Space Camp

Fig 1: Restraint

Flash Gordon (1981)

This is the third and final synched-review of late Seventies/early Eighties space opera movies. Guanolad, Jamas and Al have also covered this movie -check them out!

I am ten and- do you really want me to continue beginning my posts this way? Okay, how about this: I wanted to see this when I was a kid, arranged to watch it the first Saturday it got into town with my friend Paul (who I was 'sharing' with his weirdly jealous next-door neighbour), missed the first week, and on the last weekend, while mowing my Nan's lawn, watched then bicycle home past her house with my rival crowing that they'd just seen Flash Gordon and I hadn't. Screw you, Geoffrey McIntosh, screw you!

A bullet for my rival in friendship, Mister Memories, sir...

I eventually saw Flash Gordon  maybe twenty-three or twenty-four years later along with Mrs Simian at the flat of a workmate of hers, an expat whose lovely collection of movies also introduced us to such treats as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Mouse That Roared and one of my all-time favourites, School for Scoundrels. Flash was jokingly dreaded by both of us in advance, but by god we had a lot of fun watching it. I'm convinced I wouldn't have got half as much out of it at ten. Even now, I thought I'd be reviewing this with the old skeptical spectacles, and yet again fell for its prurient charms. I shouldn't enjoy it, but it wants me to. I can't take it seriously, nobody takes it seriously - god knows it can't take itself seriously. It's a beautiful thing.

This is the tamest 'kinky' picture I can find.

But let's try for some balance and address some ugly truths. This movie is kinky as all get-out. Leather, whips, leather whips, shorts, short shorts, leather shorts, thongs, spandex, gimp masks, bondage, drugs, and some of the campest lines this side of Scouting for Boys. And it's all deliberate.

The campness is a knowing wink towards the dated aesthetic of Alex Raymond's original strip, an appealing but unworkable welding together of Buck Rogers SF and the derring-do of a Douglas Fairbanks serial. This is borne out by the special effects, which switch the two-stroke whining sparkler-farting piano string borne rockets and painted cycloramas of the Buster Crabbe shorts (not those kind of shorts!) for studiously-designed models and a LOT of blue screen over lava-lamp cloud formations. 

Welcome to Mongo, hope you like red!

Once the rather wooden prologue connecting our three leads (Flash, Dale, Zarkov) is over and the All-American tee-shirt is ditched for Mongo attrire - in fact, once we're on Mongo, this retro design kicks in, and it sells the movie, really. The only gripe I'd have is in the lighting, which gives nothing in the way of shadows and makes the reds look garish, the gold look plasticky, and Mongo look a little two-dimensional. I'm not sure whether this is Mike Hodges attempting to replicate the four-colour look of Raymond's strips, or just dodgy direction, but there's probably too much hoving towards the old stagey serials in this approach, and not enough wide open spaces. I do bear a lot of goodwill towards the look of this movie and its aesthetic, but particularly towards the end it looks cheap, is directed flatly, and its realisation of the Hawkmen of Vultan aren't a patch on Barbarella's angelic Pygar, twelve years older.

Gaze into the Ring of Ming!

Vultan is of course Brian Blessed, one of a notable handful of Shakepearean actors hamming it up, supporting frankly weaker leads, though Max von Sydow and Chiam Topol are quite endearing in their fun as Ming and Zarkov, respectively. The straightforward script is given the minimum of conviction, and only then by Sam Jones and Melody Anderson - our leads and the weak links in the chain. Without them, however, and in the hands of actors more arch, I think Flash Gordon may well have been dismissed as a production just too knowing to be given its due. As it is, the balance is fine, teetering on lampoon, and the Queen soundtrack never really hits the highs of the famous theme song. Klytus is dispatched too easily and really has little threat, and his troops have the aim of graduates from Stormtrooper Academy.

Yup, if you're going to be in with this movie, you need to cast aside a too-critical eye, and maybe be a little longer in the tooth than the movie's adventure is pitching at.

But look - there's the ingredients here for a hell of a remake, and I hope Matthew Vaughan is taking notes as well as phoning The Darkness to do the soundtrack.

