geekent’s stuff’n things

A brief little book (140ish pages plus pictures and drawrings) by Goon Show founder Spike Milligan detailing his exploits and hijinks serving in Her Majesty’s Royal Army. Milligan’s writing is glib and whimsical but often too much so, at times just an endless string of quips, playing with words and phrases (written as suspect dialogue). It also feels restrained and hesitant, never getting into too much depth or really establishing any emotional connection with the reader. It’s almost as if he was too concerned whether the reader would be interested in anything but the funny bits from him, and it’s ultimately a mildly amusing but flimsy read. Apparently it was the first of a trilogy (“Rommel?” “Gunner Who?” and Monty: His Part in My Victory), along with a fourth through seventh part of the “trilogy”, (Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall; Where Have All the Bullets Gone?;
Goodbye Soldier; and Peace Work). A film adaptation of this book was made in 1972.

TCM stated that Notorious was “up next”, but when it came time, it was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a not-horrendous romantic comedy which bears next to no similarities to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie feuding assassin spouses film of not too long ago. The film starts with the Mrs. asking the Mr. that if he had it to do all over again, would they get married. They have an established level of honesty and trust to them, so he doesn’t lie and tells her no. What he didn’t know was to come was, through a bureaucratic error, their marriage isn’t actually legal. When the Mr. teases the Mrs. with the information, she rebels against their relationship, throwing him out and allowing other men to court her, including the Mr.’s best friend/business partner (who, though it’s never stated aloud, is insinuated as being gay). The film’s 95 minutes kind of drags along especially knowing that inevitably the two will indeed patch it up. The bits of torture and cunning the two put each other through aren’t really all that clever or humorous enough to sustain the length that each one takes up. Though there are indeed a few laughs, the dialogue isn’t all that punchy nor witty. WIth it’s nonsensically abrupt ending, the film ultimately underscores why Hitch is known for his thrillers, rather than his comedies.

I’m quickly coming to understand that the Bard was, if not the originator of the romantic comedy, then the master. These modern retellings of Shakespeare’s comedic plays pay homage to the source while placing them square amidst their Julia Roberts/Amy Adams-style movie peers.

Shirley Henderson (best known as “Moaning Myrtle” in the Harry Potter films) plays Katherine, the titular shrew. A short, bitter-faced, hard-edged, cynical, bitchy Member of Parliament with aspirations of becoming the leader of her withering party. Her fellow party members would support her (out of fear most likely) but they think her viability with the voting public would be improved were she perhaps not so… single. Katherine’s sister, Bianca (Dexter’s Jaime Murray) is a top-ranked supermodel, and obviously part of why Katherine is the way she is. When Bianca fires her long-time, doting manager, Harry (Stephen Tompkinson) after yet another marriage proposal, she states she’ll only get married after Katherine does. Enter his best friend, Pete (Petruchio, played by Rufus Sewell), just back in the UK after being kicked out of Australia. Avoiding massive debts to the government, Pete states he just wants to marry a woman with money, with no attention paid to her looks, age or demeanour. Harry puts two and two together, and when Pete spies Katherine he professes love at first site, and a whirlwind courtship ensues. Within the week they’re off to get married, only the farcical wedding finds Pete drunk and in drag, and Katherine enraged, and the couple is whisked off to their Italian villa to hash out their differences (or, as Pete states, “I’m gonna tame that bitch”).

It’s far from a politically correct comedy, although it does show the battle of the sexes in an interesting and modern light. The acting from Henderson and Sewell is delightful, even though it’s about as unromantic a romantic comedy as I’ve seen, it still brings it in its own way.

Adam, one of my co-writers over at Thor’s Comic Column, wrote a review last year of this collection, and while his review piqued my interest, my past experiences with 500+ page tomes of black and white comics have been less than satisfying (primarily because they’ve poorly written, 60’s/70’s oriented reprints of DC/Marvel Comics) so I didn’t make much of an effort to buy the book. However, whilst whittling a half hour away in the basement of the Jane/Dundas Library (it’s where the kids/young adult sections live), I spied a copy on the shelves and checked it out.

