The Connection - Alliance Music

It seems that back in 1996 I was mug enough to both pay for, and spend an hour listening to, an advert.


This card-covered CD sampler cost £1.00 in the UK for 16 complete Christian songs, one from each of 16 different albums.

In fairness, also attached were 16 £1-off coupons.


Had I decided to go ahead and purchase all 16 CDs, or cassettes, then this sampler would have represented quite a saving. (provided that I had spent them all before the expiry dates on the back of 31.12.96)

However fourteen years on, whenever I try to recall the experience of actually listening to this CD, I find that I can remember only one of its 16 ditties. One absolutely vomit-projectingly awful track that I just gave up half way through.

I mean, I never do that. I always stick these things out. I've sat through The Star Wars Holiday Special three times!

Anyway, aside from using it as backing music to a slide-show evening that I got together in 2003, I never let this disc see the light of a laser ever again.

Until this morning when I cranked-up the DVD-player (unthinkable back in '96) to give the whole thing another chance.

Although it's a sampler, I played every song all the way through, but did make a note of how far I was through each track when I first checked how much time was left. Except for on the first one, as I was still coming up with the idea then. Hardly a positive attitude I know, but that's the cruel world of reality blogging for you.

So, welcome to Christians Had Talent - where, by the end of this post, just one of these 16 tracks will have beaten the other 15 into submission by going around in my head for the rest of today.

Sadly, there's also a loser song in here somewhere, which will emerge as the one which made me wince so much all those long years ago.

So, let's meet our 16 hopeful contestants...

1. Field Of Souls - Wayne Watson
2. Revolution - The World Wide Message Tribe
3. Flood - Jars Of Clay
4. Glorify The Lord - Jessy Dixon & the Chicago Community Choir
5. So Help Me God - DC Talk
6. Out Of The Darkness - Re: Fresh
7. Gravity - Out Of The Grey
8. Alone In The Presence - Ce Ce Winans
9. Everything Changes - Iona
10. Love - Imagine This
11. Two Sets Of Jones - Big Tent Revival
12. The City Of Peace - Adrian Snell
13. True Devotion - Margaret Becker
14. Remember Your Chains - Steven Curtis Chapman
15. Simple Things - Tony Vincent
16. Be Encouraged - William Becton & Friends

Who will win, and who will lose? There's only one way to find out, right after these messages.

(INSERT LOCAL ADVERTS HERE)

Ready? Here we go!

1. Field Of Souls - Wayne Watson


S'okay. Maybe a bit long for an opening track.

What do you think, Simon Cowell?


Cowell: "I think this whole post is a stupid idea. The 28th of February was six weeks ago now. Why don't you find a hobby you can keep up to date at?"

Yes, thank you Simon, and thank you for your analysis. (SOBS)

2. Revolution - The World Wide Message Tribe


Dance music. At this early stage, it actually moved me to put on some headphones. (prior to that the DVD had been playing through the TV - also unthinkable in '96) Checked the time at 2:30. Not bad, I liked this. A bit barmy.

3. Flood - Jars Of Clay


Nice music, but such lifeless monotone singing. Much of it is a song with only one note. Checked the time at 0:57. And again at 2:01. And 2:37. And 3:19. Oh, please, make it stop now, newbie.

4. Glorify The Lord - Jessy Dixon & the Chicago Community Choir


This accomplishes every expectation that the title and artists' names suggest. It's hand-clapping, shoulder-triangling, throat-OWing gospel-music, much of which is rendered sadly unintelligible due to giving the instruments all the close microphones.

(We've got to Lift him up)
We got to lift him up
(Jesus!)
Lift him up!
Lift him up!
(Owww!)

(I had to wonder if they'd dropped him...)

0:48. But I mean, who doesn't like gospel music?

5. So Help Me God - DC Talk


One of those rare groups who I have actually seen perform live. (at Greenbelt 1990, since you ask) There they blew me away with their unique ability to perform a rap number that I actually liked! Here they've astounded me again. The entire track sounds like an old Philips compact cassette throughout. The dynamic range sounds appropriately narrow, it's distorted, and it quite literally wows. (I assume this copy was taken from the CD) Amazingly, despite all these self-inflicted handicaps, I noticed my foot was swinging up and down to it. I never looked at the clock.

6. Out Of The Darkness - Re: Fresh


Probably not an arrangement of the old movie of the same name, instead it's another dance / rave number. This sounds so repetitive and 1990s, these guys might just be 2 Unlimited-Lite. The track's energy-levels certainly suggest little sugar-content.

You know
That faith shows
You've lifted me
Out of the darkness
You know
That faith shows
You've lifted me
Out of the darkness
Out of the darkness
Out of the darkness
You lifted me
You lifted me
You lifted me
You lifted me
Out of the darkness
You lifted me
(You lifted me)
You lifted me
Out of the darkness
You lifted me
(You lifted me)
You lifted me
Out of the darkness
You lifted me
You lifted me
Out of the darkness
You lifted me
(fade-out)

I tell you, it was as though the CD itself was thanking me for finally playing it again.

For some reason in my notes I have written the two contradictory comments "foot swinging" and "going to sleep". I never quite looked at the clock. That could go either way, couldn't it? Well, let's be positive and assume that I liked it. My foot obviously did.

7. Gravity - Out Of The Grey


Nothing to do with UFOs, unless we're talking about time-travel. This one certainly transported me back in time, specifically to the 1970s. This time my swinging foot was joined by my lips mouthing along. Despite these good signs, 1:46 and 2:43.

8. Alone In The Presence - Ce Ce Winans


I think this was the point when the CD started to get the better of me, or maybe I actually mean the worse. I first looked at the clock at 0:39. I second looked at the clock a mere eight seconds later at 0:47. At the lyric "Your will clearly shows" I let out a Krusty-esque groan, and picked up a comic to read for the rest.


Heh-heh, that was funny. What's the time now? 2:11. Spent the rest of this in the comic book. Doctor Who And The Star Beast part one to be precise. Dave Gibbons' art is excellent as ever, turning the newsreader character into a believable Angela Rippon. Mills & Wagner's script is more comical than usual, but it works. Beep the Meep comes across in his first appearance as comedically cute, and I like that.

This might just be the way to knuckle down for the rest of this disc. Yes, of course that'll be unfair on all the other artists.

Sorry CeCe. Apparently just not my thing.

9. Everything Changes - Iona


Okay. No opinion. A bit haunting maybe. What clock? Don't distract me - the Wrarth Warriors have planted a bomb in the Doctor's stomach! They want to use him to blow-up that nice Meep! "Meep! Meep!"

10. Love - Imagine This


Funky from the outset, I liked this immediately, despite the lyrics sounding like some jilted lover laying-into their crazy cheating ex.

"I never knew
The ways that you could be
And I never dreamed
The things that I could see
And I never felt
The way I feel right now
And I never knew
That you lived in the clouds.
Mm-hmm-hmm…"

"But now I know...

That your love is everywhere
Like a song in the air
Your love is everywhere I go
Whoa!
Your love is everywhere
Like a song in the air
Your love is everywhere I go
All the time.
Mm-hm-hmm.
I'd never seen
The faces you could wear..."

11. Two Sets Of Jones - Big Tent Revival


ARGHH! This is the track I just couldn't stomach last time!

Surely preaching to the converted, it's the tale of two couples, one of whom placed their faith in Jesus, and the other of whom didn't. Well, guess what happens.

Not so much a straw-man argument, more of a straw-marriage one. 0:16. I never looked at the clock again - I had my hand over my face in despair throughout, and was literally shaking my head at the end. I don't know what the opposite of evangelism is, but this might be it. Unvangelism maybe. Don't ever let a non-Christian hear this. Don't let any divorced Christians hear it either.

Happily married Christians? They might like it, but I'm not sure it'll promote humility.

Lyrics here.

(it doesn't include all his smug crooning "Lie-de-die, lie-de-die, lie-de-die, lie-de-die" at the end)

Eurghh…

12. The City Of Peace - Adrian Snell


Urgh. (Y'know "urgh"? Doesn't quite make it to "eurghh"?) Straight back to the comic. Sorry Adrian, but you were up against a really good reprint. BTW I think your song's title - "The City Of Peace" - would make a good Doctor Who story-title too.

Heh-heh, K-9's been reprogrammed to think that he's a cat.

13. True Devotion - Margaret Becker


This sounds like 1991. Specifically, December. In an okay way. It also turns out that the Meep is evil, while the Wrarth are actually the good guys. The Doctor's still not too keen on blowing-up though.

