A few more shots from my recent nocturnal camera stroll around Edinburgh – shooting from the Mound, looking east toward the very posh Balmoral Hotel (originally the North British railway hotel from the golden days of rail travel), with Calton Hill behind, the telescope shaped tower of the Nelson Monument visible on the right background and the National Monument, meant to be a replica of the Parthenon but they ran out of money; over the last couple of centuries or so various groups have tried to find the money to finish it but I doubt they ever will and most of us would rather they didn’t, it is part of the city as it is (also a nice reminder about hubris and that overweening desire to build grand, triumphant memorial architecture just to impress):
If you are visiting, Calton Hill is one of the best central location from which to take in views of Edinburgh, along Princes Street past the Balmoral, over to the Castle, Old Town, down to the Palace of Holyrood, or down the coast to North Berwick. The great Edinburgh author Robert Louis Stevenson, in his Picturesque notes described the views from Calton Hill:
“Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps the best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur’s Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur’s Seat. It is the place to stroll on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the sea, with a little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar to the quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organizations and greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a faint, floating haze, a cunning decolourizer, although not thick enough to obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more decolourizer, although not thick enough to obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes the aspect of a bank of thin sea fog. ”
And a close up of the clock tower on the Balmoral; by tradition the clock is always set two or three minutes fast to encourage people not to tarry on the way to their train at the station below:
Looking west this time from the same vantage point on the Mound, a little up slope from the Church of Scotland Assmbly building, zoomed in here on the bulk of the Caledonian Hotel (another very grand posh, former railway hotel, at the opposite end of Princes Street from the Balmoral. In the foreground the spire with the clock on it belongs to Saint Cuthberts, a very unusual (for Scotland) kirk which is more Eastern Orthodox than traditional Scottish in design. Above and behind the flank of the Caledonian you can see the multiple spires of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, shot just half an hour after the sun had set below the horizon, but there was still some colour in the western skies:
Down on Princes Street, by the West Princes Street Gardens, looking up past the statue of 18th century poet Allan Ramsay towards the illuminated, ancient stone walls of Edinburgh Castle, with the first star of evening visible over his shoulder:
From the Mound again, looking down on the National Gallery of Scotland. I elevated the tripod as high as I could but couldn’t clear the tall railings in front of my vantage point, but now I actually find I like them in there, act like a border for the bottom of the image and slope down nicely right to left leading the eye into the photo:
And at the front of the the National Gallery, with banners hanging between the pillars before the front entrance:
Another one from the Mound, looking up where the road curves up above the National Gallery past the Bank of Scotland’s headquarters before turning up and over the Royal Mile:
This re-edit of clips from the old Peanuts animated cartoon showcases poor old Charlie Brown against the Vega Choir’s beautiful cover version of Radiohead’s fabulous song Creep. It suits it so well, both funny and quite sad at the same time, seems so appropriate for Charlie Brown, one of the nice guys who always seems to get the rough end of the stick be it in baseball or his quest of the little red-haired girl…
During my recent night photography session in Edinburgh I had a little fun prowling the dark bone orchards – this one looks quiet, dark, still, but actually it is Saint Cuthbert’s, which is right in the middle of the town with a very busy street just a few yards away. Up above you can see Edinburgh Castle, all floodlit while the massive volcanic rock it sits atop is in darkness, giving the illusion that the Castle is floating above the city like something from Gulliver’s Travels:
This reworking of Obama’s iconic election campaign poster to show his utter hypocrisy in being a Democratic leader presiding over a country where young teenage student girls get pepper sprayed in the face on their own campus simply for peacefully exercising their right to free assembly and speech, or signing legislation (and very sneakily doing it over New Year when he hoped most wouldn’t notice) that will make it possible for the authorities to arrest and detain not only those pesky foreign radicals and terrorists without proper judicial oversight or charges, but also US citizens. The Land of the Free my fecking arse in parsley sauce…I thought back at election time that the euphoria over Obama’s election was foolish – sure it was better than having Bush there but I thought the hopes people piled on his administration were unrealistic, not to mention foolish and sure enough he has disappointed endlessly since then. Sad to think at the next US election I wouldn’t prefer to see him re-elected because he deserves to be but simply because he is a lesser evil (just) of the rampantly right-wing, Tea Party numpties in the Republican Reptile Party… Sigh…
I field tested my rather spiffing new winter coat today by walking around for several hours from dusk into early evening with the tripod, taking some night shots of Edinburgh despite it being bloody freezing, new coat kept me nice and snug. Shot almost a gig of photographs so it will take a while to work through them, some landmark type pics, other everyday, or, in this case, everynight scenes, meant to spend an hour, ended up walking about for nearly 3 hours till I was back my end of town, stop into the local for a quick beer and warm up then home. Sorted a handful of pics from that large batch, here’s dusk this evening in Edinburgh, sun already set for a while, but still colour in the sky and that ‘gloaming’quality of twilight over the city as I stood on the Mound:
The huge dome of West Register House in Charlotte Square (near neighbour to the First Minister’s official residence), silhoutted against the western horizon just afte sunset, again shot from the Mound:
Looking east this time, down towards Princes Street and the magnificent Gothic rocket of the Scott Monument:
Close up zoom to the Scott Monument’s first floor, if you click to go to my Flickr page with this and look at the bigger version you can make out the stained glass windows which is in a narrow but incredibly tall room:
This was originally penned for my traditional Best of the Year, part of an annual series I run on the Forbidden Planet blog, following on from a month-long series of guest Best Of posts that ran daily from the first week of December:
It’s been another quite superb year for good reading and, like last year’s Best Of selection, I’ve been delighted at the diversity and quality of comics work coming out of the UK publishing scene, which seems to be going from strength to strength and like the more established science fiction and fantasy publishing in the UK, it’s putting out works that are getting worldwide attention. SelfMadehero and Blank Slate especially have had a cracking year. I’ll apologise in advance – as usual I’m going to go on longer than I meant to, but I blame all those too damned talented writers and artists for that, made trying to narrow down my selection extremely difficult and I must apologise to some because I know that there are some I have probably missed out, but we better get on with this list:
The new chapter has just started this very week online, but over the last few months few things have made me laugh out loud as much as Jamie Smart’s Corporate Skull, taking the mickey out of big business and corporate office culture, loaded with cynicism and sarcasm, decorated liberally with bad language, foul behaviour and violence and bodily excretions. It’s everything rude and crude but expertly and cleverly crafted. I said several months ago that it was “arse splittingly funny” and I stand by that comment, mostly because the aforementioned bum is still recuperating from the previous comedic splitting. Sick genius. The doctors say it is good therapy for Jamie to work it out of his system.
