Suicide is Painless

This month I had a stop-over in Gisborne for work. It was wet, I don't know anybody there and was a bit anxious about what was in store for me the following day, so rather than cooling my heels in a motel room with bad telly I took in a movie. I saw Suicide Squad in a small-town cinema at a late session with six other people including three of the local youths - loud voices, confident swagger, armfuls of candy bar popcorn and selfies galore. What the hell I thought, they may be more the movie's dynamic than I am.

But in the end I didn't mind Suicide Squad and some parts and characters I quite dug. It's certainly not the ultraviolent hoodlum gangster flick I feared it would be, and is more likeable than Batman v  Superman, and though it fell a little drunkenly between stools (namely the grimy urban vision of David Ayer's original shoot and the dayglo gonzo of Trailer Parks' reworking) it falls just short of recalling some mid 80s B movie fare in giddy pleasures. Perhaps I responded to this movie from a background in comics like 2000AD's Strontium Dog and Bad Company, where motley bands of outcasts find their honour in the spurned work of normal men, and redemption the insurmountable odds of doomed battle. Truly, Squad is to date the most comic-strip looking of the modern superhero movies, relishing in its colourful grotesques.

I find my reactions are frustratingly akin to those of others. - yes Margot Robbie, Will Smith and Viola Davis carry the movie. But yes also Jay Hernandez deserves more recognition for his doomed Diablo, and Joel Kiniman does a lot with his character Rick Flagg's character - enough, in fact, that I'm sorry the movie didn't make more of Flagg and Deadshot's grudging alliance seen through his eyes; the normal man amidst Amanda Waller's crew of deadly circus turns. Jared Leto is hard to gauge - he's simply not in the movie enough, and could have been edited out for the most part, which isn't to say I wouldn't want to see his Joker return, it's just that Squad is not a Joker movie whatever the marketing and trailer might have led everyone to believe. 

But, like Batman v Superman before it, Suicide Squad has turned out to be a different beast from the slick production the trailers promised. It is a little lumpy in places, and the third act looks like it's had some chops that would make F4ntastic Four snigger. The musical cues are all up the wop in places and in others are about as blurty and welcome as the soundtrack to a DIY programme. Cara Delevigne dances about as well as I do in her big scene, and there are other casualties along the way. Katana and Killer Croc hardly get out of the gate and are timidly underused, the former especially as Flagg's hired muscle. Boomerang has to feature in the Flash movie if there's any justice. We just see too little of him, and a comic foil with his rough unrepentant charm would to my mind be more fitting than Harley's "irksome" self-aware needling. 

But Jeez - it's not the end of the world, and it's not cinematic trash. It's guilt-free gung-ho hooligan heroism, with a powerful foil in Davis' Amanda Waller (essentially the true villain of the piece.) Its part in the DC cinematic universe is well-earned with some fun and effective cameos by two Justic League members, and its graphics are awesome. It's by no means perfect, but I can't help liking it. Let justice be served - let's see them again. 

Postscript: Justice has of course come to this movie, weirdly enough. The critics have been effectively silenced, and Squad has become the Little Blockbuster That Improbably Did. It's out-grossed Captain America : The Winter Soldier without a Chinese release, and out-profited Iron Man, its soundtrack has just gone gold, and it's Will Smith's most profitable movie. It's made a star of Margot Robbie and Harley Quinn into a future movie lead. This despite a lingering well-below-par critical score and acknowledged production and editing issues. The future for Suicide Squad looks bright, I'd say, though some of the above will assuredly make it an interesting one. And I can't wait to see what makes it onto the Blu Ray.

Lead Time Lords: The Twelfth Doctor

Hullo! And welcome back to a new instalment of this lumbering series. There's more to come, so sit down, grab a stiff brandy and settle in.

Here, then, is the Twelfth Doctor, in the form of Crooked Dice Studio's lookee-likey Tucker Newman (great name.) Up until very recently CD were the only game in town for a Twelfth Dr figure, but new licence-holders Warlord Games have just teased everyone with their (slightly taller) version of him in his Hell Bent duds - hoodie, red 'lectric guitar, stupid f***ing sonic specs and his journeyman walk looking for all the world like the Mid-life Crisis Doctor he's sadly become. God I hated last year's season - for the most part. They do say no-one loathes Doctor Who more than Doctor Who fans.

