TimC

I caught an artsy little flick called 4:44 The Last Day on Earth that was an OK little movie. Had Willem Dafoe and a cast of actors I didn't recognize. It was a little heavy on glorifying Al Gore...but beyond that, how do you spend your last day when the end is inevitable?

Had to look that up to check whether it was a remake or knock-off of the excellent 'Last Night' (or the recent and rather fascinating 'Melancholia'). And blimey, it's from Abel Ferrera. I'll watch out for it.

The dominance of the Western episode may be because it's the only one that they've filmed much of yet...

The Re/Search 'Conversations' book is also well worth getting (and I'm not just saying that cos I've got some photos in it). There's another collection of interviews due later this year, co-edited by Simon Sellars of Ballardian.com

Roger Luckhurst's 'The angle between two walls: the fiction of J.G. Ballard' is probably the best regarded of the critical studies. Baxter's bio is, by all accounts, an absolute stinker.

From a 1984 letter from JG Ballard -

"As for William Blake, in fact I know him only for his more famous

poems, Jerusalem (the hymn). Tiger etc and chiefly for his paintings,

a large number of which are in the Tate Gallery in London -- native

surrealist."

"To be honest I've never heard of the Four Zoas -- though I certainly

chose the hero's name in honour of Blake, and for the same qualities

of furious identification with all the transforming forces of nature

and to the unseen powers of the universe hiding behind every leaf and

flower -- seen objectively, (William) Blake is something of a minor

pagan deity himself."

John Baxter makes heavy going of the 'Milton' parallels in his recent 'biography', but that doesn't seem to be any more accurate than anything else in that very poorly received book.

Impossible Stories, Mostly by Alaister Gray-

I think that's 'Unlikely Stories, Mostly' - shouldn't exaggerate! Pretty much anything by Gray is well worth reading, of course.

Now, I am starting on reading The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard, which is partially a retelling of one of my favourite William Blake poems, the epic "Milton".

Now, that's a contentious claim among Ballardians... If I recall, JGB acknowledged he'd taken the protagonist's name from WB, but hadn't actually read any of the poetry.

Side note - the Shepperton of the book bears a somewhat hazy resemblance to the actual town, but I did find and photograph a number of sites in the town which relate to parts of the book (and also to 'War of the Worlds') in a sort of photo essay I call 'What we saw of the destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton' -

I'll modestly note that a short novel by myself, titled Spaceboy, is now available for purchase in electronic form for users of the Kindle and suchlike.

The story combines evolutionary cosmology and revolutionary politics, with a healthy seasoning of sex, drugs, angst, psychedelic mathematics, sudden violence, and mimes.

Here it is on Amazon (UK) -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spaceboy-Blue-Shift-ebook/dp/B007LZ39RS/

- people elsewhere can doubtless find it on their local sites. I'll probably add to Smashwords shortly, or elsewhere if there's demand.

And I can't think of anything in the last ten years that Morrison has done that has had any sort of rape

Batman.

And Neonomicon is deserving of a more thoughtful reading, to put it mildly.

That Seraphemera interview also has some interesting comments about one John Constantine, with regards to creator- and company-owned characters -

I understood that when I had finished with that character that it would just be absorbed into the general DC stockpile and I believe that I've expressed my admiration. I think that Brian Azzarello's editor had heard that I quite liked the job that he did with Richard Corben on Hellblazer and he phoned up asking me for a quote. I don't know if they ever used it, but I gave them a fulsome one.

Pedantic note - 'Fires of Pompeii' was written by James Moran. Colin Teague was the director.

And what, no Mark 'Ghost Light' Platt? Or David Whitaker? Or Anthony Coburn, for that matter?

That's just wrong on so many levels.

Whatever that gorilla page is from - could someone fix them up with a proper cyrillic font?

Action Comics 6 was a big improvement on the last few, for me. Stuff happens in a fun way. It's restored my interest in the series.

I seem to be rather out of sync with the reviews on sooperhero-centric comic sites.

Bit of a straw man argument, though. That's not what Moore's saying.

Corporate fanfic.

From that NYT article -

Brian Azzarello, a comics author who is writing the mini-series for the Watchmen characters Rorschach and the Comedian, said he expected an initial wave of resistance because “a lot of comic readers don’t like new things.”

That's the Azz we know and love, using his legendary powers of wordplay to provide a thoroughly mindfucking reinvention of the hackneyed phrase "new things".

Or, possibly, talking shite.

Not sure how to post it, but check out the new Hellblazer cover on Biz's facebook.. # 290, i know i'm getting it even if it has Azarello's Bingo issue reprint inside.

According to the solicitation text, the First of the Fallen is back.

Yaroo.

Ha. I haven't really looked around for the wider online reaction to that last episode, but I suspect that TimC and I are far from the only people whose immediate reaction was to make this joke.

My other Moffaty thought was that [ Spoiler : Watson brought Sherlock back with magic dust and wishful thinking ], but that would just be silly.

 

I suppose next you will be sharing your revelation that Durden is the Narrator, eh?

Nah -

SHERLOCK!

I can explain the ending!

Thanks, Tim. I'll keep an eye out for the Dent-Young, then.

Be aware that it's unlikely you'll stumble across the whole thing - we found the first two volumes in a museum bookshop in Bath, then had to mail-order the rest from Hong Kong.

On a different note - I'm taking a week's cruise up the Nile next month, and don't seem to have anything on the shelf that'll be quite right. Any recommendations for something appropriate (or, otherwise, dense and beefy)? I've already read Mailer's and Burroughs' big Egyptian books on previous trips, but something similar would be grand.

I'm only reading Action Comics of this 'new' 52, and the last couple of issues of that have been pissweak. Boring fight scene, boring flashback, and what seems to be an incomprehensible crossover plot (and not incomprehensible in the good Morrison sense, either). It's a long way short of what was promised.

I'm just hoping that the last phase of Morrison's Batman run will be more interesting, now that there's no requirement to tie it in to the wider DC clusterfuck.

Anybody have any idea which English translation of The Water Margin is the best to seek out? Wiki insists that the Pearl S Buck isn't as faithful as it could be, but doesn't mention the JH Jackson, which is all over amazon and ebay for a fair bit less than the Sidney Shapiro one wiki's queer for. Is that one cheaper because it's an abridged version?

The wife, who knows about such things, says the John and Alex Dent-Young 5-volume translation (Chinese University Press) is the one to go for. Or, at least, the most comprehensive.

David Weir's highly abridged TV tie-in edition is also entertaining, apparently.

Far from Moffat's worst, but it was fluff. Still some snuffling at the end from our sofa, though.

I also got a stack of old Who DVDs in my stocking, so got myself into the mood for the new episode with 'The Horns of Nimon'. Now, that's how you do pantomime.

If you prefer, say, Hellblazer now to how it was written twenty years ago then these aren't the comics for you.

Let's see... December 1991 was the second part of 'The Pub Where I Was Born'.

Yes, today is better.

So they're continuity-heavy, characterised by 'chunks of exposition', and read like something from 15-20 years ago? To be honest, you're not really selling them to me...