Tony Kiernan

Don’t know why, it just seems right, I’m moving here. (I recently paid two years on here)

Seeing as everyone else is at it I thought I’d try and do a list of my bestest movies, music etc from the last ten years. However, I cast my mind back to the shiny post-grad student with nothing but hopes and great things ahead I was at the turn of the millennium. And, TBH, by the time I’d got to how all of that had turned to shit by the end of 2001 I decided it would be inadvisable to continue wandering down that memory lane.

So, instead, in alphabetical order, here are my things of 2009:

Brew Dog beers
Brew Dog brewery up in coldest Aberdeenshire are currently by far the most interesting beer producer in the country.

After initially dismissing the stuff as Aspecto-shopper chic bottles, it was when the local supermarket began stocking the excellent Imperial Stout Rip Tide. This became the beer of choice when we hit the supermarket.

Back in August we went to a food fair and were introbduced to Paradox definitely the taste of 2009 for me. Brilliantly over the year we’ve manged to taste the Arran, Springbank and (like Sy Bernard as part of an awful 3 hour journey home) Smokehead. I must try these malts now…

The summer tasted quite substantially of icy cold Punk IPA, just a fine everyday tasty beer. There was a brilliant blip where Asda got a box of the Hardcore variation by mistake. I reckon we mananged to get about 2/3 of the lot that was there (assuming one box). It’s crazy hoppt and just awesome.

We were pleased to find Trashy Blond on draught during the Edinburgh Festival. And have dabbled in a few of their other products, especially The Physics and splendid dark lager Zeitgeist. (In a drunken moment of weakness I even bought a share in the company.) Brilliantly we’ve merely scratched the surface.

Unfortunately the Tactical Nuclear Penguin I ordered didn’t manage to get bottled and delivered in time for Xmas. So, I’ll be in Colorado before it turns up and it’ll be next year before I get to drink it. Shame, it would’ve been a good ending to the Brew Dog part of the year.

The Coen Brothers
In a year I largely missed the film I wanted to catch A Serious Man was at least I fine example of what I hoped I was missing. Reminiscent of Ethan’s short story book, it’s a film that largely said nothing but all-is-shit. But, made me howl with laughter and keeps coming back for consideration.

No, I have no answers about it, but that’s whay it was so genius.

Richard Herring (& Andrew Collings)
It must have been last year I started listening to The Collings & Herrin Podcast, I can’t be sure. There was such an intense catching up period. Alongside Smodcast it’s become he one I look forward to the most.

As a result, I’ve started to enjoy Herring’s daily blog Warming Up. I enjoyed the description of the process of getting a comedy show together so much I had to go see Hitler Moustache at the Festival. And, seeing as I was doing that I caught the live podcast. All brill.

Then he did As It Occurs To Me, a live show written in the few hours before performance and performed as such. It was then podcast. It made me laugh out loud on the bus a few times - surely the benchmark for all audio comedy. I’m hoping to make the next series live show; despite the fact sending the money I would spend getting there would probably benefit the production more. I now have a serious crush on TV’s Emma Kennedy.

Also looking forward to see how the ‘tache show’s changed at the Glasgow Comedy Festival.

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School Of Medicine
I got to see Jello Biafra sing Holiday In Cambodia live in the all-too ample flesh. The gig in Bristol was worth the angst and extra expense it took to get there several time over. The ‘original’ stuff was, at points, almost better. Subsequent album The Audacity Of Hype gets mentioned for being essential to keep us on our toes. And, it has the cover of the year by a mile.

Law & Order
We got Law & Order UK and I really liked it. This got me thinking about the original series, which - to me - was something that turned up late at night and you caught one or two episodes. So, I decided to start watching the original and all it’s subsequent offshoots, in order. I’m currently at 2001 (eleven years in) with three flavours running in parallel.

I love a cop show. If you want to buy me enough beer I’ll explain to you how The Bill jumped the shark when it lost the half hour format, and killed itself with Don Beech - no matter how thrilling that was.

David Peace
I read barely anything this year. This makes me sad.

