The Amazing Spider-Man #225: Fools... Like Us!

Writer: Roger Stern
Artists: John Romita Jr. & Bob Wiacek

Following my review of the British reprint of this story, for Christmas I was given a copy of the original US printing to compare it with.


And it's very much as I expected. The suspected gaps in the narrative were confirmed, and it turned-out that the UK version had cut five pages in total – that's almost a quarter of the whole 21-page story!

The missing scenes provide Greg Salinger's Foolkiller with a two-page origin, a quick exchange between Parker and Robbie, and some more friendly neighborhood fighting.

Oh, and do you remember how these two panels didn’t seem to run on?



Well, there are four missing panels between those, of Spidey swinging around town in search of FK, and yes, the final panel did indeed run on into that mysterious "—WHERE..." narration at the top. But here's the thing: compare the US version of that panel on the left, with the tweaked UK one on the right...


That's right, it looks like someone actually chopped-off the top of the panel, took the now defunct narration-box and went to the trouble of re-inserting it where it could not now make any sense! Ahhh, I love Marvel UK.

But the biggest surprise in getting to read the full-length original version has got to be discovering an entire scene with Deb in, (yep – Deb was in this story) in which Parker not only works out the Foolkiller's identity, but also where he's about to strike next!



A fairly pivotal exchange if you ask me – in the UK version Spidey just showed up with no explanation of how he knew what was going on. And yet, I actually think that improved things. Greg is so blatantly the Foolkiller, that it really didn't need to be said, so the shorter UK edit inadvertently endowed Parker with a subtext.

Finally, there's one more great thing that the American publication had that the British reprint sadly didn't.


Yep, heh-heh, this maze is actually possible to solve!

:)

The World's Fastest Indian

"If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone."


Though I had already watched this in 2006 with flatmate Dave, this afternoon I sat down with my mum to re-enjoy kiwi Burt Munro's road-journey from New Zealand to Utah, which is a real lesson in the power of just saying "yes".

Burt's dream is impossible – to go race on his souped-up motorbike, despite his age, health and lack of having actually entered the contest.

Along the way he meets a colourful assortment of characters, nearly all of whom find it in their hearts to give him a little push. By the end of his story, it's really become a team-effort, but who would want to take away any of this charming old man's hard-earned glory?

A great lesson in the value of trying to find a way to help others in need, but he really should have been played by a Kiwi.

Wardrobe Of The Cybermen

Wearing all the clothes I got given for Christmas...

Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events

Fairly clever and imaginative movie about orphaned kids, that appears to wish that it wasn't a vehicle for Jim Carrey.

Not that Carrey is bad in this – Carrey is always good – but the disturbing world into which his silly, and frankly unthreatening, character is inserted must have far darker villains with which to haunt our heroes.

That said, the progression of ever-changing characters and locations make this one film that holds the attention well. The inspiration with which Violet saves herself and Klaus from getting run-over by a train is lost however when she later weakly resigns herself to marrying Count Olaf.

The film also has a terrific ending, simply because it doesn't cop-out and do what most films do. Instead the conclusion is true to the movie's tone of addressing its viewer as an equal, and for that alone this is one motion picture that I was pleased to enjoy.

Elmo's Christmas Countdown

Highly enjoyable festive adventure, in which Elmo once again has to save Christmas. This time he's joined by Stiller the Elf, voiced by Ben Stiller. (the casting director really lucked-out there) It must be said, the puppeteer does a fine job of syncing to Stiller's voice.

Really of course it's just a big excuse for a series of self-contained Christmas sketches featuring a heap of guest-stars, and I think it's fair to say that everyone does well here. Sheryl Crow performs an enthusiastic opening number, and Anne Hathaway is so graceful that you realise just what a fine act she must have been putting on as klutzy Mia in The Princess Diaries. Wow, imagine having to unlearn your trade like that.

Giving the best performance though is Ty Pennington, who in his I Saw Three Ships sketch with the Count, manages to be hilarious in such an exacting and different way with every one of his many entrances. This one was a finely-crafted piece of comedy, and it's great to see another performer giving the muppets their all.

However the most surreal segment has to be the one with Steve Schirripa and Tony Sirico as the live-action Ernie and Bert respectively. The sketch isn't bursting with quality gags, but the ridiculous idea behind it is value enough.

Long live Elmo and Christmas!

Year Of The Review 2008

It was a last-minute decision, but I managed to post most of my Christmas cards today.

That'll be nine of them then.

