I’ve been digging through the archives again…

After a seven year wait, the final volume of cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s graphic novel series The Metabarons is getting a long-overdue English language release this week.  What follows is an interview I did with Jodorowsky back in 2002 for the much-loved, but sadly no-longer-with-us, comics magazine Borderline.

Back then, LA-based Humanoids Publishing were busy releasing sumptuous volumes of Jodorowsky’s comics translated into English.  At the same time, two of his most famous movies - El Topo and The Holy Mountain – were fiendishly difficult to get hold of due to a decades-long feud between Jodorowsky and former Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, who owned the rights to the films.

That’s no longer the case as the two men finally reconciled prior to Klein’s death last year and both films were subsequently restored and released on DVD.  English translations of Jodorowsky’s comics, on the other hand, are now fiendishly difficult to get hold of.

Typical.

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Here’s my second batch of favourite films of the last decade in haiku-form, which covers number 75 through to 51.

For 100 through to 76 scroll up or go here.

More to come…

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75.  Drag Me To Hell (dir. Sam Raimi, 2009)

Raimi’s zeitgeist surf

As bank clerk is damned

Due to Evil Debt

74.  The Bourne Identity (dir. Doug Liman, 2002)

New ‘JB’ in town

It’s those initials again!

Bond and Bauer – meet Bourne

73.  Gone Baby Gone (dir. Ben Affleck, 2008)

Those Affleck brothers

Adapt Boston-set thriller

(Look out for Omar!)

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Well, no, he isn’t really – and he probably won’t be, either – but we all know in our hearts that he should be. Here’s a rather clever fan-made trailer from someone who agrees…

The New Yorker’s legendarily outspoken film critic Pauline Kael once said of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan “Now that’s more like it.” At least, I think that’s what she said. Whatever the case, it’s a phrase that went through my mind last night as the credits went up at the end of JJ Abrams’ wonderful reboot, reimagining and reinvigoration of Star Trek.

Let me make my position clear: I’m what you might call a lapsed Trekkie. As a kid, as a teenager and even into my twenties I was addicted to all things Star Trek. I watched every episode of the original series countless times, went to see each movie on the opening weekend and even learned to embrace The Next Generation. In my defence, however, I never went so far as to attend conventions, dress up in costumes or sport a pair of fake pointy ears. As Mason said to Dixon: “You’ve got to draw the line somewhere”.

At some point, though, something went wrong. I began to despise Star Trek. This didn’t happen overnight; there was no Phantom Menace-style moment of clarity. Over time, however, I became increasingly disenchanted with the franchise. The TV shows became increasingly anodyne and even the old Trek movie ‘even-numbered good; odd-numbered bad’ maxim was replaced with a new, entropic holding pattern of ‘even numbered dull; odd-numbered duller’.

Thank God, then, for JJ Abrams. He’s not only created a Star Trek film that’s exciting, kinetic and full of great characterisation, but he’s done something that hasn’t been done before. He’s made a cracking piece of mainstream entertainment that just happens to be a Star Trek movie.

Now that’s more like it.

My brother and I will be off to see JJ Abrams’ Star Trek at the Birmingham Imax this evening and – I must admit – I’m rather looking forward to it. As a lapsed Trekker, I’ve almost forgotton how that feels. To actually look forward to a Star Trek fim… why, that’s a sensation I haven’t experienced since about 1994. That was Star Trek: Generations – the one where Captain Shat met Captain Baldy – and it turned out to be not very good. I’d have to go further back to find one I look forward to and actually enjoyed.

When tonight’s tickets came through the post an accompanying leaflet promised an evening of ‘Star Trek themed fun’:

• Come in costume and receive a FREE sci-fi goodie bag
• Have your photo taken with your favourite Star trek characters
• Competitions to win amazing Star Trek prizes

Oh dear.

While it’s nice of the Imax to make an effort and all, this does not bode well. I’ve been to places where grown-up people dress up in genre drag and its never a pretty sight. I don’t relish the opportunity of spending this eveing surrounded by chartered accountants dressed as Klingons.

I guess I’ll be coming home empty handed.

From Variety:

MGM and the Farrelly brothers are closing in on their cast for “The Three Stooges.”

Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome “Curly” Howard.

The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe.

What? What? WHAT???

For some reason, the notion of the recently Oscar-enriched Penn playing Larry puts me in mind of a Woody Allen short story, where a serious-but-struggling writer is commissioned to write a novelisation of a Three Stooges flick:

Calmly and for no apparent reason, the dark-haired man took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a long, counterclockwise circle. A horrible grinding sound broke the silence of the Great Plains. ‘We suffer,’ the dark-haired man said. ‘O woe to the random violence of human existence.’

