Peter Hoflich

Groundhog Day – The ultra ultra cult movie of them all, hilarious in its repetition and subtle in its grand ideas, plus it’s a tour-de-force performance by Bill Murray, as he’s in nearly every scene, always convincing, always inventive, and constantly hilarious; there’s really no other film quite like it.

The premise is well known – a bitter and sarcastic (“I peg you as a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of guy”) man is doomed to repeat the same mundane day over and over again, from the time hear is woken up at 6:00 AM to the sounds of the clock radio setting off “I Got You Babe”, to the time he fall asleep at night. Repetition like that should lead to a film losing steam, but this one never really does. In fact, it just gets funnier and funnier. “I am a god. Not the God… I don’t think…” Phil Conners and Ned Ryerson… my son and I relive those reunions again and again and again… Buying insurance, seeing old man dying night after night and helpless to save him, sexual conquests, bank robberies, ice sculptures. “It was the end of a very long day,” and “What if there isn’t a tomorrow… there wasn’t one today,” and “My years are not advancing as fast as you think.”

Do you ever get deja vu?
Didn’t you just ask me that?

What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you anyone does matters.
That sums it up for me.

Quotes (and situations) like that have led the term “groundhog day” to be applied to situations where someone is stuck in one place and every day is exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered. Although, at least in the movie, groundhog day means going from being a prisoner of a time and place to becoming the master of that time and place.

There are plenty of bonus features, including a nice six-minute documentary on marmites. Among the outtakes there’s a wicked billiards scene, where Phil predicts every move: “Hey mister, are you some kind of hustler.” “No… GOSH, no!!!” There’s also a great interview, albeit a short one, with director Harold Ramis, who was nicknamed “The Rabbi” by an ex-wife for always trying to win everyone over.” Apparently, Scooter the groundhog did bite a chunk out of Bill Murray’s hand. They had considered Tom Hanks for the role, although he is not as unpredictable as Murray, you never knew if he would be good or bad…

Twins – A funny film indeed, with the goofy Arnold acting like a dope (funny scene at the beginning of him going up to a Rambo movie poster and comparing the size of his biceps with Sly’s), and Danny DeVito being his usual scoundrel self. Some stupid plot-like stuff happening when they go to search for their mother and fathers, and interesting interaction with a trained killer. Kelly Preston is stunning as Marnie, Julius’ girlfriend. Some okay lines, like “I did nothing – the pavement is his enemy.” The final scene is good and goofy. Overall not Stallone’s best film, but also not his worse.

Be Here To Love Me – I’ve loved the music of Townes Van Zandt for many years, so I was happy to find out that a documentary existed with his story on it. The documentary is formed out of archival footage, as well as recent interviews with his contemporaries and collaborators. Born into money, but an infamous substance abuser who had most of his teeth replaced after a glue sniffing incident, he lived in the gutter, sang, wrote music, and left a trail of destruction. At the end are interviews with his kids, some of whom hardly knew him.

First of all, Joe Ely, who was a musical partner from the very start, is interviewed, talking about alone-ness versus loneliness, broke versus poor, and how Townes was always the better, more Zen-like of the two. Guy Clark noted how Townes’ songs “are sparse, they don’t spell everything out for you. They allow you to use your imagination and allow you to be sucked in.” He also had a great sense of humor, as demonstrated with one show where he said “I’ll now play a medley of my hit.”