14. Remember Your Chains - Steven Curtis Chapman


I've written nothing down. Nothing. Not even the track number. I do remember the evil Meep turning humans into zombies to help it repair its spaceship.

15. Simple Things - Tony Vincent


"1980s." That's it.

16. Be Encouraged - William Becton & Friends


It's the final track of the CD, and my notes aren't looking good. I seem to have written simply "2:53", "4:37", "4:48" and "4:53". I'm guessing that it ended sometime around the 5:00 mark. Does this mean that I'm not one of William Becton's friends? But I can't even remember why…

Overall, being a publicity album, I suppose they probably put the arguably best tracks at the start, figuring that the early ones would get listened to more and stand a greater chance of generating sales.

On the plus side, the Doctor fiddled with the Meep's star drive, saving everyone and indirectly causing it to be taken into intergalactic custody. He's even had the bomb removed from his stomach. K-9 still thinks he's a cat though. So, the CD hasn't been a total waste.

I guess I should round-off by noting here that, in maybe 14 years, I've never bought a single one of the albums being advertised here.

That's all very well, but which is the track that I can't stop humming?

Well, now that I've had a good eight hours sleep, I can confidently reveal which one of the sixteen songs has been repeatedly going around in my head today.

Yes, The Two freakin' Jones. Yes, that's the same one that I disliked the most as well. Hey - that's the music industry for ya, kid.

Y'know, although it still annoys me, it's a catchy little number. I like the realisation of the line "and the rains came down." And the stark imagery of the lyric "One set of Joneses was standing that day." Maybe I should have listened to it a little more?

Lie-de-die, lie-de-die, lie-de-die, lie-de-die…

(with thanks to Herschel for the comic)

Doctor Who: Dreamland

Doctor Who finally does a story about Area 51, and gets away with it.

There are two things that I have come to expect of Phil Ford's Doctor Who scripts:

1. A reasonable story, about an original subject.

2. A few conspicuous mistakes.

On the whole, I find that observation one doesn't usually manage to eclipse observation two, however for me, this story didn't even have a point two.

I will admit to being confused by the many different factions in this - two human and three alien - but I came out of it confident that the story had worked, even though I had not fully understood it. That's quite an achievement given the number of problems that I have had with this series in the past.

The main characters play their parts well, Murray Gold's Thunderbirds-ish music hides well in a cartoon, and the story itself is a good old-fashioned runaround, as the underdog Doctor figures-out the mystery. The action sequences work well too, and some of the artwork looks great.


Even the token zombies are okay, outweighed as they are by so many other good elements. Let's hope we see some more of these robots again sometime.

What is conspicuous by its absence is any motion-capture work. As a result, none of the animatics move with any conviction, not even when the script merely calls for them to simply walk. Again with the Thunderbirds style.

The Doctor manages to outrun bullets quite a lot, and his sonic screwdriver seems to get considerately left on him when captured, but so what.

I do think it's a shame than an official spin-off like this wasn't smart enough to state precisely when it takes place for the Doctor. The last live-action episode (The Waters Of Mars) finished a bit differently to normal, so I can't help but wonder whether, in retrospect, this story will make more sense out of transmission-sequence. Still, we'll see.

The last Doctor Who cartoon - The Infinite Quest - didn't really do much for me, but as a series this one certainly has potential.

Set in a big sandpit with a few monsters, it might as well have been live-action.

Is that a compliment for doing Doctor Who well, or a criticism for not maximising on the opportunities afforded by the animated medium?

I guess it's a bit of both.

:)

4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer

Two years ago I missed this film at the cinema.

Then, last week, it got a screening on Channel 4, so I taped it.

Then, this week, as apparently is their wont, Channel 4 went and showed it again.

By the time I finally watched it this morning, (fourth time lucky) over four years had passed since Herschel and I had gone to the cinema to watch the first one. It's a good job that I'm a fan of the comics, or by now I might well have forgotten who all these super-types were.


Except for that mailman character - I remember him. Just what was that bouncer thinking - turning away such a hard-working fellow from Reed and Sue's wedding, just for pretending to be Stan Lee? I mean we've all done it.

Anyway, Herschel never shovelled-out for the sequel either, and since my film reviews seem to have been getting a bit negative lately, here just for a change is his review of it.

Remember now, let's keep that blood-pressure down...


"Way to mess up the ending, Hollywood!

So, the Silver Surfer just had to turn on the cloud and it would disappear forever. Well, maybe he should have thought of that as soon as he got his powers, huh? It's not like the Surfer is ever a bad guy in this.

I liked the cloud effect, but it so desperately cried out for a sentient presence inside it. The Surfer attracting a space typhoon made no sense. I wonder what non-comic readers made of that, whether it made more or less sense than it did to me knowing the original story.

And Galactus only got named once in the whole thing. Such a loss.

This was probably the greatest ever Marvel comic, the most glorious story ever put in comics, and they utterly loused up the ending. The rest trekked along with some wit and style, but it just bailed out entirely on the ending.

If the cloud had had any suggestion of sentience at all it might have made more sense, but it just wasn't portrayed like that at all. At least it could have spoken, "how dare you defy me, herald!" - something!!! But no, it was a weather system. A weather system of EVIL!

I'm sorry, Hollywood people... this was a better movie than the first FF, and there was some charm to the performances at least, but even if you have to lose the image of a giant guy in purple armour (which you don't, Galactus is the definition of awesome), you still need...

1. Galactus to have personality.

2. The FF to play some role in saving the day.

This was an Ultimate Nullifier short of a success. I give it 6 Hey!™s out of 10, the ending was just a shambles."

The Bible: A History #1 of 7 - Creation

TX 24/01/2010

The first in a series of films on Channel 4 expressing famous people's beliefs on the Bible.

Jewish-ish novelist Howard Jacobson loves the Biblical account of creation, but he doesn't believe that it's literally true.

I haven't asked them all, but I'd speculate that maybe 50% of my church-going Christian friends agree with him.

Unfortunately the backbone of this film depends upon the old straw-polarisation of religion and science into two irreconcilable camps, which Jacobson then seeks to reconcile. When, in the closing ten minutes, he finally interviews a Christian who considers the first chapter of Genesis to be poetry, I had to wonder just why he had left such a common perspective until so late.

However Jacobson's (general) respect for the people of both leanings is refreshing, as is his commitment to his search for truth.

"Where's the point in attacking religion for thinking it has all the answers, when you think you have all the answers yourself? Blind faith is fatuous, but so is blind doubt."

That said, Jacobson's pre-existing beliefs rob him of some of the open-mindedness necessary for a search for truth. Hence, when it comes to his opinion on natural history, evolution is understandably assumed to be true throughout this, while creation is not.

One creationist – Greg Haslam – objectively challenges the fossil record:

Haslam: “Fossils aren’t formed gradually over time, because dead animals rot or they’re eaten by predators. How could a whole dinosaur be preserved without sudden catastrophic burial.”

Jacobson discards this reasoning without addressing it.

I found the theory that the first thirteen books of the Bible were an enormous historical retcon a fascinating one, although tough to swallow without equally doubting today's similar retcons, such as evolution and the big bang.

This programme's modern CGI images of what we imagine Earth and gigantic starfields to look like really ought to emphasise the extent to which our perceptions today are informed by our faith. We only know what space looks like from here - we use science to calculate what we think it looks like from elsewhere, and then faith to believe it.

Similarly, we use science to calculate natural history, and then faith to believe that too.

My own stance on the debate is that you can't conclusively prove - using science or written records - that any event definitely happened before your life began. Sure, we can speculate with reasonable certainty events from within the lifetime of those contemporaries older than ourselves, and maybe even within the lifetime of people who they used to know, but beyond that history gets muddy. We can't really be sure of any alleged event based purely upon the testimony of people we've never met, and certainly not of any supposed event from before records even began.

It's very easy to be wrong about a thing that you can't check, and as man cannot travel in time, both evolution and creation remain very, very unchecked. Maybe we should all just get over ourselves and accept that we don’t, and can’t, know.

At the close of the programme, Jacobson seems to agree with the Christian who believes the creation account to be a beautiful work of fiction constructed from the author's (or authors') present-day world.

Disappointingly, he doesn't equally apply this perspective to test evolution.

But then Jacobson's journey is not about discerning which version, if either, is true, but about how he can embrace them both.

