Archive for December, 2011

Around Singapore again…

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

Took a bunch of interesting pictures recently, time to post them…

Lunar eclipse seen from Singapore, December 10th, 2011

Lunar eclipse seen from Singapore, December 10th, 2011

Ulu Pandan incinerator nearly entirely gone on December 20th; by December 23rd it was totally gone.

Ulu Pandan incinerator nearly entirely gone on December 20th; by December 23rd it was totally gone.

Singapore's slowest construction project nearly done... three years later (December 21st, 2011).

Singapore's slowest construction project nearly done... three years later (December 21st, 2011).

Singapore's slowest construction project COMPLETED! (December 27th, 2011).

Singapore's slowest construction project COMPLETED! (December 27th, 2011).

I think this shop used to be called BRANDED, now it's just called RANDED... probably because they didn't sell any branded clothing at all.

I think this shop used to be called BRANDED, now it's just called RANDED... probably because they didn't sell any branded clothing at all.

Talledega Nights – The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

TN-TBORB

TN-TBORB


Talledega Nights – The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – Will Ferrell is popular as a comedian, but I’ve yet to find him in a movie that’s particularly funny. This one was well-received, so I thought I’d check it out, especially since it has Sasha Baron Cohen in it, as well as John C Reilly, an actor I like very much. I’d say that of the three, John C Reilly is the funniest, with his good ole boy routine and his optimism that he can steal his best friend’s hot wife and still remain buddies. Ha ha ha… Still, there are some good lines in the film like “[The French} invented democracy, existentialism and the blowjob.” Cohen, while not particularly funny here, does an interesting job portraying a gay Nascar driver. The gawks on commentators’ faces when he introduces his husband are priceless. Sponsor’s wife is lovin’ the wall vibrations, that’s pretty funny. Kenny Rogers scene is kind of funny. Nice use of a Monster Magnet song, “Space Lord”, as well as AC/DC’s “TNT”, and Pat Benatar’s “We Belong”. Biggest car wreck ever. Funny “I want to picture Jesus as a…” running gag as well.

The gag reel shows a great collection of Ricky and Cal’s public service messages: kids on leashes, plastic – the silent killer, cardboard is edible, children reading too early, shopping cart safety, fare safety (kids wrapped in newspaper, sleep in a hammock, don’t drink gasoline), shoplifting’s fun, don’t steal fireworks, packs of stray dogs that control most of the major cities of North America. Interviews with the actors in character are cute and sorta funny.

Here’s the great French version of “Paint It Black” that is shown in the film. Enjoy.

This is Spinal Tap

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

TISTSA

TISTSA


This Is Spın̈al Tap – This is the rock documentary film, better than any real documentary that has ever been or ever will be. It’s a bit like Withnail and I, where you’re primarily watching it for opportunities to get more of that great dialogue, but the musical numbers are wonderful as well, and so are some of the sight gags. But you really just can’t get over that understated (and overstated) dialogue. When the drummer spontaneously combusted onstage, “the authorities agreed it was best left unsolved.” Choked on somebody else‘s vomit.” Mime is Money. Dana Carvey and Billy Crystal have mime bits, years before either of them made their very big films of the 1980s. Derek Smalls plays a ridiculous double-necked bass guitar. Howard Hessman gets a cameo, he’s probably the most famous actor (of the time) in the film. Between Mozart and Bach… Mach. Paul Shaffer plays weird local rep Artie “Kick My Ass” Fulkin. “Puppet show and Spın̈al Tap” listed on the billboard.

But the music is wonderful and the boys are great at approximating an energetic classic ’70s rock band’s stage show, and they fill an audience with extras ready to rock out. Kobe Hall in Tokyo. Nigel playing while wearing a Yomiuri Giants t-shirt. All classic stuff.