I do digress, because the figure here is Peter Capaldi's marvellous, abrasive, alien Doctor in his first year, replete with his Hartnellesque lapel-hooking finger, his magician get up (check out that flash of red lining!) and that majestic pair of eyebrows. Why, I was so intimidated by those space caterpillars that I didn't dare finish painting his eyes for fear of catching the wee man's baleful gaze.

There was a bit of planning here, but no modification needed. It's a beautiful sculpt by CD's reliable Ernst Blofeld sorry, Veingart. Simple but effective, with the aforementioned overturned Crombie jacket front to break up the navy and charcoal stovepipes (I cheated - it may well be an all navy ensemble, but I wasn't going there.) He was a pleasure to paint, with a great likeness and very forgiving face (except the eyebrows, obviously) although I expect I may yet return to him to tidy up some of the blue and maybe... maybe, attempt those eyes. The cobblestone base is mine and I'm rather chuffed with it.

Cripes - he's looking my way again. Aargh!

Video Affects: 'Wuthering Heights' - Kate Bush

It's a point of historical fact that for probably the first years of my life my family don't own a modern TV. Ours is big, blocky, and black and white. When we finally have the luxury of two TV sets, the old one is housed for a while in the bedroom of my older sister, and on it of a Saturday evening she, my brother and I will watch the early evening fare before bedtime. Probably The Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk or Little House on the Prairie. But crucially also, among my sister's M*A*S*H and Scott Baio posters, some tidbits of pop music via classic chart show Ready to Roll. I am eight years old, and about to have one of the great frights of my life.

Picture a night-black studio, its floor smothered in dry ice fog. Out of it and strobing with the same video feedback trick that made The Jackson Five's Blame It On The Boogie so memorable, is something more starting. A ghost. A wailing, wide-eyed spectral woman in white with a high pitched mournful song that could only itself be about a ghost. At eight I think I've heard of a banshee - and this seems the most accurate depiction of one I could imagine. Somehow, I think the song's creator would approve.

Kate Bush's oeuvre has always had elements of the supernatural and horror about it, from Hammer Horror to Experiment IV, the opening snippet of Night of the Demon leading into Hounds of Love to the wonderfully (and literally) batty cosplay on the back of fourth album Never For Ever. But no song is as redolent as Wuthering Heights, its Gothic imprimatur well intact. Unsurprisingly for what follows, Bush is a revelation - and Wuthering Heights sets out her agenda with aplomb. Eerie, arty, outsider music of a kind which ought not to be able to escape its Seventies trappings were it not for Bush's own ability to follow the trend and her ability to reinvent herself.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For the moment this is the first time I'll ever see Kate Bush, and I'm ready to run to the hills in terror. There are two videos for Wuthering Heights; this is the lesser-seen one, but it's the one that will haunt my nights for a good few weeks to come.

The Mighty Bush

Times dictate that I must post this today, for today is the day that Kate Bush has her birthday. Happy Birthday, your majestic Weirdness.

Flap-flap-flap! It's a bat.

Kooky, spooky, and very very talented, Kate Bush landed on Earth on this day in 1958, and announced her presence to humankind twenty years later (more on that in another post). By this time she'd pretty much written out her career, and for the next two decades at least, she'd continue to be a significant presence in the UK pop world. She was young, gifted and weird. Arty, intellectual, sexy, exotic and cooly distant, she'd write, compose, choreogrph and direct her impressive body of work almost from day one, all the while maintaining the same destatchment that would mark her persona and probably frustrate her fans. There aren't many artists like her around these days, and there weren't then, either.

Bush Goes Full Achilleos

My first encounter with la Bush will be the feature of my next entry, but like Bowie before and after, her career and public presence (the two being virtually one and the same due to the artist's strict control over her private life) was something that I drfited through. I remember select videos and song from her early years - Wuthering Heights, Babooshka, Running Up That Hill, and the rest was pretty much catch-up.

