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[Tom Hardy Tackling Vertigo Comic '100 Bullets' for New Line]

Why 100B hasn't already been turned into a premium cable TV series is a mystery to me. It's so cinematic you could almost just film it verbatim and it would work on screen.

Tom Hardy Tackling Vertigo Comic '100 Bullets' for New Line

I remember hearing about the Tom Hardy thing, but that article is from nearly two years ago and not a word since. Also, it sounds like they're planning a movie, when 100B really deserves a premium cable show. The format is perfect - relatively self-contained crime vignettes and mini-arcs, with hints of a larger mythology in the background.

Has anyone read the Lono spin-off? Is it worth a purchase?

I remember excitedly buying the first few issues, but just couldn't get into it for whatever reason. Didn't have the same magic.

I'll say what I always say whenever a thread like this pops up - no, things weren't better in the past, you were just younger and more impressionable, so things seemed more vital to you then. There's just as much - if not far more - creativity around now than there always was. It's very easy to cherry pick the very best music/films/games from years past and ignore the vast swathes of crap that there has always been.

I also don't understand why people moan about social media - if you don't want to engage with it, you don't have to. And if you're complaining about people posting mundane shite, it probably says more about who you're following and engaging with than the medium itself.

I also get a little tired of all the griping about smartphones and how they're making people 'antisocial'. That's ignoring the literally thousands of ways that they facilitate communication and engagement with others.

Having said all that....

In some very specific ways I kind of miss the pre-internet era, when you had to have your finger on the pulse and really seek stuff out when it came to stuff like music and films, and there was something really special about discovering a new band, or tracking down a copy of Watchmen for the first time, whereas now it's almost too easy. There's no barrier to entry and geek culture has now swallowed mainstream pop culture whole, and I find myself feeling a little disconnected from it as a result.

As far as I can tell, there isn't really an 'alternative' music scene anymore because as soon as an artist builds any underground buzz, they'll have a Wikipedia page and be profiled in The Guardian a week later. Patton Oswalt wrote a really great article about this phenomenon a few years back.

https://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/

Not that I'd go back to how things were, mind. The advantages of a connected world still vastly outweigh the disadvantages.

I mean, there is very little detail in his face, it looks very easy to replicate for anyone with out any artistic experience. By that, I mean he just looks so basic. I don't get any sense of realism from that image, no personality in Dredd's face, he just looks like a cartoon.

So approximating reality is the only merit by which art should be judged?

[13 Reasons Why]

13 Reasons Why

The buzzy new Netflix show. I caught the first episode and strongly disliked it. I just couldn't get a handle on the tone they were going for, and my initial reaction was that they were treating some very serious subjects in an astoundingly irresponsible, flippant way - for example glamourising teen suicide as a kind of kooky, quirky way to get revenge on others. Won't be watching any more.

Same. Tonally it was a disaster - but it's not really "for us" I'd argue - it's helping a shit-ton of teenagers open up about stuff apparently the world over so that's something I suppose.

If it's helping people then fair enough I guess. I also totally agree with everything Blaze says. Apparently  the writers were given a list of 'don'ts' by various specialists relating to teen suicide (don't glamourise or portray suicide as a 'release' or way to 'get back' at people, don't explicitly show the act itself) and chose to completely ignore all the notes... They've also been strongly criticised for not even attempting to address or touch on what is the bigger of mental health.

I think the thing that got my back up was that it seemed to be treating a very serious issue in this really preposterous, even cutesy way - 'I'm leaving my suicide note on an old cassette tape - so vintage #suicide'. Nothing read remotely real or relatable about it.

Finished Happy Valley - it's a good show, though the first half of the first season's plot is so similar to that of Fargo beat for beat that it's borderline a ripoff, and as a whole it inevitably gets more soapy and far-fetched as it goes.

I also think the main villain character is really badly miscast. He's a decent actor, but he looks more like a 90s boyband member than a hardened criminal - he lacks the menace a character like that needs to have. Kept imagining what someone like Stephen Graham would have done with the role.

Really, really enjoyed this and not just because it takes place in my future-dream-home of the Calde.r valley.

Watching the show made you want to move there?!?!?!

As I say, I understand what the intended result was now, but when reading his Dredd and Stront stuff as a kid me and my friends always used to think it was a really strange quirk.

[100 Bullets]

Doing a full reread of 100 Bullets for probably the first time in 10+ years.

Well, it holds up a lot better than Preacher!

Amazing stuff - loving every page of it. So stylish - the writing starts a little rough but gets better and more confident with every arc, and the artwork is just next level incredible. As a body of work it's up there with Akira or Watchmen for me.

Why 100B hasn't already been turned into a premium cable TV series is a mystery to me. It's so cinematic you could almost just film it verbatim and it would work on screen.

Mindhorn, the new Julian Barratt (him off The Mighty Boosh) comedy. Very, very funny and immensely likeable stuff. Should go down great with anyone who enjoys his brand of humour or has a soft spot for Partridge-style characters and dialogue. Laughed heartily throughout and look forward to seeing it again.

Sweet - heard Barratt talking about this on the Adam Buxton podcast. Think it's going to release straight to Netflix over here - looking forward to it.

Got to admit - I never liked the chunky dotted outline thing. I now get what the intended effect was, but imo all it did was draw attention to itself and make me wonder what the reasoning behind it was.

Been a while but I believe Epping is the farthest station out of the city on the red line. M11 from Standsted to there. And the red line takes you to St. Pauls which is a quick jog to where you want to go. So assuming you can find somewhere cheap to sleep in Epping that's what I would do.

But I'm not a Londoner nor have I visited for a fairly long time so maybe mines not the best advice.