Meanwhile Larry, the third man, had wandered into the house and had somehow managed to get his head caught inside an earthenware jar. Everything was suddenly terrifying and black as Larry groped blindly around the room.

He wondered if there was a god or any purpose at all to life or any design behind the universe when suddenly the dark-haired man entered and, finding a large polo mallet, began to break the jar off his companion’s head. With pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of man’s fate, the one named Moe smashed the crockery.

That’s it. I’m off to watch You Nazty Spy! before I go to bed…

Here’s something fairly inconsequential for you.

This is a meme I saw on Rol’s blog late last year. Rol heard about it here, but I believe it originated from here. In any case, the idea is to select a favourite film to represent each letter of the alphabet. As I have lots of favourite films and a fairly temperamental set of taste buds, I’ve included runners-up in my list. This was to overcome the judgement-call paralysis that hampered my previous attempt.

If I didn’t do it this way I wouldn’t have made it past the first consonant.

Annie Hall (Runners up: An American Werewolf in London, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension)

The Big Lebowski (Runners up: Batman Begins, Blazing Saddles and Brazil)

Citizen Kane (Runners up: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Chinatown and Casino)

Dirty Harry (Runners up: Dawn of the Dead, Duck Soup and Down by Law)

Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (Runners up: El Topo, Escape From New York and The Empire Strikes Back)

F For Fake (Runners up: Fight Club, Fitzcarraldo and Fistful of Dollars)

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Runner up: Ghostbusters, Get Carter and The Great Dictator)

Holy Mountain (Runner up: High Fidelity)

It’s a Wonderful Life

Jaws (Runner up: Jackie Brown)

Kiss Me Deadly (Runners up: King Kong [1933] and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang)

Love and Death (Runner up: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and L’Âge d’Or)

Manhattan (Runners up: Momento, The Magnificent Ambersons and Monty Python’s Life of Brian)

North By North West (Runners up: Night of the Hunter and Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (Runner up: Once Upon a Time in the West)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Runners up: Point Blank, The Producers and Paris, Texas)

Quadrophenia (Runner up: Q – The Winged Serpent)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Runners up: Repoman, Rear Window and Reservoir Dogs)

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (Runners up: Spider-Man 2, Santa Sangre and The Searchers)

This is Spinal Tap (Runner up: Touch of Evil, The Thing and The Third Man)

The Usual Suspects (Runners up: Un Chien Andalou and Unforgiven)

Vertigo (Runner up: Videodrome)

Withnail & I (Runners up: W.R. – Mysteries of the Organism, When Harry Met Sally and Wings of Desire)

X-Men 2

Young Frankenstein

Zelig (Runners up: Zero Effect, Zoolander and Zodiac)

I went to see Watchmen last night.

As a somewhat obsessive fan of the original comic book (alright then, graphic novel), I expected this to be something of a Manichean moviegoing experience. I’d leave the theatre either loving or hating the film, hailing Zack Snyder as a cinematic genius or denouncing him as the New Schumacher. Like the moral standpoint of Rorschach, one of the anti-heroes from the film (alright then, motion picture), there would be no middle ground, no compromise.

That was yesterday. Now, I’m not too sure.

My good friend Phil likened the film to the Ludovico technique, that fictitious aversion therapy from Clockwork Orange in which Malcolm McDowell’s Alex was forced to watch a barrage of lurid, violent images with his eyes prised open. Watchmen was two hours and forty minutes of relentless sensory overload which made me feel happy, annoyed, ecstatic, angry, gleeful and perplexed and often all at the same time. It’s also left me feeling a bit like Malcolm McDowell.

I’m still trying to process it now. Like Schrödinger’s Cat – which is both alive and dead at the same time – I find myself simultaneously loving and hating Zack Snyder’s Watchmen. I’ll try to write something more coherent once my neurology settles down.

Or I might just go to see it again.

As you might have already noticed, the Watchmen movie comes out this week. Unlike most online commentators with geekazoid tendancies, I’ll try my best to reserve judgement on the film until I’ve actually seen the damn thing. Whether I end up loving it film or loathing it, at least it’s given me an excuse to re-read Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ original comic series for the umpteenth time:

“Moe Vernon was a man around fifty-five or so, and he had one of those old New York faces that you don’t see anymore. It’s funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they’re related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there’s a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.”

I first read Watchmen when it was released as a 12 issue series between 1986-7. A lot of things have changed since then, but it’s still my favourite comic.