For my money Jacques Tardi is one of Europe’s great comics creators, a true maestro who can turn his hand and alter his style to suit almost any genre, from gruesome, angry It Was The War of the Trenches to hardboiled 70s crime and, of course, his famous Adele Blanc-Sec series. A plucky heroine writer who investigates the bizarre and always becomes entangled in the oddest conspiracies and plans. This second helping collects two of the original French albums and serves up a heady cocktail of conspiracies, secret societies, black magic practiocners, mad scientists (and boy does Tardi do a great, cackling mad scientist – he even brings in some from his brilliant The Arctic Maruader into this) and all set against a beautifully realised backdrop of Belle Epoque, pre-war Paris. Fantagraphics are translating a huge swathe of Tardi’s work and in fact I’d recommend and and everything they have so far translated and republished, but for the sake of this piece I’ll go with the wonderful Adele.
This is a superb, dark piece from SMH, a labyrinthean maze of childhood memories and how they shape and influence the character and outlook of the protagonists as adults, set in one of those depressing, featureless “it could be anywhere” type of towns, with emotional paths triggered by the reconnection between childhood friends and almost-sweethearts John and Naomi, it’s a fascinating through a glass darkly tale that I could see making an engrossing film in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro. Dark, brooding, intense and fascinating.
Spiegelman’s Maus must be about the most famous graphic novel on the planet, known not only to comics readers like Watchmen but to the wider reading public because of its reception and the Pulitzer Prize highlighting it even to readers who normally don’t read in the comics medium. That, however, is also something of a millstone for a young artist to carry around for the next few decades of his career and Spiegelman talks about that, as well as how he came to make the original comic, discussing the craft, the family history, his relationship with his father, the approach to the art and layout, it’s a truly exhaustive (it comes with a DVD packed with more material) look inside one of the major literary works of the 20th century, but it is also deeply personal too, not just in terms of discussing Spiegelman’s relationship with his father, the man whose tale he is telling, but also how the book has affected his own children growing up in its shadow. Penguin also republished the original Complete Maus in the same hardback format as MetaMaus to mark the anniversary of its publication, they make a very handsome set.
Don Quixote, Migeul de Cervantes with some help from Rob Davis, SelfMadeHero
Several years ago a poll of some of the best writers from many countries picked out this masterpiece of Spanish literature as the favourite novel for most of today’s respected international authors. They were right. It’s an astonishing book that has crossed centuries, influencing artists, writers, playwrights, poets, painters, film-makers and readers; several centuries of readers have fallen in love with this mad knight who dreams of a golden past of chivalry and adventure. Is Quixote a dreaming madman in a cynical age or is it the world that is wrong and his vision which is the more wonderful? Is it a Quixotic madness to even attempt to adapt this great work into comics? Perhaps, but as one who has loved this book for years I think Rob too has supped from the same cup of divinely inspired madness that made our tottering knight charge at windmills; it’s a wonderful madness we all need to embrace from time to time to rise above the mundanity of the everyday. Rob has put a Herculean effort into this adaptation – a read of his blog shows the effort and thought and love he’s put into each frame, how to approach the characters, even the effect of changing colours and shadows, and it shows in the finished work.
Quixote is one of those books that belong to the world and to the ages, given that immortality that belongs to few books across the long centuries, the few that become immortal, the Poes, the Dickens, the Austens, that will be read for as long as there are books and stories. If you’ve loved Quixote you will delight in this joyful adaptation of the work, if you haven’t had that pleasure yet then Rob’s is the perfect, accessible introduction to it, and afterwards you’ll want to read the book itself and treasure it. As a bookseller and booklover I can’t think of a higher compliment than that.
Much acclaimed on it’s German language release I was delighted to see Blank Slate translating Uli Oesterle’s brilliant Hector Umbra, his first full length work to make it into English. A brilliant mixture of buddy movie, religious conspiracy, science fiction and dark magics, with more than a tinge of the excellent Mike Mignola flavouring it as Hector, between drinks, tries to find his missing DJ friend Osaka, stumbles into a megolomaniac attempt to subvert humanity, even finds himself, in an almost Hellboy moment, entering into Hell to be given information from a recently dead friend. Stylish and funny as we see bizarre sights, drinking, shagging, lunacy and more around Munich and strange realms hidden away from normal sight. Think Mike Mignola meets Quentin Tarantino meets Wim Wenders.
Coleridge’s famous poetical work, inspired in part by the great age of exploration as ships sailed to undiscovered corners of the world, is reworked visually here to great effect by Guardian cartoonist Nick Hayes, who follows the rhyme and beat of Coleridge but refashions the work to a more contemporary topic of the environment and man’s disastrous effect on those great, world-spanning oceans, the cradle of all life. The book itself is unusual for a graphic work, being similar in format to a thick hardback novel rather than the normally larger album format, but this is perfect for the few frames on each page, designed to work in time to the beat of the verse. There’s some lovely work in there too – Nick did a Director’s Commentary for us back in the spring, where he talked us through some of the work in his own words, go and have a look.
(Nick Hayes and William Goldsmith at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011, pic from my Flickr)
Another unusual work from Cape in 2011 was this first major work from Will Goldsmith, whose work can also be seen in the Imagined Cities anthology Karrie Fransman put together. Ostensibly a series of short, two-page tales, each taking in a different story of a different (and usually eccentric and odd) dweller in a fictional, roughly Eastern European city, although the stories slowly start to become interlinked as you progress through, a little like Carver’s Short Cuts. Visually it is unlike anything else I’ve read in recent years, it’s a remarkable, unusual art style that demands re-reading to take it in. Unique.
