Histoire de Melody Nelson - Serge Gainsbourg

When Serge Gainsbourg died on 2 March 1991, the news resulted in Paris coming to a standstill. Police blocked off the streets around his home at the Rue de Verneuil as thousands flocked, in much the same way that John Lennon's fans had gathered at the Dakota building. There was nothing on the TV but Gainsbourg all day long; the radio a continous rotation of Serge's prodigious backcatalogue. People in tears. Flags were flown at half-mast. French President Francious Mitterrand said of him, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire... He elevated the song to the level of art."

Gainsbourg is best known to the world at large for the song Je t'aime... moi non plus, and beyond that, the general audience knows little else about the man. But Gainsbourg was (and remains) part of the French culture; Gitane-smoking, louche, the epitome of French cool. A singer, songwriter, soundtrack composer, novelist, photographer, actor, artist, director, screenwriter and a drunk. He was dedicated to cigarettes, alcohol and sex. Over three decades, his musical output encompassed classical, chanson, jazz, pop, reggae, disco, rap... His lyrics were astonishing exercises in Franglais double and triple entendres and rythmic word percussion. His subject matter covered literature, coprophagy, sexual obsession, incest, farting, philosophy, Nazi death camps and cabbage heads.

Since his death his musical legacy and reknown has grown in the past fifteen years or so. Jarvis Cocker (who incidentally wrote the lyrics for Charlotte Gainsbourg's solo album in the 'Serge-style'), Franz Ferdinand, Michael Stipe, Portishead, Beckand Nick Cave all owe (and freely acknowledge) a debt to Gainsbourg's years-ahead-of-his-time style. And anyone who owns an album by the French duo, Air should know that Gainsbourg created that style of music way back in the early seventies.

Which brings us to Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg's finest and most 'complete' work. I only discovered Gainsbourg's work in the last few years, following our first trip to Paris. I'd immersed myself in a lot of Parisian culture when I realised that my first novel would indeed be set there. So that meant Piaf, Pere Lachaise, Pigalle and Moulin Rouge. And it had to mean Gainsbourg. It seemed incredible that I was arriving at such a 'complete' artiste in my thirties. How had I missed out on someone like this for so long?

There's a lot to get through and the Best of... package Initials S.G. is a good starting point for a potted history that takes in the early Be-bop jazz style, the classic Bardot collaborations (Bonnie and Clyde being one of the greatest three minutes of pop ever committed to tape), a smattering of Melody Nelson and some of the later, less impressive reggae diversions.

But if you want a crash course in French cool, Histoire de Melody Nelson is the first and last stop. There are a lot of arguably 'cool' albums: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Velvet Underground's Warhol album, Tom Waits Rain Dogs, Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers, Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers... but ...Melody Nelson outcools them all.

A loose (and louche) sort of concept album, its Lolita-esque storyline involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg losing control of his 1910 Rolls Royce and colliding with English teenage nymphet Melody Nelson, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues. Although I've since discovered an English translation of the superb (and decidedly kinky) lyrics, which are written with a novelist's grasp of narrative, language and allusion, it's inevitably the music that leaves an indelible mark on a non-French speaking listener.

And what music it is! While Serge mutters close to the microphone about sex, aesthetics, death and obsession, a thick and rubbery funk bass guitar rumbles beneath it all, creating rhythmic tension and melody, along with a scraping, staccato, almost punk-ish electric guitar, piano rolls, lush strings and choir. While much of the early seventies output of many progressive rock outfits now sounds dated, Gainsbourg's use of funk and deep orchestrated string and choral arrangements which accentuate the rhythm and salacious atmosphere make ...Melody Nelson sound like an album made in the nineties rather than the seventies. An organ that fades in and out on the track, L’Hotel Particulier creates a spacey trip-hop effect that pre-dates the synthesizer, and will make any new listeners instantly think of Air's Moon Safari.

In L’Hotel Particulier (Special Hotel) , Gainsborug slyly describes the hotel where he and Melody consummate their relationship: “While up there a mirror reflects us, Slowly I intertwine Melody.” After that En Melody (In Melody) it's clear what's transpiring—not only because of its title, but due to the vocals by a squealing Melody (vocalized by Jane Birkin, the girl on the cover and Gainsbourg's muse and long term love).

