A Load of old Tosche

 When I was a nipper and watched that Star Wars the character I identified with most readily was Luke Skywalker. He had blonde hair like me (at the time) and a strong sense of moral justice. "It's not fair" he'd plead, pleasingly for a hero destined to be The One. As years went by I finally switched onto his brunette mate, who had the lines, the charm, the spaceship, the gun-slinging skills, the bravado, the hairier friend and got the girl in the end - although knowing how that turned out you can forgive young "Wormy" for dodging that particular competition.

Where I did still identify with young Master Luke is in his interest in Tosche Station, where the power converters come from. My eye was always drawn to the background. The sky, the liver-coloured mountains of Tatooine, the strange fluting and Morse Code-like lighting or whatever they were behind  Moff Tarkin's meeting on the Death Star, the grimy walls of the trash compactor, the endless stars, and the sky again. That blue, seemingly endless expanse that promised so much but hemmed Luke in. Against that the promise of Anchorhead and Tosche Station did sound exotic and interesting. Whatever could it be like?

Turns out, much more of the same. Another set in Tunisia (I knew that much about the location even back in the day, despite me calling Luke's home planet "Tattoonie" for probably a good year). We get to see the location, meet some of Luke's friends (well, Biggs we meet again later, the rest are perhaps more fairweather chums) and learn that young Skywalker has a nickname! That didn't last

Perhaps the scene is too long and in the wrong place, but I love it for its blue sky, new scenery, worldbuilding (we finally meet those friends Uncle Owen griped about!) and a bit more of gauche Luke before the whole Rebellion and later Jedi-dom proves such a buzzkill. And Biggs has a sweet space-cape. 

So far, no reinstatement, despite upwards of four revisions of the original by Lucasfilm. Nor any clean-ups or restorations - this scene is D.E.D ded, I guess. Except for fans; so among the considerable number of remounts, remakes and repairs, here's something that blends the missing from the might-have-been to bide us over. Now, about those power converters...

A Box of (Past) Delights

 A recent trip down home unearthed a bounty of old playthings and bits of playthings from... oh, over thirty-five years ago. Yikes! They all came in an old, slightly garagy box, near bursting with nostalgia and forget. 

So: what's in the baaahx...?

Ooh. It's densely packed! And everything's individually wrapped. What sort of twisted mind would do such a thing? Oh yeah - that's right. I did that myself.

A plethora of playthings are here. Some of it useful (missing original Kenner line Star Wars Stormtrooper still in pretty good nick! Hello, boy!) And some probably not so much (a Hot Wheels ramp without its struts, some terrain for a WW2 field gun, its parts and crew probably long since tossed to the four winds.) That green Matchbox car might be salvageable. There's even some promising modeling work here, maybe. Like... 

Bits of spaceship models. There are three separate examples here, none of which are or likely ever will be complete. The Space Shuttle is missing its tail fin at least, and was never finished in its day, so it could be.  

This Apollo 11 'Eagle' lunar lander I'm undecided on. It's definitely not complete - and some of the surviving plastic bits are so thin I'd consider replacing them with something sturdier, like brass rod. That said, I do have the plans  - as brief as they look; and allegedly the classic Airfix model above is not known for being entirely accurate. Oh, the astronauts are there, too. A little bit disembodied in the limb department, but might be worth a crack. Unlike... 

...this guy. Who is some more parts of this guy See - I knew I had some more pieces! Beats me where the rest is, though. Even with these bits reunited, the result might have to be... creative.

And some vintage transfers for racing cars and hot rods. I say vintage transfers because I'm pretty sure these days they'd be a download file somewhere, rather than be something you'd actually have to hunt down and buy in your local model shop. Or combination bike shop, fishing gear shop, toy shop and model shop - which is what we had back home, and in my mind it was - and remains, awesome.

So, a few more projects here to add to the pile. And in the mean-time, a bit more clutter to put in the basement.  

Jim Baikie

As mentioned elsewhere, my entry point into 2000AD prog-wise was the early 300s, and in those initial issues a short-lived strip was begining to wind down.

Skizz, by Alan Moore, was the story of an alien interpreter from Tau Ceti crashing to Earth and evading the Authorities with the help of a local kid. It was E.T, I knew, but I also recognised that Moore had other things to throw into the mix: this wasn't the autumnal suburban hills of California that Interpreter Zhcchz was dragged into, but central Birmingham amid the bleak early 80s winter of Thatcherism, record unemployment and bleak opportunity Its human protagonist is Roxy, a girl - still a newish thing for 2000AD and in retrospect predicting Moore's realisation of the same in Halo Jones.  In short, it's E.T meets Boys from the Blackstuff by way of a little bit of contemporary TV (Philip Sandifer nods towards the likes of Minder and Grange Hill, but therese are minor influences at best), and while the clash of realism and fantasy would recur in the years that followed in the comic, this was the first roll off the slipway, and one of the best-remembered.