Every year I tell myself that I'll be better organised this time, that I'll post the overseas ones nice and early, and that just this once I'll be able to save money by sending the whole lot second-class.

But no. This afternoon found me furiously scribbling away to but a handful of UK friends which, frankly, was a big improvement on the last half-decade. Even the cards were bought for Christmases yesteryear, some of them bearing a price-tag in New Zealand dollars from Paper Plus.

Just then an email arrived. One very smart old friend from 1996 had sent all of his via the internet, thereby simulaneously both saving a fortune, and avoiding any soul-searching about who to stop writing to this year. Well-organised, that's what he was. In exactly the same way that I wasn't.

His e-card was an Acrobat file detailing his family's exploits over the year just ending, complete with full-colour photos and electronic signatures. Ahh, the Christmas round-robin. I sent one of those once...

It was about ten years ago. I neatly folded a sheet of A4 paper into my 50-odd cards that year that, once unfolded, simply read in small letters "Nothing has happened this year." It was something of an anti-review. And it was a big success! Years later, when I would catch-up with some of these people, they would still quote it at me!

This year, it could not escape my notice (and no doubt yours if you read this blog regularly) that once again I had done nothing. Earlier in 2008, Herschel had actually warned me, "Don't let 2008 be the year you do nothing, like '66 was for Kubrick."

So, having ignored his advice as usual (really, who listens to advice from a klown?) last week I'd wondered, was it time to do another "anti-review" again?

I thought about the 'annual reviews' that I receive each year. What did they all have in common that I could rebel against? They tend to be from couples, on one side of A4, and concentrate on just a few journeys that they have undertaken, often to the weddings of distant relatives. This can, I find, inadvertently give the impression that the authors have, after a tremendous amount of organisation, actually achieved very little this year either.

So I decided to tell everyone who I thought would get the joke about all the many and varied things that I have achieved this year, mainly through very little effort.

The following is what I sent them, embellished here with hyperlinks, where available:

Movies watched:

They Live
I Married A Witch
The Last Dalek
10,000 BC
The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
High Heels and Low Lifes
Lost In Translation
Tron
The Miracle Maker
Kontroll
Cube
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Charlie's Angels
March Of The Penguins
Charlies Angels: Full Throttle
Donnie Darko
Mystery Men
Sky High
Ben-Hur - A Tale of The Christ (1925)
Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)
Leeds Bridge (1888)
Accordion Player (1888)
Man Walking Around A Corner (Homme au Coin d'une Rue) (1888)
Duck Soup
Batman Begins
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
Batman: Gotham Knight
The Shawshank Redemption
Starship Troopers
Naked Gun 33⅓ - The Final Insult
Madagascar
One Week
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Bedazzled (1967)
Ben Hur – A Tale Of The Christ (1959)
The Faculty
Safety Last!
The Kid Brother
The Fifth Element
Felix The Cat – The Movie
ELEKTRA
Shrek
The Railway Children
The Avengers
Shaun Of The Dead
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Jurassic Park: The Lost World
V For Vendetta
Elmo's Christmas Countdown

Doctor Whos watched:

Doctor Who: The Dominators
Doctor Who: The Mind Robber
Doctor Who: The Invasion
Doctor Who: The Krotons
Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Death
Doctor Who: Castrovalva #1
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead #1
Doctor Who: The Parting Of The Ways
Doctor Who: Pudsey Cutaway
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Revenge of the Slitheen
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Eye Of The Gorgon
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Warriors Of Kudlak
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Lost Boy
Doctor Who: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution Of The Daleks
Doctor Who: The Lazarus Experiment
Doctor Who: 42
Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest
Doctor Who: Human Nature / The Family Of Blood
Doctor Who: Blink (outstanding!)
Doctor Who: Utopia / The Sound Of Drums / Last Of The Time Lords
Doctor Who: Time Crash
Doctor Who: Voyage Of The Damned
Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Torchwood: Sleeper
Torchwood: To The Last Man
Torchwood: Meat
Torchwood: Adam
Torchwood: Reset
Torchwood: Dead Man Walking
Torchwood: A Day In The Death
Torchwood: Something Borrowed
Torchwood: From Out Of The Rain
Torchwood: Adrift
Torchwood: Fragments / Exit Wounds
Doctor Who: Partners In Crime
Doctor Who: The Fires Of Pompeii
Doctor Who: Planet Of The Ood
Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky
Doctor Who: The Doctor's Daughter
Doctor Who: The Unicorn And The Wasp
Doctor Who: Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead (twice)
Doctor Who: Midnight
Doctor Who: Turn Left
Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End