The extras are extensive, and there are more minutes of material than there are in the entire official film (culled from “dozens of hours” of footage filmed at the time). One of the featurettes is “Catching up with Marty DiBergi.” Marty and Spın̈al Tap fighting. He didn’t have anything to do with the 18 inch Stonehenge set, and is resentful he can’t get more work as a director. “It’s not my fault that Stanley Kubrick’s last film was bad. Don’t hold that against me. And I’m not as old as Stanley Kubrick.” The “Rare Outtakes” section includes over an hour of stuff, including more Billy Crystal mime segment stuff, together with some Dana Carvey and Bruce Kirby in some interesting scenes. The peculiar thing about the Spın̈al Tap movie is that there’s lots of rock ‘n’ roll, but there’s very little sex and drugs; the outtakes remedies some of that, and there’s a scene when they get conservative Sinatra-loving (“Rock and roll… this is just a fad”) limo driver Tony, played by Bruno Kirby, gets quite stoned, to the point where he’s dancing around in his undies singing Sinatra. Enter the plaster casters… except they cast buttocks. Paul Shaffer smashes an egg on his forehead. Drummer demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball in a very funny skit about a radio show where a caller-in poses the typical redundant question (hey, I can relate – I’ve been there). The actors are actually good musicians – in one musical scene, Michael McKean is fretting a guitar whilere Christopher Guest is picking it – two musical hearts beating as one (it’s like Lips and Robb of Anvil many years later). Great! At the Flower People press conference, when asked what they think about free love, the say it’s too expensive. In the “Hell Hole” video, a skeleton arm sweeps over a doll set of the band on stage. Howard Hessman’s character produced music for Smegma Records.

In this case, I watched the film a second time with the commentary running, which is provided by the three main actors, so it’s more like a Beavis and Butthead-type commentary than the usual director-discusses-his-choice-of-camera-angles type of commentary, and the guys who play Spın̈al Tap members David St Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls remain in character throughout. Rob Reiner, the director, who plays Marty DiBergi, is not present, so the other three use the occasion to take potshots at him, and make the usual claim that he showed the band in an unglamorous light on most occasions, ha ha ha.

More Spın̈al Tap songs and albums: “Big Bottom”, “Intravenus de Milo”, “The Gospel According to Spın̈al Tap”, “Shark Sandwich,” “The Sun Never Sweats”, “The Incredible Flight of Icarus T Bottom”, “Blood To Let”, “Brainhammer!”, “Bent For The Rent”, “(Tonight I’m Gonna) Rock You Tonight”, “Rainy Day Sun”, “Nice ‘n’ Stinky”.

Great dialogue:

- “We were called The Originals. But there was another band in the East End called The Originals, so we became the New Originals. And then when that band broke up we considered going back to being called The Originals again.”
- “We’ve got armadillos in our trousers, and they run screaming.”
- “There’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
- “It is an endless party, we just don’t get invited to it all the time.”
- “I could hold my own with a gorilla. I read that they can say a few words. They can talk, but they can’t swear.”
- “Water’s a drug. Water on your face in the morning is the strongest drug.”
- “We toured the world and elsewhere.”
- “You can buy or rent those gold records that you put on the wall.”
- “This rehearsal was filmed at two in the afternoon – who’s awake.”
- “He could have been killed – missed opportunity.”
- “Her smoothness was over come by her stridency.”
- “It feels very fake. Well, not really fake, but false.”
- “They don’t choose to show the enjoyment, only the dismay. The de-joyment.”
- “When they say the camera doesn’t lie – they lie; it’s the champion lie of all time.”

She emailled me.
Are you on email?
Well.. my friend is.

Elvis was dead before it was cool to be dead.
Do you think he knew he was dead?
He didn’t know he was alive.

I gave that jacket to Jeff Beck.
Did he like it?
He said ‘fuck off’.

My Big Bad Madman Page

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

MATA

MATA


Madman and the Atomics – This picks up where one of the earlier Madman stories left off, namely the one where Madman is attacked by bitter, misanthropic beatniks who live in the sewers of Snap City, only to have one of them (Nana’s boyfriend Sleek), kidnapped by Zenelle, an alien “black widow spider” creature out man-hunting for Mott from Hoople (or any male with a pulse); ’nuff said about that. The story explores the fate of the beatniks, basically showing how they were infected by alien spores that mutated them, each in different ways. They mold and intersect with each other, their fates now intertwined with Zenelle’s and her time traveling son (the offspring of the original kidnapped beatnik Sleek) and other strange concoctions, including renegade beatnik Bert who got a raw deal – while most of the beatniks got desirable new bodies and powers (Luna Romy, for example, turned into the glamorous It Girl), he turned into… The Cadaver!