Key to me is Moore's script alongside the art of Jim Baikie, whose time at 2000AD was just beginning, Baikie had come from a variety of UK illustration jobs, often working on various licensed products and titles (Monkees, Star Trek, Hammer House of Horror, Look In and Countdown, for which he provided some Doctor Who art) plus forays into TV spin-offs such as Charlie's Angels, The Fall Guy, and more recently, Terrahawks. Like Moore he had a previous association with Warrior magazine, and was imported into Tharg's team from there. Baikie has a pen-based apporach, with  nice heavy brush on shading anfd a flowing approach to his linework. I can see a lot of contemporaries in his work - Jim Burns and Steve Parkhouse in particular. He likely co-created the look of the kangaroo-like Skizz with Moore, but he could do fantasy well enough - although it's the realism in his work which sells Skizz and becomes a recognisable trait in his work. Baikie's humans arent the elongated strips of sinew that Mick McMahon rendered the likes of Dredd and Slaine, nor the beefcake slabs of muscle under Bisley's tenure, but realistic, unexaggerated forms. His Dredd looks harder for this, and importantly for Skizz, his Lol,Roxy, and tragic no-hoper Clarence Cardew look as though they've come off a Birmingham high street - their fates accrus a pathos because of their recognisability.

Outside of Skizz Baikie also turned his hand to Dredd, helping out with the mega epic Oz, and providing some memorable shot stories and one-shots - in particular the three-part Hitman with its loathsome, toad-like human assassin, and the classic In the Bath which features early 90s cranky Joe Dredd doing what he does best... well,that would be telling.

Baikie went beyond the parent comic to work on spin-off Crisis, where he collaborated with John Smith on the action-oriented New Statesman, as well as turning up Stateside for a brief run on Star Wars. The relaunched Eagle magazine saw him team up with fellow Scot John Wagner for their dinosaur romp Bloodfang, which I look forward to covering in a future instalment of Where Eagles Dare.

In the early Nineties he returned to Skizz for the second series as an artist-writer, giving the story a more satirical edge, but the first story remains the superior, and I'd say so because of its more worldly elements. 'Reliable' is an epithet I apply to a lot of artists who turn in just that sort of work - consistent, faithful, relatable, and it's no dismissal agaist the likes of innovative artists like those above. Blaikie's work remained no less recognisable and was always faithful to its subject. Those first few encounters with his work in Skizz made a big impression on me, and no doubt will remain for some time.

Rest in peace, sir.

Jim Baikie 28 February 1940 – 29 December 2017

The Force With Us.

Last weekend some of my childhood arrived in the post, in particular, 90 per cent of my Star Wars action figures, and my cardboard Death Star playset. Here it is:

Obviously, there’s a bit of restoration work to be done on the Death Star, and there’s the question of my missing Stormtrooper (I wonder if I have it here in the house?) AND everyone’s missing firearms (will just have to make some new ones I guess), but hey – Star Wars figures back! And I hadn’t even missed them, really. Surprisingly though, their unearthing by my brother and their arrival did trigger a small frisson of excitement and nostalgia for me; and as Mrs Simian (and Jet Jr) insisted that we open the two large parcels as a family, I can attest that, yes, there was considerable interest and explanation of who was who, and a roll call taken.


The Junior Simian is intrigued, as he hasn’t really been exposed to Star Wars until now. Oh, sure, he has some Kinder Surprise bobble things from last year, and he’s seen the Lego game of the prequel series; but hard plastic blobs and pixel shapes do not a space saga make. I was seven when I saw Star Wars – I couldn’t possibly have been any younger and I still think it’s the perfect age to watch those movies, but times change and kids change. And so after careful parental deliberation, the verdict was read: Jet Jr could watch Star Wars with Dad while Mum had a lie down. But Dad was in control of the remote. Better he discover these stories at home than (shudder) from the playground…Do I care just a little too much? I hope not. We watched the Special Edition of the movie now insistently called A New Hope. As my copy of the ‘original’ print is the miserly letterbox version released with the Special Edition DVD a few years back, it was sadly no contest. Our TV screen is a good size, but it’s not THAT big to make a difference to the picture quality . It nearly killed me to do this, as outside of the SE of Empire I’m not a fan of those editions at all (the Jabba scene got sped through – goodbye, bad CGI and unnecessary dialogue repetition!), and Junior wandered out during the Greedo-shooting-first debacle, so no expended explanation was necessary for why Dad’s teeth were making a grinding sound for a few seconds there. Maybe I do care too much? 