Townes got into glue sniffin’ in high school football, and signed in his yearbook “from one junky to another.” Recounts the story of willfully falling from his fourth floor apartment onto his back just to feel the sensation. Fran Lohr, his first wife, talks about their life together. He got “insulin shock” to the point where he couldn’t recognise his own mother. Burned out his childhood memories. Plays a beautiful version of “Dollar Bill Blues” live without the noise on the recording. First song he wrote was “Waitin’ Around To Die.” Townes and Janis Joplin hangin’ out. Ken Eggers, record producer, Tomato Records owner in Chelsea Hotel. Wrecks Bell, bass player, spoke of Townes’ fame after the Our Mother The Mountain. Lightnin’ Hopkins interviewed. David Olney – “a woman riped off her blouse at the start of the set.” JT Van Zandt looks like Townes, but with a cleft chin. Steve Earl, But and Susanna Clark. Townes “admired Susanna, and she looked like a pretty funky person when she was young. Professor Longhair also interviewed in movie. Guy was jealous of Townes, on camera he’s laughing but also angry. Was into heroin in Houston, never into it when he was elsewhere because he wouldn’t know where to get it. Interviewing him about glue sniffing while someone else fires off shotgun blasts, then tells the story of being DOA for 90 minutes before he came back to life. He was heart dead every 2-3 months. Weed made him neurotic, alcohol psychotic. Peggy Underwood, lawyer, saw him shoot cola and bourbon. Played “Waiting Around To Die”, an old black man next to him was in tears. Katie Bell Van Zandt, daughter, interviewed in Nashville in 2002. A French interviewer tells him “Blues is happy music”, he answers “oh yes, I agree.” “Gold And Mud” from a TV in a Texas bar, re-creating his life and sensibilities, hanging around in bars waiting to die… Steve Earle found a nice cabin for him, learned that he was fascinated with morning glories. Townes put Steve’s gun to his head, pulled trigger three times. Steve was pissed!! Townes wrote “If I Needed You” in his sleep – dreamed he was singing it, wrote it down when he woke up. Jeanene Van Zandt, third wife. Steve Shelly, the drummer of Sonic Youth, is on hand to tell the tales of Townes’ death. Lyle Lovett sings “Flyin” Shoes” at Townes’ funeral. Guy Clark gets the last laugh: “I booked this gig 30 years ago.

Labyrinth – Not the fun Bowie film that you’d expect. Sure, there he is in his full mischievous glory in a role he was born to play, a goblin king. Jennifer Connelly, cute as a button, has a hissy fit against her little step-brother, commanding the goblins to take the baby way (in a sly wink to Maurice Sendak’s book of the same subject, and paying tribute to his clear influence on the spirit of the film, there’s a copy of one of his books displayed prominently in the child’s bedroom); when her wish comes true (against her wishes), she goes on a quest to recover him, making friends and enemies along the way among Jim Henson’s puppet army. Too bad the plot is nonsense, and only a few scenes work. The musical numbers, of course, are horrible, and her grump and traitorous (but, of course, with a good heart in the end) little sidekick Hoggle is even more annoying than Dobby. At least the Fire gang, with their weird head-swapping abilities, are a nice touch. The living Escher painting (the stairs of relativity) is pretty cool, though, I must admit. So it’s not like the film has nothing going for it… in fact its creepy weirdness is sort of endearing in a strange way.

In this vein, Ridley Scott’s Legend is a bit better, but not by much (at least it is so highly stylized that you can forgive its many periods of wankiness), but neither is as good as Pan’s Labyrinth.

Dream On – Living on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, by Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler and Danny Fields – My main interest in reading this was the fact that the book was co-written by Danny Fields, whose voice was so prominent in Please Kill Me – The Oral History of Punk, but also some interest in America’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band (or at least one of them, along with Guns N’ Roses, KISS and a few others). It also makes a nice companion to the “rock chick” books I’ve read by Marianne Faithfull and Angela Bowie. The book is somewhat mis-titled, though, as nearly one half of it is about Cyrinda’s life before she meets Steven Tyler. This is also the most interesting part of the book.

Cyrinda was basically a poor girl growing up with a psychotic/flaky/religious mom who married a bunch of air force guys, giving little Cyrinda a revolving door of dads. She ran away from home, hitch-hiked and stayed with guys she sometimes hd to sleep with, made it to New York City and stayed at the YWCE (a den of lesbianism – she was wooed constantly) where she fell in with Andy Warhol and his crew, eventually becoming a love interest to David and Angela Bowie (she aborted David’s baby), and eventually also befriending Joe Perry and his wife. This led to a relationship with the wacky Steven Tyler, which was a problem for her friends Joe and Elisa – Aerosmith was drugged out and in-fighting. Shame. Marriage, a baby, and divorce followed, years of drug haze, further years of poverty and struggling to make ends meet when the alimony payments weren’t forthcoming, and plenty of insanity. The book was written in the midst of a legal battle (and perhaps even due to a legal battle), so we don’t get any insights into who the lovely Cyrinda might have dated after things with Stephen went sour (apparently he showed up at her place from time to time, despite the couple being separated and their relationship soured, still expecting sex). Must have been weird being married to a playboy millionaire drug addict who drifts all over the world snorting coke and banging groupies.