The stories are zany! First there’s the Atomics’ encounter with Shrek, the giant fly creature bodyguard of Boone Gehr, who goes berserk for a while before he’s tamed, Zenelle’s runaway son Boone Gehr (we learn more about him, his training, his friends, and the life and loves he left behind on a cruel man-eating world in another part of the galaxy), Adam and Luna’s budding romance, Adam’s insecurities, Dorrie and Phil’s weird symbiotic relationship (especially Dorrie’s slug-ness), Luna’s recipe for meatloaf, brief appearances of Snap City superstar Cool Cat, the cute farmer-and-the-airplane joke, Adam’s cool angel dreams, his future light-self helping save our heroes, crazy space-time tunnels appearing randomly (and with incredibly strange mechanics), The Skunk’s attempt at bank robbery, Dr Flem’s crazy head hijinx, Adam’s band, Mr Gum’s weird Jagger moves, Sleek’s future self as The Laser, Boone’s reunion with a vengeful Tarkus in a dimension of slavers, the “Sub-Atomics” as shrunken creatures, a second battle with the Cadaver, Boone and Tarkus’ battle, crazy Kirbian two-page space-dimension-smash murals with bodies flying everywhere in confusion, every page full of beautiful action, battles with Savage Dragon in the forest, the weird Mook beast, battles with lamprey slug creatures in the mystic hills of the wizard, who turns out to be The Cadaver (a third battle with the crazy guy). Sweet, even though Madman himself hardly has anything to do with this book. Groovy!!

Naturally, the book is full of really groovy art, and incredibly weird non-sequitur storytelling, as well as silly, weird, touching superfluous scenes of touching humanity… and hip grooviness. Who is more hip and groovy in comic-dom than Michael Allred anyway?

MAMMV2

MAMMV2


Michael Allred’s Madman Volume 2 – I’d never heard of Madman or Michael Allred before, but I only needed to read this volume to become a huge fan. Madman is impossibly cool! Named Frank Einstein (after Frank Sinatra and Albert Einstein, supposedly, but also a pun on Einstein), the comic is fast-paced and Frank moves from one strange adventure to another. Frank has a girlfriend, Joe, that he’s inseperable from and is deeply in love with, and he hangs out all day with a group of scientists. The storyline develops rapidly, and he is regularly and inexplicably attacked or befriended by strange space beings, hostile beatniks, strange robots, evil masterminds and Lovecraftian demons. He survives a murder mystery aboard a cruising ship, hangs out with the armoured government agent Big Guy, and escapes from a disgusting puke creature. The artwork is incredible, each panel is a masterpiece, and Madman, with his weird mask and white suit with exclamation point (!) and boots is somehow pretty nifty. No Marvel-like scupted muscle cool guy posing to be seen in Mad Man Comics, only Fifties-like superheroes and robots with weird names like Factor Max (Max Factor… get it?) and other taken-for-granted protagonists that enter and exit without introduction or explanation – n0ne asked, none needed. Hellboy makes a guest appearance in one of the stranger stories in the book, which is about the Blast, a terrorist who has been tricked into becoming an assassin, and how has been put on Frank’s trail.

MM

MM


Madman, Atomic Comics volume 2 – This volume is full of experimental art techniques, meaning that Michael Allred took some of the methods that animators use and applied it to Madman. You get a lot of scenes that look like stills from a Disney or Ghibli film, with great backdrops and semi-transparent effects with a lot of fluid activity. Allred also uses plenty of double-page spreads to tell his story, in fact it seems that one issue was nothing but double spreads (they connect in real life and are considered to be the longest continuous comic book panel ever)! There are flashbacks to Madman’s life as the assassin Zane Townsend as he tries to penetrate his past, and we see Frank without his Madman suit watching a movie of his life. We learn that Joe has been annihilated and her molecules integrated with those of It Girl, Luna Romy, who lost her beau Adam Balm, the Metal Man, when he was destroyed and turned into the powerful Zombot.  Of course, by the end of the book, science restores Adam and separates Joe from Luna, and everything is peachy. The book is virtually popping, bursting at the seams with tons of awesome artwork!