I wanted to read Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace.

Thankfully this seemed to be his year. The Red Riding Trilogy on TV was being advertised in cinemas. The Damned United was storming the critics and filmgoers. I’ve still not seen the latter. The former, was fantastic. Despite the fact it suffered a bit heavily from us being told it was dead good, and the who’s who cast, was very good TV. It could’ve been the best telly of this year. It was never up with the best ever, however.

Took me 6 months to read thart book. But, if I’m honest, I opened it at most six times. So when I was reading it I was feverish with it. I just avoided doing this very often.

I need to read more. Including more of his stuff.

The Phantom Band
Ah, here lies the beast. I first saw The Phantom Band couple of years back at a estival. Despite having thoroughly enjoyed them, they kinda fell off my register. This year they releases their debut album Checkmate Savage. I heard good things and decided to investigate.

I liked it very much, but found nothing exceptionable about it. I found myself returning time and time again, getting more, feeling depths and generally being subsumed by it. By the time I was going to see them at the Festival, I was convinced this was one of the most important (and best) albums I’d ever heard. It’s a record that could only come out of Glasgow. Romantic, but rooted in the industrial. Yet, still so heavily redolent of the west-coast it’s scary. Stunning stuff.

The gig in Edinburgh was cramped but great. The following Glasgow gig blew me away. The one a couple of weeks back, as xmas celebration, was near devotional. Wow.

As an aside, the caught the lead singer doing his solo Rick Redbeard thing. Was baffled by the ‘completely different from the Phantoms’ comments I got. It’s not it’s totally symbiotic to what I’m trying not to get too flowery conveying.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club european tour
What can I say? some friends came over from the states. Within 48 hours one had a broken arm, we’d been to Edinburgh and Argyll & Bute. I was sat in Sleazys talking to one of Trail Of The Dead and feeling the happiest I have done for christ knows how long. This was before the continantal leg involving absinthe in Brussells, the warmth or ‘parisienne arabes’ to americans and my first surreal visit to Switzerland and it’s beautiful people (and a couple of Austrians).

Memories. Ones I should’ve detailed at the time, but I’m keeeping just now.

Oh, and all soundtracked by the TOO AMERICAN TOO LOUD Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. Who I spent New Year with and shall do again in a couple of days.

The Thick of It
So early in the year In The Loop turned up. Basically Armando Iannucci’s calling card to HBO. It’s very funny, and quite disturbing. But, there’s something not quite right about it. Which is basically the crowbar technique of moving the action to the States. It has one joke that made me laugh so loud I was nearly embarassed, if you’ve seen it I might tell you which. Also, it made the entire Scots contingent in the Curzon, soho cheer very loudly. Again…

Where was the telly series that spawned it going to go from there? (Let’s not mention the loss of the excellent Chris Langham.) What they did….OMG!

Not only did they have they make the astounding choice of Rebecca Front as the new minister, but they sneaked one of the most heartstopping storylines about Malcolm Tucker.

I do not have a TV. If there has been any finer this year than this I’ve missed it. However, I am quite willing to put this series among the best telly ever.

Thank fuck they dropped that Jamie character.

Twitter
As part of my job I had to look into Twitter. I looked, I didn’t like and I very much didn’t understand.

Nope, still not getting it.

Nope, still not getting it.

…

Oh, right!

Got it now.

The fact I can send a drunken text to no-one is the best thing ever. My friends agree.

I love it now.

Don’t make me ‘investigate’ Facebook, please.

I suppose malt whisky should be in there too, as this year I developed an appreciation that may well be ruinous.

Here’s to the new year; lord knows it can’t be any worse than the last one. Just a shame I can say that about the decade to. See, I am just an optimist.

Anyone that gets back to me on genuine typos, I’ll despise (but possibly amend them). Words that should’ve been picked up by spellckeck, but are actual words, have their own circle in hell for the pedants.

I tried to write a piece about this for Is This Music?. I failed. Thankfully there’s a proper review up there now. I’m putting this up because I find it a bit funny.