Other TV shows / DVD programmes watched:

The Alchemists Of Sound
America's Most Wanted (the Homer J Simpson one)
Battlestar Galactica 3 hour pilot
Dad's Army (various episodes, 1 in junkitcolour)
The IT Crowd (14 episodes)
Losing It – Griff Rhys Jones On Anger (both 2)
The Marx Brothers – A Documentary: Time Marx Is On
The Passion (all 6)
Prisoner And Escort
Seinfeld (various episodes)
The Simpsons (various episodes)
Sledge Hammer! (various episodes)
Souvenir of Singapore
Spaced (all 14 + most extras)
"Weird Al" Yankovic - LIVE! -

Radio / Spoken Word audio listened to:

Doctor Who Unbound: Sympathy For The Devil
Goble On Friday (2 editions)
That Anzac Day Feeling
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul (all 6)
Torchwood: Lost Souls
Real Life (3 editions)
Audio Adventures In Time & Space: Conduct Unbecoming

CDs / Cassettes listened to:

Alapalooza – "Weird Al" Yankovic
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey – Music From The Motion Picture
Dr Who – Music From The Tenth Planet
Escape From Television – Jan Hammer
Even Worse – "Weird Al" Yankovic
Girl In A Suitcase
Gratuitously Groucho
Greatest Science Fiction Hits IV – Neil Norman And His Cosmic Orchestra
Juice – Taste The Music
Mochaccino Moments – Bruce Murray Singers
Natural Born Fillers
Saturday Morning – cartoon's greatest hits
Signor Rossi: Herr Rossi sucht das Glück – Music by Franco Godi
songs in the key of springfield - The Simpsons
Unforgettable – John Mann

Books read:

The Bible (twice)
The Calvin and Hobbes Collection: Something Under The Bed Is Drooling
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy – Movie Tie-In Editon (afterword only)
On The Mad Magician's Trail by Josie Goble (currently at draft stage)
The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Comics read:

Star Wars Comic #33
Marvel Comics and The Electric Company Present – Spidey Super Stories #1
Marvel Comics and The Electric Company Present – Spidey Super Stories #2
The Amazing Spider-Man #155: Whodunit!
The Amazing Spider-Man: Fusion!
Super Spider-Man TV Comic #473
Super Spider-Man #493: The Mistake
The Fires Down Below
Spider-Man: A Hero's Welcome / Darkness Encroaching / On The Town! / Death Line
Fantastic Four # 262
Web Of Spider-Man #26
The Amazing Spider-Man #251: Endings
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1-12
The Amazing Spider-Man #252: Homecoming!
The Amazing Spider-Man #253
The Transformers: Man Of Iron
The Mighty Thor # 383
The Adventures Of Superman #8
the prisoner – books a, b, c and d
Fantastic Four Adventures #1
Fantastic Four Adventures #2
Free Comic Book Day: Bongo Comics Free-For-All! 2007
X-Men First-Class #11
Futurama Comics #49: Doctor What

Computer Games played:

Bamboozle!
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The Italian Job
Jammy
Scrabble
Scrabulous
The Simpsons – Road Rage
Sock And Awe
SSX / SSX Tricky
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
Tetris

Board Games played:

Haunted House
Monopolyopoly (6 Monopoly boards)
Top Top Trumps (12 packs)
Uno

Went To:

Conservative quiz night, ETNA
May Fair, Richmond
Bowls, Cambridge Park
BBQ
Alex's birthday party
Homeless breakfast at Waterloo
Conservative Christians meeting, Teddington
REM - Live at my house (yes they were that loud)
Andrew Watson's leaving do at St Stephen's Church
Milton Jones at the Bearcat Comedy Club
56th British Film Collectors Convention, Ealing
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
Comic exhibition in Richmond
Thunderbirds Are Go! Barry Gray Centenary Concert, South Bank
SPUC coffee morning, Richmond
My mum's home group

Friends seen and properly caught up with:

Gideon, Scottish Dave, Fraser, Kevin, John, John, Alistair, Tim Harrison, David, Michael, Herschel, David, Steve K, Richard, Keith, Perry, and Jo.

People I met but don't know:

Gerry Anderson.

Other trivial stats:

Sketches written: 2
Sketches performed: 3
Blog entries written: 344 (ish)
Blog posts posted: 376
Times sighted in New Zealand: 1 (jogging through Highland Park)
International phone-calls made: 2,500 approx.
Church services attended: maybe 5?

