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The King in Yellow and I

We have a winner.

[Dom 3 : 2 Simon.]

Dom 3 : 2 Simon.

Simon has drawn some truly incredible intricate things for the prog, and I even count myself as a member of the Final Solution-liking* minority. But there's somethIng about Dom's slabs of black, negative space and spiky outlines that are exactly what I want from comics art.


*This is definitely a problematic phrase in more than one way.

[Ron Smith 3 : 2 Mark Harrison]

Loved Mark Harrison forever, and he's never been better than he currently is on Grey Area and The Out, but Ron Smith in his looong heyday is Top 3 material.

Ron Smith 3 : 2 Mark Harrison

Summertime on Icarus LV-426. Love it. Tharg needs to find space for this and more like it.

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I mean, have you seen Cats

Is it based on The Cats of Ulthar?

The Mitchells is now my seven-year-old's favourite film. I thought it was very, very good ...

My youngest loved it too. It's well made, and best of all it's funny, but I just felt I'd seen the same family dynamic so many times that I (a joyless 50 year old man) was frustrated that so many scenes took up so much of the run-time by explicitly setting out the same points, rather than being a bit more oblique about it.

But like I say, my jaded palate is hardly what was being catered for, and nor should it have been.

None of this bitterness has anything to do with the fact that my children kept pointing at me and laughing  during the learning-to-use-a-computer, carrying-a-screwdriver and - particularly hurtfully - the gibbon-hooting scenes.

[Mare of Easttown]

Mare of Easttown. Best cop thing I've watched in ages, a very contemporary smalltown Cagney & Lacey, without Cagney. Helps that its long episodes are being doled out weekly, there's a lot of misery to digest.

(As a complete aside, even after all these years I remain astonished at the scale of houses depicted in US TV, even where the characters are specifically established as working-class poor barely surviving).

Graham Linehan.

God yeah, him too. Comedy idol, the first guy I followed on Twitter. Like a moth, me.

[The Mitchells versus the Machines]

The Mitchells versus the Machines. Overlong speechifying and unnecessarily blunt homilies to the indisputable wonder of family life hamstring what is a very pretty, often very funny film. It's a largely successful mash-up of The Incredibles (mainly this), Tron, Into the Spiderverse and The Lego Movie, with the now-ubiquitous Olivia Colman shining as a sarky Siri. Some oddly out-of-place reinforcing of conventional gender roles and middle-class lifeways, an understandably predictable get-to-the-off-switch plot, and some genuinely good gags and inventive visuals but it's telling that the best bit is the family dog. Not boring, but not great.

FFS.

If you wanted handy advance warning of dogshit, you could do worse than take careful note of the people I vocally admire(d). Orson Card, Whedon, Rolf Harris, Spacey,  Rowling, Dawkins, Ellis... Heartfelt paeons to their glory litter my indelible internet record. 

Rest assured this level of judgement extends into my personal life, and of course, I love you all.

*Eddie Campbell and Raymond Briggs. Am I being very mean to Don Lawrence, Frank Hampson and Leo Baxendale? Probably, but the Sacred Six-Pack doesn't scan well.

I'd add Bryan Talbot to that.

Dammit!  One of my all-time faves and all!  Paul Grist deserves a slot too.

No.  It really didn't age well, did it?

Not only talented, but a terrific fella by all accounts. And regularly fighting the good fight on social media.

Eeee-oook....

They aren't currently in power in Ireland, despite gaining the most first preference votes. Make of that what you will.

Arguably because they didn't field enough candidates. STVPR doesn't really give a runny shite who gets the most No.1s nationally, it's a game played at the local level.

[Tamara Drewe]

Tamara Drewe. It warms my heart to think of the last of the Holy Trinity of British Writer-Artists* finally getting a nice big cheque, but I'm not sure this otherwise-faithful adaptation gets to the heart of her work. In short, it's all the middle-class cosy of the drawings, and none of the edge of the writing, drifting away from Thomas Hardy and towards Richard Curtis. 

Gorgeous cast, and some terrific performances (Tamsin Grieg and Charlotte Christie in particular), and who could resist watching Roger Allam [spoiler]trampled by stampeding cattle[/spoiler]. Not bad as adaptations go, but not quite all there.



*Eddie Campbell and Raymond Briggs. Am I being very mean to Don Lawrence, Frank Hampson and Leo Baxendale? Probably, but the Sacred Six-Pack doesn't scan well.

No words.