Blurred Lines

Today my chum Tim and I are going to brave Wellington's Very Big ANZAC Parade and venture out to one of Wellington's last remaining inner-city music shops to buy The Magic Whip, Blur's surprising new album (as in: "surprise! A new album!") I've juggled the idea for a few years as to how to approach Blur's discography, and as I've not long finished Manic Street Preachers', and the memory of the marathon that was Iron Maiden's discography is still fresh. Blur's set of seven studio albums to date is by comparison much more manageable, but for some reason I find the idea of sallying forth and covering another band - this band in particular, just a bit too hard. I've been a Blur fan for twenty years now (bloody hell. Seriously - Bloody Hell!), have read countless magazine articles, a Britpop biography and the bassist's autobiography, watched a few docos and their own very very good film story - and still I feel like I don't know them very well.

So the following is a potted mixed-up history of me and Blur via the means of a countdown of their albums according to me. If you've read this far, thangyewverymuch and enjoy:

The Great Escape (1995) Post-Parklife and the beginning of the comedown troika that reinvents the band and almost destroys it. Damon Albarn reduces his beloved Britain to shallow caricatures with caustic songs like 'Entertain Me', 'Stereotypes' and 'Mr Robinson's Quango'. There's so much more like that, but best to dwell on the successes: 'The Universal' and 'Yuko and Hiro' save this, really. Otherwise it's a spiteful, joyless stomping on Nineties Britain with no alternative offered. And then Oasis won the Britpop war to nobody's surprise. 

Leisure (1991) The debut album, unsurprisingly pulling in a lot of directions, many of them baggy and not a little saggy.  Very few bands indeed arrive fully-formed, and while this is fun, this is also Blur the followers and not the leaders.  The singles 'There's No Other Way' and 'She's So High' are harmless and non-threatening in such a way that it's interesting to note how much an impression non-single track 'Sing' made, earning it a key place in the Trainspotting album years later.

Think Tank – complicated and sad. If 13 is the break up album over Justine Frischmann, then Think Tank details the entropic effects of Graham Coxon's departure. There are some really good songs on this: 'Out of Time', 'Sad Song', 'Gene by Gene' and the sorrowful 'Battery in Your Leg', but Think Tank, being one foot in Albarn's politics and World Music dabblings, and one foot in Blur's heritage (including - inevitably- Gorillaz) is a discomforting body of work, and perhaps all the more interesting for it. 

Blur (1997) - the rescue attempt.  If I'm honest, I find Think Tank gets more of an outing on my stereo, but this nudges it because there’s more Coxon here. Also, 'Beetlebum', one of their best songs (particularly the instrumental coda) 'On Your Own', and 'Song 2' - the little song that broke the US when the band had long-ceased trying. 


13 (1999) – The millennium approaches, the band is hardly speaking, things fall apart, and William Orbit is around (with Stephen Street again) to literally pick up the pieces aided and abetted by ProTools. The result is never boring - from a spiritual 'Tender' opening, to some fuzzy, wiggish Bowie mugging ('Bugman') then to the some very trippy head music ('Battle', 'Caramel') the should-have-been-a-single culminating in a weary, weepy 'No Distance left to Run'. I love the flavours of 13, but it's not the sound of a band at its peak or in the midst of joy.

Modern Life is Rubbish (1993) – near-perfect,with the band firing on all cylinders distilling Kinks, Who, Small Faces and coming up with the true beginnings of their most recognisable sound, and kicking off their 'Life' trilogy. There's some great experimentation here: 'Oily Water' almost matches the live version from the Hyde Park reunion.  although the oom-pah shouting in 'Sunday Sunday' gets a bit much, and possibly the album is one song too long.  That said, it's indispensible.

Parklife (1994) – Where pretty much everything falls into place. The battle of Britpop doesn’t exist, and the zeitgeist is wholly grappled and pinned down. From the bouncing, bassy sun-drenched onlooking of 'Girls and Boys' to the wonderful shipping forecast lyrical closer, it’s an album that can be listened to end to end, and is still the band’s grandest sweep of British life in the mid-Nineties. For me it was a slow grower, and the first and still the most significant album of theirs I bought. The Clash may have formed my in-head soundtrack to a 2000 landing in London, but it was 'This is a Low' which fed the return home, and a flight over the northern coastlines of the British Isles.   

And so to The Magic Whip?  We'll see...

Fakes Seven

This is the second of three synched blog reviews with Jamas and Al - check them out!

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

It is 1980 and I am ten. I have never heard of this movie. In 2014 I finally see it. Can I stop now?

Oh, alright then.Three years after Star Wars borrowed elements of Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, another 'noted' name of Hollywood sysnonymous with low-budget, profit-making schlockbusters did the same, purloining the master's Seven Samurai - and setting it in space!