Throughout the festival there’s an exhibition called Rough Cut Nation “a collaborative project in which artists have constructed a remixed version of Scottish history”. As with all these things, there’s DJs, performance and live music. Due to only finding out about it about 10 minutes before, at the other end of town, and the instructions being a bit garbled I manage to get here for the last half of Zoey Van Goey’s last song. Shame because they seemed in fine fettle and are always fun to see.

But, the main course is the album launch gig of St Jude’s Infirmary. This afternoon they’re joined by the reader in residence a the National Library. And, I’m thinking this might not have been the best gig to ask me to cover.

So, let’s try and ignore the horrendous fact that I’m sat in the middle of a street-art installation, watching a guy reading poetry over what seems to be the same Badalamenti 50s riff again and again. Let’s get to the music. The Infirmary are a band that have always been there and I’ve been interested in what I’ve heard but never followed up. So, looking forward to this.

The first number is inconsequential. The second gets to a peak where it builds to a near huge finish and things are looking up. It’s a while before anything else interesting happens. That comes in the form of the song that I’m sure is about Jack Vettriano where the guitarist sings and we at least get some sort of Nick Cave style roughness.

Other than that, it’s all pretty much aiming higher than they seem to really be willing to try for. If you want to talk the cultural reference thing, fine. But at least back it up with some thing. Everyone and his dog has some sort of strings on the go at he moment, it doesn’t work as a shorthand for being deep. Y’know wearing the trousers doesn’t mean you wan walk the walk.

The acoustics are bad; it’s a gallery. Or, maybe that’s definitely an east coast thing. Let’s just say I wasn’t the person that should’ve been her for this one.

So, a couple of months back me and J got out of bed on the Saturday and dragged ourselves to the Tesco A Taste Of Scotland food fayre on George Square. We had a whale of a time scoffing free nosh and partaking of the many free samples of fine beers and whisky’s from around the country. The few wines there were not available for tasting so boo to the wine producers. TBH, we were quite cheery when we left. But, as we were going to be out late (going to the late showing of Let The Right One In) we didn’t buy anything. Next day, we just managed to haul ass and get there before they stopped letting folk in. There was then a whirlwind dash round to pick up the various beers we wanted buy. It may have been sponsored by a major supermarket chain, but they certainly don’t stock everything we had liked (certainly not the huge 24 hour one we’ve got). Anyhoo, here are the boys (note: all unopened, so no idea why they’re so blurry).

Broughton Brewery (you might want to look to that website) is the home of one of my favourite Scottish Ales: Old Jock. This weekend they were punting their award winning (a common theme) Champion Double Ale. This is a new one to me. We picked up a pack of 8 for £10. Win already!. But is the beer any good. Yes, very. A lovely deep red/black colour with a nice caramac head. A good mincemeat nose to it. And, rich fruits and chocolate in the taste, bit of a hoppy aftertaste. Although not too heavy and quite light on the fizz. Damn tasty. The kind of beer I wish my local sold.

Onto 8 mixed bottles from the Williams Brothers of Alloa (another pretty dull site, but not as bad as the one we were looking at back then). Famous for Fraoch which is thankfully not included here (it’s a fine beer, but we think we’ve drank enough of it in our time). We had quite a nice chat with the bloke that was on Oz & James Drink To Britain. My great uncle worked in the Alloa brewery so I find this potted history pf SCotland’s second brewing epicentre (after Edinburgh - we don’t have the water apparently). He keeps feeding us the Midnight Sun in the hope we’ll get the ginger in there. J can see it I can’t. But, it’s another very lovely porter style beer. Fruit, hops, vanilla and, yes, spices but not specifically ginger. I get the gooseberry in the Grozet. Bang, can’t miss that. Clean and refreshing, had we kept this it would have gone down a treat frosty when we had the summer a few weeks back. There’s a brilliantly floral hops packed IPA in there, the name of which escapes me. And, my surprise favorite, the Red. A good dry hopppy edge and a splendid breakfast beer. Some lovely labels from these guys too.