Lots of great anecdotes around the book, and from time to time also some decent writing:

In 1971 New York was so radically different form what it is today that I’m going to hae to ask you to really stretch your imagination. Try this: twenty-five years back from that date was 1946! Men wore fedoras all day long, women had those big, heavy hairdos, there was no TV or air conditioning, music was “the big band sound,” and practically no one had been born yet, except I think Charlie Watts.

The book has a cool description of Dorothy Dean, the cashier/security at Max’s Kansas City, “a size two black woman with glasses, who was universally acknowledged as the most terrifying and brilliant person in New York,” who “could scare policemen, politicians, celebrities, and the meanest queens in town.” Cyrinda used to sit in Max’s while Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe used to linger in the pre-chamber, too scared to approach the Warhol gang.

Cool Candy Darling anecdote, which is based on the fact that Cyrinda and Candy had the same-coloured hair (it’s a relative term – Cyinda’s was dyed, Candy’s was fake):

Once I was at a party with these two guys, waiting for th eelevator, and Candy got off and looked me up and down, and one of these wiseass guys smirked and said “I wonder which one is the real Candy Darling.”

An I shot back, “The one with the cock between his legs.”

Cyrinda tells the sad story of Steven Piven, who was onstage with her in Warhol’s play Pork, who killed himself in a room in her building, but whose body wasn’t discovered for a week. He had been depressed that people ignored him; the truth was that he was so attractive that people were afraid to approach him. Talk about sad irony! She got involved with strange people, such as Sam Green, who was dating Barbara Bakeland – she was killed by her son, who killed himself in jail by putting a plastic bag over his head. She spent some time hanging out with Greta Garbo, with whom she had to be very careful (like the time Rex Harrison, who lived in the same building and was then in his 60s, tried to pick her up). She also met Keith Richards, and was nearly mauled by Ike Turner.

She has funny things to say about Al Pacino:

Al Pacino was a stinky nuisance. He was the janitor in sam’s building and slept on this filthy mattress under the staircase. He was grubby, disgusting, smelly and drunk, and he used to look up my skirt when I went up the stairs. There was nothing appealing about him at all. He was an aspiring actor but too soused to get any work. According to legend, Lee Strasberg of the Actor’s Studio spotted him at a party and told him that if he cleaned up he’d let him study at the Studio. And that’s what happened.

Candy Darling, my wonderful friend, was very close to Salvador and Gala Dali, and we used to meet up with them at funky bars. One time I was sitting next to Gala, and in the midst of our casual conversation I felt he hand on my knee, and then it started to slide up my thigh. I wondered a t first if this was some European custom, but I soon got nervous and excused myself. On the way to the Ladies’ room I gave Candy a little “help” signal and she followed me in. I asked, “Is she just being friendly?” and Candy said, “Oh, hone, no. Keep your legs close together when you sit next to her.”

When it came to sex, Angela Bowie was much wilder than her husband. I’ve seen her crawling around on her hands and knees after having sex with a bodyguard, because it was so intense that she couldn’t walk afterward. David would be in one room with me, and we’d be making love or we’d be talking while he’d be doing it with another girl, all on a kind of gentle level and Angie would be in the other room making the floors shake.

David and I had a cabana at that hotel, and we would sit there while Angie and the bodyguard Anthony Jones fucked in the pool. We knew they were fucking, but to the chic women with daiquiris sitting around the pool, it looked as if they were doing some kind of swimming exercise together, this black man and this squealing blond woman. Paul Morrissey came over, picked up on it right away, and said, “I can’t understand how you people get away with things like this.” We were all rock-and-roll trash to him.

