I often have absolutely no idea what is happening in Nicolas Roeg's films, and that's the way I like them.
There isn't anybody quite like him in modern cinema - an impeccable craftsman who got into gorgeously mind-expanding madness when he got given the directorial reins. Some of his movies are almost unwatchable - Eureka has an incredible Gene Hackman performance, but is a hell of a slog - but he also constantly reached for the transcendent, and sometimes even made it.
I saw all of his most challenging films when I was a young film nerd, but have been revisiting them in recent months, and they're all fucking brilliant. His run of four films in the 1970s - Performance, Walkabout, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth - is a body of work that few have ever matched in the history of cinema. I wish we had a thousand Nicolas Roegs out there, but I'll have to make do with an impeccable one.
The SixPack comics by Garth Ennis, John McCrea and Russ Braun came out about a decade ago to resounding indifference. A dubious spin-off to the still highly-regarded Hitman series by Ennis and McCrea, the adventures of SixPack, Dogwelder and the other assorted miscreants of Section Eight were full of puerile humour and a resounding lack of respect for some of DC's biggest spiritual entities (The Phantom Stranger's gangsta rapping skills were certainly... unique.)
It's all generally harmless, even with one of the characters fighting evil with the power of perversion, and another character literally just a pile of guts, but there is enough sharp humour, and the tiniest pieces of pathos in the sad story of a hopeless alcoholic.
The best parts in the two series that we somehow got were when Ennis got in some nice biting of the hand that fed him, with the Batman imploring that he's not a racist as he tries to get out of a parking ticket, and Superman cheerfully giving a hopeless alcoholic a bottle of booze and telling him that everything is going to be okay.
The most biting part is for poor old John Constantine. In interviews talking about the character and his work on it in the past, Ennis was always clear that Constantine was one of the most interesting characters in mainstream comics - a chancer, a lurker, someone who is very much not a hero, but will ultimately try to do the right thing if he has to, (and often totally fails to be both good or useful).
The world improbably got 300 issues of Hellblazer with that character, with some very good and very not-good issues in that run, but Constantine was always clearly the same man. And then they refolded him back into the DC universe and he was hanging out with the Justice League again and firing magic bolts of energy from his fingers like a right dickhead.
This clearly did not sit well with Ennis, who wrote Hellblazer at an astonishingly young age and clearly has fondness for the fuckup that is John Constantine. So in the the SixPack and Dogwelder comic, Constantine shows up riding a cosmic surfboard and wearing a stupid fucking helmet
The character is self-aware enough to realise that he doesn't really work when he has to use his Hellblazer pistol to weave his magic, and spends his entire appearance moaning about his current situation (while still manipulating the team into saving the world when all the other superheroes are just bloody useless).
It's all there to drive home the point that they had a truly great character and have just wasted it, and now John is just another tit in the crowd in the big crossovers. There has been some attempts to return Constantine to his darker roots, most notably in some excellent comics by Si Spurrier and Aaron Campbell, but that just further proves that John doesn't belong in a room full of spandex..
At least we did get one last Steve Dillon drawing of Constantine, crying on the cover of #2 with his cigarettes between his fingers like he's Wolverine. That's something.
I recently rediscovered an old diary from 1992, back when I was 17 and very, very unsure of my place in the world. And after reading it through, it's a little remarkable how much I hide my anxieties behind a rabid obsession for comic books.
It was my last year of school, and there is an ongoing thread through the entries where I have no idea what I'm going to do in the next year, and it's a heavy fucking thing to lay on a 17 year old.
I have no aspirations to go to university like all my other smart friends. I try out for a tourism course at polytech and I try to get a job at a TV and video store, and I fail miserably at both. There is, inexplicably, some talk of joining the police or becoming a teacher, but there is a glimmer of hope - I make vague motions of going to a journalism course and give up on it far too easily, but I will be back there in 2004, and doing the course was easily the single best decision I've ever made in my life.
