Waiting for the movie to start

I always liked the idea of pure meditation, of closing down my mind from the noise of the world and becoming one with everything. That sounds lovely, but I've never been able to pull it off, and the closest I ever get to it is in the quiet of the cinema before the movie starts. 

I'm not a total freak, and recognise the importance of going to the pictures with your mates, but I do still see a significant amount of movies on my own, especially now that I can go see that mid-range actioner at 10am on a Tuesday morning. And I'm never, ever late to a screening - and will bail altogether if I'm going to miss the first few minutes, so I end up spending a lot of time sitting in the cinema, waiting for things to start, and I never feel more calm and restful than that moment.

I can switch off before the trailers start, and easily ignore the advertisements. The sense of anticipation, that something is about to happen, is enough for me to power down and go into standby mode. 

Sometimes I can't get into that headspace, and I end up playing weird word games with the ads that show up, but I'm still hanging out for the movie to start. It might be the best thing ever, and probably won't be, but I've made the effort, have no other distractions, and am seated for the next couple of hours.

Like all good cine-hypocrites, I sneer at the performative nature of film festival audiences, but my own rituals around going to the cinema are logical and rational. I never, ever fuck about on my phone in the cinema, but do think it's right and proper to read 30-year-old paperbacks in the half-light of the theatre.

(I have, to my shame, stopped turning my phone off when I'm at the cathedral of light, because I have greater responsibilities now, but it is on the lowest dim setting, with all the sound turned off, from the moment I walk into the theatre.)

I even started a novel with the main character having this moment of zen, and having it rudely interrupted, because that's what it means to me.

This world is so noisy, and so full of sound and fury, and we should take any opportunity to have a break from it all. Maybe you're better at this meditation thing than I am, but if your head won't shut up long enough to get there, you could do worse than get to the movies five minutes earlier, and find some peace in the theatre.

Grendel: Behold the Devil: I always know where he stands

- Grendel: Behold The Devil #2 (2007)
Drawn and written by Matt Wagner

Letters by Tom Orzechowski

My skin is theirs

One of the great things about an individual human brain is that it is making connections that no other brain does, just because of the context in which those connections are made. And I know that nobody else in the world probably thinks that Filter's 'Take A Picture' single from 1999 is all about the vampires in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, but I do.

All I know is that I was re-reading Newman's series at the time that song came out, probably because the thoroughly excellent Dracula Cha Cha Cha had just been released, and then I hear Filter on the radio in the loading dock at Farmers, and they're singing about taking a picture because they won't remember what they look like is obviously about how they will feel after they've turned vamp and gone cold to the camera; and they're talking about feeling like a newborn, which is how Newman often describes the newly-turned vampires; and what do you think of your son now that he's a bloodsucking monster?

Obviously it's not about that, and 10 seconds of research shows that it's about the frontman getitng drunk on a plane, but it's all about the fangs in my mind.

Bourne Royale!

I love the Bourne movies, mainly because they're about the virus of empathy taking down a cabal of stone-cold killers, and even the worst of them have moments of beauty, or at least a fucking awesome piece of stuntwork.

They've repeatedly tried to recapture the brilliance of the first few films and have always fallen short, but there is always talk of a new film somewhere in development, if they can just crack the right story.

Here's my idea for free, because it's blindingly obvious - make it all Bourne, all the way.

There have now been five films in the series (and a television show which seems to have been watched by absolutely nobody), and while they all have fairly substantial body counts, there have also been a lot of wounded people walking away grimly, and putting them all together in one film is a total no-brainer.

You've got Matt Damon, of course, who can do properly grizzled these days, and Jeremy Renner, who is very much not dead. Throw in Édgar Ramírez from the final film in the original trilogy and you've a decent battle royale going on. Karl Urban was left alive despite his villainous deeds in Supremacy, and is surely up for a bit of revenge.  

Chuck them all into the mix and see where the dust settles, I say. I'm not saying they should all join together in a superteam, but I would love to see them all beating the snot out of each other. 

No redemption for you, sucker

There's a part in the latest Superman film where one of Lex's henchmen finally starts to show some remorse for what he is doing. Most of the villain's smooth-brained lackies just do horrible things with all the certainty of the truly sociopathic, but there's one dude who notably starts to doubt the plan and whines that they need to stop ripping the planet in half. 

And just when things have really gone to hell, and he gets the chance to step up and help, Mr Terrific tells him to fuck off, and just fixes it himself because he's goddamn Mr Terrific. There's no redemption arc for you here, brother. 

It goes against many of the things I personally believe in real life - that people do often deserve second chances - but also somewhat refreshing to see it in a film. That you don't get forgiven for doing terrible shit just because it finally reached the limit of your own moral code. That you have to actually face some motherfucking consequences for your actions, and any late squeamishness is not enough.

I also found this hard-nosed lack of any kind of forgiveness in the Andor television series, a show that was way more blunt and brutal in its messaging. One tiny aspect of the series was a small focus on Mon Mothma's driver, who was spying on her for the Imperials, but occasionally seems a bit conflicted and shows some remorse, and he may be having second thoughts about his skullduggery when he overhears what his alleged boss is trying to do, and when he's at the moment of laying all his cards out, we never get to see any of it because Andor shoots him in the fucking face and walks on without a second thought. Too late. No more chances for you, pal.