Insurrection, Dan Abnett & Colin MacNeil, 2000 AD/Rebellion
I’m a 2000 AD boy, no question about it, original generation there right for the very first Prog and I still like to dive into the tales from the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic today, with a special fondness for the Dredd-verse. This story from veterans Dan Abnett and Colin MacNeil is set in Dredd’s universe but doesn’t feature him, taking place on a Mega City colony in deep space, fighting for independence. Following an alien attack where the Judges ignored pleas for aid everyone, including sentient robots, genetically uplifted apes and mutants, were given citizenship in return for fighting to save the colony. War over they judge marshal is told to revoke that citizenship, which he refuses, leading to a colossal showdown with the feared SJS, the Special Judicial Squad we first really saw way back in The Day The Law Died years ago, the Judges who investigate the other Judges. It’s a great future war tale, seemingly good guys against bad, but Abnett deliberately muddles the morality to make it more dramatic while MacNeil creates some brilliant B&W art (see my review here for more).
Batwoman – the New 52, JH Williams III & W Haden Blackman,published DC Comics
Over the years I have largely slipped out of the habit of picking up monthly or weekly issues – yes, I know, sounds sacriligeous for someone in my position, but I have collected them for more years than I care to recall and these days I generally prefer to wait for the collected trade edition. But along with the rest of the blog gang I had to have a look at DC hugely ambitious New 52 experiment, effectively rebooting the main DC Universe, all re-starting at issue 1, a great spot to leap on for anyone new to them, or, like me, who had missed out several years of continuity. It was a great success for the most part and now 5 issues later I find myself still checking the racks for some of them, most notably Batwoman.
I can’t help but go back to it every month – interesting storyline with Kate Kane’s Batwoman facing a supernatural, very creepy threat as well as a more natural world threat from a government agency and a screwed up wannabe sidekick. But the team also deliver a good personal side to Kate’s non superhero life – the problems with her sidekick being emlematic of her her problems with relationships in general, like her missing, presumed dead, twin who returned as a psychotic villain, her estranged father, her detective lover who doesn’t know she is Batwoman… But mostly it is JH Williams III’s art. Simply fabulous, probably some of the best artwork you will see in a mainstream comic right now, achingly gorgeous, atmospheric and with some fantastically kinetic layouts across double pages that as well as looking great scream out to me this is comics and this is the sort of wonderful visualisations of a story only this medium can do.
And as a bonus we have a very strong female lead, every inch the equal of the Batman, quite independent of him, strong but with doubts and troubles but a tremendous determination to do her ‘duty’ honourably. And the fact that she is a lesbian is, I am glad to say, simply a part of her character, played for emotional nuances but not for titillation or exotic allure. Kudos to the guys for that too. And on the New 52 front I also need to give shout outs for Gail Simone’s Batgirl and Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s The Flash. And boy, am I surprised to find myself reading Flash again after all these years, but there you have it…
Nelson, edited Rob Davis & Woodrow Phoenix, published Blank Slate Books
It’s been an outstanding year for comics work again, and especially for the UK scene. Nobrow, Blank Slate, SelfMadeHero and Cape have all distinguished themselves and it feels to me like the UK scene, both professional Indy presses and the self published small presses, are just getting better, more diverse and more intersting. Good time to be a reader – the only drawback is more good books than I have time to read and it is murder trying to make a list like this out of so many fine candidates! But, hand on heart, I have to stick with what I said in my review (see here) of Nelson, where I called it:
“a fascinating, unusual landmark publication in Brit comics, a moving tale that works not only as a snapshot of a woman’s life but as a snapshot of the finest comics talent working in the UK right now.”
In a year of quite brilliant works Nelson still stands out for me, a bold experiment by Messrs Phoenix and Davis and all at Blank Slate to craft a single tale covering decades of a woman’s life, each segment by a different artist yet all coming together as more than the sum of it’s parts. I think it is one of those books we will still talk about looking back from future years, a major moment in the renaissance of UK comics publishing. And we even got to raise money for Shelter just by buying it. I’m running up my flag and saluting Nelson as my best graphic novel read of 2011.
Books
Sea of Ghosts, Alan Campbell, Tor/Macmillan
First book of the Gravedigger Chronicles from the Scottish author Alan Campbell who impressed with his previous debut series, the Deepgate Trilogy. As with that debut his new series is an inventive, different and often disturbing take on a genre which can all too often fall into formulaic generic tropes. What starts as a fantasy on a world in which magic is real mutates throughout until it becomes half science fiction, half fantasy, with a compelling, driven lead character and a world where even the oceans have been poisoned by magica;/scientific meddling to become The Brine, the simplest splash of which is toxic and has horrible effects on the human body – and Campbell excels in grisly fates in a manner equalled only by veteran SF scribe Neal Asher. Compelling but not for the faint hearted.
The Ascendant Stars, Michael Cobley, Orbit
Book three of the Humanity’s Fire series sees Michael Cobley really coming of age – I enjoyed his original fantasy series he debuted with, but I think Mike’s switch to grand space opera science fiction was a wise one and this entire series marks him really growing into a much more assured, mature writer, with a brilliant tale of lost human colonies, major intrigues among major alien powers, a strong evnironmental thread and an exciting mixture of the big scale (major starship battles) and the personal (we get to know our heroes very well as they struggle for freedom), and his main planet with a colony composed of Scots, Norwegian and Russian descendants sharing their world with a friendly native species makes for a great and memorable cast of characters. Enjoy Ken MacLeod and Iain M Banks? Then you should be reading this.
The Reapers are the Angels, Alden Bell, Tor/Macmillan
Years ago a papercut from a radioactive book gave me special bookseller senses – sometimes a publisher will send me a book I know nothing about, the author is totally new to me, the book I know nothing about other than the blurb on the PR handout, and yet I get the tingle. And when I get that tingle it means I just know that this book is good, that I am going to like it and I trust the tingle because that instinct rarely leads me astray when it comes to reading. And I got the tingle for Reapers are the Angels and it was, again, pointing me to some bloody good reading. Both zombie tales and post-apocalyptic SF are ten a penny, it takes something to do either sub genre in a fresh way – Bell’s book combines both sub genres and it does so superbly, with his young girl wandering the remains of America after a zombie outbreak, trying her best to survive in a lethal, brutal world (where the remaining humans can be as dangerous as the walking dead), yet she has evolved her own quite moral code and a unique way of looking at the world and still seeing some wonder in it. It’s an amazing piece of work and – thank you – Bell is assured enough to keep it to a decent length and not feel compelled to bloat it to some 600 page monster as too many modern writers do. Beautifully self contained work.