I have to admit that, although I believe creation, I do see some beauty in the evolution theory too.

Click here for review of programme 2 - Abraham.
Click here for review of programme 3 - Moses and the Law.
Click here for review of programme 4 - The Daughters of Eve.
Click here for review of programme 5 - Jesus.
Click here for review of programme 6 - St. Paul.
Click here for review of programme 7 - Revelation - The Last Judgement.

The Sarah Jane Adventures - Season Three Overview

Overall, it's been a promising series.

I think The Sarah Jane Adventures really wants to regain the hipness of its first season, but has become too much of a performance piece. The central character in that first series was arguably Maria, and the relationship that she had with her mum and dad was highly believable.

These days however, Maria has been replaced by the sparkier Rani, who has sitcom parents. There's nothing wrong with that - actors Ace Bhatti and Mina Anwar make a great double act - but I do think the overall show misses that grounding in the real world.

When every edition now starts off with Clyde talking to camera and introducing clips from upcoming episodes, well you do lose that a bit. I am impressed that they didn't misuse this sequence to give-away the Doctor's return. Speaking of which… this season the Doctor returned!

The stories this year have been weaker than in the first series too, but acceptable because they have also been nowhere near as poor as in series two. At least this time they have generally been workable again, although that may be because so many of them have followed the same formula - zombies, and a machine that conveniently undoes everything at the end.

Stepping-up the rate of broadcast to two episodes a week didn't help to disguise this repetition either.

It's a shame that Maria hasn't made it back for her mum's wedding yet, but maybe a fourth series will grant us her long-awaited meeting with Rani?

And I must mention the music. About 80% of it must go. It's like listening to shortwave radio and getting interference from another station.

Of course, what I'd really like to see is an episode written by Steven Moffat. The dialogue in SJA tends to feel quite awkward at times, but his sparkling banter might just be able to make it all flow like in his old filmic series Press Gang.

Not that that will be any good if we can't hear it.

Stories this season:

Comic Relief Special
Prisoner Of The Judoon
The Mad Woman In The Attic
The Wedding Of Sarah Jane Smith
The Eternity Trap
Mona Lisa's Revenge
The Gift

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Gift

The final story of this series doesn't start off so well.


There's an obese kid being chased by our heroes. Obesity, as you know, is not something you should poke fun at kids for.

Rani: "He's just a kid! What does he want with a… what was is called?"

Luke: "Matter Compressor."

Clyde: "Well - maybe he wants some matter compressed."

However, everyone knows that in this show, obese people are always evil Slitheen who must be stopped, not that that's the sort of message you would want to send into the nation's playgrounds either…

Despite this, our heroes are amazed when said big kid turns out to be a Slitheen zombie, as usual.


No-one even mentions the poor kid who has died to provide the body.

The Slitheen actually get defeated in the opening minutes by the Blathereen. These are two good aliens voiced with unusual difficulty by Simon Callow and Miriam Margoyles.

The helpful Blathereen then politely invite themselves over to Rani's house for dinner. At this farcical situation, a comedy of manners ensues, strangulated as always by so much incidental music. Trying to filter out so much interference is reminiscent of watching something on a portable TV.

At the end of the evening, the friendly aliens give Sarah a rackweed plant as a gift, promising that it can solve the Earth's famine problem. (which I'd always thought was more about mankind's lack of organisation) Sarah's reluctance to accept prompts her to wonder if she's actually being careful, or just plain prejudiced.

This in turn then gives way to a more solid storyline about said plant infecting the Earth's atmosphere and proceeding to destroy the environment. It's a New Zealand customs official's worst nightmare. It goes without saying that these new nice aliens turn out to actually be malicious ones.

It all finishes with K-9, Clyde and Rani realising that the plant can handily be destroyed by sound, and Mr Smith somehow retuning London's smoke-alarms, clock radios, car alarms, even microwaves etc. to that frequency. Yes, once again they have a machine that just undoes everything for them.

Mr. Smith: "I am now linking to all electrical devices in the area invaded by the rackweed, and retuning them to replicate the bell's frequency."

How does he do that? I mean I know that Mr. Smith is an alien computer an'all, but still, just how does he retune the alarm frequency of all the microwave ovens in London?

Furthermore, why didn't the aliens just release the plant into the wild themselves? Why go through that whole difficult charade of having dinner with, and talking Sarah into, accepting the plant as a gift? All this and cool Clyde's out-of-character theft of K-9, and "Go" dance.

It all adds up to the worst full-length story this season, particularly because of the ending, in which the aliens break wind so violently that they literally explode their brown innards all over the cast.


Since the last story of each series usually features the return of the aliens from the opening one, I had been expecting the Judoon to come back. Now of course I wish that they had.

Silly me, I guess I forgot about this season's actual opener, specifically that awful sketch on Comic Relief…

Sorry guys, but I didn't think it finished so well either.

Mission: Impossible III

I'd like to call this entry a 'return to form' for the series, but since I've found all three films so far to be quite different in tone to each other, I'm just not sure what this franchise's 'form' is.

This is definitely the best of the three though, featuring a much simpler - and therefore easier to follow - plot, and more depth to the characters.

Ethan Hunt is now engaged to a girl to whom he's apparently planning to spend the rest of his life lying. About his past, about his job, and about himself. Well, obviously I was rooting for that relationship to end straight away, for her sake. Has he even told her about the girl he was going out with in II?

The other stumbling-block I had here stemmed from the first movie. After the way they made the TV show's lead character Jim Phelps become a bad guy, it still follows that new lead Ethan Hunt may well do the same thing. Frankly, I just don't want to root for Hunt after that film.

Why sure, maybe I should consider this third movie in isolation from the other two, but my point is that my keenness on the whole series was disabled by that first one. This is the extent of the damage done by that ill-advised own-goal.

Okay, I'll take some deep breaths now… (gaaasp, exhale, gaaaasp, exhale, gaaaaasp…)

Mission: Impossible IV's due out next year. Yep, I'm up for that, but not enough to reward them by buying a ticket.

The Graduate (1967)

When writing these reviews, I usually only put the year in brackets after the title if there has been more than one version made, to differentiate which production I am talking about.

As far as I know, there has only ever been one movie adaptation of Charles Webb’s book The Graduate, but let’s be honest, as soon as someone in Hollywood notices, that will change. It’ll be Teri Hatcher coming onto Frankie Muniz or someone.

I watched this film today because it’s Valentine’s Day, and this was the closest thing I could find to a romcom. (I’ve decided to start liking romcoms from now on)

I gotta say, although I’d never seen it before, The Graduate felt like a movie that I had already sat through many times, purely because it’s been so extensively satirised down the years.

Particularly the ending. When Dustin Hoffman pelts down that road towards the church, expending every drop of energy that he has to play the scene, I already had a pretty clear idea what the layout and architecture of the building would be, along with exactly how he was about to interact with it.

The Graduate is a film that starts out as a finely performed drama, before sliding slowly into comedy, and ultimately throwing it all aside for Hollywood fantasy. Benjamin has slept with Elaine’s mom, but being movieland he still gets the girl anyway. Now there's forgiveness in a relationship for you. All the same, I guess that’s the point at which this jumped the shark for me.

That’s not enough to make it a bad movie though. Films about introverts are always watchable, and Dustin Hoffman proves throughout this that he’s every bit the first rate actor that he’s so often parodied for.

The music too is outstanding. I don’t normally like to hear lyrics on a film’s soundtrack, because I think it’s a form of narration and breaks the fourth wall, but Simon & Garfunkel’s guitarry numbers convey so much of the title character’s loneliness and desperation that they imbue the film with an atmosphere all of its own.

Maybe I was wrong above when I suggested that this classic was in danger of suffering a remake. The original book did get a sequel recently…

Major League / Major League II / Major League: Back To The Minors - Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtracks

Since they became so ubiquitous, I have never understood film soundtrack albums.

I mean it made sense that if a movie contained a lot of particularly worthy music, such as Queen’s work on Flash Gordon, then of course there might be a lot of people who would enjoy listening to it for its own value.

But every single other flick? Come off it.

Excluding musicals, songs used to be something of a rarity in movies, but the whole Original Soundtrack Album industry seems to have changed all that. For example, your average soundtrack album is about 60 minutes long, and predominantly full of lyrics. Your average film is more like 90-120 minutes. This means that every film that gets made now must contain singing throughout at least 50% of it.