Zot! is the creation of Scott McCloud - best known for his brilliant educational text Understanding Comics - and this collection compiles issues 11 through 37 of the series (minus the back-up features and with only the thumbnail outline for issues 20 and 21, which were drawn by another artist whilst McCloud was on his Honeymoon… also the first ten issues were in color and may be reproduced at a later date). The titular character is a superhero in his own world, a parallel earth where time moves slower and things are generally pleasant (which, one should add, isn’t the same as naive). Zot’s home town is like a futuristic Salt Lake City where everyone’s happy except the odd curmudgeon who declares himself a villain. Zot and his uncle (prior to when this book picks up) had discovered a dimensional gateway to something more resembling our Earth, where he met Jenny. Two thirds of this volume encompass traditional elements of superhero fiction (good vs. evil stuff), merging sci-fi tropes (exploring differences between worlds, alternate histories), and teenage melodrama, all with an avant garde twist, McCloud taking an early interest in not-so-much deconstructionism as realism. There’s a sense of logic to Zot’s world that the real Earth doesn’t have, order versus chaos, but what’s interesting is how alien Zot’s world seems and how familiar ours is.

The latter third of the book finds Zot stranded on our Earth, but McCloud’s storytelling focuses on telling individual tales of the support cast instead of focusing on Zot’s adjustment to his predicament (which he takes with his usual optimism). McCloud’s overall tone for the series is experimentalist, not to any great extreme, mind you, but he was a forerunner to much of the storytelling styles we see in comics today, where the superpowers and superheroics are less central than characters and character interaction. A leader in the naturalist movement of storytelling, McCloud was also working through some ideas for Understanding Comics in Zot!, in terms of story structure, pacing, illustration, and themes.

McCloud provides an introduction and post script to this collection, as well as interspersed recollections on creating individual issues or story arcs. These commentary “special features” (to use a DVD term) add a lot to the enjoyment of the series. Something that would have seen, frankly, a little plain is suddenly filled with gravitas when you understand the context in which it was made. McCloud undercuts his own artistic skill but his clean line and exquisitely detailed illustrations are actually quite superb, his characters pointedly simplified, perhaps not to a Charles Schulz extreme but along the same line of “less evokes more”.

(Torontonians, I notice a stack of copies on sale at BMV books on Bloor for $9.99… Bargoon!)

After receiving a copy of the UK premiere film magazine Empire from Aden’s dad a few months back, I’ve had a jonesing to give it another shot, since it seems to have an honest geek focus (both genre geek and film geek) which American rags just don’t seem to come by. The mag has professional writing (unlike some of the godawful crappy news/rumours sites out there) and some great articles, a solid crew of reviewers, and plenty of Brit and international content (again, which the American rags don’t seem to pay any mind). It doesn’t worship at the cult of celebrity, but rather seems to hold the cult of the director in more esteem, as any film mag should.

This month was Empire’s 20th anniversary feature, which at first to me seemed like a long time, then I realized that 20 years ago I was 13, and Batman had just come out, so in a sense it’s not like their roots in film are that much deeper than mine. To celebrate their 20 years, Stephen Spielberg guest edited the Magazine, which led an interesting synergy to much of the book-sized magazine. There were three major articles featuring Peter Jackson (focusing on his new film, Lovely Bones, as well as his motion capture co-directing gig with Spielberg on the two Tin-Tin moves, and an extensive interview with him and Guillermo Del Toro on the Hobbit films), and a focus on technology (including interviewing Coppola about his love of pure filmmaking and James Cameron on Avatar, and all the new gadgets he’s developed for shooting it). Directors get a spotlight, with a great survey sent out to twelve prominent directors (Miyazaki to Del Toro, Pixar’s Andrew Stanton to David Fincher) - the scary thing is how many want to try 3-D, yuck - Tarantino hitting 9/10 on 10-questions (they threw him a Muppets Wizard of Oz-related curveball which he called shenanigans on), and Jack Nicholson pondering his friend Stanley Kubrick.

Though thinned out with a couple boring photo spreads of celebrities and the Empire awards party, it’s a pretty entertaining and meaty (took me a full week to read) mag. I’ll be back for more.