We sampled some stuff from the Arran Brewery and the non-Ab branded Arran blonde (considerably less fizzy) was fab. They’d packed up by the time we were buying, though. And another dull website.

Next up, for us, the main reason for being here: Brew Dog. As their, rather smashing, website says Beer was never meant to be bland, tasteless and apathetic. Amen, brothers, amen. If you are not familiar with the works of this lot, shame on you. Some of the finest ales in this country ar coming out of their Lossiemouth brewery. We’re particualrly fond of the awesome Rip Tide twisted merciless stout. At tthis bash they’re pushing their new Zeitgeist dark lager. We don’t do enough decent (nevermind dark) lager in this country. This stuff rocks. If you look around at the fayre you’ll see two tediously bored dolly-burds at the Tennents stand. No-one’s touching their filth. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

What we’re hoping for is to try the Paradox, the imerial stout matured in whisky casks. They do not disappoint and we make off with a dozen bottles for £20. Later when buying some more I resent not having brought the car and filled it with the stuff. This is the Isle Of Arran batch (No 16, apparently). It’s awesome. Rich chocolate and licorice bite. Thick and smooth with, obvious whisky overtones. I love this beer. It even encouraged me to buy the whisky which is damn fine too.

Orkney Brewery make seriously quaffable (and much maligned) Skullsplitter and the excellent Dark Island. Go anywhere outside the central belt and you’ll find stuff this good on draught everywhere. Why do we get landed with the tosh? While enjoying some samples of the latter on the Saturday we spot for sale the limited edition Special Reserve. It’s a handmade version, matured in Orkney malt whisky barrels. It is also £15 a bottle. We scoff at it, but it plays on my mind. So, come Sunday, a bottle is bought. By the gods, it is special. A thick dense subtle whack in the face. All round chocolates and vanilla playing with the malt and that deep spicy citrus of the Orkney whisky. I would encourage anyone even tempted to treat themselves to a bottle of this. At least you’ll have a good anecdote.

So, some excellent brews. Beer in this country is looking more interesting than ever. If only hostelries would cotton on. A winner? Not really. But, if pushed I’d have to go for the Paradox. Much as the Special reserve is so much more (again) special, I’ve been enjoying the different characteristics bestowed upon the beer from the different barrels (now tried Springbank and Speyside) that it keeps giving. And, hey, recyling!

Ah, little bloggy-bloggy. Am I ignoring you? Am I spending too much time with that flighty upstart Twitter? Perhaps. God knows why I’ve failed to find the time to jot down some thoughts on my recent cinematic excursions. I’ve been failing to read anything. And avoiding (to varying degrees of success) the drink. I know, I only do this to help with my ability to layout a cohesive sentence. It’s just myself I’m hurting. So, let’s play catch-up what have I seen in the last couple of weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

A joint production between HBO and the BBC and by god it shows. I’m all for low budget movies, in fact prefer them, but FAQ About Time Travel is telly programme. In no-one’s mind could this ever be described as a movie.

Not to say it’s without it’s charm. It never really lives up to the Dr Who meets Shaun Of The Dead vibe that someone thought deserved promotion to the big screen. But it’s likable, largely down to a cast featuring Chris O’Dowd and Dean Lennox Kelly (note: two very fine TV actors) and a fantastically relentless pace that would leave Brian Rix’s head spinning. The plot (three friends discover a rip in the space/time continuum in the gents at their local, and try to get home) means that as soon as things flag, someone can come screaming out of the toilet to get things moving again. And, it’s really rather funny. Not a big one-liner film but definitely grinsome.

When this comes round in the christmas schedule, circle it with pen and make sure you don’t miss it.

It also has Meredith MacNeill as a leather clad villain. Which a lot more films could benefit from.

In The Loop

Another telly programme making the move to the big screen. Although, at least this time, it has had the decency to throw out a couple of series on the small screen first.

Armando Iannucci’s The Thick Of It is one of the finest comedy shows of recent years. In The Loop is the big screen version. To fill that screen, and no doubt to sell it worldwide, the scope has been widened from the back rooms of Westminster to the special relationship with our colonial cousins and dodgy dossiers as an excuse to go to war.