Of course that’s not true, these days the songs on these things only have to be in the film briefly, if at all. The Blair Witch Project, I understand, contains no music, yet still managed to produce a soundtrack album anyway. On some level I have to admire such positive thinking.

In most cases though, a production company will now happily mix-in as much inappropriate music as seems necessary to secure better CD sales afterwards, often making a worse movie in the process.

Yet it took my purchase of the Major League soundtrack LP from Tower Records on 9th November 1989 to realise much of this.

I’d watched the film Major League several times while… what? What do you mean how can I remember the date? Why do you want to know that? Look, here I am trying to point an accusing cursor at the failings of an entire album genre, and all you can do is focus on one trivial little detail. What do you mean that’s what I’m doing as well? (sigh) Oh, all right, look, I can remember the date because I kept the receipt, okay?


Right, can we please go on now? Thank you.

I’d watched Major League several times in 1989 (because the year’s printed on my payslips okay) while working at my local Odeon, and there was one specific bit of drummy instrumental music that I particularly liked. It played over an establishing shot of the Cleveland Stadium at night.

So, like a mug, I went out and bought the album.

(insert receipt jpeg)
Y’see? I was GOING to put the receipt picture in HERE. Now I have to substitute the LP cover instead, which means somehow fitting it into my much smaller scanner, so I’m going to have to scan it in in four parts, and then seamlessly jigsaw them all together in Paint.


There – sorted.

Now here’s my point. There were only two instrumental tracks on the entire album, both towards the end of side 2, and neither of which was the one that I actually wanted.

The rest of the album, like so many soundtrack releases these days, is packed to bursting with songs, in the wrong order, and most of which we’d only enjoyed brief snatches of in the film, if at all. Admittedly, I haven’t been through checking each one, so maybe all nine of them were indeed buried away in there somewhere. It's starting to seem as though those samples in the movie were just adverts for the CD.

Anyway, those two instrumental pieces - Trial & Error and Pennant Fever, both by James Newton Howard and mixed by Robert Schaper - feature in the film in their entirety, and understandably wound up being my favourite tracks on the album. They even handily provided the intro music to my first broadcast radio show on 1st December 1991. (because I wrote it on the side of the cassette it’s recorded on)

I was still using those tracks 15 years later in New Zealand…

Anyway, back to the early 1990s, and one day I happened upon the CD album of the sequel:


This is probably the best of the three Major League CDs, and does indeed feature some instrumentals, particularly Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Rude Mood, which I find pleasantly reminiscent of The Goodies.

Ultimately I wound up playing this CD several times over, so much so that when I finally sat down to watch the film itself, I kept getting distracted by spotting all the familiar songs whenever they crept in. For example, one track can be briefly heard on a juke box in a bar. This broke the illusion.


When I came across the threequel’s CD, I made sure that I left it forgotten in a dark corner of my room for the many years that would pass until I finally got around to watching the movie first.

Well, since that day happened recently on 6th February 2010 (because it’s on my blog!), tonight I finally cranked-up the DVD player, plugged the headphones into the TV, sat back and listened.

This one contains quite a range of styles, from Scatman John’s slightly dogmatic Steal The Base, to the Cuban-sounding Oye Como Va from Takaaki Ishibashi, Dennis Haysbert & The Jay Miley Band.

But any instrumentals? The text on the CD itself states that Reverend Horton Heat’s Baby I’m Drunk qualifies, but maybe whoever typed that was (hic) drunk at the time.

The very last track on here however – Robert Folk’s Dugout - contains no lyrics whatsoever, and the wandering clarinet makes it sound curiously reminiscent of a Harold Lloyd movie.

Overall though, despite each one including a crowd-pleasing cover-version of a classic hit, on all three discs the dominant style is country, which I still find too laid-back to really get me interested.

I hardly ever buy soundtrack albums now.

Major League available to sample / buy here.
Major League II available to sample / buy here.
Major League: Back To The Minors available to sample / listen here.

Spider-Man, Fire-Star and Iceman / Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk / Wally The Wizard #1 / Fraggle Rock #1 as presented in The Spider-Man Comic #634-637

It’s the four issues from 1985 of Marvel UK’s Spider-Man Weekly reprint series, that began its sudden and mistifying attempt to shed its existing teen readership in favour of one half its age.

Unsurprisingly, these issues also began the decent towards the title’s inevitable cancellation six months later.

With issue #634, the new production team retitled the mag The Spider-Man Comic and began replacing all the established Marvel Universe strips with material from outside the generally accepted canon. Spider-Man’s decades-old storyline was suddenly dropped in favour of rather more generic fare. Readers who had previously enjoyed the mag for all its super-powered battles were now being invited to send in their funniest rib-ticklers. But on the plus side, the first two issues did come with free transfers!


(admittedly some of the transfers were the same)

These four issues principally reprint two Spider-stories.


The first is Danger In Denver! which is set in the world of the old Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends TV cartoon, featuring as it does our hero together with his flatmates Iceman and Fire-Star.

In the US, this hadn’t even been printed in a regular Marvel Comic. This strip was especially created for a free advertising supplement within the Denver Post.

So throwaway had this insertion been, that apparently someone had even thrown away the original printing plates. Look at the colour, or rather lack of it, in this panel:


And now imagine it in black-and-white.


The second story – the earlier published Southwest Showdown! - looks much clearer, and had originally been distributed free with both the Dallas Times Herald and Tulsa World, as well as through the now world-famous Sanger Harris store. World-famous since this strip got reprinted by Marvel UK anyway. These strips had after all originally been written just for shoppers and their kids, so take a look at these six panels, and ask yourself if you feel like buying anything...







As an impressionable fourteen-year-old, after reading this story I realised that I really needed to go out and buy some clothes. At the Sanger Harris store in Dallas. And I told my parents that I wanted to become a cheerleader.

It's hard to fathom just who these UK editions were really aimed at, but I guess it was very young British girls, who were fans of rugby, and shopped in Texas.

The back-up strips, which for the past ten years had featured a dazzling array of other Marvel super heroes, didn’t fare much better, replaced by reprints from Star Comics that were very definitely aimed at pre-teens.


Writer/Artist: Bob Bolling
Letterer: Grace Kremer
Colours: George Roussos
Editor: Sid Jacobson
Executive Editor: Tom DeFalco
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter

Making it difficult for themselves from the outset, Willy The Wizard was a reprint from the US of Wally The Wizard. Why did they change the name? Your guess is as good as mine.

Whatever the reasoning, it required Marvel UK to rewrite the title character’s name every single time it was mentioned, along with all the other words they so liked to Anglicise. Joyously, they miss an instance on the very first page, when Marlin is actually telling-off Wally, sorry I mean Willy, oh whatever, for getting his name wrong!


If the irony was intended, then I’d like to know what excuse they had for again calling him Wally in the narration the following week…

Minor spelling errors aside, I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed this opening four-parter, entitled A Plague Of Locust. It’s pun-laden and very funny. Why aren’t there more strips like this?

Queen: (viewing events through the watchtower window)"Sir Flauntaroy! He’s been unhorsed… by a chestnut tree! No, I believe it’s an elm!"

King Kodger: "Is the sap running?"

Queen: "No! He’s out cold!"


Writer: Stan Kay
Art / Colouring: Marie Severin
Lettering: Grace Kremer
Editor: Sid Jacobson
Executive Editor: Tom DeFalco
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter

The other back-up strip is Fraggle Rock in The Magic Time Machine. This one also impresses, being very true indeed to the original series. Not just in getting its facts right, but the characterisations, structure and tone too. Fraggle Rock was a much deeper show than it’s generally remembered for, and this spin-off outing is true to all of that.

Yet again though, Marvel UK managed to fumble their presentation of it.

In the US TV series, the human character was an American named Doc, who owned a (muppet) dog called Sprocket. When the show was sold overseas, these scenes would be refilmed with a local actor playing a completely new character, who also owned a (muppet) dog called Sprocket. This grounded the show as being set fairly nearby wherever it was viewed. In the UK, TVS got through three different actors playing three different humans (the Captain, PK and BJ) over the course of the show’s history.


With this in mind, (or maybe just because they couldn’t use the American actor’s likeness, I don’t know) the US comic strip deliberately hid the human character’s face, presumably expecting overseas reprints to simply replace the name ‘Doc’ with whatever the local one was. You gotta admit, Marvel UK should have taken to this idea like a duck to water.

Well, they missed it, which is such a shame. They would have been so good at that. Maybe they needed TVS’ permission or something. But all the same, in this first story Doc does only get name-checked in the opening narration and UK-originated recaps!