Other experiences:

Telling on Election Day
Playing lawn bowls at Cambridge Park
Having my NZ residency appeal turned-down
Rescuing old TV reels from certain destruction
Selling my childhood train set for £235 to a German on Ebay.

Most surreal experience:

The attached story.

Of course, after posting this off, I remembered that I'd forgotten to include having watched St Elsewhere, One Foot In The Grave, Hill Rise Blues and Brideshead Revisited, but it has been such a busy year, that there's just too much to fit in a letter really...

V For Vendetta (movie)

Mesmerising comicbook adaptation from the Wachowski brothers, (and directed by James McTeigue) which flatly rejects standard Hollywood templates and does its own thing. It's wonderful to watch a film in which the characters, like real life, actually have a creative free will beyond the simple choices that a two-dimensional movie-character might normally have.

One character who never even appears gets a whole ten-minute back-story. That's not following any formula. About thirty minutes in I glanced at the clock and realised that I had no idea what might have taken place in this breakneck plot in an hour's time.

The hero – the eponymous V - is a terrorist, but not one who's painted with such easy to judge strokes. In fact, his face remains hidden throughout, forcing us to to weigh him up on his words and actions.

V: "Evey, please. There is a face beneath this mask but it's not me. I'm no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it or the bones beneath them."

Yup, that sounds like the Wachowskis.

Over one year, V and his new friend Evey struggle to evade the totalitarian government's advances upon them, whilst quietly sowing the seeds of widespread public rebellion.

The totalitarian government in question is the UK of the future, in a dismally recognisable society which looks just like our one, but thanks to the American production style also feels uncomfortably different. I was particularly impressed with the vision of the media in a few decades' time – still churning out propaganda, but to an apathetic public who are now so aware of it, that they have actually become used to it.

V: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

This is a society in which the general populus live in a box, under the illusion of freedom.

How disturbingly familiar.

Terrific, thought-provoking film.

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Eminem

God's love is meteoric,
his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic,
his verdicts oceanic.

- Psalm 36:5-6a (Message)

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Bartholomew Jojo Simpson

I'm in deep, deep trouble again.

- Psalm 31:9b (Message)

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Ace Rimmer

What a God!

- Psalm 18:30a (Message)

The Mighty Thor # 383: This Secret Love--!

Writer: Tom DeFalco
Penciler: Ron Frenz

I probably only bought this because it tied-into the Secret Wars. I certainly only read it this morning because it did.

It's a morality-tale which the Enchantress conveys to her sister Lorelei via a lengthy flashback to unseen events on the planet the Beyonder made.

While it's great to see further original Secret Wars material, (published after Secret Wars II had finished!) by necessity it can't really get too story-driven. However the Enchantress' journey is one that elicits some sympathy from the reader, and thereby endows her otherwise shallow character with some sort of depth. By turning her suitor to stone, Lorelei is effectively a mirror, representing the more self-centred woman that the Enchantress used to be.

Web Of Spider-Man #26: Nothing To Fear...

Plot: Stefan Petrucha
Script: Len Kaminsky
Pencils: Tom Morgan

Never was there a more inaccurate Spidey cover than this one – the story's not called "The Best Laid Plans...", and his black costume - on the cover twice - never gets so much as a mention! In fact, being "an untold tale of Spidey's past", the Marvel Chronology Project actually place these events during Amazing Spider-Man #251 – before he even got his new duds. :)

I can see their reasoning though. The absence of any reference to his alien clothes strongly suggests that this all takes place before the Secret Wars, but with the presence of Joe Robertson as Editor-In Chief of the Daily Bugle, this story has to be squeezed into a very narrow window indeed. (within the words "HOURS LATER" on page 17!)

Stirring the pot, below we can see that Robbie also appears to have poached Clark Kent from the Daily Planet ...


Anyhow, this filler tale offers few surprises, although the concept of how Spidey would cope with a migraine is one of those real-life problems that Marvel Comics, and Peter Parker especially, are famous for.

Surprised he didn't attribute his headaches to the 'monster-tingles' he was getting from the Beyonder at that point in time though...

:)

Fantastic Four # 262: The Trial Of Reed Richards

In the 1980s, it was my dad who used to be the Goble who had a problem with the logic of current Doctor Who episodes. His concern was that, every time the Doctor landed on Earth in the present-day, no-one ever recognised him off the telly.