She notes the writing of Jean Genie, which took place before her eyes (noting that it was both about her and about Iggy Pop), and how she appears in the video for the song:

Things get interesting when Cyrinda marries another David, David Johansson of The New York Dolls, and becomes a major New York celebrity, whose every move was documented in the rock magazines of the time that were read by KISS and a young Aerosmith. But all good things must come to an end:

The Dolls just weren’t happening anymore, and I was left with only him. There were no more diversions to keep us from actually getting to know each other, and I wasn’t ready to face getting that serious. One night I went out for a pack of cigarettes and never went back. started seeing Steven Tyler, andhis lawyers handled all the divorce stuff. My one-year marriage to David Johansen ended in 1977, on our wedding day.

The romance with Tyler is political and emotional, with plenty of ups and downs.

We were fighting a lot. The screaming was so loud that even Richard Harris, our next-door neighbor and a notorious drunk who frequently gets thrown out of hotels himself, complained to the management.

Even the pregnancy wasn’t normal.

Steven, the big rock-and-roll star, had a plane on standby in case it was needed when the baby started coming A plane? To take me where? There was a perfectly good hospital down the highway, but these fucking rock-and-roll stars are the worst assholes when it comes to this. The world has to know that a plane to nowhere is available for the arrival of this tiny extension of themselves.

An interesting insight on the business or rock and roll.

Bands really do care how they sound in the worst seats. It’s good business to care about that, because those are usually the youngest fans with the least amount of money, and they’ll be back the next few times you come to town. The people with the best seats will be on to the Next New Thing, or too old to rock and roll in a couple of years.

The closing of the book is sad, with Cyrinda replacing drug addiction with food addiction, and all sorts of messy divorce and rehabilitation stuff. But there is also the episode where her daughter Mia discovers (like the rest of us, like Steven Tyler himself), that there’s another Tyler daughter, Liv Tyler, and they got to know each other. So there are happy endings of sorts after all.

Persepolis is the wonderful comic book by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian artist now living in Paris who was about 10 years old when when the Islamic revolution swept over her country, deposing the tyrant king and bringing with it its own set of problems – the imposition of religious laws and law enforcement, a war with Iraq, and an “inner war” against the people of Iran by the people of Iran. The art is brilliant, with simple line drawings done in inky black and white as to imitate inkblock style that is highly expressive and emotional. There are two English-language books of Persepolis, eaqch of which contains themed episodes of 7-9 pages, and I have read the first one. The movie combines both into one narrative.

Persepolis (book) – The key phrase of the book, repeated more than once, is “One can forgive, but one should never forget.” The book depicts Marjane’s childhood in a privileged family, and goes all the way up to her flight to Vienna to live with an uncle. Attending classes in a French school, the first pages depict the stress of being streamed into same-sex schools and forced to wear a veil, and what this meant for society. Some protest against the veil, some protest for the veil. Society becomes morbid, with children saying things like “execution in the name of freedom” in their games. Mom’s pic was taken and published in magazines. The book is full of wonderful doodles on various pages, like one showing the contrast between an Islamic life of tradition and a modern life of education and enablement, another one of her grandfather as an idealised prince with a sword-wielding lion, family faces coming to a sleeping dreamer, kids walking down a forest lane, the family on a flying carpet going off to spain with a dancing women hidden among the squiggles, a rush of cars among a fire, an army of self-flagellating schoolgirls (?!?!), explosions destroying an army of martyr children with gold-painted plastic “keys to heaven” (“they told the boys that if they went to war and were lucky enough to die, this key would get them into heaven”), depictions of the rush down stairs during an air raid alert (bodies rushing down multiple staircases) and the aftermath of phone calls of friends and relatives checking up on each other.