Of course, between Kurosawa and Corman there was John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven, and it shold be said that Battle owes much more to the Western version, stealing dialogue and one of its stars - Robert Vaughn playing virtually the same character, as it does. I haven't seen Sturges' film, but I have seen Kurosawa's, and I'm biased, because my ideal sci-fi adaptation of Seven Samurai features robots (the Meknificent Seven) and was written by Pat Mills Tharg.

Corman's robots aren't bad - all disco moves and all, but they're no Hammerstein and company, and so the rest of the movie falls - too many humans in bad makeup, not enough sci-fi spectacle, and a space ship with a really distracting rack.

You have to give props to an actual spaceship to try to upstage Sybil Danning, but the organicaly-designed Nell does - for the most part, helped along by the very very thin character given Danning's Valkyrie, secreted somewhere between her Thor-lite costume and increasing innuendo. Seriously - Google will provide what I won't: fill your boots.

Our hero is Richard 'John-Boy' Thomas and a rag-tag bunch of desperadoes - the aforementioned Vaughan (taciturn gunslinger - nice idea, but phoning it in), Danning (The Howling II is only five years away!) and an affable George Peppard as an actual space cowboy ("I'm from Earth - ever heard of it?") alongside some nice but frankly squandered ideas - a female robot technician who technicians no robots, Nestor the gestalt entity who has a really nice jellyfish-like spaceship, and Cayman - a lizardman who is the last of his kind (awww.)

All have reasons valid and spurious to off chief baddie Sador, a limb-replacing, shiny-faced megalomaniac who farms civilisations, destroys planets and never leaves his ship (maybe he's in another movie? I wouldn't put it past Corman.) Honestly - would it have hurt Corman to actually have a end-level fight with the big bad and the hero on their feet and properly duking it out rather than all these interminable dogfight scenes? I don't care if they were the work of James Cameron - this is one of many wasted opportunities!

I'll draw this thing up. I'm glad I've finally seen Battle Beyond the Stars, but I fear a year of film studies and The Galaxy's Greatest Comic may have spoiled the novelty for me. This movie is just too contrived and cheap - its spaceships made from butchered Star Wars models, its dialogue lifted from another movie. As it turned out, I do believe I have seen this movie - or bits of it at least, aged fourteen watching the daggy ends of Tom Hanks opus Bachelor Party, where segments feature as part of a 3-D movie at the film's climax (still my favourite part of the movie - both movies!) Had I seen this aged ten, chances are my memories would be as fond or at least as vivid as those I have of The Black Hole. But at fourty-four I'm officially Getting Too Old For This Sh*t. And that's my review of Battle Beyond the Stars by Roger Corman.

That Trailer...

No! Not THAT one. Jeez, that's everywhere - what could I possibly add to all that? Nice trailer. Very exciting. There, done.

No, I mean this one . Here's the earlier-than-planned teaser for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice,

I really hope you didn't actually look at the teaser in my small window and instead checked it out in HD with fullscreen loaded up, because visually it really is rather lovely to look at - especially now that we have the real deal and not some Brazillian shaky sneaky cinemacam (boo!)

So anyway, yep, it's a teaser and we're still over a year out from the movie. I say this because my first reaction was a quiet "uh-oh"  - to be honest, it looks like it plays directly into the hands and mouths of the vocal crowd who hoot the usual mantra about DC being "dark and gritty" and therefore not fun. Well, what did you expect?

The central premise of the movie is the first-ever cinematic head-to-head between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight. It's happened in comics and in animated adaptations, but here it is in live action - a big deal, so of course you put it in the teaser.

Some positives, then: Affleck looks pretty good in the Bat-suit, and there's an obvious study of Frank Millar's Dark Knight comics in Zack Snyder's direction. Crikey - Henry Cavill looks like a TITAN in his costume (and most of it is him!), and the recognisable voices - Holly Hunter, Jeremy Irons, Jesse Eisenberg - Neil Degrasse Tyson, are really intriguing. Props for what looks to be Mexico in one crowd scene (the Day of the Dead one). If so, it's good to see some other non-US locations in a superhero movie these days.