That used to mess with my head a bit. I mean, if the Doctor ever had met someone who did recognise him from that show on BBC-1, then theoretically he could have then landed the TARDIS at BBC Television Centre and met the actor who was playing him. But then... surely he would only be able to do that because it had been written by the author, who he could also meet?

Now obviously, apart from that episode in 1988, the Doctor always travelled in a universe which was similar to ours, but didn't have the TV show.

Other shows have been more adventurous with regards to seriously examining just how thin that fourth wall is. Moonlighting could be very post-modern indeed some weeks, the silliest week being when David and Maddie chased the villain off their set, out of the studio and right across the film lot. However in its more dramatic episodes, their world was painfully real again.

There was an episode of Mork and Mindy when Mork met Robin Williams, and it was only then that Mindy was a bit phased by the resemblance.

Perhaps the finest TV crossing of the threshold was The South Bank Show's doco about author Douglas Adams, in which Ford and Arthur from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy crossed universes into one where they were only fictional characters. Ford finds the documentary's script, and, horrified, asks Arthur to say something completely at random. Well obviously, Arthur's improvised wording was very very improbably spot-on.

But the award for the grandest reconciliation of the real world with a fictitious one must surely go to the Marvel Comics universe of the 1980s.

In their superhero-saturated version of Earth, a fictional version of Marvel Comics Group itself existed, publishing comicbooks based upon the recently transpired adventures of the anonymous Spider-Man etc. For a while, Captain America, in his artist alter-ego of Steve Rogers, actually got a job drawing himself in his own adventures!

But I don't think I've ever come across an issue as near-to-burning as Fantastic Four #262 entitled The Trial Of Reed Richards. (see – I got to it eventually)


Writer/artist John Byrne is getting hassled by his editor – Mike Higgins - for this month's issue. It's not really Byrne's fault that he's so late though – the FF are giving him the runaround with regards to what adventures have actually happened to them lately...



However Byrne's luck is about to change, as he gets to witness the FF's next escapade first-hand.


Whisked beyond the physical plane, the Watcher transports our hapless protagonist to where the Fantastic Four's latest adventure is already in progress. Specifically, where Mr Fantastic is on trial for not killing Galactus a while back. That's right – for not killing him. Galactus later went on to kill billions, something that Reed must prove that he was right not to prevent.

And that's where this story really takes-off. Court-cases are generally the fourth-dullest plot-device, (after interviews with the cast, clips shows and love stories) but Reed has to stand-up for his sense of right and wrong, even in the face of such emotive arguments as the death of 7 billion skrulls.

Worse, he doesn't just have to convince a jury of his innocence, but his prosecutors too.


Boy, let's hope Reed doesn't go and put his foot in it by saying anything really stupid.


D'oh!

Without any proof, Reed's logic and faith sustain him throughout his reasoning on the nature of universal right and wrong, as along the way entropy itself becomes the villain when we discover the origin of Galactus!

It's a deep, mind-blowing muse, all wrapped-up in a story about superheros and aliens. It's really what I got into comicbooks for.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned our space-faring writer-artist for a few paragraphs. That's because, tragically, once the action gets going he gets little to do but sit on the sidelines and watch, ultimately turning out to be irrelevant to proceedings.

It's a real shame, but an entirely forgivable one, given the high-standard of everything else going on in this issue.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Is this a sequel, or a remake?

I guess it's both. Early on, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) tells Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) that there's actually a second island on which several more completely safe dinosaurs have survived, so the latter sets out to 'rescue' his girlfriend, accidentally taking his child along too.

And, whaddayaknow, the dinosaurs turn nasty and chase everyone for the rest of the movie.

I'm not knocking the above at all, I'd have complained if they'd remained friendly.

This is exactly what it says on the box – more of the same, again. Cool.

(original movie here)
(Jurassic Park III here)

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

A refreshingly self-contained sequel, in fact so self-contained that it might even be a prequel.

Jim Carrey is the only actor to return from the original, although the opening shot of him rock-climbing from the back dares you to suppose otherwise!

And it is a terrific opening. The movie that it parodies is one that I've never seen, but even I still recognised it.

Ian McNeice knows exactly how to take a backseat to the film's star too, which really enables Carrey to shine.

The film is much ruder than the original, and grosser with it, but at least Ventura gets to deal more with animals in this one.

Once again this year, the giant Whitcoulls Santa is standing its mysterious vigil over Queen Street. However this year, a careful scrutiny might just reveal the sinister shadowy forces of evil that have actually been behind it all this time...

