Messages

Thank you.  I take that as a compliment...

rsonally, i thought Savage gave me the Crisis flashbacks - excellent stuff though, especially the 'Guv'nor' tag - why didn't they think of that one before? It's him all over. (The American tourist in Ireland dialogue stretched credibility a bit, but nice to see real issues being addressed - the Shannon airstrip and that).

Agree about the art on Dredd - it's great, but not for a serious strip. And yeah, the Fargos and Dredd have the same size chins - in fact they don't look like mutants at all.

Stickleback i just never really got into. Not bad, but didn't engage me. THe first series was better. The highlights were the links with Red Seas and the idea of Stickleback's identity being fake.

And Dead Eyes - too early to say, but I think John Smith has been at the Profanisaurus lately. By the way, it's a 'seance wank', not a 'wank seance' - the guilty feeling that dead relatives can see you when you're relaxing in a gentleman's way.


No it's not.

http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Wank_Seance









Anyway, i'll wait and see.

Yay!  Nice to see an Arcade Fire thread on here!  Definitely the best band in the world right now...  Saw them at Latitude this summer and they were just brilliant.  There's a sense of... erm... imminence about their songs that verges on the near-religious.

Have you heard their EP with the early rough version of "No Cars Go"?  The last two tracks - "Headlights look like diamonds" and "Vampires/ Forest Fire" are up there with both albums...

Yay!  Nice to see an Arcade Fire thread on here!  Definitely the best band in the world right now...  Saw them at Latitude this summer and they were just brilliant.  There's a sense of... erm... imminence about their songs that verges on the near-religious.

Have you heard their EP with the early rough version of "No Cars Go"?  The last two tracks - "Headlights look like diamonds" and "Vampires/ Forest Fire" are up there with both albums...

The film you're thinking of is definitely "The Vault of Horror" and the story was called "Midnight Mess" starring Daniel Massey.  He ends up hanging upside-down in a restaurant with a tap in his jugular and the vampire patrons quaffing his blood...

Underrated film with a great final story with Tom Baker as a voodoo portrait painter!  Not... recommended...

"B) a certain john s posting on the other thread didn't take too kindly to the latter half of my annotations. (I wonder why?..) :)"


Maybe because you're just the kind of show-off you accuse me of being?  And gutless with it too, since you take refuge in another thread...

I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck WHAT you think, fink!  What you think of "Leatherjack" is academic.  But when the pan starts calling the kettle black...

Guess it takes a smart arse to know one, eh? ;)


 

"Put them together and you get a typical john/SMITH compound word ostesibly meaning alien poison, with a distinct undertone of 'Look at me, look at me! I am considerably cleverer than you!'."

scutfink


Which I suppose makes you equally clever AND a big show-off, does it?

What's clever about "xenotoxins" anyway?  It's just daft SF window-dressing and a pretty obvious made up compound word.  Personally, I don't want to read old-style SF that talks about rayguns and warp drives all the time, but maybe that's just me!

Thanks for your opinions anyway... :-P

Cheers!
john

I'm not sure if this is really the forum where I should try to justify my thinking on this - particularly as the story's still ongoing - but Byron's articulated some of my rationale for including those particular images in that particular episode.  The whole subtext of the story is inter-generational abuse and the use of fear to manipulate individuals and society... something which, in today's climate, I'm sure we're all well aware of.

Ever thought how the mantra "9/11" ("war on terror" - like the "war on drugs" - is another one) has become a kind of post-hynpnotic trigger word used by our governments to whip up hysteria among the public and justify their own increasingly draconian lunacies and violations against our "civil liberties"?

Okay, perhaps that specific image was questionably in bad taste, but I still stand by the sentiments written there.  We are brutalised and made psychological torture victims and prisoners by our own governments and media and that,as much as anything, is what the story is about.  And in the end, well, it is just MY opinion and I'm STILL entitled to have one.  For the moment, anyway...

Also, it did strike me as odd that no-one complained about the rape and murders that preceded this so-called controversial panel.  Surely that was more shocking?  Or does the fact that it was comic artwork rather than photorealism not matter?

Like I say, probably one to debate elsewhere when the strip's over.  Nobody wants to listen to the DVD commentary before they've watched the bloody film, do they?

Best,
john

Welcome Mr Smith!


I thought the war torn picture panel was incredibly effective - the photo-realism was quite suddenly out of place (from an artwork style) in a way that really made me think about what was being said along side it. Was that particular photo referenced in the script, or was it Paul M's idea?


Must've missed the Twin Towers bit - maybe it wasn't cheap enough! ;)


The Twin Towers is visible in that panel.  Here's the relevant bit of script:


Frame 2   Full width panel.  Flip to photo-realism now with a photomontage showing images of atrocities from recent Earth history.  Mass graves in Auschwitz.  Fields of skulls in the Cambodian killing fields.  And – especially – the impact of the planes into the Twin Towers.  That screaming naked Vietnamese girl fleeing from her napalmed village.  (Alternatively, Paul, a "Spartacus"-like avenue of naked beaten people crucified upside-down.  Some missing limbs or wrapped in barb-wire; others with their guts hanging out.)

BUT: VERY unsure about using that photo of the Vietnamese girl (Kim Phuc) in the napalm attack like that. Whatever the merits of the strip, it's still pulp, and that girl's pain is not some cheap effect.

What about the Twin Towers bit then?  Cheap effect or not?

john

"Thesis" is an okay-ish film (in a shallow teen not-very-scary kind of way) but as for the "snuff" thing...

There's no such thing and never has been.  The idea of the "snuff film" is just another media bogeyman - like satanic ritual abuse.

Sure, serial killers like the spectacularly sick Gary Heidnik, etc. have videotaped some of their atrocities, but "snuff" - in the sense of a real-life murder film being commercially released for public consumption - is a total media invention.

The closest thing I've ever seen (excepting the lousy - and largely staged - "Mondo Cane" or "Faces of Death" shockumentaries) is the anti-capital punishment film "Executions" (once on sale in WH Smith!)... itself featuring some very nasty state killings...

The best book that exposes all the urban myths of the so-called "death film" is "Killing For Culture" by Davids Kerekes and Slater.  Essential reading for anyone who believes in snuff media propaganda...

Cheers!
john

Thanks - but the link won't let me access individual images and I don't have time to trawl through the entire site.  I spent an hour looking on the web myself and there are plenty pics of Mr Sin but I can't find any of Weng-Chiang...

Surely not a hopeless task?  Anyone?

Cheers!
john

Hi there!

Can any of you "Doctor Who" fans out there suggest any websites with pictures of Weng-Chiang from that story?  Does he really look as scary as I always remembered him?

Thanks in advance...
john

I laughed out load and so did the other half...

You reckon Fergee will be the King of Clubs?

john

>Tyranny Rex - Still very good, liked the blatancy of the steal from Wrath of Khan.>


What steal was that then?  If you're referring to the sandflukes attacking the guy's face, that was inspired by "Doc Savage"...