And it's dark. Of course it's dark. It's always darkest before the Dawn - and guess what this movie's subtitle is? I think far from this being a hasty attempt to build a Justice League franchise inside a Superman movie, or a misguided muddying of a Superman sequel putting Batman front and centre, this looks to me more assured than that. Superman is front and centre here - the teaser is a direct callback to Jonathan Kent's warning to Clark in the first movie, so this story can only be a logical sequel, even if the first movie suggested a more optimistic ending. Millar's The Dark Knight has been shipped in, but it's intriguing to see the roles of the combatants reversed here - instead of Kal El being the government stooge sent to wipe out the renegade Batman, here we seem to have a Batman brought out of retirement and into some very heavy armour to neutralise the new Public Enemy Number One.

 And of course there are some notable omissions - no Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman and (maybe) Flash; Lex and Alfred are there in voice only. I can't wait to see them, but that's obviously being saved for further down the line. Really, if you're going to set up your stall around one of the biggest stand-offs in comic history, then this is a pretty good way of setting the scene. Roll on teaser number two!   

Friday Night Local: Sneaky Feelings - Husband House (1985)

Crikey Fridays - trailers everywhere! If you haven't already seen the Star Wars one then you might have seen the Batman vs Superman leaked one. Coming soon: the same thing with motion control and no Spanish subtitles!

Yes, it's the season. And the change of seasons is the subject of tonight's Friday Night Local. Last week I did all I could to not put another Shihad video up, because even then it was two weeks gone from Daylight Saving, and so a song that begins with the line "Put your clocks back for the winter" - though appropriate and wholly deserving - not to mention useful, just seemed an indulgence. So here instead is a song that marks the seasons change while being about something else.

Sneaky Feeling were a 'Dunedin Band' - one of the classic acts from Flying Nun's roster, although since their early triumph at making FN's much-lauded 'Dunedin Double' EP twinset, it seems the rest of the band's life was spent for the most part escaping the Dunedin label, while at the same time fighting for recognition from their record label. It's a complicated and somewhat fraught story, told much better and more personally by chief spokesman and frontman Matthew Bannister in his must-read memoirs Positively George Street. I was not a fan, but felt more than a little alliegance wit them during band days - they were local, they were somewhat 'outsiders' among the cool alternative Nun set, I could claim a vague familial connection with one of them, sat in lectures behind another, and so it went. But they didn't fit the Flying Nun label, and they weren't the only band to suffer for this. Bannister does a nice line in sardonic observational lyrics, but it's safe to say there's probably no other ex-FN act that can boast a teacher, archivist and high commissioner in its collective future.

And no other Flying Nun act produced a 'Husband House', with its opening crawl across the Sew Hoy factory and Speights brewery rooftop, goofy chess-club cool video, and irresistable droning chord refrain, which I stole for at least one of my songs back in my guitaring days. Some form of suspended A, if I remember it right.

'Husband House' of course observes the approach of Autumn with the not-too-shabby line "the season's old, and the leaves have turned to gold/and the wind blows cold from the south." It might sound a little pithy, but anyone who's experienced a southern winter in the Feelings' home town will know exactly what Matthew Bannister is talking about - and if you don't, just cop a view at theose wonderful rolling St Clair waves, delivered hourly from the South Pacific ocean. Now that's cold water surf. And speaking of rolling, mister projector sir:

Right Next Door to Hell

This post is one of three synched posts covering nigh-80s sci-fi movies from Paul,  Al and Jamas. Check 'em out!


'The Black Hole' (1979)

As a young viewer, or one new to the cinematic form, the experience of entering a movie theatre must be a kind of surrender.

 I am nine, and having been one of Oamaru's biggest Star Wars fans, nothing is going to stop me from seeing the next best thing. So far I've braved an omnibus edit of Battlestar Galactica (the first two episodes cut into movie length for foreign markets, NZ included), but this time I and the kids next door and up the road, are seeing the new Disney movie The Black Hole.

I've not heard much about it, except that it's a Disney film - so I'm sure it'll be good, and it has spaceships and robots in it  another plus. I enter the theatre, the lights go down, my young impressionable mind dutifully surrenders to the images and unfolding story on the screen - and despite some false bravery for my fellow movie-goers, I'm not a little traumatised by this movie, and don't really recover from its impact for a while. I did manage to recover enough to buy the read-along 45 story version of it, though. I still have it, in fact.