Despite selling little more than 15,000 copies on its release, it was a highly influential album, and remains so to this day. The cover also bears a mention. Mainly, because it's a gorgeous, iconic bit of pop art, but also beacuse there are stories behind it. Jane Birkin in a short red wig and a pair of patched bell-bottom jeans. The monkey she's holding was buried with Serge and the jeans are open purely because Birkin was at the time four months pregnant with Charlotte (who has gone on to become a respected actress and musician).

On our second visit to Paris there were a couple of trips I had to make. By this time I was a fully paid-up fan of Gainsbourg, and the city seemed different to me because of it in a way that only great writers and movie makers can transform people and places for you through their art.

We visited Montparnasse cemetary where Gainsbourg's body was laid to rest. It's a beautiful place and home to Baudelaire and De Beauvoir and Sartre. Serge's grave is hidden beneath a mound of metro tickets, fluffy toys, wine bottles and cigarettes. We weren't the only one's there; a man had come from the same metro station as us and sat opposite the grave, studying it carefully for some time. Being English we didn't linger as long. But by the time we left, an older couple had arrived and left something on the grave themselves.

We also visited 5 Rue de Verneuil, Serge Gainsbourg's modest two-storey home until his death. It's situated in a repsectable street in the St Germain area, a stones-throw from the Seine, and it's the kind of place where the shops sell old masters and antiques. A few years ago, the residents of the street paid to have the walls of Gainsbourg's home white-washed after his fans travelled from all over the world to cover it with slogans and graffiti. That same night someone arrived, spray-painted a new slogan, and it began all over again. The residents gave in.

It took a little while to find, and it is in a very high-class area and the shops do sell very expensive wares. So it's all the more fascinating to find hidden there a section of wall covered in colours, caricatures, graffiti, poetry, metaphysical debates and phallic images. This more than the grave in Montparnasse felt more like the Serge I'd discovered at this late point in my life.

In retrospect I should have contributed something to the wall as I had when we visited Abbey Road a few years previous (No one I think is in my tree seemed apt at the time). But I didn't. That English reserve again. Graffiti in an expensive area - how could I? I probably will if we visit again.
Apparently, hidden amongst the scrawl is a message that seems to sum Gainsbourg up perfectly. It reads, "Serge is not dead. He's in heaven, fucking."
That seems about right.

The Strange (movie?) Adventures Of H.P.Lovecraft

The new four-part Image comic book, The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft hasn't come out yet, but has already sold to Universal and Imagine Entertainment for Ron Howard to direct.

"Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, the book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.”

Ron Howard wouldn't have been my first choice to finally bring some classic eldritch Lovecraft inspired-horror to our screen, but I'll take what I can get. It's high time. Hopefully the comic itself will do Lovecraft justice, and we'll go from there...

Tour of Chernobyl

A link here and here and a video for the somewhat bone-chilling tours of Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. I've always found the place fascinating - 30km of 'dead-zone' surrounding the centre of the explosion. I'd love to go. It's not exactly a conventional holiday destination but the idea of tramping through those abandoned and radioactive buildings, fun fairs and schools in Pripyat to the sound of a clicking geiger conter just appeals to the ghoulish side of me I suppose.

But there's also something distinctly poetic to an area that's now become a haven for wildlife, due to the absence of humans. Particularly as many of those animals are deformed due to the contamination.
Should you want to book, you can do so here. Just don't tell your girlfriend/wife. It'll be a nice surprise for her when she gets off the plane...

Carter Beats The Devil - Glen David Gold

A brief story about Glen David Gold before we begin. Before he wrote Carter Beats The Devil, Gold met his future wife, Alice Sebold (the bestselling novelist of The Lovely Bones) when they were both MFA candidates at California University. Gold arrived on a motorbike for the orientation and upon meeting Sebold, tried and failed to get his helmet off without success. He sat through the entire orientation with it on, and Sebold was smitten.

It's an odd little story but after finishing Gold's Carter Beats The Devil today, it sounds like a moment lifted from the novel itself.

Like Michael Chabon's incredible The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay, Carter Beats The Devil is a rich, surprising concoction of history, magic, science comedy and romance. A book that, despite it's size (560 pages), makes you wish it were longer. Those old adages about skipping meals and losing sleep due to a novel all apply to Carter Beats The Devil. It's an unalloyed joy from start to finish. I simply couldn't put it down.