These issues also feature two British strips by Lew Stringer - Snailman and the suspiciously titled Captain Wally. These days Mr Stringer writes a hugely informative, and entertaining, blog about comics that I sometimes dip into, but twenty-five years ago these strips betrayed nothing of that knowledge. Both are about a comedically terrible super hero, and both appear to have been written for readers who are rather unfamiliar with the genre.

The inside back-cover of each issue reprints one-pagers from Spidey Super Stories, a US comic that tied-into the Children’s Television Workshop’s Electric Company TV show. After these four issues, material from this educational source would supply the lead Spider-Man strip, with predictably disastrous consequences.

These four issues therefore represent the title’s month-long segue from aiming for a teen audience to aiming for a pre-teen one. It’s an odd kind of mixture, because although the overall tone begins to talk-down, some of the old features still remain, almost apologetically. The Hallowed Ranks Of Marveldom! - a list of honourary abbreviations describing how obsessed the reader is with collecting Marvel Comics – just doesn’t belong in a comic aimed at children too young to have much pocket money.

And as for the back page of issue #637… well!


Sleep tight kids!

All About Thunderbirds

Repeat TX 28/12/2008 BBC-2

Opening narration: ”December 1966, and London is swinging. The new beat groups are rocking the charts, Hendrix has just arrived in town, and the mini-skirt is all the rage.

But tonight belongs to the old school.

Arriving in style for the star-studded premiere of their brand new film: Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Their studios on the Slough trading estate have become a mini-Hollywood and a multi-million pound empire, their TV show is an international hit, their movie will be the Christmas film, but the real stars of the night are not people - they’re puppets.

This is All About Thunderbirds - how Britain’s favourite puppet show went from Slough to the stars.”

Those words sure make it sound like the next 60 minutes are going to be a well-made BBC documentary chronicling the history of the TV series Thunderbirds, but the pictures that accompany them foreshadow the actual lazy truth.

The first paragraph is accompanied by stock footage from the day, however from the confusing words “But tonight belongs to the old school” we segue into modern videotape.

This features hazily-shot doubles of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson being driven through present-day London in a lifesize replica of Lady Penelope’s FAB1 car. We know it’s present-day because of all the modern cars, taxis and buses. At one point, before reaching Burger King, the camera positively lingers on the late lamented Virgin Megastore on New Oxford Street. Even the pink Rolls Royce itself features a huge website address emblazoned across the top of the front windscreen.

Well, obviously this is all meant to represent Gerry and Sylvia being driven to the premiere of the recent live-action Thunderbirds movie in 2004. That would reconcile the opening 1966 line with the subsequent one about tonight belonging “to the old school”, along with Gerry’s modern shaved head.

No, this actually is meant to be a reconstruction of the Andersons’ journey to the opening night of Thunderbirds Are Go! in 1966.

By the end of the programme, there’s just no alternative film for them to be seeing, since not only does the 2005 remake never get a mention, but neither does Thunderbird 6. Thunderbirds Are Go! is portrayed as the flop that got the franchise cancelled, so there was no more Thunderbirds after that, apparently.

It this programme’s claim to tell us All About Thunderbirds wasn’t already damaged enough, a great deal of it gets sidetracked into recounting Anderson’s other TV series, but only up until Space: 1999. After that he seems to have stopped working. No Space Precinct, no New Captain Scarlet, no Dick Spanner, no Lavender Castle, and certainly no three years of the Thunderbirds follow-up Terrahawks.

Worse, yet again the BBC trot-out the old wives’ tale that Thunderbirds somehow remained off the air for decades until they heroically brought it back in 1991. Apparently I just imagined watching the virtually endless reruns of Anderson’s many series on the ITV regions as a teen in the 80s.

Still, at least the BBC are consistent in their propaganda, here even presenting a clip from one of their own news bulletins of the time, attempting to pass-off a cheap plug for the latest repeats as news:

Narration: “By the early 90s, even BBC bosses had realised there was something going on here.”

CLIP OF BBC NEWS 21/09/91:”Tonight at six o’clock Thunderbirds are go once again as BBC-2 begins a rerun of the classic puppet series.”

Interviewee: ”There it was – the original episodes back on BBC-2, which I think probably was the first time it had been on in, in twenty years, and then that was, in a way, somehow I feel like it was the beginning of nostalgic television actually started there, and then, y’know, all the programmes since about all the other nostalgia, feels like it kind of started somewhere around there.”

The guy who said that sounds a little nostalgic for the nostalgia, and sadly represents the generally low quality of the soundbites that break-up this programme. At another point he mocks the programme’s famous mechanically-folding palm trees as though they were real within the story. “Ridiculous – why didn’t they plant those palm trees further out?”

I don’t want to knock him too much – I have tremendous respect for his work – but as a fan he really should have known better. Even Nick Park lets the side down, apparently playing to his perceptions of the audience’s expectations by claiming that both he and his brother used to fancy the puppet Marina.

Still, it is nice to hear what the original creators had to recall, particularly Francis Matthews on playing Captain Scarlet.

Special Effects Assistant Alan Shubrook, for some reason, is interviewed next to a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle hanging from black strings. What – could it fly or something?

At one point they even flash up an actual photo of Gerry and Sylvia from the real-life premiere that their doubles were travelling to in the reconstruction at the start of the programme, and there's little similarity. Gerry even had hair back then.

Not so much a documentary, more a collection of people recalling stuff without checking their memories. Unfortunately fans will have better recall, and therefore little to get out of this.

Upon this transmission, the show was preceded, allowing for a sport update, by a ‘new’ episode of Stingray entitled The Reunion Party.

This cobbles together sequences of original Stingray episodes to form an authentic clips shows, complete with the inherent disappointment that these things always incite. Clips shows were great back when a programme only got screened twice, tolerable throughout the VHS era, and have absolutely no place in the current age of DVDs and 100 channels of repeats.

However this one’s an exception, being not only originated by the show’s creator, at the time of production, but also intended for marketing the series overseas.

Finally, this doco was presently followed by a rerun of the Thunderbirds episode Attack Of The Alligators! which I watched this morning.

This featured the scale puppets trapped in a house surrounded by actual crocodiles, who were comparatively huge. Though I usually find Thunderbirds to be quite slow, I rather enjoyed this.

Dr. Orchard: (nervously)"Where are they?"

McGill: "International Rescue are on their way, so relax Doctor."

Dr. Orchard: "Relax? With three giant alligators knocking the house down?!? Be fair, McGill."

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

Hey – remember Starship Troopers 2? What’s that – you don’t? Well, good.

This threequel is actually a sequel to Starship Troopers 1, and as such really should have come second. In fairness though, I think they simply learnt from the mistakes of that one.

Here they actually take the trouble to get a few of the original cast members back, and advance the overall story of the war, setting scenes in several different locations instead of just one.

Speaking of that word ‘location’, they go outdoors too.

Despite the sense of fun, there’s still something missing throughout, but I think it’s just the budget. I can live with that.

Not many film series make it to four, but here’s hoping.

Doctor Who Adventures #1

The thing that I like about this junior magazine is that whoever put it together clearly enjoys the show too.

Though obviously focusing on the current remake, there’s care taken to acknowledge the show’s enormous back-story as well. I suppose for a long-term fan such as myself, I was won-over as soon as I read the knowing speech balloon on the cover “Fantastic First Issue”. (those are the same words that graced the first issue of Doctor Who Weekly back in 1979)

Loaded with free gifts, and a tenth Doctor strip that doesn’t offend (though it's sure no Mills/Wagner/Gibbons entry), my only real criticism is the choice of ‘past adventure’ to highlight.

Out of over 150 possible TV stories, they actually selected The Christmas Invasion - the most recent one! Sure, being the first issue they probably wanted to push the current Doctor a bit, and at the time there was only the one episode of his to 'choose' from, but all the same, in April 2006 it had only been three months ago.

In a mag about time-travel, this article was gagging to get billed more creatively.



With thanks to Herschel.

Incredible Hulk #34-39 as collected in The Incredible Hulk: Return Of The Monster

Written by: Bruce Jones
Pencils: John Romita Jr.
Inks: Tom Palmer
Colors: Studio F
Letters: RS & Comicraft’s Wes Abbott
Cover: Kaare Andrews
Assistant Editor: John Miesegaes
Editor: Axel Alonso
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
President: Bill Jemas

There’s a great episode of The Simpsons when Grampa goes to the cinema to see a McBain movie, only to demand his money back afterwards because it wasn’t much good.