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Brian Hanrahan

They counted these utensils when people took them out and when they brought them back.

- 1 Chronicles 9:28b (New Century Version)

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Dr Zachary Smith

Oh, the pain!

- 1 Chronicles 4:9b (Message)

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

This is one of those sequels that is heaps better than the original.

After the effortless recap, the ensemble from the first film split-up to each follow their own journey, so there are several strong storylines in here, along with gags, gags, and more gags. The penguins are still my favourite characters, so it's good to learn that they now have their own spin-off show.

The only character who really gets short-changed is the giraffe, who falls in love with the hippo character. Basically any boy for whom Melman was their favourite character from the first film will be disappointed by these scenes.

The animation is spectacular on the big screen, (I wish I'd seen it in IMAX now) and the music still warms my heart. Looking forward to the next one.

(available here)
Related posts:

Madagascar
Merry Madagascar

Oliver Postgate

I feel I have to write just a few short words about TV legend Oliver Postgate, who died today.

Postgate is the hero who, with Peter Firmin, made tons of children's TV shows from the 1950s to the 1980s, and in so doing had far more impact on the UK's children than he can ever have known.

Ivor The Engine, The Clangers, Bagpuss... These shows were so charming that even though the BBC repeated them for decades, we never got tired of them, or started to moan about them.

Postgate's role? He was the writer, the voice-over artist, and the film-maker, spending much of his life filming the animated shows alone in a cowshed, painstakingly adjusting models, and/or pushing cardboard cut-outs around a background with a paperclip. No wonder I find him such an inspiration.


A few years ago Herschel bought me Oliver Postgate's autobiography for my birthday, which opened up for me a new window into the man's life and creativity.

In fact it reveals that one of his earliest animated series sadly no longer exists – the monochrome Alexander The Mouse.


The reason for this 1950s series' junking? Because there were no copies to keep in the first place. Alexander The Mouse was animated live.

Yep, you read that right. Animated live.

Postgate had to wrangle all the character cut-outs around the screen, in real-time, on live television, via some small magnets hidden underneath the table. And this was tricky work. Sometimes the poles would accidentally get reversed, resulting in a two-dimensional character getting repelled instead, and flipping over the wrong way on national television! And the only way of fixing this was to reach in front of the camera with his hand...

While I myself would love to see those early shows for all the right reasons, (admittedly as well as for a few wrong ones) I got the impression that he was quite pleased that those programmes had now been accessioned by that great TV-archive in the sky. After all, he made so much more to be proud of afterwards.


The Clangers - creatures on another planet who ate blue-string soup and spoke through a series of swanee-whistles. Again in the autobiography, Postgate tells of his production battles, this time arguing with the BBC because they wanted it to have a narrator. Postgate protested that all the dialogue in his script was to be spoken in whistles, and that viewers would understand the dialogue, because all the inflexion would be the same, and in context.

The BBC believed him.

So much so that they later hauled him up to complain about the draft script's bad language. Postgate had hilariously started one episode with Major Clanger trying to get the sliding doors to his cave open, and was to exclaim in whistles "Oh sod it. The bloody thing's stuck again." Now Postgate found himself arguing the other way, claiming that kids would assume that Major Clanger had said "Oh dear me. The naughty thing is jammed again." Postgate was beaten, and reluctantly recorded a narration track for the series after all.

Years later, in 1984, to prove his undying conviction that his narration on The Clangers had been unnecessary, Postgate attended a conference in Germany, where he screened an episode without the narration-track, before asking the audience if they had understood what was being said.

"But of course," the German audience-members agreed. "They are speaking perfect German."

Well, if you're German. A Swede who was present protested they'd actually been speaking in Swedish…

Speaking of international incidents, Postgate also wrote of his fears about the broadcast of the Clangers' most famous episode…

I shall always remember, with a certain dread, a note of realism that turned up in one episode. In it a human astronaut arrives in a space module and attempts to collect rocks from the Clangers’ moon. The Clangers try to help but he is alarmed. Many mishaps befall him. He slips into a soup-well, is rescued, runs away so fast that he goes into low orbit and has to be captured with a fishing-magnet, and is finally stuffed back into his module. There is nothing unusual about any of that. What was unusual was the fact that it was scheduled to be transmitted on the same
day as one of the Apollo missions was due to land on the moon. I pleaded with the BBC to show something else, but in vain. I am still haunted by the thought that if the mission had failed and the astronauts had perished (as well they might have done), that Clangers transmission would have been one of the blackest jokes in television history.