Anyway, what did the Junior of the Simian house make of George Lucas’ debutante Star Wars movie? It was hard to say, really. There were bits he clearly enjoyed (Luke and Leia swinging over the Death Star chasm probably the highlight; got bored during the final X-Wing assault), and he wandered out of the room for a couple of key moments (no Obi Wan death scene for him – it traumatised me as a child, so no issues there), and some misunderstandings of the plot got quickly papered over (did you know that the film’s opening scene features a lot of guys sleeping in a space ship corridor? Well, now you do), but on the whole I think he enjoyed it, and certainly it’s been the topic of conversation for some of the week past. Hey, it’s made a nice change from requesting Bruno Mars videos on YouTube and announcing updates on which of the Beatles are still alive. And favourite character: R2-D2. Good choice. Pick the guy with the best lines. Doubtless in time the lad may want to see it again, or some other Star Wars stuff, and the movies will be doled out carefully. I’m not a crazy purist – we’ll likely do all of the prequels, whatever he wants to see, really, but all in his own time.

The Fourth Awakens

Rogue One, a Star Wars Story (d. Gareth Edwards, 2016) 

Well, I went and saw a new Star War tonight with my brother in law, as yet another installment in our 'due diligence' series of paternal gazumphing our boys' keenness to be part of the new Disney soft reboot shuffle. It was pretty good. Fantastic in places, a bit slow in others, a little wobbly in the plot department. Needed editing - particularly in the first half, where the movie was mainly concerned wth introducing its large cast and getting them to where they need to be in order that the main story begin.

The Star Wars universe was always classic Space Opera thanks to geography-busting hyperspace, but Rogue One's storytelling expediency has our heroes reach just where they need to be within five minutes of landing anywhere. Maybe, perhaps for the choppy first half, this is just as well, because it seems there are a lot of ducks to be set in a row in this movie before the action-packed second half gets into gear.

 That's a curious thing for this movie and its place in the Star Wars movieverse. I remember when Star Wars Insider magazine used to run a semi-regular column dedicated to readers who had found a friend who (gasp!) Had Never Seen Star Wars. That was... maybe fifteen years ago? In 2016 I think we should be able to decare that quest run to its logical conclusion. Nobody has not seen Star Wars now, surely. And yet despite its existence as a crowd-pleasing filler, Rogue One does go out of its way to explain, point out, and generally colour in the gaps for anyone who isn't already aware of the film's general story and maybe why there's no Wookie in this film.

Given that, this is (to me) the second attempt by filmmakers old enough to have at least lived through A New Hope's arrival in cinemas to pretty much tell the story from a different angle.
I suspect, in fact, that Rogue One is kin to The Force Awakens in both being irresistible attempts to re-tell A New Hope while 'improving' on the latter's limitations. A broader scope, greater diversity of races and species, more spectacle, a less lumbering baddie.

But once the story kicks in it does crack along, and though it's a well-worn observation, new droid K2SO is a fun addition - a sardonic and blackly comic foil with an intriguing hang-up. 

K2SO. Magnificent bastard.

K2SO is in places a practical effect, that approach so championed in SFX these days. There are of course two characters almost entirely reconstructed through CGI ... but as for finding our way out of Uncanny Valley, I think we're still not there, yet. But we've made good inroads, and maybe within five years we might actually be there. Suffice it to say, I think they really cracked it in A New Hope.

Should you see Rogue One? Yes, go and see it, and enjoy it. I was relieved that between the first trailer and the final cut some changes had been made. Not all reshoots need be a disaster, and it appears a different edit has done wonders to Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso, a character who really didn't appeal at all to me in those first teasers. The supporting cast are pretty good, and Ben Mendelsohn's Imperial foil a nice addition.

Still not sure whether I'm on board for Han Solo, though.

Space! (Walt's)

Happy Star Force Day everybody! Look - I'm your Father!

So here's something I made earlier. Nope, it's not a kit, and I just used our own bits and pieces and a photo reference. As far as I can tell there are bits of Batmobile here, some Millennillimum Falcon Microfighter bits and a Lego Friends windscreen and no small number of hours. Probably at least three evenings' worth in front of the TV right there. 

So in making my own I saved myself, let's see... Oh. "Retired Product". Heh. Not in this house, George.

Not in this house.

Fear of a Chicken Duck Woman Thing

Last week found me casting my mind back twenty years or so to the temporary musical career of the younger Simian, and how, aided by a nifty cassette Walkman since lost in a freak library incident, a friend managed to play one of my compositions (fittingly titled 'Rewind Mind') backwards. Taping the resulting sounds, we picked out weird semi-words and phrases, putting together a new version of the song which my friend (rather uncharitably, I thought) dubbed 'I am a Dwarf' from its most-repeated alleged utterance. In the end we failed to find the Devil in my music, but as an experiment in backwards masking we were lucky to find anything at all. I wonder where that tape got to in the end...

Anyway, I love serendipity, and the moment where something accidental and organic gives birth to a new and exciting creation. Sadly, most of my best artwork arose out of slips of the pen or brush, and many a waking dream has provided inspiration of some kind. My hat is off, then, to this month's ear worm, borne of a line from Bad Lip Reading's treatment of A New Hope. If I'd thought that their earlier Redneck Avengers was a work of quiet genius, then this raises the bar again. Funny, surreal, and oddly moving.