(It also brings to mind the great James Baldwin quote about how nobody has time for that foolishness: 'A cop is a cop. And he may be a very nice man, but I don't have time to figure that out. All I know is he's got a uniform and a gun. And I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him at all. Because one of us may have to die.') 

It's a conceit of fiction that the bad guys always get punished and the good guys live happily ever after, and that's why you can get away with that kind of forgiveness. On the other had, it would be nice if somebody faced some consequences for their bullshit every now and then, because fuck those dickheads.

Riker makes me feel good

Whenever I get blue, and need to turn a frown upside down, I always like to read or watch things about how William Riker from Star Trek is the ultimate male role model. It just cheers my heart, and I was absolutely stoked to find another video about the subject recently.

If I'm feeling really bad, I go to this Letterboxd review of Star Wars, by the wonderful film director Peter Strickland, which makes so many good points about the original film - something that I would have thought was impossible after five decades of discourse - and also just makes me feel incredibly seen.

Just start anywhere

The few social media feeds I still follow periodically get clogged up with the same old banal arguments, and a hoary old chestnut came up again recently - is Watchmen a good place to start reading comics?

There were all sorts of good points made for and against it, but my answer is, was and always will be: fuck knows? You never know what comics is going to grab somebody's attention. Everybody is different

There is basically nobody left alive who remembers starting Superman and Batman when they first began - and there are fewer and fewer who can remember the first Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, so if you want to read any of their adventures, you just gotta jump in there somewhere. Sink or swim. 

It's not for everyone, and most rational people bounce right out of that kind of commitment, but a certain person just wants to know more. They want to know what the backstory comes from and what this all means, and they will never stop looking for those answers.

Just start wherever the fuck you want. Jumping on points get a certain audience, but there is also an audience that comes to Uncanny X-Men after sixty years and just fucking goes for it. Maybe people respond to the art, maybe they get hooked by the soap operatics, it's different for everybody.

(And it's not limited to comics, by a long shot. Where do you start with Dr Who? Wherever you like. Here's good.)

It's still a huge appeal of the medium for me, I still buy random comics of various long-running sagas and have been intrigued enough to go back and see where it all starts. Filling in the gaps is just as much fun as seeing where it goes next.

It took me years to understand the complex families and friendships in Love and Rockets. I came in years into the run, and it took me so long to track down the earlier issues, I had no idea who was related to who in Palomar, or who Speedy was. I'm still making weird connections, decades into a full Hernandez obsession.

Watchmen is a very well written and drawn comic book, it's smart and complex and very human, even if you don't know that Night Owl should be Blue Beetle. If you like it, there's lots more like that. If you don't, there's even more that are nothing like that. There are many self-contained comics, in and out and gone again, but also ones that just go for it forever. See what you like. 

Failure of a film festival fanatic

For a long, long time, one of my absolute favourite days of the year was the day the programme for the NZ International Film festival would come out. I would obsessively go through it, finding all the cinematic treasures, and making my own time-table of treats.

The first time I ever saw one of these programmes was when the festival went out to the sticks in the 1980s, and I saw one that had a write-up of the first Evil Dead film - along with a glorious black and white picture of a blood-soaked Bruce Campbell with an axe. I wouldn't see Evil Dead for years, but that one listing had a profound effect on me, in many different ways.

By the time I was a grown-up and living in the big city, film festival attendance was mandatory every year. At my height I would go a dozen or two every year, especially when they had the Incredibly Strange Film Festival running as part of the larger festival, and would bring out the weird cult films.

They were the only place to see some movies by genius directors, the festivals are where I saw my first Wong Kar-wai, or a Paul Thomas Anderson film months before it appeared in regular cinemas. The festivals are always in the dark depths of winter down here, but a screening in the cathedral of light that is great cinema lit up my world. 

The best screenings were always in the grand theatres of Auckland and Dunedin, which were usually used for big live performances, where you could get that glorious echo of a soundtrack from the vast walls. Carter Burwell's eternally roving score for Fargo all round you, or Hendrix and The Who carving it up in the Message To Love doco.

For a while, the wife and I would get a 10-ticket for it, which would force us to get out into the world and see at least five films. This was always pretty easy, because there were always two I was desperate to see because they were obviously brilliant, two that sounded pretty good and one completely random choice, like a Nigerian crime epic or something.

And then this year's festival rolled around, and after carefully going through the motions on Programme Day, I only went to one film - Hard Boiled, John Woo's 90s action classic which I'd seen a thousand times before.

The lack of film festival action was partly because I work late shifts and have other familial commitments, but also so many of the films seemed so self-consciously film festival, full of dully heartbreaking tales of real life from around the world. Even the weird section was a bit tame, and always has the lame local horror with an eye-rolling premise.

I also get skeeved out by the smugness of other festival goers, and not just the 'I have a comment more than a question' monsters. It's just the aura of sniffy culture that feels performative, with screenings full of people you never see at all the cool films.

So I'm happy enough with the classic Woo. Besides, now I can go see the new PTA at the local multiplex at a time that suits. That's more than the festival can offer anymore.

Sebastian O: Life is such a tedium

- Sebastian O #3 (1993)

Art by Steve Yeowell
Colors by Tatjana Wood
Words by Grant Morrison

Letters by John Workman