The Mindscape of Alan Moore

[petemaskreplica]

Went to see this at the ICA last night and it's not bad, as a documentary it's no great shakes, but Moore's such an engaging raconteur that you can put up with the slightly irritating and pretentious direction (you know the kind of thing, shots of tarot cards at random, backwards film of a bloke wandering around London in a trenchcoat looking not that much like John Constantine, some crappy special effect that would have shamed Dr Who at its worst which I think was meant to represent Swamp Thing, or possibly the super-consciousness of creation, maaan, crappy "dramatisations" of passages from V and Watchmen). Thankfully the only voice you hear is Moore's though, so you can ignore this kind of nonsense and enjoy his tales of growing up in the kind of neighbourhood where "even the family dog shared the same hair lip", then a brief resume of his career, and (the real meat of the interview) his ideas on magic and the creative process, which are a great deal less pretentious or mad than I've just made them sound. There's also a very creepy moment when he reads one of Rorschach's journal entries, which is quite terrifying. His great interest at the moment is the theory that information may be a fundamental universal force, and the accelleration of information and knowledge to the point where he thinks "human culture is turning to steam".

There's no cinema distribution deal been done for this yet, so if you're not in Londinium (it's showing all week at the ICA) your best bet is to look oput for it on TV or DVD. Anyway, for all my misgivings about the style of the film, 80 minutes of Moore talking is worth anybody's time.

BTW, rumours of affable Al's retirement would seem to be premature: one of the titbits to emerge from the discussion before the screening was that he's kicking ideas around with Oscar Zarate for a new book, provisionally called "The Battle". And Jose Villarubia recommended the upcoming final issue of Promethea, on the grounds that it's "insane" :)

[The Amstor Computer]

Retirement from "mainstream comics" was how he described it himself, IIRC. That means that more personal strips, like the new Zarate project you mention or LOEG Vol 3, are still on the go (and in encouraging news for League fans, Kevin O'Neill is currently working on the new series :-D )

[dobbsy]

Spot-on review Pete, IMHO.  It was just a shame the screening ran so late.  On the plus side, I saw Dave Gibbons at Embankment station afterwards and asked if he'd mind autographing my Watchmen TPB.  Not only did I get an autograph, he also sketched Rorschach.  

[The Amstor Computer]

Did it look like a butterfly? Butterfly with GUNS.

[dobbsy]

More like a dead dog a with tire track through its guts.

[The Amstor Computer]

Aheh. Heh.