crime writer helps the cops investigate crime? Exactly the sort of 'high'-concept tosh the US networks churn out all the time. But when the writer is played by Nathan Fillion...yes, I'd rather he were still making Firefly. From interviews I've seen, so would he - he says he'd buy the rights if he won the state lottery and fund production himself. But, alas, he is not. So if we want to see him on screen, Castle is what we've got. And the bastard's charming enough that he can make me overlook everything I don't like about the show (which is pretty much everything else, especially the James Patterson cameo as himself) and keep going. Though I may just be saying that because at times Fillion seems to be auditioning for the role of me. Hell, I'd give him the job.
Because man cannot live by imported US crime dramas on Five alone, even though the summer schedulers seem to think otherwise, I also continued with my project of watching all the surviving Who I've not seen. This time: the surprisingly good Enlightenment, probably the most eerily Sapphire & Steel the show has ever been. Though I say that having only watched the special edition, which uses new CGI and cuts about 20 minutes from the running time - and you don't feel you've missed anything in those minutes, because old Who stories can be added to that long list of things which, though great, no one ever wished longer. As for what Eighties special effects made of the haunting central image of sailing ships racing majestically through space, I dread to think.
And then there's comics. Oh, comics. I love you, but you're getting me down. I bought three new comics yesterday, and bear in mind these were not just random, flailing picks, but carefully chosen on the basis of the writers' past work. Well, two of them were. The one I pretty much suspected was going to be dreadful was Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing. The title's a hint, isn't it? But it features the return of John Constantine to the mainstream DC universe, where he originated but from which he has spent many years separated by editorial fiat. And that's the problem here - it's not a comic which seems driven by a story the writer needed to tell, but by editorial - or maybe, worse, branding. Even since the preview DC had in almost all of their comics last month, details have changed, dialogue and art been altered to bring in different characters, and that is very seldom a good sign. And the writer charged with handling this exercise, Jonathan Vankin, comes in with this weird Ray Winstone-meets-Dick van Dyke speech style for Constantine. It is, in short, hideous, and does not bode well for DC's forthcoming universe-wide relaunch, which again looks to be an editorial decision at best. And in the wake of which all the other DC titles are winding down with stories which feel all the more pointless for looking likely to be erased from continuity in three months. Though Paul Cornell's current Superman tale felt pretty bloody pointless even without that looming. You may know Paul Cornell from his many fine Doctor Who stories, or 'Father's Day', but he's also done some very good comics. Having spent a year handling Action Comics (the original Superman comic) without Superman, he'd told an excellent little epic in which Lex Luthor wandered the DC world, meeting its other great villains, in pursuit of the power with which to rival Superman. Except then Superman came back in for the conclusion in issue 900, and everything fell apart, and now we've got a story in which Superman and his brand extensions are fighting the boring nineties villain Doomsday (back then he killed Superman - guess what, it didn't stick) and *his* new brand-extension clones. This is the sort of comic which makes people give up on comics.
And then, away from DC, there's Ultimate Spider-Man, which Brian Michael Bendis has been writing for 160 issues (plus various little spin-offs). And aside from occasional blips, he's kept it interesting that whole time. His alternate take on Peter Parker is still in his teens and, fundamentally, is less of a slappable schmuck than the classic take. Bad things happen to him, he makes bad decisions like teenagers do, but he never seems quite the self-sabotaging arse that the classic and film versions of the character usually do. But now...in a heavily trailed story, he's been killed off. Except I don't buy it because it's only a couple of years since, in a heavily-trailed crossover, he was killed off. Except he obviously wasn't, and just as he supposedly drowned when New York was flooded, and I didn't buy it for a minute, nor can I feel anything about his apparently bleeding out in the arms of Mary-Jane and Aunt May, because even by comics standards it's obviously not a real death. When Bruce Wayne or Captain America got killed off, you knew they'd be back, but enough effort had been put into the deaths that you could believe in it for the purposes of the story, and look forward to the ingenuity that would be needed to retrieve them. Here? Not so much. Which means all the issue can be is an extended smackdown between Spider-Man and the Goblin, ending with both apparently dead but neither convincingly so. Yes, it has the nice scene where Mary-Jane rams a truck into the Goblin, but that wasn't a patch on last issue where Aunt May pulled a revolver out of her handbag and wasted Electro.
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I think I'm going to ignore DCU Constantine. In fact with Secret Six cancelled and Batman Inc on hold I think I'm going to ignore DC full stop.
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And I very much know where you're coming from, but even in the not unlikely instance that the Milligan and Cornell titles are a mess - MORRISON WRITING SUPERMAN!
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I can't even seem to get excited about MORRISON WRITING SUPERMAN. Make mine Indigo Prime, I'm bored of Superman.
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conclusion: nathan fillion. whatnow?
#popcultureloser
(other good inappropriate-person-helping-cops-shows: the mentalist (con man) and lie to me (kind of) (face reader))
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Aside from Firefly/Serenity (in which one of the other leads was a Baldwin but not a *Baldwin*, if you get me) you may know Fillion as the evil preacher in the last season of Buffy.
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couldn't get into firefly / serenity.
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Oh, the lady in firefly was pretty too. Dammit.
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But yeah, A:R was super light hearted - the crew of the Betty essentially is the crew from the show, with Sigourney in the inhuman super fighter mode the Summer Glau character was. To be fair, I've only seen Serenity and thought it was pants, BUT MY POINT STILL STANDS*.
*Thanks, Summer!
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Well, unless you fancy him, i suppose.
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Yes :D
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(The only Baldwin I actually fancy is Adam, who isn't actually A Baldwin. Well, he is in the sense that his first initial is A, but you know what I mean.)
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I am unable to watch castle - mainly because they insist on calling him "ka-sel" rather than the appropriate "car-sle"
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I am now picturing Castle being reconfigured as a US Keeping Up Appearances.
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I recently finished the term for the summer, and with a nice quiet week ahead of me, I decided on a re-watch of Firefly/Serenity. It was a good week. :)
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