The novel begins in 1923 with Carter performing his act, the climax of which is a duel with the Devil, with president Warren Harding taking part. But two hours later, Harding is dead and a dogged secret service agent is convinced Carter is responsible and in possession of a final Presidential secret.

After the audacious beginning, Gold takes us back to Carter's childhood in an upper class turn of the century San Francisco, following the budding magician through the vaudeville circuit, a titanic clash with a rival magician, a meeting with the legendary Harry Houdini, and Carter's ascent to his status as the greatest magician in the world. There's a dazzling array of larger-than-life characters along the way: fortune tellers, the world's tallest man, the inventor of television, pirates on the Molucca Sea, a blind woman with a dark past and pet lion called Baby.

To say more would be to spoil one of the biggest treats that books have to offer you. Gold's novel is an epic sleight of hand as well as a rip-roaring page turner. Using the old magician's adage of hiding a secret in plain sight, the book twists one way and then another, constantly suprising you. There are amazing escapes, huge magical set-pieces, and Gold effortlessly evokes the atmosphere of the early twenties and the spirit of theatre and vaudeville, weaving (and then tying up) an array of subplots and a wonderfully OTT villain into the finale. It's also a beautifully written love story between Carter and the two women who come into his life. Only in this book can a magician and a blind woman flirting in an overgrown park while a lion eats roast beef off of wax paper move you so completely. It's a charming, clever and unique piece of fiction, and destined to join Kavalier and Clay as one of my all time favourite novels.

Now seven years after the publication of Carter Beats The Devil, Glen David Gold has a new novel imminent, which sounds equally fascinating. Sunnyside opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary mass delusion. From there, the novel follows the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world's last (and worst) Wild West star, as he heads to the battlefields of France; snobbish Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America's doomed engagement with Russia; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vice of complications - studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother - to finally make a movie 'as good as he was.'

And just as promising is the news that Carter Beats The Devil has been picked up by AMC, the company behind Mad Men to be adapted into a mini-series. Although Tom Cruise owned the rights for several years, and intended to produce and star in movie version of the book, this AMC produced version sounds like a much more appealing proposition. Let's hope it pans out.

Another Story Girl: Stina Nordenstam - Memories Of A Colour/And She Closed Her Eyes

I first heard Stina Nordenstam in the mid-90's; she was featured on a long forgotten TV show in the small hours of the night on ITV. The piece lasted no longer than a few minutes and I don't even recall a moment of it, other than it mentioned the release of her second album, And She Closed Her Eyes. Of course it was the sound of her music that made an impression: delicate, spare, fragile, ever so slightly jazzy; a voice like a child singing in an empty room and lyrics that hinted at whole worlds of experience and filtered through a very European sensibility. Songs that sounded like a Goddard or Truffaut movie in three or four spider-web like minutes. In the middle of the night I was converted and went out the next day to a wonderful record shop in Birmingham called HIghway 61 that was our one-stop shop for cool and obscure music back in the 90's. And against the odds I found that album along with her debut, Memories Of A Colour. Both were promotional copies; I snapped them up and subsequently fell in love with the reclusive woman from Stockholm who rarely gave interviews and hasn't toured since that first album, back in '91.

I've always gravitated towards musicians who operate outside of the mainstream. Scott Walker (whom I've written about in an earlier post) shares the same reclusive tendencies, exercises complete artistic control over how the songs are (meticulously) constructed and produced, and hasn't performed live since the sixties. Walker, like Nordenstam also knows how to use silence as skillfully as sound in song.

Although Nordenstam has subsequently gone on to write far more avant garde fare, the first two albums are coloured with warm jazz piano and French horn, and the voice is tremulous, pensive. Dusky and plaintive melodies that draw you in quietly then open out for a moment into something thrillingly gorgeous and mournful. Think of snow falling in Stockholm, the minutae of relationships as they hesitantly begin or slowly fall apart, memories of childhood, faded photographs in wallets, a former lover's clothes in a wardrobe, cold coffee, empty streets, airport inertia... Nordenstam's songs are like morning-after lullabies, gauzy with mystery...