Satrapi tends to intersect the horror of the outside world with the horror in the family world, but sometimes she also balances the horror of modern Iranian history with banalities or superficialities (like a punk party, or shopping for jeans). There’s the horror of the Rex, when imperial soldiers locked film-goers into a cinema and set it on fire. At age six, Marjane wanted to be a prophet, and talked to God. Her family had a maid, a Cadillac, she wanted to be a Marxist and share this with everyone. “The Bicycle” is history and politics, Arabic invasions and all the rest of it. Descartes/Marx/apple sequence is hilarious. A history of demonstrations, and stories of her grandfather – the intellectual son of an emperor who became a prime minister under the Shah, but as a Marxist was imprisoned in a flooded cell, suffering his whole life. “That’s really the probe of our country: only a prince can allow himself to have a conscience.” There’s the surreal episode of the mob celebrating the martyrdom of a young man killed by government forces, sweeping up an old man also who’d died of cancer, also a “martyr.” The parents laugh, young Marjane is confused that death can be funny. A tale for the ages, there’s the maid who falls in love with the neighbour’s boy, but they can never be together as she’s a peasant. “We were not in the same social class, but at least we were in the same bed.” The war with Iran started, but “in fact it was really our own who had attacked us.” Black Friday killings, and the release of two political prisoners who are friends of the family, Siamak and Mohsen. Uncle Anoosh is a hero, he tried to establish the independence of Iranian Azerbaijan. What he suffered under a Russian wife was worse than prison. Former revolutionaries became the sworn enemies of the republic (?!?!?). There was no life waiting for them after being released from the Shah’s prisons, as the zealot rulers dispatched fundamentalist assassins to rub them out (things never change). The crimes continue as they shut down the universities, “better to have no students than to educate future imperialists.” There’s the surrealism of the Islamic argument that womens’ hair emanates rays that excite men. One page shows the “uniforms” of 1980s Iranian men and women, be the fundamentalists or modern. “Islam is more or less against shaving.” No short sleeves (hair) or neckties (imperialist) for men. Ulp!!

There are whole sections chronicling violence against women, including the practice of not executing a condemned woman with her virginity intact, the brutal language of zealots towards women they deemed not suitably modest, and the chiding of women from the south as “sluts”. Ridiculous. “Guns may shoot and knives may carve, but we won’t wear your silly carves” protest chant is met with bullies shouting “The scarf or a beating.” How can you fight stupidity? But sometimes there is humour in the situation, like one started by Marjane, and her father’s response:

The iraquis have always been our enemies. They want to invade us.
And worse – they drive like maniacs.

There’s the sad story of the girl whose father, a pilot, was locked up for being part of a coup d’etat. He’s freed so that he can fly bombing runs against Iraq. He doesn’t come back. Marjane commends her for her hero father, she says “I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero.” The country suffers oil shortages and a refugee influx when the refinery city is bombed, impacting family life on all levels. Then there’s the martyr and the war dead, and Marjane’s rebellion against her female principal, to whom father says “if hair is as stimulating as you say, then you need to shave your beard.” Social dynamics change as neighbour spies against neighbor, and the Satrapis tape up their windows to protect from prying eyes… and enjoy chess, card games, drinking, music and dancing during their parties (and to protect from shards of glass when they are shattered by missile blasts. One time, when the sirens wailed, a mother of a newborn thrusts her baby into Marjanie’s arms as she runs for the shelter. “Since that day I’ve had doubts about the so-caleld maternal instinct.” Argues with mom after cutting class. “My mother used the same tactic as the torturers.” This leads to her first cigarette and the end of her childhood at age 14. The insanity of the times is tremendous: “We refuse this imposed peace!” “To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society.” Yuck! The regime’s survival depended on the war, it later admitted, despite a million dead. The horror, the horror…

Uncle Taher sickens and dies from the internal war and the teenagers executed in the streets for their rebellion, they visit the hospital and see the victims of chemical attacks (made by the Germans, the victims are sent to Germany for treatment – and study – as veritable guinea pigs… the horror, the horror). The tale of the trip to Turkey to get Kim Wilde and Iron Maiden posters. At the black market for music, the guys are selling tapes by Estevie Vonder, Jikael Mackson, and others. Marjanie is stopped by a coterie of harridans chastising her “punk rock” Nike sneakers, and her Michael Jackson pin (which she claims is Malcolm X, the leader of the Black Muslims, because “back then, Michael Jackson was still black”). Awesome.