Better than anything George came up with, I reckon.

Kooks

Earlier this week I checked in to a sweltering Sydney hotel at the end of a tiring flight to a work conference. As I approached the registration desk my eyes wandered up to the tv screen on the wall behind; local, trivial news played out in silence while headlines ticker-taped at the bottom. Among them were three words: 'David Bowie Dies", with the following precis a vague note about 'rumors on social media'. They just sort of hung there, and then drifted offscreen while my fatigued brain tried to process it - naturally, I wasn't sure whether to believe it or not. Finally in my room I turned on the tv to a news channel and the truth revealed itself. It was 7pm local time, and according to reports, London was just waking up to the news.

My first thought was of Jet Junior - he's a huge Bowie fan. I'm not sure why, although lots of music was playing in our house when he was young, and as a toddler visually he seemed to connect with the more flamboyant, like Ziggy/Aladdin Sane era Bowie and Live Aid Freddie Mercury. It brought out the flamboyant kid in him, too, randomly stopping lunch during a visit from Granddad with an impromptu and never-to-be-repeated lip-synching of Suffragette City. He was determined to go to New York to meet his idol, and invite him to join his band. My own discovery of Bowie was a very long process indeed, but my boy just took to him very readily - we share a love of the Ziggy album, and he especially likes Low, the instrumentals in particular. This drove his mum a little bit nuts when he kept it on high rotate for a while.

Mrs Simian and I had spent last Monday morning discussing my imminent week of absence and what the two of them could do while I was away. He's not seen The Force Awakens yet, so why not take him, knowing now what would be in store in terms of heavy plot turns? Little did we know bigger stuff would of course be just around the corner. I hated not being at home with him when he heard the news; he was, apparently, very upset.

Meanwhile, Australia was processing the news as well, and it was front page splash stuff at breakfast on all the papers. Mention was made of Bowie's connection with Australia, the Let's Dance and China Girl videos, his sometime hideaway in Elizabeth Bay and his outspoken views on Aboriginal rights. At the conference the chosen theme music of the first day (Starship and Pseudo Echo - there was a damned good reason. There had to have been) segued the following day into a quiet background set of Bowie's best, which was a little distracting for me as my ears kept straining to place the bits and pieces during workshops. Was that Moonage Daydream? Yes! The Man Who Sold the World? Of course. 'Heroes'? Inevitably. Attendees of my generation shared their impressions of the news in quiet moments, and it was in a small way cathartic.

I returned home, finally, in the weekend, to a tidy and quiet house. The news had dissipated, with life going on, but Jet Junior and I shared a wet afternoon in front of You Tube, with him in the driver's seat and an awful lot of Bowie playing. He's still to see The Force Awakens; will there be tears after that, as there were on Tuesday morning? Not sure, but this time I'll be around, just in case.

In the Years of the Scavenger.

"I do get the feeling that by listening to the album we can kind of get closer to you than we have for many years, in terms of knowing who you are and where you are at?"

[Pause]

"You know, Jonathan, that'll never happen."

Bowie on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, 2002.

I first discovered David Bowie in the early Seventies as a young child, listening to The Laughing Gnome played on the Sunday morning children's show on an orange Aztec radio in my room. I can't remember what I thought of the song - I think I liked the sped-up voices.

I first discovered David Bowie in 1979, in television advertisements for the Australasian collection 'David Bowie! Chameleon'. Snatches of songs - 1984, Sorrow, over the top of weird and jarring images from his music videos lingering in my young mind. DJ featured heavily; Venetian blinds, mixing desks, a gas mask and boiler suit.

I first discovered David Bowie in 1979 on Star Trek, a compilation of Sci-Fi-themed music and songs. My brother and I had bought it for the Star Wars and War of the Worlds themes, probably, but this also featured sound-alike versions of Space Oddity, Life on Mars? and Starman alongside other knockoffs of Elton John, Boney M and The Carpenters. They were the definitive versions of the songs for me until...

I next discovered David Bowie on a three-album collection of Sixties British pop, the real Space Oddity featuring alongside the likes of The Honeydrippers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Petula Clark and Cliff Richard. The box-set collage featured Bowie in an anachronistic Ziggy guise. I wasn't taken in.

I then discovered David Bowie as a creepy, unearthly figure, the singer of the irresistible Cat People (Putting Out Fire) which loomed large in my pre-adolescent subconscious, and of Ashes to Ashes, an even freakier video in which he tiptoed around a woozy landscape dressed like a scary clown (or, as I noted mere months later, Doctor Who in 'Watcher' form), or as a thrashing astronaut brought down to a suburban nightmare. Even I knew that Major Tom was a junkie by then. 

