How diversity works in Marvel movies today. Look at the line up on this official promo art. You have more chance of being in the movie if you have blue skin than black skin. #Avengers #sowhite #andblue
****
July 4 Is there any point in making superhero movies, when audiences keep telling you they prefer something else? This half term I’ve been valiantly drawing Supergirl on the flipcharts I do before my Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, and half the kids don’t even know who she is. Next to none of them knew or cared there was a movie out.
They do know there’s a Spider-Man movie due, and they are big on the new Toy Story and Minions movies. And, a year on, they’re still crazy about K Pop Demon Hunters. Which suggests primary school kids are the big movie audience, and making novelty movies, eg superheroes, that’s not aimed at them is a losing game.
When the hit movies come from original ideas, like Backrooms and Obsession, and the big IP movies like Mandalorian and Masters of the Universe are proving disappointing, is it worth spending more times on new ideas, and letting tired old IP rest for a while?
Who remembers Robot Archie? A favourite strip from many of our childhoods in the 70s. Grant Morrison slipped him into 2000AD, he was revived in Albion, and I smuggled him into The Beano’s Bananaman (here you see my rough script and Wayne Thomson’s brilliant art)
But I only recently remembered I plotted a Return of Robot Archie strip years ago (circa 1989). It went like this: kid finds something buried deep under the shed in this farmhouse the family’s moved into. It’s the big red robot, Archie. Looks like he crashed there fifty years ago.
While he secretly tinkers with repairing it (genius kid? I dunno) he researches and finds this was the famous Robot Archie who was big in the 60s then disappeared and everyone seemingly forgot.
Only they didn’t. Cos when the lad gets the Robot switched on again it triggers an alert at some secret government base, and out of the woodwork comes evil looking old guy who’s been waiting his life for this moment and now commences the hunt for Archie
There’s then a chase-and-hide adventure with the kid and a robot that’s waking up and remembering more about what happened all those years ago.
Turns out Archie was taken over in the 70s by the government and turned into a weapon. Rather than be used to kill people, Archie deactivated and crash-buried himself. Now those same forces want to pick up where they left off, only now, if they retrieve his special secrets, they have the technology to make a million of him
When bad guy catches up with kid and robot we learn bad guy is Archie’s original owner from those old Lion strips. There’d been two owners (Ted Richie and Ken Dale). One wanted to keep Archie good, one wanted Archie to sell out. Bad guy had Archie kill good guy. This has hung on Archie’s conscience
In final confrontation, once we’ve established that our new child hero has learned all the science from Archie, and Archie has learned humanity from the kid, Archie flies up into the sky and blows himself up so no one can have his secrets.
I mean, essentially, I’d written The Iron Giant, but about ten years early. I don’t know if I even ended up pitching it, I think Grant Morrison’s version appeared when I was thinking of mine, so the point was moot.
Anyhoo. If anyone fancies a Return of Robot Archie graphic novel writing, I’ve got an old plot for you. One careful owner. (That was a chapter title, I recall).
*****
July 5 What a good year it’s been for movies, wouldn’t you say? Last night we enjoyed Project Hail Mary , which is on telly already (remember when proper big screen movies would take three-to-five years to come to the small screen, try and tell the kids etc) and is excellent.
Having enjoyed a string of mid budget movie hits this year - including Sheep Detectives, Send Help, and Weapons - and now this big budget success, it really is a marked contrast from last year which was swamped with rubbish sequels (anyone remember the final Indiana Jones and Missions Impossible?) and dead end superhero dross (I had to google to be reminded that Thunderbolts existed, never mind the Captain America thing I didn’t even watch), the state of the cinema this year is rivalled only by the state of tv drama, which is a whole nother story.
Looks like I picked a good year to be not going out and gigging so much, and vegetating in front of the telly like an old man. Come on tv and movies, start being rubbish again so I have to get out of the house more.
Bizarrest photo, circa 2002. From the left it’s my Dad, Gez Foster, me, Dan Clegg, and Miranda Hart, outside Mum and Dad’s house in Kibworth, having stayed overnight after our Leicester Comedy Festival Sitcom Trials touring show gig.
The bizarre thing is the posterised effect that has happened, probably thanks to Mum’s printer. She took this photo and sent us it as a printout. That’s how we did it back in the day. Obviously she’s taking the photo, and by the look of it I’m videoing her, for the behind the scenes Sitcom Trials tour video that has yet to see the light of YouTube. It lives on VHS somewhere in the house, near where Hev just dug this photo out.
****
July 5 Excellent movie, Mile End Kicks. And another fine example of Uncle Kev’s mistaken identity syndrome.
Watching the lead, Barbie Ferreira, I kept thinking “doesn’t she look like her mum?”
Cos I assumed Barbie Ferreira was the daughter of America Ferrera, from Ugly Betty and Superstore.
They are no relation.
Also the guy who plays Archie isn’t George Fouracres, but I might do a separate post about that.
***
Ever been on a date with someone who starts singing different words to the song Oh Tannenbaum? That's a Red Flag.
July 8 Is Count Binface the new Martin Bell?
In French his name is Count Poubelle. Pou- Belle! Coincidence?
****
July 8 Oh. Unfortunately I’ve heard Count Binface (aka Martin Poubelle) talk for the first time and sadly I now think he won’t beat Nigel Farage.
July 10
Of course I have liked, shared, and voted in this poll. But I am aware of its futility because I, and I'm sure you, are aware of the concept of Sampling Bias and the legendary example of The Literary Digest and their poll for the Presidential Election of 1936. You don't know the story? Read on..