Harridan – Why are you wearing these “punk” shoes?
Marjanie – What punk shoes? These are sneakers!
Harridan – Shut up! They’re punk.
Marjanie – (In comment: It was obvious that she had no idea what punk was.)

SCUD missiles and the end of the Baba-Levy family, Jews whose lineage had survived in Iran for 3,000 years. As Marjanie goes off to Paris, there are highly emotional farewells, including one with her wonderful grandmother, who keeps her breasts so firm and round by soaking them in ice water for ten minutes every morning and every evening (!!!) and smelling nice by lining her bra with jasmine flowers (!!!). She gives Marjanie a great speech:

In life you’ll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it’s because they’re stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance… Always keep your dignity and e true to yourself.

Just that quote is worth the price of admission, as is Majanie’s response: “I smelled my Grandma’s bosom. It smelled good. I’ll never forget that smell.” The final page is the sad, heartbreaking farewell at the airport and a mother’s collapse. I simply must read Persepolis 2!

Persepolis (film) – The film combines the stories of the books of Persepolis 1 and Persepolis 2 English-language books. It’s a nice enough film, of course, since it tells Satrapi’s magical story, including all of her whimsy and the violence and terror and uncertainty of the era. Someone took the decision to jazz up the story, and even change scenes such as when Marjane’s father tells the story of the Shah’s father becoming the emperor under a British-supported coup-support-for-oil deal, injecting old Persian imagery. There are funky effects, editing, and the judicious use of colour. Certain details have been left out, such as the bombing of the Baba-Levy’s house, or that unforgettable scene in the airport when Marjane looks back to see that her mother has collapsed and her father is carrying her (shiver!!!!). Details about Taher’s Russian wife have been omitted too, which is probably a good thing – his comment was very cruel. Ultimately, the feeling is that visual texture has been added at the expense of narrative texture, and somehow this style also removes the stark beauty of the original comic which was one of its key strengths, making the film ultimately unsatisfying in my view; despite this, however, it is true that Satrapi herself was one of the directors of the film, so you can hardly complain that the book’s been unjustly messed around with.

The voice actors in the film are notable, with Gena Rowlands playing Marjane’s mother in the English version, Sean Penn the father, Iggy Pop as Uncle Anouche, and the wonderfully-named Amethyste Frezignac as the young Marjane (the French version includes luminaries like Catherine Deneuve as Marjane’s mother.

There are a few things that I didn’t see in the book, as treats from Marjane, such as the comments on Japanese in one scene where a Godzilla movie appears on Iranian television, “all the Japanese seem to do is hack each other up with samurai swords or run away from gruesome monsters.” Weird TV drama lines, “you cursed hairdresser, you are not worthy of my son!” There’s the surreal scene of the art class with students drawing veiled models. Grandma’s pipe is surreal and boss, and her schooling is so dramatic and poetic, like the flowers she puts in her bra so that she smells nice. “You’re crying because you made a mistake. It’s always hard to admit it when you’ve grown up.” Marjane’s parents, so central to the first half of the film, become secondary characters, although they still have great lines, like “Iran is not for you, I forbid you to return.” And so it begins.

It Might Get Loud – I didn’t have high hopes for this, and even those were disappointed, somehow. A corny Jimmy Page meets with The Edge of U2, who strikes me as a very hard-working musician, and Jack White, who has real soul and the only one of the three who sings as well as he plays (and who has the coolest, most innovative gear). Page looks a bit stodgy throughout, especially when he backs of from opening his mouth – clearly intimidated by having worked for the best – but how bad could his singing voice be? Well, let’s just find out, shall we?

