The last.......

[Greg M.]

Comic: Starblazer #61, 'Escape From Devil's Moon'. I love these pint-size packages of 80s sci-fi gold, and am working my way through my collection for the nth time.

Graphic Novel: Johnny Red: Falcon's First Flight. I'm more familiar with the Cooper era than the Colquhoun, so this has been great stuff.

Book: 'The White Spider' by Heinrich Harrer, the seminal account of attempts to conquer the north face of the Eiger.

TV Show: Morning re-runs of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' on Dave. On DVD? 'Doctor Who – The Mutants'.

Movie: The Terminal, last night on tv... dunno why, strange fondness for Tom Hanks. On DVD? 'The Searchers'.

Game: Just finished Fallout: New Vegas for the second time. Not as good as its predecessor, I've decided, but then I've played Fallout 3 through to completion more times than I have fingers.

Album: Hmmm... think it's Public Enemy: 'Yo! Bum Rush The Show' or maybe 'Crossing The Red Seas With The Adverts' by The Adverts, or 'XXV' by Pallas.

[Mardroid]

Comic you read (excluding 2000AD/Megazine)
If you include web comics, Scorer issue 0.

Sigh. I meant Keeper.

[spireite68]

COMIC An old Viz issue i found in a box the other day

GRAPHIC NOVEL Still trying to trawl through FROM HELL

BOOK Larwood by Duncan Hamilton. Prob one of the best sports biographies i have ever read.

TV SHOW The One Show with guest John Lydon

MOVIE 2012

GAME Solitare on my ipod touch

ALBUM Setting Sons THE JAM

[Professor Bear]

COMIC The latest issue of one of those charmless and interchangeable "Ultimate" crossovers - Ultimate Doom, I think, but I can't recall anything but a kind of text whitenoise.  At some point I stopped reading and flicked through the book, just looking at the many, many words on the page and couldn't bring myself to read them.  Following the art wasn't easy, either - the pages just seemed crammed.

GRAPHIC NOVEL Rue Brittania. Has its moments of greatness, but sadly I can't get past the laughable conceit that Britpop mattered in any real way outside journos and students wishing really, really hard that they could be at the center of a musical movement or, like, something.  Too many times I was brought out of the story by thinking some variation of "try working on a building site, you cunts."

BOOK A Canticle For Leibowitz, after a recommendation from the board on the sci-fi booky thread.  Great post-apocalyptia that has likely been read by JMS but has definately been read by the makers of Fallout: New Vegas.

TV SHOW Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, which I prefer over Farscape even when a lovable robot beams onto the ship demanding hugs and explanations for this human emotion we call love - he actually does this, that's not me exaggerating.  Total shit, but it just gets on with things where others of its ilk would take a moment to establish that the makers are ashamed of being involved.

MOVIE Fist of the North Star, which is a bastardisation of the original manga, the anime, and the so-bad-it's-brilliant Manga Entertainment English-language dub of the anime to create something that swings the needle all the way around on the dial through "terrible" and back into "brilliant".  Sadly it keeps going and lands in "terrible" again.  Where it stays.

GAME Killzone 3 until I bagged Lego Indiana Jones 2 in a pre-owned sale.  Now I veer between the two depending on drunkenness.

ALBUM

[Roger Godpleton]

COMIC: Do you know, I don't remember. It was probably Angry Youth Comix #14 (2007-ish) which I found in mum's room. Has anyone read New Character Parade yet?

GN: George Sprott. Gregory Gallant has mad drawing skills.

BOOK: C by Tom McCarthy. Comes from the Pynchon/Atwood end of the SF scale that is just about all that one with such rarified tastes as I can deign to tolerate. There are a few too many themes shoved into it but it's worth a read.

TV: Breaking Bad. THE GREATEST TV SHOW OF ALL TIME. I'm about to start Deadwood which I have not seen one solitary minute of thus far. I've watched the other two parts of the great HBO trilogy all the way through so it'll be nice to get some closure.

GAME: Deathsmiles. Maybe a tad overpriced but I'll keep coming back to it over and over. I'm not a shmup connoisseur by any means but ah know what I likes.

MUSIC: As I was walking home from the cinema I listened to The King of Limbs all the way through. Then I listened to Deerhoof and This Heat. And some Kanye as I neared my door.

FILM: Animal Kingdom. The set piece devised around Air Supply's All Out of Love is some bravura film making.

[TordelBack]

GRAPHIC NOVEL Rue Brittania. Has its moments of greatness, but sadly I can't get past the laughable conceit that Britpop mattered in any real way outside journos and students wishing really, really hard that they could be at the center of a musical movement or, like, something.  