If Abe Simpson were to ever buy this collected edition of The Incredible Hulk, then he might well have a pretty good go at taking Marvel to the petty claims court for not including enough of the Hulk.

These six issues are quite unashamedly a Bruce Banner series, in fact, they concentrate on the Hulk’s human alter ego even more than the 1970s TV series did.

We get to live Banner’s life on the run, as the introvert evades the many factions who are after him, by moving quietly from town to town, and changing his appearance as radically as he can. Glasses, beard, baseball cap, shaved head… heck, even I can’t recognise this guy. Quinn Martin should sue.

All the time inside Banner has to deal with the same nightmare as always, piecing together fragments of just who he has apparently laid into while ‘asleep’.

The whole thing is bleakly written and awesomely drawn, making this collection as quick or slow a read as you wish.

I can’t ignore the obvious observation either – this would make a great weekly TV series.

With thanks to Herschel.

The Amazing Spider-Man #471-508: Ezekiel

An awesome 38-issue run pencilled by John Romita Jr., and masterminded by Babylon 5 author J Michael Stracynski.

(most of the covers are sadly irrelevant)

Having not read any of the immediately preceding or following editions, I can’t comment on what impact, if any, these episodes had on the overall series. Reading them in isolation however, Stracynski seems to concentrate equally on Peter Parker the man, and his increasingly bizarre relationship with the eight-legged insects who have so transformed his life.

Over the course of this three-year saga (in publication terms anyway), Pete has to balance his humanity against his super-humanity, and he’s clearly reluctant to let himself go fully over to either.

Here’s a very brief rundown…

#471-476:


After his wife Mary Jane has left him, Peter meets Ezekiel, who to all intents and purposes appears to be an older, wiser version of himself, with similar powers. Ezekiel taunts him with the notion that the radioactive spider which first bit him 'by accident' all those years ago actually did it on purpose. Oh, and he also warns Spider-Man that he has a natural predator. When that guy – Morlun - shows up, poor Spidey-Man simply has no chance, even with Ezekiel’s help.

It’s a fairly staple ingredient of so many Spider-Man tales for our hero to gasp towards the end something like “Oh no, after all these years, this one villain is just too powerful for me!” Here, after an enormously exhausting fight, he really means it. He even gets to the stage of phoning Aunt May and Mary Jane to say some sort of goodbye to them.

Morlun won’t afford him such luxuries as running or recovering though. As soon as Spidey goes on the move, this bad guy simply starts hurting innocents instead to lure him straight back.

Eventually our hero has to hit back with something against which his aggressor has no natural advantage – his human side.

It’s a six-month battle (for us) that ends with Peter Parker’s scientific knowledge just giving him the edge that saves his life.

Then he gets back to his flat and collapses unconscious with exhaustion, just as his Aunt May comes in to collect his laundry and stands there gaping in shock at her nephew's no-longer secret identity!

#477:


The famous “black issue”.

(Don't get me started on the whole numbering thing - numbering comics is supposed to make them each UNIQUE, and I refuse to become a part of the problem!)

Ignoring the cliffhanger with Aunt May last week, this edition pays tribute to those who lost their lives in the World Trade Centre tragedy.

It features Spider-Man and other Marvel characters helping real-life heroes (servicemen etc.) to rescue the injured on 11th September 2001 and the days immediately following.

It seems to have worked very well at the time of publication, although without the shock of its original context, it has now aged a little. What begins as an internal monologue from Peter Parker at some point seems to become an anonymous commentary on events and society.

One of the most striking observations is the presence of Marvel’s broken villains amongst the devastation – the Kingpin standing silently horrified at the damage, with Doctors Octopus and Doom.

Narration: ”Even those we thought our enemies are here. Because some things surpass rivalries and borders.

Because the story of humanity is written not in towers but in tears.

In the common coin of blood and bone.

In the voice that speaks within even the worst of us, and says this is not right.

(DOOM’S TEARS WELL UP)

Because even the worst of us, however scarred, are still human.

Still feel.

Still mourn the random death of innocents.”

While I applaud the point being made, as a comic reader I had a real problem with that when I first read it in 2005. In the Marvel universe these guys have plotted to kill many more than died on that awful, awful day in real life. In #296-297, Doc Ock himself plotted to wipe out New York with anthrax, from the World Trade Centre no less.

Yet, while these inconsistencies initially led me to suppose that this story was outside the Marvel canon, I can now see how well it fits in. By 2001 Marvel’s villains had developed in character a huge amount since their early days, and tend to have much more depth to them now.

This, plus the ongoing building work in the background of subsequent issues, place this edition firmly within the Marvel universe, as far as I can see, although perhaps not taking place while Pete lies unconscious between #476 and #478. Unless this issue is all his dream of course.

If you still need convincing, just read Spidey’s observation of Captain America’s clenched fists…

”He’s the only one who could know. Because he’s been here before. I wish I had not lived to see this once. I can’t imagine what it is to see this twice.”

Cap’s standing there recalling Captain America #306 when London got devastated, isn’t he?

#478-479:

Suddenly Pete’s back in bed unconscious again with his Aunt May standing over him gaping in shock at his secret identity once more. It might seem like the previous issue had interrupted the ongoing storyline, but after the events of September 11th 2001, this image runs on quite logically.

Once she’s decided to confront her nephew regarding his double-life, May and Peter have a huge issue-long duologue about all the implications, not just for the present but their respective pasts also. Their openness, once they've managed it, enables them both to find some peace over Uncle Ben’s death.

This 22-page conversation is just the sort of in-depth scene that Stracynski rarely, if ever, got to write in Babylon 5. I always thought one of B5’s shortcomings, and indeed of much modern TV drama's, was/is its tendency to present huge life-changing moments in the space of just a couple of minutes. Not so here.

#480:

A bit soapy. Everyone gets on with their lives, but thanks to Marvel's 'Nuff Said month, without any speech-balloons.

Good job this wasn't last month!

Stracynski cheats however, showing May not just writing down her to-do list, but also composing emails. Alas, I still got lost as to what was happening towards the end.

Fortunately the original script is then presented on subsequent pages, robbing the gimmick rather. Unfortunately for me, the issue runs out of pages before the script does. Just what was the point of all that then? Come on Marvel, just print the text smaller – it's 'Nuff Said, not 'Nuff Read!

#481 – 483:

Spider-Man enlists the help of the ever entertaining Doctor Strange to find some lost kids on the astral plane. While there he finds a giant green spider who tells hi that he should not be there. Ironically, the irregular flow of time means that Spidey winds up missing a potential reconciliation with Mary Jane, and can only visit her astrally on a plane. Ha. Ha.

#484 – 486:

Successfully smuggling his Spider-gear through America’s tight post-911 airport security, Pete takes a flight with Aunt May to go visit Mary Jane over in Hollywood. There he explains about the whole astrally visiting her on the plane just as she was leaving NY thing, but doesn’t think to prove it by relating any details of what he saw, eg. what she was wearing at the time.

Meanwhile an aging Doctor Octopus discovers that his metal arms now have a technological successor. And, heh heh, that’s when the trouble starts…

#487-489:

After correctly picking the lottery numbers but forgetting to buy a ticket, Spider-Man learns from Doctor Strange that, during his trip on the astral plane, he accidentally entered the food chain. Dang it, don't you just hate it when that happens? Well, so does Spider-Man.

Sure enough, Shathra the spider wasp shows up in New York, to eat him I assume.

Spider-Man gets so overcome by the paralysis of her sting that he can only hide from her by crawling into the spider-cage at the museum of natural history, and letting hundreds of the things completely envelop him.

From there Ezekiel rescues him and flies him to Ghana. Having told Pete the legend of the original Spider-Man of Africa from centuries ago, Ezekiel then takes him to a giant underground stone spider. Here Ezekiel assures Pete that he will actually stand a very slightly better chance of winning against Shathra, which he apparently does. Whew!

#490 - 491:

With the ominous news from Ezekiel that he still has a third natural enemy to come, Pete pays a surprise visit to MJ in Los Angeles… unaware that, ha ha, MJ is simultaneously paying a surprise visit to him in New York! Heh heh heh, I mean, it’s like some kind of whacky screwball comedy. Those two repeatedly just missing each other, cor I love those things.