The 90-minute film is already short, but its presentation of content of worth (ie the reason we bought the ticket in the first place) is made shorter by the fact that it takes 27 minutes for the three to even get to their January 23rd 2008 meeting. The documentary feels the need to go through quite a lot of back story, reality TV-like in some parts, and to start with Jack White’s fascinating but gimmicky construction of a slide guitar out of a plank and a few nails. The credits are interminable, spiced up by some cool guitar playing that turns out to be Jimmy Page’s. Edge is shown doing Welsh yoga. The three guys play a little, Page does a weird rendition of “Ramble On.” Edge listens to demo cassettes of “Where The Streets Have No Name” (side note: Bono’s presence clearly hangs over the proceedings, given his larger-than-life persona, but he’s not to be seen). Edge goes back to the old school where they did one of their earliest performances, claims he hasn’t been back since that performance (we’ve seen this scene before in “Beyond The Lighted Stage”, the Rush documentary). Clips of “Street Mission” by a young pre-U2 The Hype. Page re-visits the room where “When The Levee Breaks” was recorded. James Page as a young boy on TV (note him singing backup in the second half!!), then rockin’ out to Link Wray’s “Rumble” single. An animated clip of the young Jack White’s room, 7′ x 7′, with a reel to reel, two drum sets, and no bed – he slept on a mat at an angle between the equipment. Jack White describes the Mexican neighborhood he grew up in Detroit in the hip hop-dominated 1980s, when playing an actual instrument was considered way uncool, and where there were no guitar shops or records shops. Jack White and Brian Muldoon as The Upholsterers, Makers of High Grade Suites.”

Jack White talks more about his influences than anyone else, and raves about the inspiration of seeing the Flat Duo Jets, playing with just a guitar and a drum, making a helluva lotta noise. Cool. The documentary momentarily explores the history of these guys’ first guitars, The Edge’s Explorer (got it when the family went to New York City), Jack’s Kay, and Jimmy’s Strat. Probably the best part of the film is when they show Jack getting his new modified Gretsch Anniversary Jr, dubbed the “Triple Green Machine”, with its built-in theremin and retractible microphone. Nice. Cool scene of The Edge and Jimmy intently watching Jack play “Dead Leaves On The Dirty Ground”. White notes that his favorite song is Son House’s “Grinnin’ In Your Face“, which he’s been re-making through his whole career. The three guitarists do the intro to “In My Time Of Dying”, mean slide guitar heaven. It’s when they are playing The Band’s “The Weight” that Page moans that he can’t sing (no loss – Jack and the Edge make up for it). White is playing an acoustic guitar with a double pick guard (made to look like a Brunette’s head) that has an illustration from a tattoo artist on the back. Pretty cool, man, pretty cool!

The DVD comes with 26 minutes of extras. One clip shows Jimmy playing sloppy acoustic in a white room, “Four Sticks” on an acoustic in a studio, “Kashmir” lesson for the other two guys, three-way discussion about guitar strings (?!?), some manic theremin noise (very cool, this one). The Edge talks about nick names that the band members have had, probably something of severe interest for U2 fans. The Edge plays “Stairway To Heaven”, while also telling a pretty funny “Stairway To Heaven” anecdote about his classical guitar teacher. The Edge’s soundcheck with his wall-o-pedals. Jack White teaches the other guys the ridiculously easy “Seven Nation Army”. There’s a patch of very brief, very useless animation. The DVD also comes with a 38-minute press conference from the Toronto International Film Festival that I just didn’t have the stomach to sit through.

Frank Miller’s Ronin – When this six-issue was first published in 1982 by DC, and when I was a pretty firm Marvel fan, I bought it anyway, probably based on Miller’s reputation with Daredevil and the Wolverine mini-series. I caught up with it from Issue 3 and quickly became fascinated with the weird dual storyline (medieval Japan contrasted with an apocalyptic near-future of New York) and the strange scratchy drawing style Miller employs here, creating bevelled human faces alongside trippy sketches of urban cityscapes, not to mention artistic explorations of the grime and anarchy of the rotten underworld inhabited by Nazis, criminal gangs and other assorted devolved crazies. This is a world of civilisation, but also one balanced by the senseless violence and chaos of the human drama – decapitations, arms sliced off, black eyes, cannibalism, an evil computer (very HAL 2000), a bit of sex and drugs… and of course rivers of blood and lots of destruction (mayhem may be common in today’s comics, but this is the first really gory comic that I can remember). It’s a very cinematographic comic as Miller incorporates Kurosawa’s samurai films, Escape From New York, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Robocop, The Warriors, and many other films, as well as the Akira manga.