TBH, the stuff on familiar ground works considerably better than the big picture. While it doesn’t quite hit the level of Holiday On The Buses and such, the Washington bound section of the film kinda loses something. They’ve co-opted in big hitter James Gandolfini who seems terribly underused. Leaving space for the inestimable David Rasche to steal the second half of the show.

A minor quibble, probably for one of the funniest films I’ve seen in quite some time. And, of course, the sweariest. Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker is the Shakespeare of the four lettered word.

I experienced possibly the loudest guffaw I’ve emitted in a cinema for a very long time while watching this. (I want to tell you but don’t want to spoil it. And, it’s context anyway.) So, despite it’s shortfallings, I know this will be one of the best movies I see all year. I mean the Coen’s don’t have anything in the pipeline, and the state of blockbusters…

Star Trek

…Ah. I saw this three times. Not, I hasten to add, to be taken as any indication of how good I think it is. But it is rather excellent.

There’s really not much I can say about this that’s not been said a thousand times over. So, I won’t. It’s full of holes, but just so damned enjoyable that they don’t matter. It’s great to see someone taking a franchise like this and retooling it without turning them all into psychologically damaged fuck-ups. Just an object lesson in making this kind of thing. Looking forward to the next one. And, yes, I’d quite happily sit through it gain. Might even do so.

So far so good.

Angels & Demons

Spoke too soon.

When I told people this was possibly the worst film I’d ever seen: “Worse than The Da Vinci Code?”, they’d ask. I never saw that.

At one point in the film I found myself thinking Oh fuuuukck offf!!!. The resultant laughter made me realise I’d said it out quite loud.

Nothing they could’ve got Meredith MacNeill to do would’ve saved this. all should hang their heads in shame.

State Of Play

Little screen, big screen, cardboard cut-out performance!

Plot: Political journalist tries to help out a politician friend following the apparent suicide of the intern he was having an affair with. But…all is not as it seems.

Did you see the original State Of Play? Excellent wasn’t it? (If not it’s available cheaper than a cinema ticket most places at the moment.) How the hell do Hollywood reckon they can redo six hours of finest british TV as a 2+hour film? Well, by cutting out a lot of good characters (particularly the James McAvoy). Dropping some of the sub-plots. And, reducing the central politico and his wife to mere character sketches.

But, you know what, it still works quite well. It has obvious pretensions to All the President’s Men heights, and makes a not too bad stab at them. Or, more precisely emulating the style. And, tbh, the subplot involving the dead kids family always seemed a bit like padding. But, the most interesting thing, is the move of focus from the two central characters to just the journalist. This seems to suit Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Rep. Stephen Collins. He becomes more superficial. The career politician. And, when the ultimate resolution comes around, it actually sits better with his performance.

The telly version’s still better though.

Coraline 3D

Not really a fan of the stop-start stuff that’s been attached to Tim Burton. In fact, I reckon The Nightmare Before Christmas to be one of the most over-rated of all time. Goddam goths! In fact, I’m attracted towards seeing this because the Neil Gaiman book is currently in adaptation on Broadway with music by Stephen Merritt.

And, I’ve not seen one of these RealD films.

It’s really rather lovely. Proper fairy tale stuff. Probably just the right balance of scares and magic for the kids (although I’m hardly the expert). Some smashing set pieces and musical numbers. (Including an all too brief They Might Be Giants song.)

The 3D I’d have happily lived without. Unnecessary. (And, I’m sure there’s more flab on the film so they can shove bits in the swoop at you.)

Synechdoche, New York

First film I’ve been really looking forward to this year.

I’ve been of the opinion that Charlie Kaufman’s a bit of a genius for a while. He’s been responsible for the screenplays for some of the best films of recent years. But more of that later.

Synechdoche, New York is Kaufmans directorial debut. It tells the story of a theatre director (that bit I’m certain of), who discovers he’s ill, gets an enormous ‘genius’ grant, and attempts to stage a 1:1 scale production about everyday life in New York.