The Black Hole occupies a discreet stage in Disney's development; before it fully branched out into mature adult-oriented movies under the Touchstone Pictures brand; its late Seventies, early Eighties family movies have distinct edges to them - this, Dragonslayer, Tron and Something Wicked This Way Comes are all movies which sit uneasily with the rest of the fare from the House of the Mouse. Dragonslayer and Black Hole would by my estimation definitely be the most mature, and deal with very adult notions: The Black Hole, despite being riddled with the rigours of fifteen drafts between 1974 and its year of production, is at times a philosophical piece, a moral play exercising a very Christian form of judgement on its central villain/s. Your actual mad scientist aboard the mysterious Cygnus, Dr Reinhart, is part Nemo (Verne's Nautilus captain, not Pixar's clownfish) and part Ahab, and has in effect entered a Faustian pact with his creation Maximillian (some viewers read the relationship as the android having the scientist in its thrall, perhaps by telepathic control), and both are delivered in the movie's controversial ending to a literal scientific purgatory within the event horizon of the titular stellar morass. Despite this surreal and deeply disturbing scene, I don't even remember the hellish ending scenes (perhaps I covered my eyes?), and naturally they and the question mark fate of the surviving heroes of the good ship Palomino are brushed over somewhat on the 45, so this latest viewing - probably only my second - had me watching the last five minutes with my adult mouth agape.

 Still, this is not a conventional horror movie. There are no jump scares in The Black Hole, more a creeping tension that builds slowly (too slowly for some, as it turns out.) The largest scares are not scares in themselves - Reinhardt's robot guard Maximillian is simply a massive red wall, a bulking construction of plate metal, a baleful red eye slit and two arms termination in pinning, shredding blades. Subtle he is not, yet it's still a remarkably intimidating character for its silent hovering in shot - a serous bogeyman. Worse is the reveal of the true nature of Reinhardt's android technicians, zombified souls trapped behind mirror-masked cowls. Nightmarish stuff.

There are pitfalls. As Guanolad notes, the casting is a little flat, with senior actors for the most part playing senior roles - there's Ernest Borgnine, looking for all the world like a dress rehearsal of James Doohan in his last years. Anthony Perkins doesn't last the film (another horror flashback moment!), but Meg Tilly and a later career revival beckon anyway. Maximillian Schell is a pretty good Reinhardt, but is called to give a largely linear and saturnine performance; there's only really a brief instance where he reaches out to the sole female character in the movie to 'protect' him from his monstrous android alter ago, which invites any further intrigue. More successful characters are the two speaking robots: both are unapologetically Disney, with the urbane yet surprisingly scrappy V.I.NCENT voiced by an uncredited  Roddy McDowell and the battered and beaten B.O.B by  Slim Pickens. They're hardly the stuff of Asimov, but robots of the time were still a developing phenomenon onscreen, and it's not as if Return of the Jedi's comedy pairing four years later was Citizen f*cking Kane.

The model work is very good indeed, despite some rushed-looking matte compositions towards the end, and some obvious green screen fringing. Internally the Cygnus is deliberately vast, shrinking its visitors to Lilliputian dimensions and in most areas of the interior the design is noteworthy, too. All burnished bronze and shadows, with only one room all banks of flashing lights and screens - otherwise the Cygnus is an empty vessel, quiet corridors and impassive crew. While on the outside it resembles a prone Eiffel Tower with battleship turrets, within it has the menace of an unoccupied Bond villain lair. Reinhardt's dining quarters are urbane with their gilt chairs and chandelier, but the spectacle of the slowly whirling maelstrom outside is dis-quietening - the whole place is convincingly 'off' from the get-go. Rounding this out is John Barry's superb score - I got lost in its swooning strings.

This is definitely a movie of yesteryear, but thirty-five years on doesn't appear to have dated any more than it seemed at the time anyway. The Disney effort has a 'one-foot-in-the-sixties' earnestness that at least spares it from resembling too closely the lazier Star Wars rip-offs from around the same time (which we may well cover in further synched blogs.) A quick glance at my fellow bloggers reveals that yes - this is a movie which divides its audience, and so cast me in (or out if you must) among the lovers. That surprises me, but I don't think I'll be sending off for a hair shirt at the same time.

Two Cars, One Night

A quick and dirty post tonight, I reckon.

Lately I've been hitting the charity shops, a habit I've picked up from Mrs Simian (whose thing is Crown Lynn earthenware but is open to all sorts of stuff), and one I share with Jamas. The hospice shop in town has been occasionally fruitful, uncovering small treasures both minor (some Fighting Fantasy rulebooks) and really cool (a MINT condition Moldvay-era Basic Dungeons and Dragons set with Erol Otus-illustrated box and plastic geo dice (crayon-ready, but sans crayon.)