Germline, T.C. McCarthy, Orbit
Another book that gave me the tingle is TC McCarthy’s Germline, a tale of future-war which draws on elements of the contemporary war on terror campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq with the historic (like Vietnam) with science fiction (parts of it are reminiscent of 2000 AD’s Rogue Trooper, including regiments of genetically created super soldiers). This is no war for ideal, not even pretending to be for ideals, it is purely for the remaining resources on the planet, and for every hi-tech future weapon there is the down and dirty tunneling and trenches of the Great War. Our main character is a reporter, but this is a war where you can’t stay an observer and our drug loving hack finds himself going through an Apocalypse Now like journey into the heart of darkness, along the way finding some strange buddies and even falling for one of the genetic infantry women. It’s dirty, gritty, very realistic and utterly gripping.
Echo City, Tim Lebbon, Orbit
I’ve been reading Tim’s work for a good while, he’s a brilliant, very unusual writer, coming from a horror background that also permeates his fantasy and I’ve often found it galling that he wasn’t published by a major imprint in his own country. Well this year Orbit fixed that and gave us his Echo City, a bizarre conurbation, totally self enclosed, wrapped around by an impassible, toxic desert, ruled over by a despotic family, political dissidents banished to a ghetto strip between the city walls and the desert proper. But someone has created a genetically manipulated being to cross that desert – and return. And on the return they learn that something – something unspeakable – is happening. Not just the fight between dissidents and the ruling elite or old and new ways of thinking, but something is rising from beneath the city. A city built endlessly on the bones of it’s own past, layer upon layer of new city built atop the old, vast undercity beneath, the river running through to vanish into the shadows below, where the city’s dead are fed into the falls to vanish – something is rising from deeper than even these dark levels… Scary, different, disturbing, mature dark fantasy from one of our very best.
Rule 34, Charles Stross, Orbit
Charlie is another writer I have admired for years, endlessly inventive, with a great take on using technological and societal trends to great (and cynically funny) effect. In Rule 34 he gets to indulge in the Great Edinburgh Detective Novel along with some near future science fiction, with a unit dedicated to policing all the weird cases that are spawned via the web, and our long suffering but tenacious female detective finds a bizarre murder case rapidly spinning into something much larger, going well beyond the city and even the country. It’s fast-paced, well delivered, clever and darkly humorous stuff from the guy who has become one of the best of the UK SF crop.
Supergods, Grant Morrison, Jonathan Cape
Half a potted history of the superhero comics and half a form of biography, Grant’s Supergods is an interesting read for anyone who’s grown up reading the four-colour pages. The earlier chapters dealing with the history of the early capes is fine but not anything you don’t really know already, although it has the benefit of having someone who has himself written many of these characters commenting on them and their creators. But for me the book really becomes much more interesting when we get to the 60s and Grant talks not only about the comics from then but on the ones he as a youngster was picking up and what they meant to him personally, then on to his early work (an anthology put out by the old Edinburgh SF Bookshop, which would eventually be the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet), constantly changing his style as the years pass, it offers an interesting insight into his own creative processes as well as his views on other trends in comics publishing and other writers and artists – you won’t always agree with them, but it’s always interesting.
Film & TV
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec
Luc Besson’s big screen adaptation of Jacques Tardi’s Belle Epoque heroine takes elements from a couple of the original bande dessinee to make it to it’s running length, but despite mashing together different story elements from different books it cracks along at a good pace and delivers much of the same joy of adventure and gorgeous visuals (especially of Paris in the 1910s), a very fine comics adaptation and sheer fun throughout – here’s hoping he adapts some more.
Troll Hunter
One of my highlights of my annual sojourn at the Edinburgh Film Festival was this Indy monster flick from Norwegian director/writer André Øvredal. Made on a budget of only three million Euros it uses the found footage device like Cloverfield or Blair Witch, but much better (and less annoying) than either of those, supposedly recordings by media students doing a video project, reporting on a licensed bear hunt when they find a loner who follows the hunt for the rogue animal but never takes part. Tracking him night after night they find out he is actually a member of a secret government department tasked with keeping the public safe from (and ignorant of) trolls. And we get to see all manner of trolls, from forest to cave to gigantic beasts who roam above the Arctic Circle. Funny and very inventive, never showing its tiny budget, it is sheer fun and the film fest audience gave the director a huge cheer at the end. (see here for a spoiler-free review)
Hugo
The brilliant Martin Scorcese adapts Selznick’s wonderful tale, his first foray into 3D (and surprisingly not annoying in 3D), turning the book into a fairy tale – an orphan living within the walls and tunnels of a 1920s Parisian train station, mending and maintaining the clocks while avoiding the station police who will bundle him off to the orphanage, working on restoring a 19th century automation his father was trying to repair before his death. Befriended by a young girl (Kick-Ass’s Chloe Moritz), menaced by a grumpy toy shop owner (her godfather) the pair are lead not only into the mystery of the clockwork mechanical man but of one of the great magicians of the 19th century, a curator of automata and wonders and the first, great genius of the early cinema. The dawn days of the film become part of the magical, fairy tale like story. 20s Paris in winter is a magical, enchanting land, and Scorcese makes much of the giant cogs and wheels of that era’s engineering and machinery while celebrating the first wonders of the silver screen. A pure joy.