One episode involves the weird material transferium and what happens when Joe helps a bit of it get exposed to the world. In another adventure, Frank and the Atomics (those evil beatnicks who once fought Frank but have now become his super-powered accomplices) have conversation as they fight weird alien fish-lip snake creatures who want to devour a knocked-out It Girl, and they stretch a battle all across town, another adventure caused by Curious Frank using science he doesn’t understand. Check out the Jay And Silent Bob’s Secret Stash bookstore that they swing past in their battles. In another story, Madman clashes with Dr Flem, then gets from him some information about his past – a safety deposit box owned by his father! Haley Fou Fou comes down from space to explain the alien technology (non sequitar), and Frank checks the safe deposit box to get… a photo of a house and a key. In true David Lynch fashion, it’s his old family home, where he grew up. He investigates the house alone, and of course it is haunted by some crazy Mormonic angel who explains the meaning of life (I think that’s what he explained), someone called Zacheus who was a friend of Frank’s in a pre-existence.  Cool.  The lab is attacked by a blue-bodied super-powered Monstadt, who throws everybody into a fire, but they survive when Joe calls upon special powers, and appears in her own white Madman bodysuit as a sort of Madwoman/Jean Gray Phoenix.  Cool.  The last 40 pages of the book are full of Allred sketches and some tribute drawings, as well as storyboard art from the non-starter movie project at Universal. There are also 12 pages dedicated to a “world’s biggest comic book panel project (seen across the 14 double-page spreads when Frank and the Atomics are fighting the fish-lips snake monsters). The book says the full scrollable art is to be found at www.aaapop.com, but I can’t find it when I go there.

Hey, look what I found at the Michael Allred website – the link to the free online display of the first appearance of Madman in Popgun Volume 1!

P-BBC

Saturday, December 24th, 2011

Far out, I was quoted in a BBC article!

X-Men, the Dark Phoenix Saga

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

X-MTDPS

X-MTDPS


X-Men The Dark Phoenix Saga (hardcover) – When I was a kid, it was the Dark Phoenix saga of the X-Men that took place around 1980 which really got me interested in reading and collecting comics, and for several years after that it was probably all I could think about. The Dark Phoenix story had a lot of cool action, great art by John Byrne (who I really liked a lot at the time), and sexy women with luxurious hair flying around in tight-fitting costumes.

This heavy hardcover issue collects issues 129 (the end of the battle with Proteus and the beginning of Jason Wyngarde’s influence over Jean Grey; also the first appearance of Kitty Pride) to issue 138 (the funeral of Jeay Grey and the day Kitty Pryde joins the X-Men). I didn’t manage to buy all of the issues in this series, but I did get most of them and I read them over and over again. Finding it in a nice collection is great, and it was nice to relive the old magic.

But this collection has tons of bonus stuff too. There’s some wacky tale of Jean Grey in heaven/on some other astral plane post-her demise, although there’s no information about when and where (and why) it was published. There’s a silly “Bizarre Adventures” tale of Jean and her sister being kidnapped by a subterranean prince from Namor’s world. There’s “Phoenix: The Untold Story”, which is the reprint of Issue 137 with the alternate happy ending (where Jean Grey lives), meaning that the issue is basically the same as the true Issue 137 but with a totally different final six pages in the form of a chapter called “Return to the Ashes” that described how Jean Grey is neutered of her mutant and Phoenix powers by Shi’ar technology. That’s followed by the “What If… Phoenix Had Not Died” that explores the natural conclusion of that happy ending scenario – yes, in this case, the universe would have died (very much like “What If The Avengers Had Become the Pawns of Korvac” story, for those who have read that apocalyptic tale, and so many other of the “What If…” tales). Finally, there are the newer “Classic X-Men” re-prints with the new covers, covers of the various “Dark Phoenix Saga” re-prints, and the entrants for the Marvel Universe encyclopedia thingy of X-Men, Cyclops, Phoenix, etc.

There’s also lots of text: a ponderous fore-word, and a boring 12-page interview with the executives of the time who decided whether the character should be killed off and what motivated them. Somehow, while the edition has a lot of stuff in it, it does take itself a weeeee bit too seriously. Hey, guys, it’s just a comic book series!