But I think that most people will agree that Oliver Postgate's best-loved creation is Bagpuss.

And yet the series in which the baggy old cloth cat and his friends would routinely find a lost broken thing and mend it was made in the tragic months following his mother's death.

How awful must the lonely experience of making those shows have been for him? And yet out of such unimaginable devastation, came so much joy, for so many, for so long.

In later life, with umpteen series behind him, Postgate remained creative, and became something of an activist against the nuclear deterrent, specifically against the misleading use of the phrase 'nuclear weapons.'

Weapons, he pointed-out, enabled the bearer to win a battle. The use of any nuclear strike however would result in the falling of both sides. The use of the word 'weapon' was sanitising a worse-case scenario into sounding somehow understandable.

He also pointed-out that war itself has become out-of-date, since it is now impossible for any country to win a war.

Stark, cutting observations.

The last memory I have to share is of his words in an interview he gave in 2005, about the modern state of children's television, and in particular what became of his own Noggin The Nog revival...

I think there's an economic side-effect of children becoming a market, which is that originality and fun have to take second place to the investment millions.

Well, the first thing I said was, there's no such thing as today's children, because children come along new every so often, and they don't belong to today until today has got at them.

People have tried to remake Noggin, for instance, for today's children. They put together a presentation, and then they had to go round the world collecting subscriptions to the immense quantity of money they would need to make it, a thousand times as much as I had.

They took it to each television station around the world, and each one wanted the story altered in order to suit their largest audience. By the time it had been round and come back again, it was a completely different story. It had absolutely no connection with what we'd done.

They regarded The Saga of Noggin the Nog as the basis on which they'd impose their own thing. I said, 'Look, if you want to go away and make a film about that, then do so, it's nothing to do with us.'

Our good luck was that we were not hampered by having to serve the purposes of money. Film makers, like publishers, go forward by looking over their shoulder. They do things that have already shown themselves to be successful. They pick up a formula and say, 'That works, we will do something else on it. We're putting a million pounds into it, we can't afford for it to be original.'

Or, as he had earlier put it to a group of Australian filmmaking students in the 80s:

You can’t reconstitute art from intellectual data. It is a part of love.

Thanks, Oliver Postgate, for all that love.

Shaun Of The Dead

I first saw this with Jamie at SkyCity in Auckland in 2004, and right from the opening shots it was clearly the work of people who knew comedy.

The eponymous Shaun blunders through his dead-end life totally unaware that London has been overrun by zombies.

And you can't really blame him. For while we know that all the odd events taking place in the background are the acts of the undead, for poor Shaun it's all real life, so he has to rationalise everything. The result is that you really do wonder whether he's going to sleepwalk through the entire movie without ever once realising that the world has been invaded.

It's another film of two halves, with the second taking place almost entirely inside the besieged pub, but despite the slight shift in horror genre, the finely tuned gags just never let up for a minute. Here's his girlfriend Liz, complaining to the hapless Shaun about his annoying best mate Ed.

Liz: "It's just with Ed here, it's no wonder I always bring my flatmates out and then that only exacerbates things."
Shaun: "What do you mean?"
Liz: "Well you guys hardly get on, do you?"
Shaun: "No, what does 'exacerbate' mean?"

The DVD is excellently worked-out too, containing material such as the spin-off comic strip from 2000AD, and in-character explanations of plot-holes, although this skips why they don't lure zombie-Philip out of the car again. (because I have to point it out, okay? :) ) Even the menu-screens carefully avoid giving away any of the film before you've seen it.


All DVD menus should be done like this.

The only real downside to this movie would have to be the almost constant swearing throughout, which reduces its potential audience considerably. The DVD even has a clip of the redubbed clean airline version, as though it's somehow obviously inferior. Conversely, that's the version that I would have preferred to watch, since an invented swear-word is usually funnier than a real one, and can be a whole heap cleverer. I could have watched that version with my mum, too.

Still, if you don't mind that, then Shaun Of The Dead is both a terrific comedy and a fine addition to the zombie genre.

Shaun: (TRYING TO PHONE THE COPS)"It's engaged!"
Ed: "How about an ambulance?"
Shaun: "It's engaged, Ed."
Ed: "A fire engine?"
Shaun: "It's one number, Ed, and it's busy! Okay? What you want a fire engine for, anyway?"
Ed: "Anything with flashing lights, you know?"