Then I discovered David Bowie with Let's Dance and China Girl; and, inspired by information gleaned from a courtesy cousin 'enthusiast', made my own compilation of Bowie songs, one side of a C60 cassette combining the various records we had and off-air radio recordings. "That's Bowie-", the excited announcer cries out at the end of Let's Dance; an addition I'm utterly unable to edit out, but which at least convinces me that once you're on top of the world you don't need two names. Like the rest of my class I was a fan. Briefly.

Then I forgot Bowie, and found him again, and set him aside once more for other things. He did duets with Tina Turner, movies like Labyrinth and Absolute Beginners, the Glass Spider Tour, floundering fare like Tonight and Never Let Me Down, and a classmate was such an ardent fan I avoided Bowie for years.  I was done. There were more interesting and less try-hard and pretentious artists out there. Like Sting!

I discovered Bowie in the smoky, incense-fogged bedroom of a bandmate on a loose Saturday night not gigging. He played Hunky Dory and pointed out, quite rightly, that it had a lot going on over the Flying Nun stuff I was immersed in. Even Andy Warhol.

Then Bowie turned fifty and had a big party with my university favourite acts, like Robert Smith, Frank Black, Billy Corgan and Foo Fighters. He released Earthling and Little Wonder, went all drum-n-bass and jungle, and in the middle of a brief but colourful UK glam revival in the Nineties, I was intrigued. Bowie pointedly didn't do the glam bits, but he didn't need to when the likes of Suede, Babylon Zoo, Spacehog, Placebo, Nicky Wire and Todd Haynes were happy to tip their hats to the master.

I rediscovered Bowie wearing headphones in a city dentist's chair in Wellington, listening to a supplied CD (Suffragette City), one of the most exciting songs I'd ever heard the man play. And being played by a Cuba Street busker (Ziggy Stardust). He was everywhere. I bought two compilations (The Best of David Bowie 1969-1973, The Best of David Bowie 1974-1979) and listened to it - selectively.

Then Bowie came to Wellington, and on a very rainy night I went to the concert. More on that later. Graham Reid produced three excellent overviews of the man's music for Radio NZ, interspersed with some earlier interviews. It was an education, uncovering more deep cuts to my growing knowledge - The Belway Brothers, Memories of a Free Festival, It's No Game. I think I still have the tapes somewhere...

Dad Rock ensues. Nothing to see here.

Then I rediscovered David Bowie through Jet Junior, who was, like many of his generation, an early adopter of the futuristic. Bowie songs grew and grew among our bedtime song collections. I finally discovered the simple genius of Absolute Beginners and its gorgeous C#m to Gdim drop through playing it on a ukulele of all things. But then, as Jet Jr would remind you, Bowie composed Lust for Life on a ukulele, so there. Kooks was my favourite to sing to him, and still is.

I'm still discovering David Bowie.

Alarmed Forces

[This review is synched with Jamas' over on The Truth Behind. Check it out!]

Hello, and so I done saw That Star Wars today.

Spoilers! You've now been warned , thankyou :)

The Wars Awaken (Prequel posting)

Tomorrow I'm going to see Star Wars The Force Awakens. I'm keen to see it - I won't lie, but, you know, my days of being a super huge Star Wars fan are still nearly forty years in my past.

I've posted on that thing before, so I won't rehash it here, but inevitably, this road towards the first original post-Lucas instalment in the Star Wars saga has involved me watching the original trilogy with Jet Jr.

It's been a really interesting exercise; although I own the DVDs (special editions) of the original trilogy, I haven't watched them that much, and never realy watched the moies uch outside their cinema screenings. I remember the surprise and bewilderment I felt when I missed a video night at some friends' place and they reported they'd watched the 'entire' trilogy on VHS in one sitting. Why? What could be so interesting in that? It was that far off my radar.

Jet Jr is currently Star Wars mad, the phenomenon having elbowed superheroes firmly aside, it no jostles shoulders with Thunderbirds. But like a lot of kids his age and a little older, his reading of the series is different - it's definitely for him the story of Anakin and Luke, and the Anakin/Vader connection - once encountered - is just second nature. On the other hand, me watching it with him made me watch The Empire Strikes Back in particular in a way I hadn't properly since maybe 1981 or so. And even then I was convinced Vader had to be lying. It's been... educational. Whereas Darth Vader was the definite (ultimate?) bogeyman of my childhood, to Jr he's the most interesing character in the series, bar the two main Droids of course. Of course, he's not seen ALL of the movies yet...

So, tomorrow the new chapter opens and I'm seeing it with my brother in law under the guise of 'due diligence' for our kids' sake. One reason Jr and I haven't seen the prequel trilogy is because I'm not sure he'd react that well to its darkness, so if the new movie is aimed more at mature fans (and the front page of the local paper somewhat depressingly illustrated this in photos of last week's local premieres)  then The Force Awakens might wait awhile before the young man gets to see it. It won't change things, and it won't change his love for the movies he has seen, I'm quite sure of that.