Ultimately bad weather finds them both stuck in transit in Denver, along with Captain America and Doctor Doom. And that’s when the trouble starts. (By which I mean they get back together again. In your face, Mephisto!)

That’s The Amazing Spider-Man tonight at 8:30pm right here on Thames. After George & Mildred.

#492 - 495:

Gangsters. From the undead.

#496 – 497:

Throughout these 38 issues Peter is holding down a day job as a school science teacher. Here he sets out to track down a pupil's missing brother (again) only to find that the kid has fallen in with Ezekiel.

#498 – 500:

A huge team-up with Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Thor, Cyclops and the Fantastic Three. (or Four if Sue was there invisibly)

Issue #500 has Spider-Man unstuck in time and bouncing around different moments from his life. He sees his apparent death and also gets the chance to prevent it, by averting the moment when he first gained his spider-powers. He chooses to restore history, but to do so has to re-win many of his earlier battles. Cue lots of old villains and situations and we have a re-enactment of key moments from Spidey's history. I was particularly pleased to see #31-33 covered, which is the story that I first came in on. (when it was reprinted in the 1980s as Marvel Tales #170-172)

Sadly no Beyonder though. Drag.

#501:

Spider-Man encounters a guy wearing a big suit that can vibrate stuff. Spidey defeats him in a swimming-pool. He's the greatest science teacher ever.

#502:

Spider-Man has to protect a tailor guy who specialises in designing costumes for super heroes. And villains. So we see Thor sitting there reading the paper as his top is repaired while he waits. Obvious comedy.

#503 – 504:

I'll let Spider-Man himself handle this one...

"Any way you look at it, I'm up to my webs in magical whackos."

#505:

Spider-Man prevents a kid from ruining his life by shooting a cop.

#506 – 508:

Ezekiel returns to warn Pete of the approaching third predator – the Gatekeeper. He explains that by being bitten, Peter has gained his spider powers illegally, and now the Gatekeeper expects payment for them.

Millions of giant spiders infest New York, building together to form a gigantic man. The Gatekeeper has arrived.

Throughout this run, John Romita Jr.'s artwork has remained nothing short of stunning. Here his close-ups of enormous spiders with huge gnashing teeth are truly disturbing. With three years of Stracynski's (and briefly Fiona Avery's) excellent story-telling all having built up to this moment, this is Spider-Man's greatest hour, particularly when he is engulfed by the above monster and passes-out from thousands of tiny bites.

Then it turns out that Ezekiel has been lying to him for the past few years.

Zeek is the one who stole his powers from the spiders, and he's just been hanging around Pete to use him as a decoy.

It all reaches an incredible conclusion when... oops and that's all we have time for.

An awesome run, no matter what Mephisto thought of it.

:)

With thanks to Herschel.

Major League / Major League II / Major League: Back To The Minors

Tonight I completed watching the Major League trilogy over the course of some 20 years.

To do this, I have paced myself at roughly one film per decade.


I watched the first film at the local Odeon in 1989, as I was working there as an usher that summer. For some reason it had a late night premiere on Friday 15th September – straight after The Fly II.

Major League fans, here's a screencap that you probably won't find anywhere else on the internet - a scan of the mute 35mm film frame that advertised that momentous opening night: (I saved the fade-in and fade-out trims from the rubbish bin afterwards)


When it opened properly about a week later, Major League just ran and ran, sometimes playing to as many as several audience-members. On one unforgettable occasion, I was the only person in the whole theatre. For contractual reasons, they had to project the entire reel anyway. That's right - they had to pay me to watch it. It was one of those rare opportunities to stand-up right in front of the screen just because one could.

In retrospect, it's a little bit of a surprise that Major League even got a release in the UK. It's about baseball, which is a very American sport. Though I saw this movie in the wrong order about a million times, some of what was going on still had me confused. Again, made in America, for Uncle Sam's many nephews.

The film is about a Minor League baseball team - the Cleveland Indians - who make it into the Major League, despite management's best efforts to ensure that their own side loses.

Great idea, but I never could figure out the motivation for this intention, nor what specifically enables them to win at the end. Maybe it was a longer film in the States, or maybe that's just the sort of crazy executive decision that Americans make all the time. At any rate that first screening looked like a wacky comedy that someone had gone back and rewritten several scenes of.

I do recall that there was stuff that I had seen in the trailer (which I'd also watched about a million times) that then wasn't in the actual film, specifically a joke about Jellystone Park. (misleading advertising, sheesh!)

Then in the 1990s the unthinkable happened - they made a sequel. I assume because the original had been big in the US.


Sequels are always so great, aren't they? Most of the characters reunite to recreate that old magic that made the first film so fondly-remembered.

Unfortunately, these guys were never really united in that first flick, except I guess at the end. They argued all the time, and never really made friends. Now we were being treated to the Cleveland Indians enthusiastically getting back together again and being not quite sure what to do.

I quite liked the end of the film, when Rick Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) remembers that he used to wear glasses in the first one. Apparently, he hadn't been too certain quite how they had won in the original outing either. He pops the lenses back on, and suddenly the 'Wild Thing' is back.


Tonight I sat down to watch the third one - the now numberless Major League: Back To The Minors - and choked on my pizza straight away as I realised that the lead actor was some completely new guy, called 'Scott Bakula'.

Scott... Bakula? Really?

Well, I guess he has portrayed a baseball-player once before in Quantum Leap...

Despite the return of some of the earlier cast, this was definitely the non-synoptic film of the trilogy. Even the team was different, exchanging the Cleveland Indians for the Buzz.

This final entry also brings the series nicely full-circle, with Bakula's character Gus Cantrell enterprisingly choosing to remain in the Minors, because that's where all the fresh talent is.

What's really come across through all three movies, particularly the second, is a love of the game. Despite how I might have jokingly sounded above, I've enjoyed all three of these films, and by leaving so much time between each installment, it's always been a nice series to come back to. Since I've watched them all on my own, they've also become a bit of a private pleasure.

Maybe by 2020 there'll even be another one.

Bruce / Evan Almighty

Watch a news bulletin on a subject that you are already familiar with, and you will tend to feel that you are not being told the full story.

I think this happens for two reasons:

1. The reporter is unlikely to be an expert on the story that they have been asked to cover today.

2. The reporter knows that most of their audience are not experts either.

The makers of Bruce Almighty were unlikely to make a smart film about God unless they had first spent some time wrestling with the concept's implications.

I know I'd have the same problem if I tried to make a film about a belief-system that I didn't share.

Now I'm not going to whinge on about this (I don't know the beliefs, if any, of the film's makers) but to make my point I am going to cite just one token example.

In the film, Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) is given the power of God, however among other things this comes with having to listen to lots of prayers. So he converts them into emails and just clicks on the button to blanket grant all of them. Never does this script seem to realise that many of those prayers would have contradicted each other. Token example over.

If you'd seen Jim Carrey before this in anything other than The Truman Show (in which he'd played quite a straight role), then you'd know what Bruce Almighty was really all about. Give Jim Carrey's outrageous characterisations the power to do absolutely anything, then sit back and watch the wild spectacles that ensue.

I had two problems with this:

1. Before I watched this film on 6th March 2004, I had only ever seen Jim Carrey in The Truman Show (in which he'd played quite a straight role).

2. Special effects cost a lot of money.

Consequently we're treated to Bruce with six fingers on his hand, Bruce opening a very very long drawer, Steven Carell's character speaking gibberish...

It looked as though Jim Carrey had cost a lot of money too...

I suppose I could harp on about how hard it is to feel sorry for a character who is a TV celebrity, is in a relationship with Jennifer Anniston, and who then receives unlimited power for a short while, but I've made my point - that I just didn't like it. If others did, then that's great, but I didn't. Mind you, it was nearly six years ago that I watched it, so my memory has probably just unkindly selected the worst bits to remember. At the time, I recall that I was more accepting of it.

Anyway, the consolation after watching any film that one hasn't really taken to is the knowledge that, for the rest of one's life, one will never have to sit through anything like it ever again.


What? WHAAAT? You actually made a sequel to THIS?!?

On some level I ought to have been rooting for this underdog. Here was this follow-up movie that had been made despite the shortcomings of the original, despite four years having passed, and oh yes despite the non-availability of one Mr. James Carrey.

If I had been expecting to dislike the first film, then this one I was expecting to totally despise.

Oh, but I was wrong, I was so, so wrong...

Next to The Passion Of The Christ, I think Evan Almighty is the most Christian film I've seen come out of Hollywood.