Soon After Christmas

I've called you now a thousand times

I think I know now

You're not home

I've said your name a thousand times

To be prepared if you'd be there

I wanted so to have you

And I wanted you to know

I wanted to write songs

About how we're walking in the snow

You've got me slightly disappointed

Just a bit and just enough

To keep me up another night

Waiting for another day

The city's taking a day off

The streets are empty

No one's out tonight

My life is in another's hands

I wanted so to have you

And I wanted you to know

I wanted to write songs

About how we're walking in the snow

But there's no snow this winter

There's no words for what I feel for you

It's not enough

Though it's too much

Why must it always be like that?

The TV screen is lighting up my room

The film has ended

Every inch of my skin is crying for your hands

And I wanted so to have you

And I wanted you to know

I wanted to write songs

About how we're walking in the snow

You've got me slightly disappointed

Just a bit and just enough

To keep me up another night

Waiting for another day

Of course, all these years later, it's a little easier to learn more about the artists you love, however obscure. Nordenstam gives interviews (even if she gives little away) and there are websites and forums that offer clues, breadcrumbs to follow.

A favourite story about her that I discovered a couple of years ago was that Nordenstam had left her long-term retreat on a secluded island off Stockholm in order to see her family, purely to inform them that she never wanted to see them again. And she never has. Which seems entirely fitting with what I've learnt about the woman.

This year, a seventh album is imminent after 2004's brilliant The World Is Saved, which was a return to the jazz/pop and irresistable melodies of those first two albums that beguiled me all those years ago.

In a way of bringing this post full circle, after consulting YouTube, I discovered this Electronic Press Kit that was produced for And She Closed Her Eyes, and is in fact the feature from that middle-of-the-night TV show I saw all those years ago. Here it is, along with Little Star, the single from that album.

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

I first saw this stunning piece of 'Steampunk inspired' animation a couple of years back on BBC3 or 4 and was bowled over by its sheer visionary brilliance. But it was late and I'd forgotten the title by the following day. Then yesterday I stumbled on it by accident after some random internet browsing, so I'm reproducing it here for your viewing pleasure. It's half an hour long but well worth your time. It's absolutely exquisite.

Nominated for an Oscar and for a BAFTA award, Jasper Morello is a short feature made in a unique style of silhouette animation developed by director Anthony Lucas and inspired by the work of authors Edgar Alan Poe and Jules Verne. In the frontier city of Carpathia, Jasper Morello discovers that his former adversary Doctor Claude Belgon has returned from the grave. When Claude reveals that he knows the location of the ancient city of Alto Mea where the secrets of life have been discovered, Jasper cannot resist the temptation to bring his own dead wife Amelia back. But they are captured by Armand Forgette, leader of the radical Horizontalist anti-technology movement, who is determined to reanimate his terrorist father Vasco. As lightning energises the arcane machineries of life in the floating castle of Alto Mea, Jasper must choose between having his beloved restored or seeing the government of Gothia destroyed. Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself.

Let The Right One In and There Are Monsters

A shamless bit of recycling today. We visited The Electric Cinema over the weekend for the final day of Birmingham's Flatpack festival to see Let The Right One In on the big screen. I've already posted a review of this wonderful film in the formative days of Tears All Over Town, but as I haven't much to talk about I thought I'd reprint my original thoughts here, with a few additional thoughts. But for those of you that have already read it, there's some additional material on the fabulous short movie that Flatpack had chosen to precede Let The Right One In...