As for me? We'll see...

May the Fork Be With You.

Jet Jr's birthday cake this year, taken in the quiet moments before some unspeakable scenes of disassembly and consumption.
Few Bothans died to bring him this, but there was a lot of blistering language from his parents as they put it together on a very hot day. Cutting Artoo was even more of a logistical exercise than 2010's Dalek cake.

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.

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.

Star Child, War Child

May the 24th Be With You.

May 4^th was Star Wars Day, of course, and what better occasion to take a day out and solemnly reflect upon the enormous impact this movie series has had on our lives,the lives of Disney's marketing arm, the lives of our loved ones, and those of our children – perhaps even our children’s children.

Sigh.

As I’ve outlined a few times before, my history with Star Wars is extremely uncomplicated. I was seven when I saw it, and saw every movie on the big screen first. It occupied a HUGE amount of my fevered imagination as a child, was re-fed when I hit double digits, but I knew I was over it at the age of thirteen – everything since then has been an exercise in nostalgia with diminishing returns and that, really, should be that. There’s more Star Wars to come next year, though, and I have to confess that small, long-dormant neural endings in my brain have begun to spark a little recently – especially since the release of THAT picture. Next year Jet Jr will be the same age I was when the battlefront of Star Wars reached te late-lamented Majestic Theatre in Oamaru, so you could say I have at least a small investment in the nostalgia and, if some may insist, ceremony.

Jet Jr will be exposed to this new iteration of the series in a different way. He attended a birthday party last year to a kid thesame age as him which was a Star Wars Angry Birds theme bash – bash being the operative word, as foam lightsabers, running combat throughout the house and wild unfocussed Xbox games were the order of the day’s activities. JJ, oblivious to the whole Angry Birds thing, not to mention Star Wars itself, just saw it as a lot of running around with the occasional pause to watch the crashing graphics. He wasn't outwardly confused, ut it's not really part pof his world yet, and maybe if I have anything to do with it, it won't be for a while.

He and I watched Star Wars a few months ago – in fits and starts, with Dad’s finger judiciously paused over the skip button on the remote. I’m no shrinking violet – I had friends who fractured arms and collarbones jumping off their dad’s garage while playing Superman, but I held off my skeletal injuries until they were properly scary – in my thirties. If I view the whole space saga with adult and parental eyes then I can ill-afford myself to not exercise a little censorship / leave some juicy discoveries for when he’s a year or two older. Frankly, war games and body horror aren’t part of his play vocabulary yet, so all in good time, I think.In the man-time, his favourite characters from the movie were the Droids and his favourite moment the Death Star chasm ropeswing. All good - I think I would have been the same at his age.

There is, of course, a third way – to watch the movies with him, as we have already done. There’s a fine and genuinely moving example of this courtesy of film-maker dad and one-time AintItCool reviewer Drew McWeeny over on his blog on HitFix, and it really is worth a read. McWeeny’s blog has, however, been a timely reminder of just how much the prequels up the violence count – I was a squeamish young Simian with Star Wars’ lopped-off hands at seven, let alone Obi Wan’s bloodless self-sacrifice. What would I have made of Darth Maul’s bifurcation, Jango Fett’s decapitation, Anikin’s immolation? Probably something like my disturbed reaction to the extreme deaths dished out in The Black Hole (Disney’s volley in the family-oriented Sci Fi boom of the late Seventies.) Beyond the body horror and gunplay McWeeny also reminds me that the stories are emotionally a gut punch – particularly the prequels, wherein a hero to his kids through the Clone Wars cartoons undergoes a traumatic and (hitherto unknown to them) horrendous physical transformation into one of cinema’s enduring baddies. The gradual reveal of the dark end to Anikin’s early life is drawn out in McWeeny’s blog, making it an arresting and confronting read.

McWeeny writes very well (AICN has been the poorer for his departure), and I find him quite relatable, even if my brows were furrowed a fair bit at the age he introduced his offspring to George Lucas’ opus - they age three and six at the time of their exposure, and one of those ages, parental presence or not, seems quite young to me. But kids can be surprisingly media savvy these days, and more media literate than I was. You, dear reader, may differ in your mileage. I'll be lining up to see Star Wars' seventh chapter sometime next year, but for myself, I don’t think Jet Jr is ‘there’ yet, and his time will come a little later on.

And in the mean-time, those McWeeny links:

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...g-of-star-wars

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...ack-on-blu-ray

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...ries-continues

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...nes-on-blu-ray

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...lls-from-grace

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-c...y-shared-tears

Strangeness on a Train

I am thirteen, it is the dawn of a new year, and I and am about to set foot on the North Island for the first time.