It's not tremendously deep or anything, but it has a story that holds together, characters who overcame my prejudice and grew on me, and does the unthinkable by portraying a man's journey as he stands up for his belief in God in front of his family, friends, co-workers and country.

But funny? Well now that really is subjective...

It's quite cartoonish in places, and some of the predicaments that Carell's character finds himself in are, frankly, contrived, but then it is a comedy about God trying to get someone to build an ark in modern-day America.

There's an odd scene when Carell's character (I still can't recall the name) is getting followed around by a lot of animals, who are waiting for him to build the ark. So he goes to this work meeting where he sits in front of a large fish-tank, only for the fish to keep following him whichever direction he leans in.

Fish?

Not actually impossible within the world of the story though.

My favourite scene is between God - still played with mischievous joy by Morgan Freeman - and our hero's long-suffering wife. I like it because, whoever wrote it and whatever they believe if anything, I'm finding it something that I actually am taking on board in my Christian faith...

God: "Let me ask you something.

If someone prays for patience,
you think God gives them patience?

Or does he give them
the opportunity to be patient?

If they pray for courage,
does God give them courage,

or does he give them opportunities
to be courageous?

If someone prayed
for their family to be closer,

you think God zaps them
with warm, fuzzy feelings?

Or does he give them opportunities
to love each other?"

So much for my opening argument.

Pier Pressure

Out there, in the emptiness of night, something was very wrong.

It was summer 2003, and I was standing on the south coast of England looking out across the pebbles and into the darkness. I couldn't see anything. Of course I couldn't, there were no lights down there.

There were lights behind me on the busy main road, car headlights, shops, heck there were even a few stars above me. There was also a dimly-lit pier stretching out ahead of me on my left, which apart from the theatre at this end, was closed-down and locked-up for the night. However ten metres across the beach directly in front of me, I couldn't make out a thing.

What really bugged me though, was that I couldn't hear anything either.

There should have been waves.

Some gentle lapping maybe. A buoy? At the very least some gloomy visual reflection of the night sky?

No. Apparently, some enterprising power had stolen the English Channel.

I made my way forwards across the tiny stones as far as the gloomy edge of the illuminations' illumination, but those ten or so paces revealed nothing more.

It was very spooky, in that surreal, ghostly, irrational sort of way. Out on the beach, in the darkness, alone, at such an unusual time, I felt quite afraid. I really wanted to know what had happened to the sea, but the feeling of danger that the emptiness ahead brought out of me was too much.

Over at the theatre, the show had just finished. I could see small groups of people emerging, animatedly chatting and laughing, just 30 yards away, yet completely unaware of my invisible presence on the beach.

So who else might be similarly watching me from within the deeper darkness?

I knew it was just my paranoid imagination, the result of there being less oxygen around at this time, but then wasn't it reasonably possible for a mugger or someone to be lying in wait for lone pedestrians out there?

And then I remembered. I had a personal rule in those days, one that repeatedly popped into my memory whenever I literally least wanted it to. It's one that still pesters me sometimes today.

The rule was this: whenever I am afraid of something, I do it.

I hated myself for coming up with that rule. But I really hated myself for it as I slowly stooped off into the darkness.

I wanted to know where the sea had gone, and I didn't want to miss out on that knowledge just because of a non-existent thing called fear.

The ground was still dry here. Well, that figures, 2003 was the hottest summer in years. As I placed one footprint in front of the other, I think I was muttering Psalm 23, what I could remember of it anyway. If nothing else, the sound of my own voice made me feel less alone. There was still no sea anywhere though.

Another of my irrational fears is clocks. They prove that something sneaky is going on, something sinister that you cannot even begin to perceive, let alone take measures against.

Most clocks look as though they are still, but they're lying. Every time you look at one, you know that it has moved, but you'll never catch it in the act, so you can never do anything about it. They are all slowly taking away everything you have, no matter how precious, and there's no defence. The fact that they have faces which are always looking at you just makes them worse.

Big clocks are even more threatening, because they appear to be hiding lots of gigantic uncaring machinery inside, ready to chew you up should you be unlucky enough to fall in.

To my left, as I walked without asking through an area where the mighty sea never allowed anyone to tread, the pier's enormous clock-face scowled down at me, in arrogant disapproval.

I kept walking. I had to, there was still no sea.

As I made my way past all the seaweed-covered metallic scaffolding which criss-crossed underneath, I couldn't help but glance nervously all around. Anyone could be hiding out here. I found some reassurance from looking back at the warm colours of the street, because that was well-lit and still looked safe, but it was becoming more and more remote, while I was already well swallowed-up in the night.

Still no sea. Still no sound. Just the distant traffic. I was - incredibly - approaching the end of the pier now. This was unheard of, even in daylight. Was I going to continue walking through the night all the way to France without my passport? Would I reach the centre of the channel by midnight, just as the angry sea suddenly returned? Might I trip in the darkness and fall down a really really big plughole?

The things that go through your head. I'm sure I was shaking all the way.

I still couldn't hear anything.

The soles of my shoes were at last beginning to let in just a little bit of water from the sand and miniature boulders though.

As I stopped and looked out across the dead still pond between myself and the rest of Europe, I knew I had come as far as I could. It was peaceful, and the stars were beautiful, but I still felt guilty by the very fact of my presence. Like I was trespassing out here, and nature itself was about to punish me.

I was however pleased that I had made it. I tried to take a photo but, well, it was never going to look like anything that made sense.


Making my way back past the big looming clock, which had indeed pulled its usual unkind trick of moving slightly, I don't think I stopped shaking until I reached the road again.

Throughout, the sea had been a darn sight stiller - and quieter - than I had.




Upon later reflection, I realised what I had found so deeply disturbing about the whole episode. Not just scary, but inwardly draining.

For much of my life, I had pictured life after losing one of my parents as looking similarly desolate. I had thought that the world would seem like a gigantic ball of never-ending desert. Lifeless, hopeless, and without anything that I really wanted to find anywhere.

Father had passed away over a year earlier, and that bleak image had indeed described something of how it had felt. On one occasion in that first month I had sat on a train platform, with the impression that everything out of sight - that is, everything beyond the buildings that surrounded me - was desert. Of course I knew that it wasn't, but I couldn't prove that, and so the feeling had nothing to temper it.

Now this night by the gritty empty pier had represented something of a confrontation with that perception. I sure wasn't keen to go back down the end of the promenade a second time, but I had faced an embodiment of my worries and overcome it, by relying on God.

Perhaps I should have found whoever had stolen the sea and thanked them.

But then, how do you find someone who steals 75,000 km2 of water?

Answer: by chance.

Yes, as luck would have it, tonight, over six years later in 2010, I found myself standing on the exact same eerie spot on the same seaside road, at night again, realising that they had pulled-off the same stunt once more.

No sea.

Well, I didn't need to head out there again, did I? I mean I'd done all that before. And tonight I had things that I had to get back to do.

Hmm, was I just making excuses? Because, if I was, then I was still scared. And I used to have this rule...

Ohhhhh...

... grrrrr...

Heading off into the darkness once more - the winter darkness this time - I found myself on a much lighter journey, lighter in terms of my outlook anyway.

No shaking, no worry. I did keep an eye out around me just in case there were any seedy sorts looking to mug me under the pier, but again there weren't.

I was a little tense, but there was nothing in my heart that I could honestly call fear.

I got to the clock, and laughed out loud at it. Again I couldn't see or hear any water anywhere, but I just kept on advancing forwards, past all those rusty, seaweeded scaffolding-poles. They really should remove that seaweed sometime.

It occurred to me that people probably drop spare change through the slats on the pier above, but I didn't have me metal-detector with me. Still no people.

At some stage, I did encounter someone down there, and a huge animal with teeth and claws, but it was just a local walking his dog.

Then... uncharted territory.

I reached the end of the pier.

This was unthinkable. I mean the whole point of building a pier was surely because no-one can ever walk-out this far, wasn't it? Sorry local council, you were a bit short-sighted on this one.

Well, maybe not all that short-sighted.

For at the very end of the pier, on the ground, at the base of the furthest-most piece of scaffolding, were a group of workmen with tools and a spotlight. Maybe it was they who had drained the English Channel so that they could carrying out some routine repair-work, using those machines that were creating such great big dangerous-looking sparks.

Or maybe this time they were stealing the pier itself?

I walked past them, taking a moment to gaze back at the pier from the wrong end, and continued on out into the unknown.