Catch-up took place for me in 1990, and my second year at Uni. Having joined a band I was a young man very much in pursuit of new musical ideas and influences. My friends and I were all into easily-accessible student fare - local alternative bands, Flying Nun rostermates, Pixies, Smiths, REMs, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and so on. The result was that in all of this common ground there wasn't much I could call 'my' taste - it was simply shared with too many others. And then my brother's then-girlfriend played Kate Bush's The Whole Story to me one holidays while we were both hanging out at my parent's new home. I don't remember much more, except that I was immediately taken by it, and that Marg also recommended Hounds of Love as Bush's best album. I bought Hounds two years later, having got almost everything else on vinyl - this was one of my first CD purchases, and of course she was bloody spot on. Hounds of Love is a classic.  Perhaps I'll blog that one separately.

Ms Bush and I parted company shortly after The Sensual World and her pursuing the (to me) less accessible musical stylings of Trio Bulgarka. Clearly, a Hill too high for Running Up, but by then I'd consumed enough of her creative output to have satisfied my curiosity without entering the dark world of total fandom. Kate Bush fans - or those I'd be comfortable counting myself as one among them - were a bit thin on the ground in early Nineties Dunedin, but brief encounters led me to interesting places. A long conversation I had with a keen fan answering our ad for a new keyboardist revealed that he had recenty bought her retrospectve box set This Woman's Work. I was interested, my bandmates weren't, and we never got that follow-up meeting. But the next person I had an in-depth conversation about Kate Bush to was a lot more fruitful. Just over a year from that phone call I was looking to join a flat with a friend and the two of us met with a girl from his Anbthropology class who was also on the hunt for digs. She was a fan, apparently, and now she's Mrs Simian. So there's that.

We still play The Whole Story occasionally. Mrs Simian is a big fan of Jig of Life, and I would be remiss not to admit that This Woman's Work has got me through a couple of challenging life episodes. And we were both shattered to discover a fortnight ago that we'd blown our Saturday morning roster and not had the time to turn up to Waitangi Park for Wellington's own Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. But eh. Maybe next year.

So, many happy returns once again Catherine Carder Bush, and thanks for playing a not insignificant part in the life I enjoy today.

"Don't Bury Me!" etc.

Hey, Mr Pullman - wanna help me with my blog?

Nope, I'm not dead. Dead busy. Bringing work home. Neglecting the podcast. Being an antisocial slacker. Keeping weird hours. Oh, it's terrible.

Normal business will resume shortly. And then - woo boy, buckle up your pants because I'll be posting backwards for a while!

I did stuff in June, and that stuff needs documenting!

The Grognard Files - the right of reply

Readers with long memories may recall the last time I brought up an RPG podcast it was the North Texas based Save or Die podcast, dedicated to Basic Dungeons and Dragons, still my favourite version of Ye Auld Gayme - and still a great podcast, although its frequency has lessened somewhat of late (ahem). In the meantime I've had time to seek out another more recent podcast, this time from across the Atlantic pond: the Bolton-based The Grognard Files. Unlike SoD the Files cover a variety of early 80s RPGs; and D&D isn't even their favourite by a long chalk!

The net result is a boon to me.

Firstly, having binged somewhat on North Texan fare, I've become a little too accustomed to the pecadillos of its regular hosts and their various likes and dislikes. Former 'Armchair Adventurers' Dirk the Dice and his cohorts judge Blythie, @dailydwarf (through whose Twitter feed I discover the Files), and the lesser-heard collector Ed (he of the Bargain Shed) are fresh voices and opinions; and because the Files are still young and their focus shifts every month or so, from Stormbringer to Traveller to Call of Cthulhu to AD&D ("TM") to their particular favourite Runequest, there's a lot that's new to me. I never played those particular games outside AD&D, and everything else I schooled up on through whatever magazine or book I could, usually White Dwarf, which is rightly revered and fondly remembered by the Armchair Adventurers for not only introducing them to the various games and their communities, but adding to the same worlds and adventures in a way that resonates with me. The Files do an admirable job of explaining and deconstructing each system, with Blythie - a self-confessed rules lawyer, using his own set of powers for good in his analysis. I've learned a lot as a consequence - not just about those games, but about my own favourites.

And The Grognard Files is a lot of fun. It's very much informal, witty, intimate, self-effacing and utterly British in aspect. My RPG world has two hemispheres, the American and the British. Both are equally valid and fascinating, but I've made no secret that it's the British I gravitate towards more. The added and rarely-heard regionality of a small group of Northern players not hailing from "that London" just adds to the interest factor. And who can resist a bit of Hawkwind as a closing theme?