Adapted from the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In tracks the quiet movements of a small Swedish town, which, like the ever-present snowfall, remains stubbornly serene when talk of a serial killer spreads.
It’s the early eighties. In due spirit a Rubik’s Cube becomes the catalyst of a new friendship between pallid, scrawny schoolboy Oskar and the mysterious girl next door Eli, whose droopy eyes and quiet manners belie a sinister secret.
Eli has been 12 for a very long time.
And in all her veteran experience as a preteen she encourages Oskar to stand up against the school bullies whose daily abuse has become a banal ritual for him. If at times he copes with his new regime, at others he still needs a little help…
In terms of horror cinema, Let The Right One In is something else entirely; a story of who we allow inside our defences when the options are limted, and what we'd do for them to keep them there. It's a coming of age love story between two children who haven't been allowed to be children for some time.
The direction and cinematography is nothing short of sublime. It has the pacing and stillness you'd expect of a Scandinavian film, but it's also punctuated with some of the most shocking and visually arresting scenes that I've seen in a horror movie for some time. Some of the cliches of vampire myths are magnificently re-intepreted; the title plays on the vampire trope of having to be invited over the threshold (the price of doing so without invitation is both startling and poignant); sunlight is as deadly as it ever was, and again plays into another stunning visual; and feeding is a feral, brutal act, all the more shocking when it crashes into the spectral wintry stillness. There are numerous subtexts too, that bubble under the surface; places that the original source novel goes, some of which would simply be too contentious for even the more liberal European audience. There remain little traces of some extremely dark subject matter and are perhaps all the more disturbing for their ambiguity in the film.
Of course a movie that centres around two twelve year old children could all too easily stumble if the young actor's performances fell short, but Lina Leandersson and Kare Hedebrant are simply luminous. Both portray achingly sad children, forced to rely upon each other when all else in life fails them, emitting a chilling and utterly convincing innocence.
Let The Right One In is nothing short of stunning. In my opinion it's the best interpretation of the vampire story that I've ever seen. You should all see this. I guarantee you'll fall in love with it....

But before the main feature we were treated to a stunning little short movie, by Jay Dahl, entitled There Are Monsters. I'm often a little disappointed by short movies; often they're either too amatuerish, or simply have nothing original to offer. If you can't do something visually and creatively arresting in ten minutes, then I don't think you should bother.
Luckily Jay Dahl's little horror movie has one of the best jump-out-of-your-seat moments that I've seen in a long time. The entire assembled audience at The Electric left their chairs (and Art Deco sofas) at the required moment and it was a wonderful moment. But after that, Dahl delivered another more subtle scare, creating a protracted and deeply creepy scene of implied threat, and then proceeded to deliver a final jolt at the end of the ten minutes, leaving us all giggling in that shared, slightly embarrassed afterglow that happens so very infrequently these days.
After visiting Dahl's website, I noticed that There Are Monsters (which is a tease for a full-length feature) is available to watch on YouTube, so here it is in it's entirety. There are a fair few other movies at his website to watch too, so I recommend clicking here to see the rest of his work.
So if you can, turn off the lights and crank up the volume, then watch this...

Camille O'Sullivan

A couple of video clips tonight. I discovered Camille O'Sullivan a few years back and managed to get hold of one of her CDs (A Little Yearning). Back then it was some task as she was still relatively obscure, and I had to order the CD from some small independent Irish distributor, not knowing if I'd actually receive anything in return. The instant appeal for me was due to the fact that she adapted some of my favourite artists: Tom Waits, Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, Nick Cave; and she did so in a very singular and dramatic Weimar/Cabaret style.
A few years on and she's now on the cover of Time Out magazine, winning awards left, right and centre, as well as appearing in movies. Last year we discovered she was doing a show at Birmingham's newly re-opened Town Hall but at the last minute and couldn't make it. Luckily I noticed yesterday that her 'The Dark Angel' show was coming around to the Town Hall again in June and tonight managed to get some tickets.
After a bit of a scout around on YouTube, I found these two performances that I thought I'd post, as they're a good representation of her versatility.
The first, a version of Kirsty MaColl's very funny In These Shoes is from Jools Holland's Later, and the second is her interpretation of Nick Cave's The Ship Song. It was already one of my favourite of Cave's 'quieter' songs, but O'Sullivan's version is simply stunning, and possibly better than the original.

Design is thinking made visual - The Genius of Saul Bass

Saul Bass is one of those names you know but whose work you might not immediately be able to name. His work is also the kind of work that, once you see it, you realise you know all too well. Particularly if you're a film-buff. His work is singular, utterly unique; he was a visual and conceptual genius. Before we go any further, here's the proof:

"Symbolize and Summarize" were the words Bass lived by. Before Bass, movie posters were all about luring an audience into the darkened theatre with nothing but a painted or photographic picture of the film's star. But Bass broke tradition for good in the fifties and sixties by utilising a jagged and bold style with broken type letters that spring from the posters he designed.
And Bass was about more than visually arresting poster design. He was responsible for some stunning opening title credit sequences, the like of which are often imitated for films that aspire to that Bass 'vibe' that kicked off movies such as The Man With The Golden Arm, Anatomy of A Murder, Psycho, Oceans Eleven or Vertigo.

Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm - a movie about a jazz musician's battle to overcome heroin addiction - caused Bass to come up with a title sequence and poster featuring the arm as it's central image, implying the intravenous heroin angle. When Preminger's movie arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans - "Projectionists – pull curtain before titles".
Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.

This was 1955; the drug angle was pretty taboo stuff. But it cemented Bass's reputation as a visual stylist who could as Martin Scorsese put it: "(create) an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film."

Bass caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock who employed him to produce posters and title sequnces for Psycho, Vertigo and North By Northwest, all utterly unique and visually striking. My favourite is for Vertigo...

The title sequence for Stanley Kramer's 1963 film, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is also notable, as it's been aped by a multitude of movies such as Catch Me If You Can, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and a whole host of Bond openings...

Bass's influence extended to visual consultantcy on Spartacus, West Side Story and Grand Prix. But most famous of his collaborations is his influence on Psycho's infamous and visionary shower scene. Although Bass claims he actually directed the scene, co-stars and movie historians disagree. But whatever the extent of his input on one of the most famous moments in cinema, much of his visual style is certainly present in the final product, as evidenced by the splendid storyboards he produced for Hitchcock...

Bass's lavish design sense fell out of fashion in the late sixties, and he then turned to corporate design, making a similar mark there with iconic logos for AT & T, United Airlines and Quaker. He also made a little seen SF movie called Phase IV in 1974. It took a generation who'd grown up with his work to start making movies of their own, and bring Bass back to work his magic on them. As well as creating titles for Broadcast News, Big and War of the Roses, Bass struck up a working relationship with Martin Scorsese and went on to make his tonal mini-credit movies for Cape Fear, Good Fellas, The Age of Innnocence and Casino.

A year after Casino, Bass died. His New York Times obituary hailed him as "the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art."

Watchmen

I, like a lot of comic-book fans, have waited a long time for Watchmen to come to the big screen. Sometimes it seemed too ridiculous a notion to comtemplate: who was insane enough to even try to adapt something so dense and multi-layered?
Watchmen differed from much of my comic-book history; my love for Batman and Spider-Man started at a young and impressionable age and were informed by my dad's enjoyment of them. At six or seven I would borrow his best of anthologies and then subsequently go on to create my own comic collection.
But Watchmen was, for many of us, a revolution that happened in comics while we were in our late teens; it was ours. It belonged to us. It wasn't part of a golden or silver age (although it certainly referenced both); it was something entirely new. As every issue arrived it was evident that this was clearly a milestone in comic history. It was complex and thrilling and fascinating; it referred to that aforementioned golden and silver age of comics and gave it a new and somewhat poignant spin. And it comtemplated a world that was still wrestling with the notion of imminent nuclear catastrophe.

A few years later, myself and an old friend, Chris had the pleasure of meeting Alan Moore at a friends comic store, and spent an afternoon in his company. Moore in person is a fascinating set of contradictions. A big man with a big beard and long, wild hair. He looks insane. That day he was wearing a string vest. But as we discovered, Moore was delightful company; full of sparkling humour and tall stories, and of course, well versed in just about any subject. It was a fine day, made ever so slightly hazy by the selection of flavoured bottles of vodka on offer. He signed a stack of books for us and after several hours we took the train back to Birmingham with a memory two comic book nerds (that we were and sort of still are) would treasure forever.
So Watchmen became a little bit sacred to me and to all that discovered it for themselves. How could anyone hope to transfer something so inherently comic-book to celluloid and satisfy me and its legions of fans worldwide?
But to my surprise, Zach Snyder has pretty much done us proud.
Watchmen is far better than I anticipated. Although I enjoyed Snyder's previous efforts - the re-make of Dawn of the Dead and his adaption of Frank Miller's 300 - my reservations were that although they were visually impressive, there was very little actual 'meat on the bones'.
And while his adaption of Miller's 300 was a slavish, almost obsessively detailed exercise in making Miller's art come alive on screen, the blame for the slightly juvenile nature of the movie could just as easily be laid at the artist's door as much as Snyder's. 300 is a beautiful book to look at, but it is (for me at least) one of Miller's lesser efforts.