I'm just obviously so scared, because I just don't know what to do, but I also start working with my dad in a factory that makes and packages animal dripping, and I have actual money for the first time. I go on and on about how my bank account has too much money in it, the entries are just saturated with an obsession with cash, and it's laughably small amounts - I'm incredulous that I will make more than $120 a week.
And it's all going on terrible, terrible comics. This is, after all, 1992 and there are a lot of terrible comics to buy. Some of them I have actually held onto - there is a tense period early in the year where I'm really not sure if the last two issues of the Infinity Gauntlet are going to show up at the local shops, and that's the biggest disaster in my life.
They are all I seem to care about. There is one bit where I go to Dunedin for an interview at the polytech for a tourism course down there, and I write that I got "sick of talking to boring girls" and went to the local shops to load up on Superman comics, which kinda sums up exactly how much of a loser I was.
1992 was a big year for me in other ways, our family shifted from Washdyke to Temuka, and that might not mean shit to anybody else in the world, it changed my fucking life, and every day I'm doing stupid shit with my best mates, and carving out new friendships that mean a lot to me today, (even if they do sometimes take a while to give you your Big Dave comics back).
The diary is, of course, painfully adolescent - there are some bits where I genuinely go into 'nothing I ever do is right!' moaning, and there is some outright hatred of my younger sister that I genuinely do not remember at all.
But I do remember that Infinity Gauntlet obsession and I still do have those comics, and issues of the New Warriors and 2000ad and the Justice League and the Nth Man that I got at the time. The rest are long gone, and so is that 17-year-old kid who didn't know shit about the world, but had very strong opinions about the Guardians of the Galaxy.
I've been following the Mindless Ones for years and years, and think they have written some of the sharpest reviews and criticism of comic books ad other nerdy ephemera I've ever seen online, (although I could never get into the podcast for some reason, sorry lads).
And they're still doing it in the age of newsletters, putting out some new writing every Sunday without fail, and it's just as random, just as pointed, and sometimes just as mean as it ever was. Bullets of media critique, daft jokes and personal hauntings. I highly recommend it and you can find it here.
My only criticism of the newsletter is that I do really wish they credited which parts were by who, because some of it gets really personal, and a name on the other side of that kind of story is always welcome, because I'm always craving that human connection. Aren't we all?
When it comes to late night TV comfort food, there is nothing quite as tasty as watching Tales From The Crypt, even with all the rotting corpses lying about.
I've been watching the 90s television series at the end of every day lately, and it might be full of unashamed gore, macabre twists and truly horrific puns, but it's been an incredibly chill way to end my day.
Every single episode has some actor at their absolute peak - Demi Moore never looked better as a ravenous gold-digger, William Sadler never looked sweatier than when he played a fired executioner; M Emmett Walsh made the best stuffed body.
And there is some top talent behind the camera, familiar names from genre cinema as writers and directors like Walter Hill, Richard Donner, Mary Lambert, Fred Dekker, Tobe Hooper, William Friedkin and many, many others. They even get Ry Cooder to do some music for an episode.
(It's also slightly fascinating to see episodes directed by huge actors, big name players given a chance to call the shots, so there are episodes by Bob Hoskins, Kyle MacLachlan, Tom Hanks, Michael J Fox and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and they didn't direct much else anywhere, so there is a pleasant element of ambition and showing off.)
So the production values are high, and the stories are, of course, a boatload of fun. All based on the classic EC comics, and those mad geniuses were using cliches back in the 50s that are no less creaky or predictable now, but the payoff is always worth it.
It's quite cozy horror, with a lack of irony, and a lack of self referential smugness. The cruel characters in these stories get their just desserts, and all is is at should be.
The world outside my window could use some more accountability, and I get a taste of it in the dead of night before I go to bed, watching evil people getting hacked up by a zombie out for vengeance.
It's Guy Fawkes night tonight in this part of the world, and the evening air will be popping with the sound of fireworks for hours, and I love every second of it.
The local media has been bulging with stories about wimps wanting to get them banned, because won't someone think of the poor pets or firefighters, and while these may be absolutely legitimate concerns, I still can't deny I get a thrill from explosive lights.