A recent half-week in Hawkes Bay for work meant that I had a lot of driving to do, so I took Dirk and Blythie on the road with me on a USB stick to play in the car on the way up, and the four-hour trip sped by very nicely indeed.

Coming soon is a look back at Tunnels & Trolls, another heard-of-but-not-played for me. I can't wait.

Very much recommended.

My Zombie Weekend

Eleven fifty-five - almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before twelve- just to keep us warm. 

In five minutes it will be the twelfth of June. Ten years ago on the twelfth of June, down in the South Island a polar blast brought the heaviest snowstorm in seventy years. In the high country of Canterbury some homesteads were without power for two weeks. Trees and power poles snapped from the weight of the snow, North Otago was cut off from the outside world, and Mrs Simian was stuck in Timaru with her parents. This isn't her story. This is instead the story of what I got up to whilst she was snowed in.

It was just me and the cat. We had the whole house to ourselves for two nights (so we thought), including the stereo and the DVD player. A quick fish and chip tea for one (two) gave me more hours for the evening, and I embarked upon a then-distressingly predictable activity: too much screen-time and an early morning retirement. No internet, though - for some reason I was hell-bent on modelling and movies.

The models were Games Workshop Easterlings. Nice sculpts, but colour-wise a bit one-note, really, and they're still unfinished. The movies were an ambitious triple-feature: early ScoJo and mid-career Thora Birch in an adaptation of Daniel Clowes' Ghost World; the then-recent adaptation of Dawn of the Dead by newcomer Zack Snyder - and the original Romero Dawn of the Dead for good measure. 

Ghost World ended the viewing that evening - for the better. I can't recall which version of Dawn started, though I'd say the purist in me would have picked the Romero. It's deservedly a classic and even while familiar in its plot and story beats, I wasn't ready for its length. And in terms of building up a sense of fatalistic dread, Romero was a master. Two hours of gnawing death - on several levels. I should have known, having been properly disturbed by Romero's Night of the Living Dead and depressed by Day of the Dead.

By contrast Snyder's (and screenwriter James Gunn's) remake is sprightly, high-velocity and despite fears to the contrary packs a punch. The title sequence sets the scene - and it's pretty faithful in its nihilism from those first few scenes: 

Back to the cold outside. It was freezing in Wellington, too. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction for the fire to put out any heat, and the cat bagsied what little did come out long before it made it to the couch. The wind also blew a side gate against the house during the movies - bang, bang, bang... I ventured outside to fix it shut and noticed a light on in the basement. Seriously freaked out I crept to the door, drew the bolt... and found I'd just left it on getting the model stuff in the afternoon. 

By 1:30 when Ghost World had finished, I went to bed. And realised I'd not put the electric blanket on. I shivered for an hour before I decided to warm up in the shower, and even then I couldn't warm up. Plus, my over-active brain was embarking on a second session of the zombie double-feature instead of getting me to sleep. The cat had long gone for somewhere warmer. In defeat, I took the car out of the garage and drove around empty streets to try and settle down.

By day things cleared up. The sun came out, and a friend came around for a cuppa and a jam (hi, Tim!) And still somewhat sleep-deprived, I wandered around the house like a... well, you know.

In the mean-time I was still listening to a couple of recent purchases. The Shaun of the Dead soundtrack, and the first two Gorillaz albums. Shaun has a fun selection of movie soundbites and incidental music with the odd remix among them. As you might expect, there's a Romero movie mashup in there, with 'The Gonk', the theme to Dawn of the Dead's overlong slapstick sequence, mixed in with Keith Chegwin's voiceover for It's a Knock-Out. Gorillaz of course have form with the undead, Jamie Hewlett's animation company being Zombie Flesh Eaters of course, but there are also at least three Gorillaz songs ('Overture', 'Hip Albatross' and 'M1-A1') which contain samples from Romero movies (Dawn and Day of the Dead respectively) And 'Starshine' off the untitled debut always struck me as lonely and bleak.

I listened to those songs a lot over that weekend, either on the buzz or to exorcise the spooks, and I did sleep a little better the next night, being somewhat knackered. Mrs Simian eventually bused out of Timaru and arrived back in town a couple of days late, and not a moment too soon. I go to bed at more sensible hours, now.

Speaking of which, it's high time I went off myself, now. Pleasant dreams, everyone.