When it was revealed that Snyder was taking on the almost herculean task of translating Watchmen for the screen, I was fairly sure that it would at least look like Dave Gibbon's beautiful and ridiculously detailed art come to life; as for the feat of getting one of Alan Moore's most celebrated pieces of writing into the cinema intact... well, I wasn't all that optimistic. Despite all of Snyder's reverential talk of being as faithful to the book as he was to 300, Watchmen seemed to me to be just too big, too complex to be serviced in celluloid.
For a start, there's a lot of text in Watchmen in those appendices at the end of every issue, a rich intertextual seam of backstory and history that breathes a lot of life to what amounts to a relatively slight murder-mystery as the book's fulcrum. Of course, the mystery of who killed The Comedian is incidental in Watchmen; it's far from the most important aspect of the book. Moore and Gibbon's opus is about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war and, by extension, the notion of power and control. It's also a dark and satirical treatise on comic history; its inherent absurdities and its natural conclusion. And it's one of the finest examples of a writer and artist working at the top of their game together.

Last year, The Dark Knight established that comic-book heroes on the big-screen could be treated as more than just fluff: an origin, a villain and a big CGI finale. But although he was working with a character with almost seventy years of history, Christopher Nolan's film was its own beast; it cherry picked all that was good about Batman and only had its predecessor, Batman Begins to live up to. Had he been adapting Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, fans might have been a little more hard-core and nit-picking (as is their wont) in their analysis of his movie making.
But essentially, Snyder's Watchmen is Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen. It's reverent and more often than not, absolutely spot-on. Although some of the book is unfilmable, 90% is made for film. Gibbons' layouts are inherently cinematic and follow a clean narrative structure. It's a storyboard waiting to happen.
What Snyder has done is eliminate the fat, but retain an incredible amount of minutae, both plot-wise and graphically. There are sacrifices: the news vendor and his young Black Freighter comic book reader are given short-shrift (although that comic that serves as a sort of meta-fiction has been animated and may be cut back into the movie as part of the director's cut), the psychiatrist's obsession with Rorschach is limited, and of course the much talked about omission of the alien squid at the finale (which, to be frank, was always an absurdity too far anyway, and is replaced with something that works far better for me here).
But any detractions are minor when weighed against the many pros during these 160-odd minutes. The opening credits act as a potted history of The Minutemen and their place in time, to the strains of Dylan's The Times They Are A Changin', and are a delight, filled with little 'easter eggs' from those intertextual appendices, while also serving as an introduction to the newbies in the audience.
There are a few standout performances amongst the generally excellent cast. Jackie Earl Haley's interpretation of Rorschach and Walter Kovacs is spot-on; he's essentially the crypto-fascist element evident in Batman or his template, Steve Ditko's The Question. But we can't help but sympathise to an extent with his anger at the world. Jeffrey Dean Morgan makes the most of his limited screen time as The Comedian; a gun for hire monster who seems to want someone to stop him (as in the chilling scene with Manhattan and the preganant Vietnamese woman). Billy Crudup is excellent too under the heavy CGI as Dr Manhattan, a man adrift from the world and time and serving as the finale's fall guy; creating a new utopia over the fear of an angry god.

There's much more to Snyder's Watchmen to be discussed, and more to be gleaned from future viewings. The notion of a director's cut with another thirty minutes only adds to its appeal, a film made for the blu-ray generation. All in all, there's sufficient depth to it, and that's the big surprise for me. It may not be an absolutely perfect movie but for me, it's the best Watchmen movie that I could have possibly expected.

Now, who's up for The Dark Knight Returns?

Watch The Skies! - The Thing From Another World

Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World is a movie that passed me by entirely during my childhood. Of late I've been trying to catch up with all those classic old movies that I did see when I was young, but only have dim recollections of: The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them, The Fearless Vampire Killers... the list is long.

Unlike a lot of re-makes, the do-over of the Hawks' movie by John Carpenter was visceral, eye-popping top drawer horror movie making; so I was curious to see the original after all this time.