I must admit I thought the point of Rue Brittania (which I only just read myself a week or so ago) wasn't to say that Britpop was in any way special or important (except (perhaps) to Gillen himself), but instead to use something that the author knew well as an example to explore the general experience and memories  of a very specific time or 'scene' in your life and the music of same that goes along with it.  The conflict with the Retromancers and their manipulation of the 'Goddess' is about retaining those memories in the face of subsequent reinterpretation and neat packaging of the past as a sort of commodified consensus-nostalgia.  That seems like a pretty universal experience to me.

Or at least that's what I took away from it, only really liking Pulp out of the whole crew.

[Professor Bear]

The notion of Britpop as notable was a stumbling block for me personally, TB, but it's a notion that Phonogram still hinges upon both as a hook and a means of commentary.  It accepts as given that Britpop was culturally important in order to function in the way the writer intends, but I didn't buy it as important at the time and I don't now.

As I say, it's a personal stumbling block and one that needn't apply to other readers as Rue Brittania is still a worthwhile read, but I will knife-fight in a pit of tigers anyone who tries to suggest - as Phonogram does - that Black Grape and Elastica were operating in the same musical spectrum.

[TordelBack]

...it's a notion that Phonogram still hinges upon both as a hook and a means of commentary.

Well, that's certainly true - it's the hook, alright. However, I didn't feel that once you got into the story Britpop was being put forward as anything more than Kohl's specific context, and of deep personal importance to him in the way he defined it, rather than any intrinsic cultural importance or objective reality - any period or perceived sub-group of music would have done (if Gillen had had that emotional attachment and deep knowledge of some other period). The conflict in the book was all about resisting exactly the kind of artificial grouping and characterising and labelling that you identify re: Black Grape and Elastica - what matters to Kohl, and by extension everyone, is their experience of times in their own lives, not how society subsequently remembers itself.  Mainly, I think that McKelvie draws pretty girls.  

[Dunk!]

Comic you read: Single issue? Some Ed McGuiness Hulk many moons ago.

Graphic Novel you read: The collected run of Jonah Hex. Brought the most recent due to Darwyn Cooke's art on one of the stories, but have become hooked because of the writing. Surprisingly good stuff.

Book you read: Shadow Something by Tad Williams. Gave up halfway through due to life being just too short and cryptic dream sequences not being my favourite plot device.

TV Show you watched: Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner. Quite an eye-opener for me.

Movie you watched: Animal Kingdom. Grim.

Game you played: TF2 every lunchtime for an hour.

Album you played: The Bends by Radiohead. Needs a listen every now-and-then.

[I, Cosh]

Pretty much what Tordelback said about the heart of the story. For me, the use of Britpop at the heart of Phonogram was a big part of what made it work so well. Precisely because I did know most of the music but didn't share Kohl/Gillen's view of the scene, it provided enough distance to savour the recognition and skewering of all the little snobberies and bellendishness of the self-righteous music snob.

Also about the ladies. A lot of people talk about Ian Gibson on that score, but I prefer Gillen's.

GAME: Deathsmiles. Maybe a tad overpriced but I'll keep coming back to it over and over. I'm not a shmup connoisseur by any means but ah know what I likes.

Second recommendation of this I've heard in the last three days. Will definitely be having a look.

[radiator]

Comic you read: This week's 2000ad - prog 1723 - good stuff, especially Dredd.

Graphic Novel you read: Scarlet Traces: The Great Game, which was great, but has definite pacing problems and falls apart somewhat towards the end. Still great, but not as tight and perfectly conceived as it's predecessor.

Book you read: I don't really read a lot of books if I'm honest, I prefer audiobooks these days, as I can listen while I work. I just this morning finished Stephen Fry's autobiography The Fry Chronicles. Frankly it's a bit disappointing. It only covers a period of eight or so years, which seems a bit stingy (later years are clearly being reserved for further volumes - the next installment is rather cynically teased in the last chapter.

Though there are intriguing chapters, the restricted focus denies the book of any overarching narrative or revelations, and though i applaud his honesty, I defy anyone to sit through the book and not come away having lost a little of their admiration for the author - he doesn't come across very well, constantly pleading with the reader to forgive his obvious failings. He also comes across as a little sycophantic, gushing at all of his contemporaries in an incredibly luvvie-ish manner with barely a bad word to say about anyone, which can make for a dull experience.