The Borrower Arrietty
Another gem from the Film Fest for me was the new Studio Ghibli – I know I’m far from alone in being a huge admirer of Myazaki-san’s studio and their wonderful animations and the chance to see this tale, adapted from Mary Norton’s classic book The Borrowers, is a visual wonder as we see the tiny Borrowers living hidden in the human household, and how one Borrower girl and one seriously ill human boy come together despite the vast difference in sizes. The art is a delight showing our world at the Borrower’s tiny scale (so small when they pour tea from the pot it doesn’t flow like our water does, it comes out as large droplets), even the sound is used to convey the scale, the rustling of shirt fabric enormously loud to Arrietty’s miniscule ears. It is charming and a pure visual feast of traditional animation (with a few CG elements). See here for a review
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Maverick director Werner Herzhog gained exclusive camera access to the Chauvet caves of southern France, one of the great historical discoveries of the last couple of decades, a series of caves used by our ancestors for rituals, for art… For the oldest human artwork we know of, a glorious series of cave paintings over 32, 000 years old. Just consider that for a moment – human artwork many times older than any beautiful work that survives from Rome, Ancient Greece or even Egypt or Ur or Babylon. These may have been stone-age people, but they are modern humans, just like us physically, and in their art we can see they are much like us mentally, spiritually. Art paintedin darkness lit only by flickering torches, which would have made the animals depicted seem to move. The artists are clever, using their material wisely, using the surface qualities of the rock and the curves and undulations to emphasise the art, making a horse seem dynamic as it curves around a bend in the wall. The work is far too delicate to be open to the public, only scientific teams are allowed in to a now sealed, climate controlled environment, Herzhog’s access therefore as close as we can get to this miraculous find. It’s a treasure in paint and stone and human effort and cleverness reaching out of the darkness across long millennia to us. It’s so beautiful it will make you cry with wonder. The human spirit and art eternal…
As usual I have rambled on far, far too long and been a bit self indulgent, but again my excuse is that I read far too many extremely good comics, books and saw some fabulous films again through the year, and this is me missing out many I would have liked to include as well (I haven’t even managed space to give proper mentions to the Big Bang Theory – much improved this year with a stronger female strand to the regular male geek cast – or Doctor Who or the surprise that was The Fades, the brilliant adaptation that is A Game of Thrones, the growing pleasure of Fringe (one of the best SF shows of recent years, I think), SyFy’s Haven, Warehouse 13 and Lost Girl).
Looking forward to in 2012
Okay, as I said I have gone on too long already, but what the smeg, a very brief look at some books and comics coming up that I’m looking forward to this coming year: Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Mary & Bryan Talbot, Jonathan Cape. Bryan was kind enough to give me a peek at some of this collaboration with his wife Mary some months ago and I’m eager to read the finished book – Mary was kind enough to to pen a Director’s Commentary about Dotter for us and I’m delighted to say you will be able to read it on the blog tomorrow. Kochi Wanaba, Jamie Smart, Blank Slate – I love Jamie’s work and adored what I saw of Kochi online. It’s an amazing mixture of the supercute and the bizarre, almost grotesque and I’m chuffed to see him getting this lovely hardback edition from Blank Slate.
One of the great European classic has been promised in new English editions to use several times over recent years, but never appeared – now, at last we’re going to see it again: Corto Maltese: the Ballad of the Salt Sea, Hugo Pratt, Universe. Hopefully this summer sees the third part of the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, Knockabout/Top Shelf. This final part brings us up to contemporary times after we last saw the League in the Swinging Sixties (with a coda in the punk era of the 70s). Peepholes, Laurie J Proud, Blank Slate Books looks absolutely fascinating – it was due late 2011 but will now be this year, but a pleasure delayed simply increases the final satisfaction (and I hope to have Laurie also doing a Commentary for us too in the near future).
And I’ll leave you with a couple of 2012′s science fiction works that caught my eye – Empire State, Adam Christopher, Angry Robot. I was treated to an advance copy at the end of 2011 but the book is out this month – if you follow our Twitter feed you’ll already have seen me singing the praises of Adam’s novel – set in a 1930s/40s city that seems like New York but is actually the Empire State, like an alternative version of the New York we know, with gangsters and speakeasys and superheroes in rocket boots like characters from the old Republic serials of the day. A city that is all that exists, surrounded by a mist around its rivers, and yet there is a mysterious enemy ships sail off to fight… Somewhere. Hugely stylish, with elements that reminded me of hardboiled noir of the 40s and 50s, the old serial movies, Rocketeer and Dark City- probably the first really interesting SF book of the New Year for me. And this year also sees the return of one of my long-term favourites, Ken MacLeod, with Intrusion (Orbit) – Cory Doctorow has seen it already and described it as “a new kind of dystopian novel: a vision of a near future “benevolent dictatorship” run by Tony Blair-style technocrats who believe freedom isn’t the right to choose, it’s the right to have the government decide what you would choose, if only you knew what they knew. ” Ken told me a little about it recently but to be really honest all I need to know is it is a new Ken MacLeod and that means I’ll be reading it.
Singaporean director and former comic creator Eric Khoo debuted his homage to legendary Japanese comics creator Yoshihiro Tatsumi at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last spring, an animated feature which draws largely on Tatsumi’s much-acclaimed A Drifting Life (published in English by the good folks at Drawn & Quarterly). It’s an interesting work exploring the life and career of the godfather of the gekiga form of manga, which helped establish the comics form in Japan as a medium which could also appeal to an adult audience and not just child readers, combined with animating some of Tatsumi’s own short comic stories such as Occupied (our young artist works so hard on his children’s strips he makes himself ill, only to find new inspiration in an unlikely spot), Hell (an army reporter is sent to document the devastation of Hiroshima after the atomic blast), Good-Bye (a prostitute daughter and estranged drunken father struggle with their relationship and to survive in American occupied post-war Japan) and more.
It’s an interesting approach to documenting one of the most influential creators from the Japanese comics scene, taking us from his childhood, growing up in post-war Japan, being influenced by his big brother’s drawing, the work of manga godfather Tezuka (who he still respectfully refers to as Mister Tezuka), his first success as a boy winning newspaper comics competitions and getting a break when one of those newspapers decides to do a report on his success in the manga competitions, helping lead the way for him to work on his own children’s strips to appear regularly. This encouraging early success is diluted, however, by problems at home – his brother is often forced to stay in bed with a serious illness and slowly comes to resent his younger brother being able to go out and about while he remains an invalid. His drawing during his enforced convalescence had inspired Tatsumi but now his younger brother’s growing success fed his brother’s resentment and the fact that Tatsumi’s competition success meant he earned money which he gave to his mother to help the family finances because his father was less than efficient at looking after them made it worse.