The book starts off in old Tokyo, with our samurai and his master. The master is killed by his enemy, the demon Agat, turning our young samurai into a ronin set on his master’s revenge. In a brilliant move, the ronin destroys himself and his enemy, but the demon has one more trick up his sleeve – to trap both of them in the sword.

But all of this is just a staging scene for the real story, set in the last 21st century when the world is as war, society has collapsed and polarised completely. This is the world of Billy Challas, an armless legless boy with psychic abilities, who lives alongside descendants of ours who cope daily with the mistakes we are going to make, some of whom live and work in the Aquarius Corporation with its fortified compound, managed/ruled by corporate types and administered by an intelligent CPU called Virgo. With anarchy outside of its walls, security is a high concern – keeping the outside out and the inside in. The world is explained in the opening pages, with updates hinted at throughout the book, but what doesn’t become apparent immediately is that the dangers within Aquarius may actually be greater than those without. This sense of dread builds throughout the story.

The real magic of the story is in its design and its layout, as well as its storytelling techniques. Ronin, in one silent sequence, tames a wild horse in Central Park while local crazies watch from the bushes. Another sequence is told in pitch dark, with Miller using word balloons to help the characters (and the readers) learn what is happening. Then there are the tight panels where Peter McKenna we observe McKenna’s thinking process as he intuits what has undergone in Aquarius and who the real movers are. There’s also an amazing panel when Taggert/Agat learns that he’s probably the figment of someone’s imagination. Many pages are full of panels that offer no dialogue or sound whatsoever – a fight scene here, a love scene there – offering fluid storytelling through images; these are balanced by others that are absolutely cluttered with word balloons to provide extensive background and updates. There are also plenty of amazing two-page spreads that demonstrate the destruction of the world, along with its rebirth through the growth of the plastic bio-circuitry created by McKenna (the rounded bio-circuitry forms a neat contrast with the edges and corners of existing architecture, and also magically seems to be part of both the foreground and the background). One particular series shows the same neighborhood as it evolves.

Chariots Of Fire – Wonderful intro, starting off in a chapel for the funeral of a Jewish athlete and British Olympic hero (does the irony register in the later scenes when Harold Abrahams is chided for being Jewish?). Bursting into the great beach running scene when we see our five key runners, and then the establishment of the characters, their art, and their issues.

Again, like any great film, there are lots of close-ups of sculpted, intense faces, but also flailing arms. Wonderful Oxford shots, and great costumes and party gear, as well as the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII, who abdicated under scandal, turning the throne over to his brother Albert, of The King’s Speech fame).

The film is full of great lines:

If I can’t win, I won’t run.
If you don’t run, you can’t win.

I just don’t know what to do.
Try growing up.

The film is about running, but it’s really about big themes like racism, war, nationalism, religion, legend-building, fate and destiny, and the God-given talent needed to fulfill it. Lots of slow motion on bloody, muddy, aching, muscular young bodies. This is seen in the three long speeches given in the film, the first one “Let us honour famous men”, then a requiem for the war dead, and later on a speech about how there are no kings on earth, as they are dust before the might of God in the heavens.

Homoerotic? “You are my most complete man”. Great slow motion of the 200 metre run. Coach Mussabini listens from a nearby room, when he hears God Save The King and sees the Union Jack being hoisted, he knows that his man has won, dramatically punches a hole in his hat.

In the final scene we go back to the chapel, and the scene shifts from young boys to the old men (it’s the reverse of the opening scene).

Ironically, the actors who played the young runners were not so young themselves – their ages at the time of filming ranged from 24-35! Few of them went on to make great films again, although Ian Charleson (who died of HIV in 1990) was in Ghandi. Ian Holm, who was great as Abrahams’ personal coach Sam Mussabini, was memorable in films like Alien, Lord Of The Rings, The Sweet Hereafter, The Fifth Element and many other edgy films.

Dodi Fayed was the film’s executive producer!