It's also an eye-opener in how it portrays the media world of the 1980s - much as he tries to deny it, it really does come across as a jolly club of uber-privileged Oxbridge graduate chums giving each other a leg up and rolling around in vast mounds of cash - I was pretty shocked to learn that Fry himself had earned an inordinate amount of money even before the work that made his name - Blackadder, Fry and Laurie etc.

TV Show you watched: Just rewatched Spaced, finally convinced my girlfriend to watch it with me - she's always been averse to it for some reason (I think because her housemates at Uni used to watch it all the time and quote it frequently - which I guess is enough to put anyone off something!). I knew she'd love it if she gave it a chance, and she did, but strangely she preferred series one, finding parts of series two a little too fantasy-based.

Movie you watched: Had a bit of an 80s-fest on Sunday, and watched The Breakfast Club, Stand By Me and Pretty in Pink back to back.

Game you played: Klondike (Solitaire) on my iPod. It's worryingly addictive, as it requires so little concentration that you can play it while doing something else. I'm sure there's some scientific (psychological) explanation as to why these sorts of games are so appealing to certain people.

Album you played: Tend to just stick the iPod on shuffle - have about 6000 songs on there - but the most recent album I've been listening to is probably The King is Dead by The Decemberists.

[mygrimmbrother]

Comic: The megazine

GN: American Vampire Vol 1 - really good stuff with some wonderful art from Rafael Alburquerque

Book: Must confess I haven't read a 'proper book' for about 2 years now, but I have dipped in and out of short story collections by Lovecraft and Bukowski recently.

TV Show: Fringe - really enjoying this show at the moment, after beginning like a 'yeah, it's good, but it's just the x-files', it's now truly carved out a niche for itself. John Noble steals the show hands down. And Anna Torv is hot.

Movie: Cypher, the film that Vincenzo Natali made in between Cube and Splice. Not quite as memorable as the former but far superior to the latter. Cool premise, nicely acted and well made, with Lucy Liu as the possibly duplicitous femme fatale Ada Wong I mean Rita Foster. Recommended.

Game: Well my xbox wheezed its last sometime last year and since then I've been reduced to playing bubble shooter online. But before it died I was hammering Gears of War 2, which is definietly up there in my top 5 games of all time (along with Resi 2, Rogue Leader, Left for Dead and Halo 2)

Album: Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will,  by Mogwai. Saw em on saturday night as well, for the first time in about 7-8 years. Have to say I was thoroughly underwhelmed with both, and I used to be a huge fan. Ah well.

[Keef Monkey]

Movie: Cypher, the film that Vincenzo Natali made in between Cube and Splice. Not quite as memorable as the former but far superior to the latter. Cool premise, nicely acted and well made, with Lucy Liu as the possibly duplicitous femme fatale Ada Wong I mean Rita Foster. Recommended.

Seconded, I really liked Cypher, had some neat twists and turns and a great look. Was pretty disappointed with Splice after that.

[bluemeanie]

Comic you read: Dracula : In the Company of Monsters. Pretty cool updating of it all

Graphic Novel you read: Re-read Twisted Visions by an amazing artist I know called Valia Kapadai. Weird litte indie book. Very very cool.

Book you read: Reading "God is not Great". Scary scary stuff. Im on a bit of a religion kick at the moment.

TV Show you watched: Mrs Browns Boys. Showed the first of the BBC episodes to my folks last night. Really funny stuff... tho after checking out some of his other Mrs Browns boys stuff I can see why others havent given this a chance as its not half as good.

Movie you watched: Moonraker. The "watch all the bond movies in order" marathon continues. Enjoyed it... beer might have helped.

Game you played: Dragon Age 2. Decided to give a D&D style RPG a go. Enjoying it so far tho only played a few hours. Does feel designed more for casual role players which works for me

Album you played: Light Me Up by The Pretty Reckless. Total bubblegum metal but enjoyed it driving to work this morning

[Mardroid]

Comic: Clint. Twas okay.

Graphic Novel: Strontium Dog S/D files 1. Pretty good. The annual stories at the end fell a bit flat, but the main stuff was great.

Book: Unchanged from last time, still Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz. I usually get through these quicker, and it's certainly not due to lack of quality as I'm really enjoying it. I was just delayed due to reading the above.

TV Show: Keeping Up Appearances. Well, strictly I wasn't watching it, it was on in the background while I was doing something else. I don't mind it, but it's not really my cup of tea. The characters are amusing, but the episodes are rather repetitive... Last of the Summer Wine is on now. I'd give this the same criticism as the last. Beautiful countryside though. (My Dad's rather into UK Gold.)

Movie: Harry Brown.  Highly recommended. It's pretty disturbing in places, and it has a good message. Michael Caine was great.

Game and Albumn remain the same.