(In Hell a young man is dispatched to document the dreadful aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing)
The film criss-crosses between animated adaptations of Tatsumi’s own short manga tales, mostly in black and white like the comics, and autobiographical sections which are in colour. The level of animation in both strands is fairly simple, it has to be said, but given the low budget that isn’t surprising. Besides which I suspect the fairly simple animation methods is a deliberate stylistic choice by Khoo and he would have stuck with it even if he had the budget for the much more expensive and time consuming forms of animation. And he would have been right to stick with the simpler version because it takes Tatsumi’s own iconic visuals, which themselves were often influenced by imagery from films and simply adapt them to the moving form of animated film, maintaining Tatsumi’s clear style effectively, something fans of his books will appreciate (and if you are new to his work then it is a good introduction to his style).
The adaptations of the short manga tales is simple but effective, although for anyone who has read the original comics (which would, I imagine, be a lot of the potential audience for the film, surely?) they don’t really offer anything new. Personally I found Hell the most effective, following a young man sent to Hiroshima, taking photographs of the nuclear devastation, including a shadow of a mother and child burnt into a wall by the blast. Years later he takes this picture to the newspapers and in the 50s it becomes an emblem of the growing anti nuclear weapon movement, leading to an international campaign, fame for the photographer (who feels guilt at making a living from documenting suffering) and yet it may all be built on an unintentional false assumption…
(young Tatsumi tells the newspaper reporters of his love for the work of Tezuka)
For myself I found the autobiographical segments to be far more fascinating, not least because Tatsumi himself was not only involved in the making of the film, especially those sections, but because he himself lends his voice to it, giving those parts an air of authenticity, the artist’s own stamp of approval, and it is quite fascinating to hear Tatsumi in his own words speaking about his life. There’s much there to fascinate anyone interested in the comics medium, regardless of their level of knowledge of the Japanese scene – some elements are pretty universal, such as having to move to the big city (leaving Osaka for Tokyo) to pursue work opportunities, struggling to find your own creative voice and style, build a reputation, secure regular work and more that I think any comics creator today, in any country or language, would still identify with.
I was particularly fascinated by sections where young Tatsumi is sharing an apartment with fellow cartoonists, all trying to make their mark. Determined to show that manga can be aimed squarely at an adult readership and deal with mature themes he becomes frustrated with the virulent reaction these new gekiga strips and the ‘concerned’ parents and teachers who attack it for being a bad influence on younger readers. It’s not for younger readers, it’s for adults, he rails, so how can it be a bad influence. Ah, his friend comments, but in the manga rental stores (where readers can borrow several comics in one go for a handful of Yen) our work is shelved right alongside the main ranks of kid’s manga, you see… It’s a problem that has beset the comics medium around the world, irrespective or language or culture – those who don’t read them often assume they are aimed only at children, so are horrified if they then see comics which pursue serious, adult storylines, not realising that they are not meant for younger eyes. The struggle to have readers accept that the medium can deal with mature themes and storylines and not just child-like jolly romps has been going on for decades, and continues still. Likewise the claims, usually by those who haven’t actually read the books but decide to pronounce judgement on them anyway (for the ‘greater good’ of course), that comics exert some svengali like evil influence to corrupt the innocent is something that’s been going on for decades in all countries, and indeed is still a problem today, and it is remarkable to think of Tatsumi nailing his gekiga manifesto the mast and dealing with these problems decades ago.
The autobiographical sections also include happier moments, not the least of which two important meetings in his life, one as an adult, meeting the woman who would be his wife, one as a young boy being introduced to the great Osamu Tezuka himself, a remarkable moment for a young boy, hugely influenced by him, just at the very start of his artistic career and being taken to meet his great hero who greets him warmly. As I said I think I found the autobiographical chapters to be the most interesting, but the comics adaptations laced throughout are also with merit and for those in the audience who haven’t read much Tatsumi they function as a good introduction to some of his themes and styles. And as with Tatsumi’s work itself the film shows that the manga world is far broader than a cursory glance at ranks of multi-volume younger reader series might suggest to those who haven’t dabbled in it much (I include myself in those ranks, recent Indy and underground manga translations by D&Q (including Tatsumi’s work), Fantagraphics and Top Shelf have been a great eye-opener to the diversity of adult manga work), and that certain problems are pretty much universal to comics creators everywhere. The film is getting a release on the arthouse cinema circuit in the UK at the moment – I spotted it due this month in Edinburgh’s wonderful Filmhouse, so check your own local Indy/arthouse cinemas to keep an eye out for it, it’s certainly well worth your time, if you are already a fan of Tatsumi or new to his work, it’s of huge interest to anyone with a love of the comics medium.
Heading out of the warmth of the flat to watch the fireworks erupt over Edinburgh Castle at midnight as December 31st 2011 (my birthday, as it happens) clicks over to become January 1st, 2012, watching from an old, humpackd bridge on the Union Canal near the flat with a decent view to the evening’s pyrotechnics. Naturally we came prepared with some sparkly stuff for the chimes at midnight:
And then the sky erupted into colours and great booms and thumps echoed across the night sky over our ancient capital, while we laughed at the nearby crowd of English students trying to sing Auld Lang’s Syne and mispronouncing Edinburgh dreadfully.