1983 was the first year I'd left the Mainland, spending a week on Stewart Island for a school trip in Second Form; but this time, for the 10th New Zealand Scout Jamboree, I would be in Fielding for  ten days of outdoor activities, burgeoning testosterone, cold showers, open-air latrines, physical challenges, military catering and some of the worst sunburn of my life.

Scouting for me was a central activity from the ages of around eight through to around eighteen, and being a young simian a lot of my early life experiences involved scouting or variations of it.  There had been an Jamboree at the local racecourse 'round the corner from my house in Oamaru in 1978, so when I was old enough to make the trip myself, it was a no-brainer. I reckon that in our town that summer of 1983-84 was a halcyon period for many parents who, given the choice, could have shipped their boys entering or in that 'difficult age' off to such parts as Fielding, Palmerston North (where my brother went for a Venturers camp), or Mystery Creek in Hamilton (for Boys Brigade. I distinctly recall checking off my backpack contents with my Dad (who hadn't put his teeth in... details...) in our post-Christmas lounge the day before I was to take a chartered train up the east coast, then over to Picton, across Cook Strait to Wellington, then another three hours to Fielding.

The train journey was long. Looong: around 24 hours on the rails with l only two Making of the Return of the Jedi, the first issue of my new comic order from the local bookshop - (I'd ditched Eagle for 2000AD), some preserved ginger (I hated the stuff, but my Gran, assuming the opposite, always made sure I got some for Christmas every year) and a carriage full of adolescent males shouting, wrestling, playing cards and generally stinking the place up to pass the time. It was Lord of the Flies on rails. But, we made it through the night, saw in the new year while  in transit (one of the lads was a Bowie fan and duly played 1984 at the appointed striking of midnight.) By morning we'd reached Picton, boarded the Interisland ferry and carried on over to a quiet and grey looking Wellington - I'd never have thought it would be my future home.

The main event was a hell of a thing - a virtual tent city with seemingly hundreds of camps for individual contingents from all over the Asia Pacific region. It was all pretty chaste stuff, while there were stories that a boy had been stabbed one night on the other side of the camp, I talked and swapped badges with kids from Australia, Canada, the US and the Pacific, left my own contingent for twenty-four hours on an overnight tramp in a nearby forest; and though I dreaded what I took to be an inevitability, in the end I was sad to see the camp's abseiling tower abandoned at the end, unassailed by me. The photos I took from the jamboree are, I presume, long gone, and by memory would have been dull fare indeed - camp sites, Manfield race track (where it was held), and a few other tricked up sites of other scout contingents (Mt Roskill had a banner based on the Return of the Jedi poster which I'd thought was very cool). My memories of the trip and the event are now nudged along by some remaining artifacts - the books I took to read with me, an open air film we watched en masse (weirdly, Battlestar Galactica: Conquest of the Earth) and pop culture snippets (number one at the time: UB40's cover of Red Red Wine, local high flyer - Split Enz's Straight Old Line.) I developed a strange addition to carob bars; and with my fellow troop devised ways to avoid the Roman-styled latrines and the regular wave that would pass under the unwary sitter as it flushed the rows of seats. The showers were something else: open-air, cold water and communal.  My friend Alister managed to brave the boggy entrance to the plywood ablutions block and exited cleanly laundered only to slip arse over kite and land back in the muck again. Ee, but we were 'appy...

So much for scouting and my one and only jamboree experience, but it was an exciting, tiring time, and looking back from thirty years on, a clear disembarking point for some old my pre-high school life (I was so glad to be shot of intermediate school - and frankly, Jedi saw the end of my Star Wars interest) and the hopping-on point for a lot of new stuff and new friends.

So - New Year's Eve 1983, thirty years ago.

Watch it before Darth Flannel finds out!

A brief update and yes it's come to this, a Star Wars one. Who'd have thought?

Now, as I've been at tedious pains to point out, I've been not a Star Wars fan since 1984, but I need to say that when its makers decide to clamp down on the spirit of sharing and cultural blending that has actually sustained the franchise and enabled it to turn a profit in leans years and flabby, I can sympathise with the fans who might see it as a rebuke against THEIR love of the series and how it can span the borders. So as I say, enjoy this, the third installment of Withnail and I/Star Wars before the dread cohorts of The Bearded One have it blocked, as they did to the wonderful first installment with Uncle Monty*.



(*that is, of course until they can find a way cough!*Robot Chicken* cough! to make it hack!*Family Guy* huck! profitable for them, naturally)

Donna Summer, Disco and Sci-Fi

"One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right."

-David Bowie, Sound+Vision

Donna Summer died yesterday after an undisclosed battle with cancer. With her, I feel a little of my childhood is now gone. My earliest recollection of Summer's work was probably when I was nine or ten, visiting with my brother the house of one of his friends. His friend had Summer's early Best Of, 'On the Radio' and was playing it, while his Dad, the local police sergeant, came into their lounge and dismissed the singer as "a moaning cow". We thought it was pretty funny, but the song stuck with me; hearing it frequently later on, of course, the radio, it's still one of the earliest Donna Summer singles I can easily recall. The big song of Summer's earlier career though was probably always on the radio, just not one I'd associated wth her at the time - 'I Feel Love'.