Imagine every scene excised from the movies he screenplayed by Jonze, Gondry and Clooney. Add every weird little scenario written on the back of a fag packet. Throw them in the air, let them fall and you’ve got the screenplay here. And, still that sounds good to me. It’s not.

I can’t even write this off as a mess, or over indulgence it’s just a BAD film. Indulgence would be alright, but no. So painfully bad…

There are some of the finest female actors in the world at the moment in this film. They are wasted to a …woman. Except for Samantha Morton, who is the only reason I didn’t walk out.

I didn’t expect to see anything worse that Angels & Demons this year, let alone the same week.

So, back to the screenplay point. As far as I can make out my fave Kaufman stuff is adaptations (yes, including the film of the same name). ie. the original stuff’s not so good. (yes, I do mean Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine).
Maybe the imagination of this man is not all I thought it to be.

X-men Origins: Wolverine

Pah. Killing time, again. Not a fan of the original films (or the two I saw any way), but thought this might be passable fluff. Works neither as an action movie nor a superhero film. Double-fail.

Terminator Salvation

Parp! Any hope we had for this, and that Star Trek may have bolstered were all in vain. It’s not even as ‘good’ as Rise Of The Machines. No wonder Christian Bale was so damned angry.

Drag Me To Hell

God bless Sam Raimi!

I do not do horror. Largely it’s this guy’s fault. When the whole ‘video nasty’ bollocks was happening I dogged school and saw them all. I Spit On Your Grave, Last House On The Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead. The slasher horrible stuff did nothing. The latter kept me awake for weeks. I was about nine.

Completely hilarious and actually quite creepy at times. Was near hiding in my jacket at a few points but giggling like an idiot others.

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS - BUT I’LL TRY NOT TO*
Thinking about this afterwards it strikes me that Alison Lohman’s character brings the curse and horror on herself as a result of a desire to forward herself in busines. She forecloses on a (sub-prime?) mortgage to prove she’s tough. Not wanting to evoke the end, but she admits as much. The first post-credit crunch morality tale?

Who knows.

Fermat’s Room

Spanish (possibly Catalonian) thriller about a bunch of mathematics types who find themselves trapped in a room where the must solve problems or be killed. The hydraulic walls are closing in for each they don’t solve.

Despite not really having the intelligence of it’s conceits (you don’t ask the mathematical geniuses of a genration the “one guard always tells the truth…” question), this is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of fluff. Tense enough and nicely acted and paced. Kinda like Dan Brown not for morons.

Looking For Eric

Ken Loach on seemingly familiar ground. However. don’t believe the synopses of this that have a bloke smoking a jazz cigarette and hallucinating. This is actually a simpler, and more touching, tale of someone near the end of their tether taking support from friends (and a self help book) to start pulling the strands of his life back together.

And, it’s flippin’ marvellous. Hilarious, touching and above all real.

There’s somde thing a bit pat about the climax. But, this movie and it’s stars (including a brilliantly self-parodising turn from M. Cantona) earn so much good feeling from the audience that you not only forgive it, but fully embrace it.

This is the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

*phew*

Do such things exists? Or, more likely, some software to do so?

“What the hell are you talking about, Kiernan?” I hear you cry. Right, we all know about Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V etc and what they do. Basical cutting and pasting selected text/objects. I notice that Office (or at least Outlook - don’t use the rest that much) is expanding this and giving you more clipboard options within the suite. And, I’m tedious droned on to about just how much you can do with te clipboard in Linux. But, still none of them do what I want to do. Here are two examples of what I mean:

Email address
I want to be able to Ctrl+Shift+@ (for example, it doesn’t really matter if that already does something) and paste my email address into whatever application I am using.

Lorem
I develop web sites. I would love to hit Ctrl+L and *bang* a paragraph of Lorem complete with p tags.

There must be something that does this. I can’t be the only person to see the advantages. Even a Firefox plug-in for the first would be useful. But ideally something that works with the OS.

Or, am I missing something really obvious somewhere?

NB. I use PCs and Macs

Surveillance is Jenifer Lynch finally getting a second chance to make a movie after the hilariously dreadful (and I hate to admit quite sexy) Boxing Helena.