Casting my eye back over my ever-expanding Woolamaloo Flickr stream (now approaching the 7, 000 image level, unbelievably), I thought since it was the end of the year I’d chose some of my personal favourites from my own photos I shot over the last twelve months. I know I carry the camera in my bag everywhere but even I find myself a bit taken aback with just how many photos I’ve shot over the year… But I see something interesting, be it a performer on the Royal Mile during the Fringe or simply the sun casting shadows over an old, stone building in Edinburgh or a famous author at the Book Fest. Out of the hundreds I shot this year, here are a few I was particularly pleased with:
The Mad Hatter on the Mile during this year’s Fringe:
Using the longer zoom on the new camera to get closer in for a portrait of this percussionist performing on the Royal Mile to summer tourists as the evening light plays on him. I love getting unposed, natural street shots:
I was shooting in the Dovecote Studios during Doors Open Day when my eye was drawn by the autumn sunlight coming in the skylights of the studio to cast bright shafts of light and shadow over the upper gallery, which these two women walked into, so again I took advantage of the bigger zoom on the new camera to take this quick scene which worked nicely in black and white in a way it never would have in colour (and a reminder, if you see a pic of mine in B&W I shot it in B&W, I refuse to shoot in colour then grayscale it in Photoshop afterwards, it loses the texture):
I don’t just shoot my ‘arty’ black and white though! Here’s some quite glorious colour, Riddles Court, just off the top of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, beautiful, bright, warm, autumn day, the colour of the centuries old buildings (reminiscent of the mustard colours used in the palace across the river in Cuiross) in strong light with that magnificent sky, a gift from my city to me as a reward for looking up:
My adorable wee cousin Caitlin, learning how to use my dad’s camera (which is almost as big as her head!). I took several shots of her while she was busy trying this out but my favourite from the sequence is this one where she’s cuddled right into my dad (her beloved ‘Uncle Jojo”):
The magnificent Victorian atrium of the National Museum of Scotland, now re-opened after several years of refurbishment, flooded with natural light, quite wonderful to take in
And some old typewriters hanging from the wall in the Museum, seemingly without support, floating, it said black and white to me, so I did:
My gorgeous city seen from the roof terrace of the National Museum of Scotland, one of the best spots to take in the roofs of the Old Town:
A candid, quickly captured shot of my friends Colin and Frances in between the more formal, posed photos at their wedding:
And I was quite pleased with this shot of my friends Malcolm and Rhona I managed to get at the same wedding – obviously this one is posed unlike the preceding pic, but still quite pleased with this one:
Statue of Hugh Miller, pioneering Scottish geologist, in the revamped National Museum of Scotland, as the autumn sunlight slanted through the Victorian iron and glass roof into the galleries below making some lovely light and shadows:
The always excellent artists at Saint John’s Church on Princes Street post a new mural commenting on current events, this time on the Occupy movemnt:
Quickly snatched candid shot (I love capturing natural, unposed scenes in the street, or in this case, park) of young folks practising their juggling on a nice day in the Meadows, Edinburgh:
Bagpiper on stilts on the Royal Mile (a few nights later I heard him piping the Star Wars theme on the bagpipes!), spotted walking home from work in the summer (another reason I carry the camera in my bag all the time, never know what you might see):
Launch for the programme for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, bumped into a bunch of book folks I know, including Aly and Bob here, who I used to work with back in the day when Waterstone’s was still a real bookstore:
Walking home in the middle of the summer and find a brace of classic old touring cars parked on the Royal Mile. This chap got into his and fired it up, started turning it around as I was shooting so instead of still life shots of classic cars I got him driving it too:
In the National Museum of Scotland with my dad and uncle earlier in the year, taking in the exhibition on Scottish lighthouses (including the huge contributions to maritime safety and engineering from the famous Stevenson family – the same family that produced the great Robert Louis Stevenson). This was a giant representation of the Fresnel lenses used in lighthouses to hugely magnify the power of the rotating light. I noticed after I shot it that I had also captured reflection of my dad and myself, looks very well timed but actually accidental!
quick, candid shot of one of my favourite watering holes, the Abbotsford in Rose Stree in Edinburgh’s New Town:
Walking home from work way back in January of the year, a huge, orange moon was rising above my ancient city, as large as an autumanal harvest moon but in the middle of the winter. Had to stop and try and improvise a quick night shot:
André Øvredal, Norwegian director of one of my favourite films of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, in the Cameo after the debut of the brilliant Troll Hunter:
Fringe performers made up and dressed as 1920s silent cinema stars – I have such a weakness for women in the Louise Brooks bob and was lucky enough to get this unposed, candid shot while I snapped a series of them…
British published graphic novels dominate in the bookstore tent of the Edinburgh International Book Festival:
Neil Gaiman at the BooK Festival this year, first time I have managed to say hello in person for years – I’ve had the pleasure of hosting Neil for book events several times going right back to the early 90s while he was still writing The Sandman, but not seen him in person for a good while (although we do get to swap the odd email, which is nice considering how many emails he must have to deal with):
Scottish comics superstar writer Grant Morrison at the BooK Fest:
Some scantily clad performers during the Fringe saw me snapping away and posed very nicely for me, normally prefer candid to posed, but I was quite pleased with this:
Nick Hayes and William Goldsmith who first came to my attention with their debut graphic novels works from Jonathan Cape this year, got to meet them in person at the Book Festival during the summer:
A really good Charlie Chaplin impersonator on the Mile during the Fringe:
And I loved this candid moment during on Fringe performer’s act as he kissed the hand of the lady who agreed to assist him:
We had the Jungle City exhibition of statues of endangered species dotted all over the city, each decorated differently by various artists. I especially liked this big cat covered in shiny one pence pieces by the Scott Monument:
The final remaining parts of the old Scottish & Newcastle Brewery were at last demolished after a pause of a few years caused by the financial crisis, now totally gone and site cleared for new work, here is one of the large structures when only partly demolished – how odd to be able to see inside, almost like a cutaway diagram of the building:
My view on the way home from work – I do love this city!
Okay, I could probably pick a few more, but I think that is more than enough, you can always go browse my Flickr stream yourself, after all!
Okay, today I turn 44. Which I still find quite hard to believe, frankly – I mean how the hell did that happen? One day you just suddenly realise you’re a lot older, but in your head you aren’t. My dear dad hits the big seven-oh early next year and he said the same once to me, that in your head you don’t feel that you are that age. In my head I probably stopped around my mid to late twenties. Sadly my body didn’t agree with my mind on that and the bastard got older, wider and decided it could do well without hair on my head but suddenly deciding at the same time it would grow it in other places that required regular grooming in order not to look like one of those mad older blokes who never do anything about it and end up with what looks like badgers for eyebrows and the brushes from those old shoeshine machines you used to see in public lavs in the 70s sticking out their nose and ears.