And Hawks' movie is a entirely different beast to be sure, but no less effective. (And by the way, it's technically directed by Christian Nyby, but to all intents and purposes, The Thing... is a Hawks' movie through and through.) This claustrophobic, thinly-veiled meditation on the anti-communist witchhunts in the form of a malevolent alien being terrorising an air force crew and the scientists at a remote Artic research outpost is full of mood and suspense, and plays like a more contemporary movie.

What surprised me most was the dialogue; it's fast-paced, exceedingly snappy stuff for a horror movie of the 50's. Dialogue was never top of the list of requirements for SF/Horror back in those days (and some, me included, would argue it still isn't, alas). But Hawks and Charles Lederer's script bristles with one liners with characters' dialogue often overlapping in a realistic way. It's also notable for having a female co-star who's pretty sassy and more than capable when the alien starts his reign of terror on the base. There's also some light bondage fun to had with male lead, Kenneth Tobey!

Of course, a fifty year old movie simply can't compete with the (still) stunning FX work by Rob Bottin in Carpenter's remake, and James Arness stumbling about in the snow looking like a sub-Karloff Frankenstein doesn't especially do it any favours. But despite this, Hawks' Thing slow-burns the tension, making the menace - out there - all the more fearful, and instead focuses on the interplay between the exceedingly well-drawn characters, and then throws some well-staged and atmospheric set-pieces into the mix for the finale. The final fire and electricity scenes are simply beautiful bits of black and white cinema. There's also some fabulously spooky music by Dimitri Tiomkin that lends extra chills to the shadows and largely unseen menace.

Despite its somewhat heavy handed 'Reds in the bed' subtext, Hawks' The Thing From Another World is huge 50's blockbuster fun. Them is next on the list...

You Can Go Home Again - The Genius of Frasier

Just recently we started watching Frasier again. Right from the start, as we have them all on DVD. And each time I return to this show, I fall in love with it all over again. For eleven seasons this show maintained its elegance, absurdity and razor sharp wit. It sounds like a cliche but the core group of Frasier, Niles, Martin, Daphne and Roz (and Eddie!) became something akin to friends whose company you treasured and adored. There was none of the schmalzt that often marrs a lot of American sitcoms, and for a show that took quite broad character sweeps - wine and opera loving fopps/ crotchety retired cop/ a very English maid/ a sex mad producer - nevertheless managed to breathe real life and and a rich seam of depth into each of them.
I picked the following clip from Season three because it ecompasses everything I adore about this show. You Can Go Home Again sees Frasier celebrating three years of his radio show and flashbacks to his first farcical day on the job at KACL, meeting with Niles for the first time in several years, and then seeing his father Martin for the first time since The Crane's mother's death. What Frasier did brilliantly was go from laugh out loud humour to moments of pure perfect poignancy. Kelsey Grammer distills everything that made Frasier touching, funny and warm in this scene in Martin's apartment. It speaks for itself. Perfect. Just perfect.

The Six Word Story

In the twenties, Ernest Hemingway's colleagues bet him he couldn't write a complete story in six words. In retaliation, Hemingway wrote this:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

His colleagues paid up. Hemingway considered it his best work.

Six Word Stories takes this challenge and includes stories by famous people and reader submissions. And while nothing approaches the tragic genius of Hemingway, there are some real gems on there.

Some of the SF one's are my particular favourites...

Time traveller dies tragically. (1967 - 1608) (Sean from Dublin)

“Hello Son,” it said, tentacles waving. (G. Sulea)

Last man on earth. Hears knock. (Pete Berg)

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time (Alan Moore)

Leia: “Baby’s yours.” Luke: “Bad news…” (Steven Meretzky)

While in the Death category, we have three of my writing heroes...

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine. (Stan Lee)

With bloody hands, I say good-bye. (Frank Miller)

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. (Joss Whedon)

Objects of Inexplicable Desire # 5: Horrified B-Movie Victims Action Figure Set

Having bought Them, 50's classic SF/atomic monster movie today, this utterly silly action figure set seemed apt...

From the Baron Bob website: Don't you love those old time monster films, that bloated blob oozing after that scream queen? Well now you can reenact your favorite scenes anywhere whether it's at your desk during work or in your bedroom. Every time you look over at these awkward looking fools, you'll be sure to get a laugh. Celebrate the greatness of the heart of cinema with the soon to be classic Horrified B Movie Victims Set.