This film has both Bill Pullman AND Michael Ironside in it!!!! If that’s not screaming B movie/straight to DVD to you, you don’t know what a film is. OK, plot: A group of disparate unreliable witnesses are interviewed by two FBI agents about a brush with some serial killers rampaging across the country. There’s a twist, you’ve probably guessed it.

The problem is, this film has pretensions. Probably most embodied in the rather good performance from Julia Ormand (one of them I’m sure I’ve seen in stuff until I look at what they’ve been in). Or maybe the way they try to use a Rashômon type device, without really understanding the point of it. Rendering the whole thing a bit of a pseudo mess. This is it’s biggest failing. If it accepted it’s place it’s be tighter, darker and nastier.

When it turns up on Five, it’s worth a look. If you’re siting peaceably in in a pub enjoying a glass of cabernet wih a good book, don’t disturb yourself.

overly faithful whilst managing to miss the point

A comment on a messageboard elsewhere (read after having seen it). I’ll have to take his word for it. Having never been comic-book boy I haven’t read Alan Moore’s seminal The Watchmen. This despite it being one of the few graphic novels that I’ve always meant to.

So, based on the movie alone, we have story of some ’superheroes’ (of the Batman mode - no real super powers) outlawed and now possible the victims of a serial killer. There’s also their large blue radioactive mate who apparently single handedly won the Vietnam war ensuring President Nixon’s continued presidency. There’s bagloads of existential angst and cod-galactic philosophy bollocks on the way too. It all seems a bit hokey, and creaky.

And there in lies the main problem with this: It’s nothing new. No, I know the source material changed the world of the ‘comic book’. But, when I used the word seminal earlier it wasn’t some sort of lazy shorthand. The source material has been so influential that we’ve seen pretty much everything in it ripped off already (Tim Burton’s Batman comes to mind). It’s permeated popular culture (this feels more akin to Heroes than X-men ever did). And, been superceded (stand up Batman Begins - you’re all wrong about The Dark Knight).

In the director’s chair we have 300’s Zack Snyder. So, you’d expect a heavil stylised visual stun-feast. Again, it’s all very pedestrian. In fact most of the effects seem to be on Billy Crudup’s big blue member and some twaddle to do with clockwork he throws together on Mars when having a cream puff. (All of which would probably look great on a HUGE 3-D screen. If only there was such a thing). This being a proper grown-up comic means there’s been no faffing about trying to get a 12A certificate, it’s a full blown 18. (A rare enough thing these days for anything.) And the director gets to indulge his very obvious love of graphic violence. And, I’ll be honest, the most impressive moments in the film for me are the sequences where he’s managed to take (what I imagine is) one frame from the storyboard of a bullet passing through a body with a splurge and a crunch. But, tbh, these things really are just exercises in doing so and would have been more impressive presented as such. Maybe on Youtube.

I’ve complained many times about the use of digicam and before this we saw a trailer for the preposterous looking Crank II in which the only bits I could make out what was happening were the usual homoerotic Statham jokes. Over the 2+ hours of this I kept wondering if there was something wrong with the projector. Not one scene goes by at even a normal pace when its possible to run it in painful slow-mo. It struck me afterwards that this is probably Snyder trying to make sure that we can drink in all the detail (upcoming Imax release perhaps?). It don’t work.

There is about half an hour of fun in matching the cast with the real star they couldn’t get for the part. Or, rather you’ll find yourself scrabbling for anything to do to release the tedium.

So, “faithful”; I’m willing to believe. “Missing the point”; I sure hope so. Of all of the films adapted from Moore’s works I’ve seen (none of which have been great), I can’t help thinking this was certainly the poorest. And, yes, I have seen The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I’d convinced myself that I needed to go see this because (unlike his last three films) this one’s actually got Clint acting in it. But, let’s face it, despite it’s plaudits, I still haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby. So, why did this seem so necessary for me to see? Well, sucker that I am, it would qppear to be the marketing. As well as this bing the ’surpise’ hit when I was in the states over New Year (Slumdog came out on the 1st and quickly usurped it) and subject ot much discussion/TV coverage, there was a blitz on it when released here (it’s the bum end ofthe awards season, probably not the dieal time to be putting something out). Effectively, this had been positioned as Dirty Harry meets A Perfect World. Now, who wouldn’t find that irresistable.