Patti Smith, Just Kids

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

PS-JK

PS-JK


Patti Smith, Just Kids – The book Just Kids is about Patti Smith and her lover/friend/accomplice Robert Mapplethorpe, the famous gay photographer of controversial homoerotic images who died of AIDS in 1989. The book is relatively short, but contains many very nice photos and drawings of our young protagonists. The book recounts Smith’s youth in rural New Jersey and her early years in New York, first as a destitute street kid, slowly working her way up in life, working in book stores, living in poverty, moving around Manhattan and Brooklyn until finally taking up a residency in the Chelsea Hotel and eventually becoming serious about her art. The musical voyage isn’t explained very clearly, almost taken for granted – one minute she’s plain old Patti Smith, the next she’s got her own band (and what a band!).

Meanwhile, Robert is going through his own travails, experimenting with his art, his sexuality, and drugs, experiencing several bouts of desperate sickness, eventually hustling his way through life, both literally and figuratively, all the while reinventing himself as an icon of the art world.

The small things are the most valuable, like when Smith talks about books she bought, or sitting in a room, or making a cup of tea, or meeting famous people. She also reveals herself to be someone who remembers birthdays of family members, friends and influencers. But mostly I was happy to read a book where music is cited so often, especially that of the Rolling Stones – she describes listening to Beggar’s Banquet endlessly, or attending the premiere of Ladies And Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, a film I just bought on DVD.

The start and the end of the book both deal with Mapplethorpe’s death. The chronology of the book goes roughly up until 1975, dips a bit into 1978 and 1979, leaves out most of the 1980s entirely, as well as anything after Mapplethorpe’s death. It is truly only the life of Patti Smith in the context of Robert Mapplethorpe, RIP.

The Who do The Stones

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Far out, man, in 1967, when Keith and Mick had been busted for drugs, The Who recorded “Under My Thumb” and “The Last Time” to support them. Somehow, far from being crushed by the case, The Stones came out of it stronger and more popular.

The Who – “Under My Thumb”

The Who – “The Last Time”

Thunderstruck by the Christmas lighting

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Some people take their Christmas lights pretty seriously.



Black Sabbath (movie)

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

BS

BS


Black Sabbath – The 1963 movie, shot in Italian by famed horror director Mario Bava gave the band their name as they were considering a switch from Polka Tulk, a weak moniker that Ozzy Osbourne selected one day on a visit to the loo. The film features Boris Karloff as the narrator who introduces all of the three segments (The Telephone, The Wurdalak, and The Drop of Water) and as a patriarchal wurdalak.

The opening tale is one of weird psychological horror called The Telephone, as a beautiful woman gets threatening phone calls from someone who swears to kill her. The caller is not the killer, but… someone is! Great interior shots of a sexy woman undressing in a beautiful gothic apartment full of cool stuff and opulent furniture – she’s probably not paying for all this on a coat check girl’s salary. Smoking nervously. The strap of her night gown slips away perfectly from her shoulder at one particularly tense moment. Short and sweet. The Wurdalak is weird gothic monster horror – is he or isn’t he a blood sucker? Of course, a dumb nobody lets his feelings get in the way of his better senses, and he’s destroyed along with the wurdalak’s beautiful family. A Drop of Water is the tale of a sassy nurse who is called on when an old woman dies in her apartment, and who is driven mad when she tries to steal her ring – buzzing flies, dripping drip drops, strange sounds, staring eyes and other insanity haunts the production. The movie doesn’t quite take itself seriously, though, and at the end Boris Karloff goes for a weird sight gag – he’s riding a horse, when the camera pulls away we see that it’s a prop horse with stage hands making it look like he’s riding around by passing by with spruces from a tree. Bizarre!

The DVD comes with a profile of Mark Harmon, who boasts of introducing Clint Eastwood to his first leading role in Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars. There are also great samples of stills and posters other promotional materials in a variety of languages.

One of the highlights of this DVD is the previews of other Mario Bava films, such as Black Sunday, the Girl Who Knew Too Much, Knives of the Avenger, and Kill, Baby… Kill. These would be great to show before one of my band’s concerts!