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These remakes just seem exercises in post modern irony to me Proffesah Byah. They seem more like a critique of contemporary tastes through the medium of remaking once popular films/t.v shows. Fame was something unique, it was serialised into a weekly T.V. show, I even went out and bought the double album. Films nowadays, especially remakes, seem very bland by comparison, cleverer, but not as much fun.

Listening to the "Burlesque" album by Bellowhead.

http://www.bellowhead.co.uk/

It's very good.

[FAME]

FAME. This is good entertaiment for an hour or so. Why don't they make films like this any more? A group of students are sitting around bored; one is tapping with a spoon on the table, another is swinging his foot against a radiator and somewhere a broken old fan in the ceiling is clattering away. Next thing you know the whole college is alive with students singing, dancing and cavorting and performing impossible acrobatic feats with one another. So much so they end up dancing in the streets in the middle of New York and bring the city to a standstill! Their teachers watch all these proceedings with wry knowing smiles on their faces.."There's Leroy again, doing the double splits on the roof of that city cab."

The fact that you can't hear yourself think long enough to concentrate on a book because of all the jabbering of mobile users....."Hello. It's me. Yes. I'm on the train. See you in about half an hour. O.k. See you." and so on through the whole journey.

What I mean by chance, is that over time many great works have been either lost or destroyed. Look at the ancient Greeks. There is so much that we can't appreciate of it because it no longer exists. This is not down to aesthetic choice but to the ravages of time.

I had a few bangers and eggs for breakfast this morning. I think it's time for me to log off now.

If you're seen with a book in your hand when you are on a train journey or in a cafe, you are regarded as a freak.

Do you really think that or is that for some dramatic effect? If you do believe that - wow!

What I can say for sure is where I live and commute that is simply not the case.

O.K. Colin, not a freak, but very old fashioned and a little quaint.

Yes it's a confusing mess. How do you evaluate a work's artistic merit? Through the amount of time that is spent producing it? Or by how well known it is? Or how difficult it is for an audience to interpret? There doesn't seem to be a reliable criteria to judge something by. Usually if something is very old then it is taken as having artistic value because of it's longevity. But a work's survival over the centuries could also just be down to pure chance, or habit, and not due to an intrinsic artistic superiority in the piece.

Hi there.

If you're seen with a book in your hand when you are on a train journey or in a cafe, you are regarded as a freak. Walking down the street oblivious of the world and people around you, while playing with your mobile or waffling away to someone on it is now regarded as normal behaviour.

"On this fist I've got tattooed war, and peace tattooed on the other fist, and I've got "The Brothers Karamazov" tattooed up my spine"  (taken from The Young Ones)

Another dystopian fantasy "Fahrenheit 451". Books are illegal in this story and so are burnt. Resistance to this by people takes the form of commiting to memory whole books. So one person is a walking "War and Peace", and another is a walking "Oliver Twist" and so on. Books cease to be objects just exsisting on  paper and on peoples' shelves or in libraries and become instead oral performances, much as in the days of Homer.

You're reading more into my posts than is there Tordel. I don't like Wagner. His music is too over blown for me, too pompous. I like Jedward, they make me laugh. I can still see that even I don't appreciate his work, that Wagner is more important to the musical world than Jedward are or ever will be.

At the end of the day it's down to the reader to decide how they want to interpret the comic.

And yet you continually state that everyone but you is missing the point when they say they don't like American Reaper.

No again Lee Bates. I'm saying not everyone thinks AR is rubbish. Those who do are making a value choice. I'm the same as you, I won't let comments on a forum stop my enjoyment of 2000ad.

No it's not an intentional conceit of AR but Langley's own creative technique, yes James Lacey I agree.

I enjoyed AR, a few on here are evaluating a bit harshly for a comic strip. That was my original contention.

No. You see, this is where you are very, very wrong. Saying, as you are, that "It's ok  because comics are a trashy, low brow medium", is not only condescending to the creators, it's also patronising to the readers.

Comics can be just as life affirming, affecting, and important as any art house film or prize winning novel. They can also be as broad in scope and scale as a blockbuster film due to the fact that there is, in effect, an unlimited budget as far as location and SFX goes.

To suggest that the creators went out of their way to create a strip which is supposed to be enjoyed as vacuous fluff is insulting to say the least.

I may not like American Reaper but I would never suggest that it's good if only enjoyed on the level of throwaway trash because comics are supposed to be low art, disposable entertainment.

No Lee Bates, I'm saying AR reflects the trashy low brow elements of comics. I think this strip has jokingly been referred to as resembling something from Mandy or Bunty, I don't know which, and I think that's part of the AR strip, to call into question the trashy throw away elements of comics. My view is AR is a ambitious undertaking by it's creators.

Comics can be a very subversive element in the cultural life of a society. I do not thnik it's vacuous fluff in the least. At the end of the day it's down to the reader to decide how they want to interpret the comic.

Comics as a whole are products for a commodity market. It is people like us, who collect and nuture them, that recuperate them from this status as plain commodity into something more significant.

I see your point Tordel. But even the most open minded and liberal of us must at some point decide that Wagner's music is of more consequnce than something by Jedward.

I'd like wall to wall Dredd for a few months.

Yeah but Cassandra Kresnov is a woman. So if we already know hell hath no fury than a woman spurned, why bring another woman into the equation?

Hell hath no fury than a woman spurned, or Casandra Kresnov, who's also a woman.

Maybe we should read the book. Could be she's a mutant or robot?