(available here)
(review of Hot Fuzz here)
(review of The World's End here)

Spaced

Spaced is 14 episodes of insanity, aimed squarely at thirtysomething SF enthusiasts.

I could tell you that it's a sitcom about a guy and a girl who pretend to be a couple so that they can move-into a flat they both need, but after the first few episodes, this premise gets almost entirely forgotten.

Tim (Simon Pegg) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson), along with their creative collection of friends, simply encounter the inane mundanities of life, but directed with with all the energy of an action movie. Nothing actually impossible ever quite happens, but with every character exerting such a unique attitude towards life, sparks don't so much fly as explode.

In one episode, Tim's mate Tyres (Michael Smiley) drops-in listening to a rave track in his head, driven by, among other things, the ringing telephone and hissing kettle. When he returns the following series, Tim and Daisy wordlessly take the phone off the hook and switch-off the kettle. The episode finishes with Tyres standing on a traffic island dancing ecstatically to the beeping of a pelican crossing.

Surreal? Yes very. But the dialogue crackles too.

Mike and Tim wait impatiently in Mike's camouflage van at a road block.

Tim: (honking the horn) "COME ON! COME ONNN! What is the hold-up?!"

Mike: (staring trance-like, and muttering spookily) "... there's been an accident... ...somebody got hurt..."

Tim: "Who?"

Mike: "...a lady..."

Tim: "How do you know?"

Mike: (turning to look Tim in the eye) "...because we hit her..."

Tim: "Did we?"

Mike: "Yeah, that's her there."

Tim turns to look through his window and screams.

Cyclist: (smacking on the window) "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING! IT'S BROAD DAYLIGHT! YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO CONSIDERATION FOR CYCLISTS!"

Tim winds down the window.

Tim: (meekly) "Pardon?"

Cyclist: "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING! IT'S BROAD DAYLIGHT! YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO CONSIDERATION FOR CYCLISTS!"

Tim: (facetiously) "All right! What's your problem?"

Mike begins to drive the van away, accidentally running over her bike and mangling it.

And yet, these supremely warped events happen to characters with such well-observed depth, that they put most TV dramas to shame. Here's Tim comforting Brian (Mark Heap) over his break-up with Twist:

"You're gonna be fine. You're gonna spend a long time thinking that you won't be, and then one morning you'll wake up and you will be. And then, y'know, for a while you'll miss the fact that you're not because it almost seems scarier when you are, because at least when you're not you've got something to cling to, and then, when you've got over that, then you're gonna be fine. Right? Feeling better?"

Just this once I actually watched the documentary on the DVD too – Skip To The End - which is also very well made. Simon Pegg's anecdote of conning the TV company into paying for a day's shooting of trailers, when the plan was actually to spent the afternoon doing retakes for the series, is the sort of grass-roots insight that you never get from carefully-manufactured press-kits with the agenda of selling a show.

Top moment here though has to be when, while filming an interview on location at the Spaced house, two fans coincidentally turn-up outside to photograph it. The terrific moment when they encounter Tim and Daisy emerging from the front door to greet them is the stuff that you have to be a fan of a series (any series) to really appreciate.

If you can get past the seediness, (and there's so much in here that it's easy to miss stuff) then Spaced is post-modern comedy gold.

Torchwood: Lost Souls

With CERN's (still beleagured) Large Hadron Collider getting turned-on in Switzerland recently, and all the inevitable science-fiction ideas that surrounded it, the team behind Torchwood made a one-off BBC radio episode about it all.


And, for what it is, they didn't do too bad a job.

It's got the whole cast, the right music, is the same length, and is set after the last televised episode, so for those of us who've been following the show, this is a bit of a bonus.

The story is simple, although a bit convoluted. As in The Sontaran Stratagem, Dr Martha's motivation to call others in to help makes come across as rather weak.

However, being radio, this is a much more verbose Torchwood story, affording a bit more comedy, with less sex and gore. In fact, like Torchwood's scenes in Doctor Who last season, the whole thing is much cleaner too, and a bit more like a fun science-fiction for it.

I should note here that whilst this production follows the last episode of Torchwood, it doesn't make any reference to the last Doctor Who story, and makes much more sense before it.

Apart from some of the acting, this was a distracting enough three-quarters of an hour, and a pleasant testimony that at this point in time, the Doctor Who franchise, whilst arguably quite weak in story-content, is nonetheless doing quite well to get to knock-out a spin-off special like this one.