There was a line from a comic writer who turned out to be a total shithead about a particular noise that human beings make when they look up and see fireworks, and even shitheads make good points sometimes, because that line has stuck in my mind for years now, because it's true. It's not a cheer, not quite a gasp, but more of a primal tones of awe. It's a lovely sound.
The wonder of fireworks is in all of us, even if we try to deny it. Even if we try to deny it with sympathy for some sensitive dogs might have to sleep under the bed for one night, or for the firefighters who have to deal with the actions of idiots. They can also be terribly dangerous - a friend of a friend lost a finger to a firecracker that he held in a closed fist when I was growing up, but that taught me some valuable safety lessons (like don't hold a fucking firecracker in a closed fist).
And I will admit that their use outside the usual days of celebration can be extremely annoying, but for one night of light and noise, it isn't the end of the world.
I will always look up at fireworks and make that weird noise again. I always do.
One of the best parts about listening to podcasts while doing the housework is that sometimes they'll articulate something that you've always had bouncing around in your skull, and it can make you feel just a little bit alone in the world.
The What Went Wrong podcast with Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer has always been thoughtful and informative, and one of the few movie history podcasts I can stand to listen to on a regular basis, because the hosts don't think they are more interesting than the subject. But when they recently did an episode on Psycho, and Winterbauer expressed horror at the idea of Janet Leigh standing under the shower and turning it on full force without checking the temperature or anything, I felt truly seen.
That has always bothered me, and there was a secret part of me that assumed that I was doing this whole shower thing wrong, and that everyone else doesn't check to see if the water is too cold, or too hot, or maybe even a bit scuzzy, before blasting it all over their naked body.
But it is Marion Crane who is the weirdo here, turning on the shower like that. We all know she will suffer a terrible fate in that shower, but I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one appalled by her kind of bathing etiquette.
There's a part in the new Oasis documentary, where after all the hype and all the anticipation, the band has finally got out there and put on a fuckin' good show, and the audience is shattered as the lights come up, and there is this kid who would have been a toddler when the band broke up, and he's processing all the feelings he's going through, and it's all just so much, and then some random dude wandering past checks up on him and makes sure he's okay, before giving him a hug and moving on, and fuck me, that is one of the best moments in cinema I've seen all year.
The obvious hook for the movie is the story of the Gallagher brothers and their extremely weird relationship, and it is genuinely moving to see them go on stage holding hands every night. After all that nonsense they went through, they're now old enough to realise that neither of them is the leader of the band, that Oasis doesn't exist without both of them involved (with a side order of Bonehead).
Liam needs his brother's songwriting and ear for a wonderful lyric, Noel needs that voice and swagger of Our Kid to carry his songs to the masses. And they both know it.
The way they meet together for rehearsals for the first time is so well done in the new documentary, everyone is watching the door to see Liam come in, and then he just appears from nowhere from the side and wants to know why they're fucking about so much. The magic of cinema strikes again.
(It certainly helps that Liam is still such a funny fucker, and while he makes a point that he doesn't give a fuck if he gets cancelled, he's of the E generation and everybody is welcome, all races, all creeds, and he's just a working class lad who somehow became a mega rock star, still self deprecating, still a master of the most pointed of observations.)
But surprisingly, even with all that, the Gallaghers turn out to be secondary characters in their own story, because Don't Look Back In Anger is in love with the audience.
It's the dude asserting his right to go into a public park to hear the band; it's the lads having a beer who know the same jokes; it's the Japanese girl explaining how Oasis aren't the band to pull you back up when you've fallen down, they are the band that has fallen down with you, and you gotta get back up together.
The sheer fucking joy is overwhelmingly positive, such a net good in the world, that no matter how much you might loath the Gallaghers or the music, you have to give them credit for that.
Of course, the other main character in the film is that ridiculous setlist, with all those guitars blaring out on banger after banger, the chorus of the masses washing out over every stadium they play. But it's those masses that are the real power of the band, bigger than anything Noel could write, or Liam could ever sing.
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