(student era me, with long hair, posing with a very young Zag, the coolest cat there ever was, who used to walk us to the shops, followed us to the pub and invited himself in)
Made slightly worse by watching the Lemmy movie on BBC4 on Friday night into Saturday (my actual bday) morning. It gave me an urge to rewatch Decline of Western Civilisation Part 2 – the Metal Years, a fab rockumentary that takes in the excess and silliness of the 80s rock and metal scene. I used to have it on VHS ages ago, I think I taped it way back in late 80s or early 90s when one Christmas season the BBC had Heavy Metal Heaven on several late night sessions during the holidays, fronted (in more ways than one!) by Elvira, and this was a part of the season. At that time I had hair which ran to halfway down my back, my second hand, cracked, battered biker leather jacket (but distressed is always cool for a biker jacket), festooned with badges (at my grad ball I was presented with a special award for most badges on a jacket) and painted, my bandanas, my DMs, enjoying college, drink, music and hanging out most weekends at Madison’s Rock Club with my college chum Metal Mel (who had been backstage with just about everyone in rock and had the pics to prove it, she did write ups on them all), headbanging away and dancing our arses off on the floor with all the other regulars. Sadly my long hair is long gone and even Madison’s is long gone, now a bloody restaurant above the Playhouse in Edinburgh. And this now dying year of 2011 marks 20 bloody years since I chucked work to go back to college in my 20s and do my degree (and meet a lot of new folks, drink a massive amount and explore some, er, other stuff that was highly enjoyable too, best time of my life, but dammit, it can’t be 20 years ago, can it? Can it?)
And part of me now gets what Homer was wistfully complaining about in the Simpsons many years back now, in the episode that spoofed Lolipalooza, where he flashes back to his long haired youth, rocking out with Barney, then to his middle aged, balding, expanding waist self… And he says to Marge I used to rock and roll all day and party every night, now I am lucky if I can find half an hour a week in which to get funky. I thought it was funny play on the KISS lyrics at the time, but now, years later, I find myself empathising more with Homer in that long ago episode, back when the Simpsons was still funny and worth watching (the fact I recall when the Simpsons was funny,fresh and original also marks out my age, I suppose!). Of late I have had a huge urge to get myself a new leather biker jacket, the proper Brando style one with the diagonal zip. I wore one for years, all decorated, with the bandandas and DMs and long hair, but then I think would I suit it now or do I want it only for nostalgic reasons? The DMs and long hair are gone, the bandanas are still there though (practically my trademark), but would I carry it off now or look like a middle aged bloke trying to find youth again? Maybe it is just middle-aged nostalgia…
(putting on the Ritz, mid 90s, grad ball, looking sharp for a posh night out with my lovely chum Claire)
Ah well, I do still rock out when I can and fuck yeah, I’ll air guitar to my fave tracks when I damned well feel like it. And rather than going into depressing middle age rant about how bad modern life is compared to what I thought it would be in my 20s, here’s some of the things I loved earlier in my life which I still think are bloody brilliant and make my planet a better place:
rock and goddam roll, obviously, the Holy Trinity of Bass, Drums and Electric geetar, from Hendrix to Nirvanna, from the ostentatious like Queen to the stripped down of the Ramones.
Movies. From the sugary confections of Vicente Minnelli to the super-smart work of Chris Nolan, from Tom’n'Jerry cartoons of the 40s to the stylised shadows and light of German Expressionism and the French New Wave, and not forgetting my life-long favourites I rewatch every year or so like Casablanca, Blade Runner and my all time favourite, Cyrano De Bergerac. Cinema – light flutters in a large, dark room full of people and magic happens, pulling you away from the everyday world in a way watching a DVD will never replicate and it’s why I have been in the cinema seven times this month alone. The older I get, the more life looks dark, the more wonderful the cinema seems…
Books. Books, books, books. Poetry, short, modern, or ancient like the Iliad, books on science, history, architecture, photography, art, novels, comics, graphic novels. I have devoured them all for as long as I can recall, I was reading well before I was old enough to go to school and I never stopped and I never will, there are too many fascinating new writers and artists out there crafting amazing books that demand to be read and despite the poverty of pay in the book trade I am glad and proud that I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of those writers, even go drinking with more than a few of them, and to write about and recommend and promote good writing to people. I still get a kick out of it when someone tells me they didn’t even know about a book until I wrote about it and my writing style convinced them they had to try it. I suppose one of these days I should really write one of my own… One day… right now I am too busy reading them and writing about them.
So 44 today, on the final day of the year. I have decided since I am such a film-head that I hereby decree that this year shall be my Dirty Harry year. As in 44 magnum, do you feel lucky punk? And if you don’t like that then you have to ask yourself a question? Did I fire five shots or did I fire six? Well to tell you the truth in all the excitment I kinda lost count myself… But seeing as this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and could blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one thing: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Friday 30th clicked over past midnight into Saturday 31st and that meant I was now 44. I have rock music on, a bottle of bubbly just popped and guzzling it with chunks of Toblerone. Rock and goddam roll, motherfuckers!
The great Alan Moore is interviewed by New Humanist magazine before a recent show, discussing the difference between the material world science can measure and the imagination (via BoingBoing):
Yes, I know I have posted this one some previous Christmas Eve posts, but the hell with it, it’s been a seasonal favourite of mine since I was a very small boy. I adored Tom’n'Jerry (and Bugs, Daffy and the rest) as a kid – the humour, the precise timing to music, the richness of that 30s and 40s animation, so much better than most modern kid’s animation (outside the feature films) and best of all I watched them all with my wonderful dad, which makes those memories all the warmer. The two of us still love watching them now, some things you never grow out of. In fact I went to my second home at the Filmhouse just a coupe of weeks ago to see an afternoon of classic cartoons, so wonderful to see them in a cinema where they were meant to be seen. Lots of young kids in the audience and oh how they laughed, probably never seen a cartoon so beautifully done on Nickelodeon or any other kid’s channel today. And it made me smile to think that 70 to 80 years on Fred Quimby, Chuck Jones and company were still making kids – and adult big kids like me – laugh out loud in delight. I think that would have made them very happy and it’s a lovely way to be remembered to future generations, isn’t it. But today us Christmas Eve and that means this particular Tom’n'Jerry cartoon:
