Messages

why are directors so afraid of musicless scenes?

Like the use of canned-laughter, it's due to a lack of confidence in the work being good enough to hold, entertain or move the viewer, or the work really isn't that good and they're trying to cover it and hope you don't notice. No Country For Old Men had hardly any music.

You know how Giorgio Moroder and Brian May are always producing scores for silent movies? Someone should give No Country For Old Men a laughter track, and see how it changes the film.

Great doc from 89 on comics and games featuring Alan Moore, Jim Baikie, Dave Gibbons etc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yt_OgoNKo

It was all (deep, morose voice) "post-literate generation" in our house for months after that aired. Pixar or Dreamworks need to base a character in one of their funny animal animations on Moore; he's even funnier than King Julian or the easily distracted dog.

[Beatnik Liberal?]

If another country wants to have nuclear weapons then who are we to stop them, it's their business and nobody elses. I say that we should just ignore them and get on with our lives and have fun.

You know some countries are out right, off the hook, all up in your grill, batshit insane right? Those dudes shouldn't have nuclear weapons, man. They shouldn't be allowed forks really. And even the chill countries are not immune to revolution, and I don't mean the flakey beatles, love-in kind of revolution. But have fun getting on with your life while all the right wing extremists, fundamentalist nutjobs and god complex communists take advantage of your beatnik, liberal ideals. Peace, man!

Beatnik Liberal? You really don't know John. The conclusion he draws is questionable, but you can't argue with the fundamental logic of his statement: if it's okay/not okay for The US/China/Russia/India/Pakistan/France/UK/Israel to possess nuclear weapons, then it's okay/not okay for North Korea to have them too. If you don't think anyone should have nuclear weapons (and I don't), you're just coming at the same logical proof from a different angle.

His argument provides the kind of interesting counterfactual necessary to test the validity of any thesis - if it was really okay for states which sometimes act irrationally and belligerently (i) to have nuclear weapons, then it would also be acceptable for states which mostly act in that manner (North Korea) to possess them too. It isn't; so they shouldn't. The falsification of one statement is the proof of the validity of the other, but the logic's the same.


(i) as the US/China/Russia/India/Pakistan/France/UK/Israel all do

[vzbuxx]

I don't know if there was an actual comic book adaptation of that movie ... it is part of the legacy and I don't think should be ignored.

Nobody ever seems to want to talk about the fact that the guy who created Dredd drew him without the helmet for the comic adaptation of the 1995 shitehouse, scripted by Andy Helfer. He wasn't allowed to use Stallone's likeness, so it pretty much featured Carlos Ezquerra's Joe Dredd. vzbuxx appears to have deleted the only image of Ezquerra's face-of-Dredd anywhere on the internet from his photobucket account, but it still returns a hit on google searches - its the thirteenth image along here. This is Carlos's take on the film costume - note the use of the short-lived DC version of Dredd's logo (also written by Helfer):





For the same reason, Uncle Ron drew him as what he describes as a Schwarzenegger-type for a strip-format adaptation which was serialialised in the pages of The News of the World, but that doesn't have quite the same weight as Ezquerra showing everyone what his Dredd looks like sans helmet. You can read the whole News of the World strip on Burdis's blog - god bless his obsessive-compulsive mania and the delight he finds in sharing it with us all:

It seems to me (sorry if I'm talking nonsense) that if the Median income skyrocketed in the 80s these graphs could be a bit misleading. Are there any places which have graphs which simply lay out all of the different earning demographics (altered to take into account inflation) and then state how many people were in each demographic in the UK from the 70s to the present day?

Not that I can find.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/nov/09/wage-gap-rich-poor-widens-25-years-data

http://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi/result2.php

The above is talking about average earnings, which is of course different from median income. Wages have doubled since the eighties, but so have prices, so things even out - but the longterm trend is for an increasing gap between those earning most and those in that bottom 60% (the majority). That means the burden placed upon the majority of folk by rising house prices has still eaten into disposable income.

[Soap]

Whoever suggested a Megazine floppy reprint as the best way of making those stories available to the few who want them is probably onto something.

Maybe the Meg can do a sequel to the '95 film too or be totally mad by licensing and adapting the earlier screenplays like they're doing with Lucas' The Star Wars. They own all iterations of the character in print...it'll shift 'units'!

But that would be terri ... ah, I see what you did there, Soap. This is probably only news to me, but the comments section of that article contains an interesting synopsis of the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back:

Lando is a clone, Vader possibly isn't Anakin, Luke's real sister is hidden somewhere, Chewbacca fights a Wampa with his bare hands, rebels fight off an invasion of Wampa at their Hoth base, cloud city is full of ethereal aliens, Obi-Wan never appears and tells luke of Dagobah, Luke and Leia do the nasty (not siblings in this script), there is a Coruscant stand in called Mund (Coruscant was created in the 90s by Timothy Zahn), Vader has pet creatures that resemble gargoyles, Luke uses the dark side to fight Vader and doesn't lose his hand, film ends with the group splitting up and Han and Chewie leaving like they originally intended

I knew Lucas was making that shite up as he was going along. "Sister ..."

[suggesting]

Despite a Republican Congressman making fairly free use of a DIA report suggesting North Korea might already have developed some kind of nuclear device which could probably be fitted to a ballistic missile, any correspondent who does a vox pop on the streets of Seoul reports that no-one there is even remotely bothered or thinks the current round of threats of complete annihilation is any different from all the others they're treated to on a regular basis. Apparently, this has barely made the news in SK or in the North, which makes you wonder why it's all over UK and US media. 

Just on the offchance that this isn't all empty rhetoric, and we will all soon be living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I've cut my hair into a mohawk and removed the arse from my leather trousers.

[Ming]

Ming - nicely modest Sir, but I think you should mention 'you know what'!

I too would enjoy hearing Ming talk about 'you know what'. And possibly the other.

Very excited to see this on its way - I've got Skin tucked away somewhere and, Saucie, I haven't dug out Revolver to read Rogan Gosh for donkeys... Has anyone seen it listed anywhere for pre-order? Ming - nicely modest Sir, but I think you should mention 'you know what'!

The Tundra Skin is a beautiful little book, and just the way it looks and feels still gives me pleasure, but seeing the prices it's going for online makes that Milligan and McCarthy collection look like an absolute steal. I can't imagine too many here aren't familiar with the story behind that strip's journey into the world, and knowing how ignorance and corporate politics almost made it one of those comics folk only hear about through talking to old-timers - and which you have to resort to dodgy means to get your hands on - only underlines the importance of keeping it in print and available to new readers.

This is going to be a bit special - having so much Milligan & McCarthy goodness in one collection will be fantastic.  For many, this will be the first chance to read a lot of classic stuff like Skin, Strange Days, Rogan Gosh, etc.  All in full except Hoax and Sooner or Later and the early Freakwaves (which will be abridged, with commentary - and Brendan's editing the whole package).

I've already have some of those, but I don't think I've ever managed to buy any comic without missing an issue or two, so that book's still definitely getting bought. I can't remember the last time I raked out the issues of Revolver I have, so seeing Rogan Gosh again will be a treat.

[DreddRunner]

As far as politics go, I am out of my league there, but will consider it.

Sorry, DreddRunner; that remark was definitely sarcasm on my part. It's like 'Nam on The Political Thread.

Like it or not, that Stallone movie and everything that came with it is a VITAL part of the history.

I don't see how.  It wasn't an objectively successful film and nothing from it crossed over into the regular stories bar some uniform tweaks that weren't embraced by all the artists and were completely gone within a year or two.  Its only contribution was outside the comic where it became a synonym for poor adaptations until Batman and Robin took even that from it a couple of years later.
It has a palpable legacy as a conversation piece, maybe - but even then only among 2000ad/Dredd fans.

A few action film junkies at my work have seen it, but no-one really remembers much about it or likes it that much. The few who still go on about Dredd '95 on film forums are Stallone fans, and I can't see folk who don't buy comics anymore making a special effort to buy a comic using the film costume (but not a Stallone likeness).

I'm sure that if Tharg thought there was even the slightest possibility of monetising stuff which has just been taking up space on a hard dive for nearly two decades, he would already have done so. Whoever suggested a Megazine floppy reprint as the best way of making those stories available to the few who want them is probably onto something.

Pat must be at a loose end at the moment. A fantastically bitchy tease about what might be coming out of the Mills gob in the new Futures Shock documentary about 2000ad (the accompanying photographs reveal that Mills is a Mac Man) and another post concerning the Nemesis dolls, which also cunningly shows you what that inexpensive Marshal Law collection you're expecting Amazon to deliver any day now will look on your bookshelf.

Got all of em boxed up in the loft , wasnt keen on Death being alternative JD but there was some nice art work in there.

Alex Ronald drew the Judge Death strip didn't he? Read not that long ago and it's pretty entertaining stuff.

You all have more patience and brand loyalty than me. I bought the first two, but even if I hadn't been skint at the time I can't imagine I would have persisted.

[Goaty]

Well tomorrow night will be off to Carlisle for overnight before start three days backpacking trek from Penrith to Patterdale via Ullswater, then on 2nd day, doing trek over few peaks at Helvellyn to Ambleside! Download some 2000AD progs for the reading there! Hope you all having a nice weekend!

I should be cutting your hair while you tell me this kind of thing, Goaty. Happy holiday, neebs.