Yeah - used to live in Epping and it's a pretty handy location. Very close to Stansted (maybe a 30/40min drive?) and you can take the central line all the way into central london in around 45 minutes (best of all, as its the end of the line you'll always be able to get a seat even at rush hour, and most of the journey is actually above ground).

I kind of get people not liking Ezquerra's art - it's a little idiosyncratic and rough around the edges - not for everyone. He isn't a 'showy' artist and I think he's more interested in storytelling than clean lines and polish.

I must admit, I don't always dig his stuff all of the time (I find his digitally coloured stuff a little bit hit and miss), but when he's on he's pretty hard to beat, as some of the examples in this thread show - and he's inarguably responsible for so many of the most iconic 2000ad images ever created.

I feel that way about a lot of the great 2000ad artists - say McMahon or Flint. I adore their stuff, but I can understand why others don't.

Colossal

An indie dramedy/kaiju mashup starring Anne Hathaway, which is a weird sentence to type. Definitely one of those films where its best that you know as little as possible going in so you can enjoy the twists and turns.

I wasn't fully convinced until about halfway through the movie (and the premise is so preposterous it barely hangs together at times - I suspect that its a bit of a Marmite film and that many viewers just won't be able to go along with it) but it ultimately won me over, and the ending is a real triumph. Really enjoyed it.

4/5

Force Awakens is seriously flawed movie, but it thunders along and has some genuinely charming moments and some really likable (albeit underwritten) new characters. I'd be tempted to say that the first hour is pretty much spot on

THE FORCE AWAKENS was an uninspired reboot. I was already grumbling at some hitherto unknown* version of the Empire or whatever the First Order is supposed to be even before I watched the blessed thing. Rey's too powerful. The fan service tedious. And anyone being able to use a lightsaber diminishes them as weapons.




* The passing interest I have in STAR WARS rarely extends beyond the movies. And I like it kept simple. The Empire was defeated in RETURN. Except, apparently it wasn't. And even that tablecloth's been pulled once already.

As I said - it's a seriously flawed movie. I largely agree with your criticisms. Rey is too powerful. Finn's ability to wield a lightsaber in the midst of battle is dumb (and on a related note, they also make lightsabers less and less cool every time they introduce weapons like the baton that can counter them). The characters are (mostly) quite weakly written and only buoyed by the ludicrously charismatic actors who play them. The recycling of ANH plot beats is distracting and unnecessary (I think even TFA's biggest defenders would admit that the Death Star 2.0 was poorly executed and entirely superfluous. The First Order is problematic, and they don't really make a lot of sense as an entity, but it's hard to see how they could feasibly even make an Episode VII without resurrecting the Empire in one form or another. Better the New Order than an endless procession of rogue factions of the old Empire and/or Emperor Palpatine clones that kept cropping up in the old EU stories.

It's a 2 (charitably a 3) star movie that I keep rewatching in the hopes that it will somehow turn into a 4 or 5.

Despite the flaws (and I still maintain that the movie really starts to fall apart during the second act before recovering slightly in the third), I'd still argue that as a film it's far superior to Rogue One. On your fan service point - it's totally a subjective thing, but I find the blatant fan service in R1 far more pernicious and distracting than anything in TFA. Ultimately, I liked all the characters in TFA so I felt invested in the plot to some degree. It had a trace of the old movie magic about it. In Rogue One I felt absolutely nothing.

[13 Reasons Why]

13 Reasons Why

The buzzy new Netflix show. I caught the first episode and strongly disliked it. I just couldn't get a handle on the tone they were going for, and my initial reaction was that they were treating some very serious subjects in an astoundingly irresponsible, flippant way - for example glamourising teen suicide as a kind of kooky, quirky way to get revenge on others. Won't be watching any more.

Happy Valley

Watched the first episode and quite liked it - kind of like if Shane Meadows remade Fargo.

Just saw Rogue One for the third time with 5 friends this evening.  It gets worse on every viewing folks.....everyone in the room felt exactly the same.

Force awakens has buckets of problems, but 6 viewings in its still fun and entertaining. Rogue one won't be getting viewing number 4.

I'm very much of this opinion too. Force Awakens is seriously flawed movie, but it thunders along and has some genuinely charming moments and some really likable (albeit underwritten) new characters. I'd be tempted to say that the first hour is pretty much spot on (up until they get to the green planet/space bar, where it promptly starts to fall apart).

Rogue One is just dismal by comparison, imo. There's just a dull void where the characters and heart of the movie should be. While it's accomplished on a purely technical level, I just don't think it holds together as a movie in its own right. Just my observation, but even its fans only ever seem to praise the vfx, or the costumes, or the vehicles, or the overtly fan-servicey stuff like the Darth Vader cameo - you rarely hear anything positive about the actual characters or story.

people like Simon Pegg and Daniel Craig don't have anything extra to bring to the table. Again they could have put me in their roles

I think this is somewhat missing the point - they were clearly anonymous by design. Had Pegg and Craig been recognisable in their cameos, it would have been totally distracting.

According to my version of Star Wars Canon, cobbled together from the film and various EU novels I cherry-pick from, Luke is actually the chosen one as predicted by the Jedi/Sith and he's the hardest/most accomplished Force user ever to have existed.

Then the story's over, because now the good guys are totally overpowered and the bad guys are the underdogs. Doesn't work narratively, and is exactly why the majority of the old EU material doesn't work - there's no stakes in a story where the good guys have already won... And eventually, yes Luke has to die*.

*[spoiler]Though judging by the beard Hamill was sporting at the Celebration thing, I suspect he'll be popping his clogs in episode IX rather than VIII.[/spoiler]

Trailer is awesome.

Poster is beyond awful. What the hell were they thinking?

Guardians Of The Galaxy I imagine.

I meant in terms of the pose, position of his hand and, er, helmet.