It's also a good spot for kitbashing gear, namely old toys. From two expeditions I managed to grab these guys:

This is a 1903 Peugot made in 1969 by Lesney, one of the classic Matchbox manufacturers. Well, that's what the Internet tells me, but any Dr Who fan will be able to tell you what it could double as. Corgi were the original makers of the Third and Fourth Doctor's 'roadster' Bessie, and a few of these are still to be found online, particularly as replicas were released ten or so years back with a reissued DVD of The Three Doctors. Black Tree also made a version in white metal which is now out of stock and goes for crazy prices online. I don't have either, so this will do thankyou very much.

 It's in rather good condition, and were it not for the fact that these are not uncommon and go for much higher prices in immaculate condition with their old canvas tops and boxes, I'd baulk at drilling out the rivets, cutting out the back doors and windscreen, removing the spare tyre and back brackets and rearranging the lights and lamps. But don't convince me otherwise because I'm really happy with it and think it'll work out fine. A shame to paint over the brass, but there you go.

There's also this guy:

I thought this might have been a Happy Meal toy, and it was, but it was only when I spotted the Pixar name on the underside that I realised what - or rather who, I was looking at. What's up, Doc? Not a lot, because he's been much-loved by some kid. His crazy random-direction third wheel mechanism doesn't really work very well and his winder's lost its get up and go, but that's okay. The cardboard windscreen will go and some serious kitbashing will go on here. Doc may not ever resemble the 1952 Hudson Hornet he was based on again, but I think he'll look fine, if not a little mean and road-rashed. Oh yes, I have a very interesting future planned for this old boy...

Good Friday Night Local: Easter Edition.

Tonight I wasn't gong to do a Friday Night Local, I was going to post about Easter instead. But then inspiration struck and I thought to myself, as they say in Mexico: 'Why Not Have Both?' Welcome then to a very special post.

I am not a religious Simian. Oh, for a while in my past I definitely was; and then, almost overnight, I wasn't. A story for another time, perhaps. Despite this, I do find myself reflecting on the origins of Easter a this time of year. What a surpirse, you might think. Funny old world.

Here in NZ Easter comes at the begining of autumn, so any sort of hissiness about the appropriation of traditional seasonal festivites by the Christian church sounds about as silly as complaining the same of Halloween or Christmas down here. Our seasonal festival calendar just isn't working out being project-managed from the other side of the world. But here we are with Easter anyway, the spring festival at the end of summer.

In the Simian household we've settled into some traditions around Easter. You can't guarantee the weather will be good, but it's harvest time for the garden, and so the tomatoes are coming in, the bok choi is being picked over daily for bastard cabbage white butterflies, and planting for spring (dill, garlic maybe, broad beans) will start soon. Feijoas are in season, and after a delightful Easter in Rotorua a few years ago, they've become something of an Easter treat for us now - muffins and crumbles alive alive-o! nd of course, though summer is no time to be scoffing fruit cake, April in the southern hemisphere is quite fine for tucking into hot crossed buns, true comfort food. With one day left of daylight saving I've started fixing up some dodgy bits of paintwork around the house exterior. The spirit was willing over summer - it really was.

Let's talk about the video, though. ere's Shihad's Stations, from their debut LP Churn, now a sprightly 21 years old. Crikey. I do like this song, but even at the time I didn't receive the song's title as anything of religious significance (it was the future Mrs Simian who took me aside to tell me, you see); and so the video with its Christ (played by Headless Chickens' Bevan Sweeney) walking the stations of the cross seems to match the title of the song, if not the lyrics themselves. Anyway, as far as I can recall, this is the most Easter-y of all NZ music videos, so why not?


Have a happy and safe Easter, everyone!

Ruby and Ferris: Done!

So yeah - I done gone and finished basing Ruby and Ferris, put Ruby's helmet on, and now they're done and good for quarantine display - whatever that is.

Not much to report, although this is the first time I've used my matte varnish - Testors Dullcote for those of you playing at home, and I'm pretty happy with it! Rather cynically (for reasons mentioned in the linked post) these guys were my first try-out on the spray, and as the result is no overt shininess or yellowed finish, I'm sold. Legions of lovingly-painted miniatures will soon be ready for their close-up!