The film opens with retiree Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) burying his wife. We are then taken to his home where he attempts to make sense of a world he no longer knows, on his own. He wants and has little to do with the Minnesotan Hmong community that has ‘taken over’ ‘the old neighbourhood’. That is until the neighbours’ youngest tries to steal his beloved 1972 Ford of the title.

God, where to start? Let’s start with the acting: Apparently most of the supporting cast here were drawn from the community the film is set among and, boy, does it show. From the wizened old hag (as I’m sure your’e meant to regard here) trading incomprehensible (to each other) abuse to the young kids that finally manage to under his rhino-like skin, they run the fuill gamut ofamaturish, one-dimensional and, ultimately, fairly cliched perfomances.

Which leads us nicely to the cliches. We could’ve set up a game of convention bingo for this film and I’m sure it would’ve been over in the first five minutes. In addition to the aforementioned grandmother, we get (uncharacteristically) tenderly meant gesture that it of course a raging faux pas in the other culture. Thwere’s the shaman/wiseman who sees deeply into the soul or our protagonist and tells him truths he’s never acknowledged about himself. Of course, all of this is related by translation through someone that doesn’t see how deeply their words are striking home… They’re all in there.

If cliche’s not good enough for you, how about the heavy handed symbolism? The car of the title: An emblem of an america long gone, but which everyone desires to own. Walt repairs his home and has all the tools required to do so (clunk!). Not only that, but he repairs the tools he uses for this. We see him mowing his lawn with an ancient but perfectly amintained push-pull mower. His beer cooler looks like it was a wedding gift. He is surrounded by the solid well built, that the modern world has no real need (or want) for anymore. A. Bit. Like. Walt. Himself. See?

There’s a line in Half Man Half Biscuit’s Breaking News (a list song of the people rounded up as part of “Operation less pricks”) about a people who say they speak as they find and are somehow proud of it. This lot’ll be creaming themselves at the ‘anti-PC’ language used by Walt throughout this movie. Much like the tubes that hailed D-Fens as some sort of hero, they’re seriously missing the point. This is a damaged human being, and an intolerant racist. Again, there’s the wistfulness for a time time long gone whan a man could call a spade whatever the hell he liked. The way in which this is used as the central (and recurrent) ‘joke’ in the film is cheap and nasty. There’s a rerason why kids today know all about Bill Hicks but have no idea who Andrew Dice Clay is (who is still with us and still going).

There’s nowt wrong with sentiment. However, it can quite easily teeter over the brink to mawkish schmaltziness. And, this film not only teeters and topples, but takes a full blown swan dive right into it.

Let’s see, what else? The plot is so predictable you find youself thinking “no, they’re not gonna do that?” And, they do. And, so shall I.

Despite it all, it’s really, really good. An object lesson in how to tell a story and keep an audience entertained. (Yes, it could lose a bit of flab. But, I’ve said enough about that beign the norm…) You quite happily go along with the signposted plot and cack-handed symbolism (oh, I haven’t touched on it, believe me) because it’s so damned enjoyable. Yes, a large part of this is down to heart of the film being CLINT doing what he does best. But, there’s just something deeply satisfying about the whole enterprise.

Nowhere near as flashy, but every bit as enjoyable as Slumdog. Probably better. The kind of solid work that makes you wonder whatever happened to the craftsmenship.

Nice piece by David Mitchell in today’s Observer:

One of the fastest growing areas in our economy in the years leading up to the crunch was the selling of crap to twats.

Jeez, this man’s younger than me :-/

Also, am I the only one that keeps getting him confused with the author of Cloud Atlas? Obviously, not when actually reading/listening/watching him but when I hear reference to him turning up on something or (as here) writing a column.