'I Feel Love' owes much to Summer's voice, but for me it's the arrangement of Giorgio Moroder that sells the track; an escalating of upper register vocals gradually climbing the scales through each verse until, finally, releasing, Summer returning to a middle range and delivering the song title in a simple repeated line for the chorus. It's a killer, and it's no surprise to me that the song's been sampled and adopted by so many over the years. The chorus is what reveals Summer's presence more, almost a snarl of a delivery compared to the seemingly modulated vocals building previously. I doubt there's any more electronic trickery there than the usual production, but the way her vocals sustain the single-note "ooooh"  with every line while a flanged synthesiser wash follows further down the scale (the closest you're going to get to a bass line in this song) and Moroder's looped rhythm track repeats its own climb up the scale, turns the vocal into another synthetic trick. It's such a succesful matching that Summer's voice is less recognisable for it; for some time I though it was Debbie Harry, another of Moroder's later collaborators.

The looped rhythm is hypnotic, perfect for the dance floor and the sound of Disco, a rare movement in music for its futurism. The late Seventies saw a natural convergence of the highly-synthesised Disco sound with the ascent of popular Sci-Fi on the big and small screen, and so the likes of Moroder, Meco (who memorably Disco-fied the themes to the first two Star Wars movies), and the incorporated SF elements in the look and music of artists like Eruption, La Belle, Boney M and Earth Wind and Fire are for me intrinsically linked to the experience of watching Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (whose chrome Cylons are the epitome of Disco-tech) and Logan's Run at the movies. Given the association it's little surprise that Beyonce would later reference the style for her own stage attire. And with her, of course, the likes of Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga. Disco for me is the soundtrack of Seventies Sci Fi, and I haven't even mentioned the likes of Geoff Love and Jeff Wayne. Need I?

So farewell, Ms Summer. A voice destined to be with us for ages to come.

"How Dare You. How DARE You!!"

When I was a child I spoke like a child,
I thought as a child,
and I viewed movies as a child.

When I was a student I put away childish things and I viewed movies as a student.

Now I am a man, I realise I can have both things at the same time.

And also

Thankyou, Morgue and the internets!

Back on a Roll

The further back I look, the harder it gets to find my first encounter with the phenomenon of Dungeons and Dragons. Likely I saw pictures of the game and read about it in books just as I was exiting childhood and entering adolescence, but it might be earlier than that. I had an issue of the Star Wars comic (actually I had two and that’s the sum of my collection!) which had an enticing cartoon advertising the game, and it’s possible that that same issue was also advertising the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings movie, such was its infiltration into popular media of the time. In 1982 the movie ET attempted to show a game in progress (further discussion on that here.)



The Greatest American Hero even pitched in on the trend working in a (very silly) story connected to early misbegotten LARPing games in real life, and later still TSR in relaunching the set for an 80s audience ran a serial advertisement in UK comics (2000AD in my case) to continue the marketing push. All of this served less to explain the game to me than promote more confusion, but with that, it did increase its mystique. It was simply a game I HAD to find out more about! So the advertising worked, due in no small part to my overactive imagination. By my 14th birthday my brother and I had a set – the red ‘Basic’ box rather than the older Advanced D&D rules (they really didn’t name things these well, did they?) and we set to, armed with a couple of handy independent guidebooks to help us on our way. This was the best of the bunch – British in origin and approach, and full of really useful insight into a game our parents were absolutely dumbfounded by and just didn’t understand. Which, in its own way, was rather cool; it made the game all the more ‘ours’, though it didn’t help me accrue many more associated books, modules and game aids because of the fact.

From that age I played the game with school friends, as did my brother with his, and for two or three years it featured quite heavily in my extracurricular life, fitting somewhere between youth group, scouts and venturers, and (thankfully) girlfriends. My characters came and went, as did my playmates, and eventually so did the game – revived over a couple of university summers mainly to recapture some of the old magic when Paul M, one of the old group, returned home from the Navy for the holidays. Things eventually went really quiet; Paul and I moved away for good, we found spouses and he even moved overseas. Before making that move though we had one ‘last’ game, with a few local friends and his brother – Jamas has it blogged here. It went okay – being as we are all grown up with less free time the games were rushed and business-like. For the most part they were okay – some of the old magic was there, albeit framed by adult duties responsibilities – that’s life.

This weekend Paul’s back for a limited time. We have one day set aside to return to the mines of Barbigazl and undo the wrongs committed in the first place. Will righteousness prevail? Can the heroes see it through and triumph? More to the point, can we fit this in over one Sunday before the inevitable call to come home for dinner? We wait to see!