In 1936 the US Presidential Election was looking close, and the art of polling was becoming established. And one thing pollsters had learned was that you got an inaccurate results if you polled too small a number. So The Literary Digest were determined to do better. They ran the biggest poll there had ever been. They got nearly 2.8 million responses! There was no way they could be wrong.
Meanwhile George Gallup's company surveyed fewer than 30,000 people, so their result was bound to be less accurate than The Literary Digest's. It stood to reason.
The Literary Digest's 2.8 million strong poll predicted confidently that Governor Alfred Landon would win the Presidency, with over 57% of the popular vote.
What happened is that his opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually won, in an unprecedented landslide, taking all but two states.
George Gallup, with his smaller sample size, had predicted this result, and was much closer, getting within 1.4% of the actual total.
How had The Literary Digest got it so wrong, after asking 2.8 million people (actually they asked way more, that's how many responded), and Gallup had got it so right by asking such a tiny fraction as many people? The answer, as is the case with the Count Binface example above, is a matter of who you ask.
Gallup made a point of ensuring they questioned the widest range of American voters possible, from all social groups.
The Literary Digest built their massive polling list from two major sources: the register of Drivers Licences, and the Telephone Directory. A pretty reliable cross section of American society, you might think. But not in 1936.
In 1936, having a phone in your home and owning a car was still much much more common among the middle class and the well to do. The vast majority of Americans didn't have their own phone, or even access to a car. A small percentage of people had both. So the poll was skewed towards quizzing people who were already more likely to vote for the Republican candidate, Landon, and greatly overlooking the people who were likely to vote for the Democrat FDR.
So let us learn the lesson of Sampling Bias, and enjoy our pro-Binface polls for the light entertainment that they are. Do please remember those of us who voted in it are primarily people who wanted to make a "Doesn't Reform Look Silly?" point, and 99.99% of us Do Not Live In Clacton!
Look away now if the existence of this stuff offends you (I know this upsets some of my friends worse than photos from an abattoir)
This week in Ai: these postcards bought at the antiques centre in Topsham at the weekend. Yes I forked out a whole pound for four postcards. These were just four out of literally hundreds of cards on show drawn, to my eye, using Ai. No manufacturers or printers details on any of them so no way of tracing where they’ve come from.
I didn’t talk to the staff about them, it’s a multi tenanted centre where the person on the desk is taking payments for dozens of non- present exhibitors, so I doubt I’d have learned anything.
Here we see hideous caricature drinkers with gibberish on their shirts; Jesus and some nonsense Latin; an alien drawing which looks flawless and, I have to say, rather impressive; and what looks like an Edwardian painting but has, on closer examination, hallucinated wording on the posters
The debate over what Ai art represents, why publishers and vendors use it (it’s free and copyright free, obviously, that bit’s easy), how it affects real art by living artists, and how we all feel about it continues.
Whether you are Team AI Is Great, Team AI Is Dangerous, Team AI Is Inevitable, or Team Head In The Sand (other teams are available) this is a situation that’s developing fast and I cannot begin to predict where it’s going to go next.
***
July 16. I’ve read less about Ai music than Ai art, and it seems an even wider and more immediate threat. Because, most simply, you can’t tell.
Whereas we can spot Ai art, for the moment, and can mostly tell Ai deepfake videos, who turns up in a dance tent or a club and thinks “I’ve never heard this bit of music before, so just before I start dancing to it I’d like to see a certificate of authenticity”?
For forty years now most dance music has been made from samples. To such an extent that you’d be surprised is a track wasn’t made from half a dozen earlier tracks. (It was only this year that I heard the track that White Lines Don’t Do It by Grandmaster Flash is sung over the top of, for example, and that’s 45 years ago).
So if Ai music avoids actual samples, which would I assume still be copyright, you have total copyright free music flooding the dance realm, the next question is how does it affect other genres?
I’m a 6 Music listener, and a pop fan of long standing, so I’m very aware of the “personality” of my music. I don’t need to necessarily hear long interviews with the people who make it, but I get their character from their music, from their lyrics, from their vibe.
But. And it’s a big but. But there is “The 6 Music Hole”. This is a syndrome whereby a piece of music will come on and Hev and I will exchange a look and ask “is it from now or is it from then?”
For years we have had acts sounding like acts and genres from the past. In the last year there have been a lot of new acts sounding like they’re from the 80s, sounding for all the world like Duran Duran, the B52s - this very second I can hear a record that could be New Order from 1986 and I’ve just been told is a new act. (Last week I had the niggle of trying to work out what Beaches by Beabadoobee sounded like, I concluded it was Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer). The point is, a lot of new music has sounded like it might be rehashed old music for a long time now.
Now the 6 Music Hole will have “or is it Ai?” added to the mix
Anyone have an experience of Ai music? I don’t randomly stream music, so my music comes curated. Have you had it sprung on you by Spotify or YouTube, or doesn’t that happen? Yet.
*****
July 17. I love a good prediction. Cos all I know is that most people get these predictions wrong most of the time. So I’m bookmarking this to see if Cory Doctorow turns out to be right. Will the AI “bubble burst”? Or will something else, more surprising and unpredictable, actually happen? Watch this space.
*****
Happiness is leaving an "Authors and Illustrators" group, which has just turned into a twice-daily AI slop fest. The latest thing is books about dogs, or books about kids. Identical, yet all different, no doubt unreadable. Yech.
I have no doubt there are posts on the thread where I stormed off, telling me not to tell the door hit me on the ass on the way out. Good. Enjoy your slop.
****
July 9. Am I the only person who keeps getting every single Subway Take on their Facebook feed all the time. How many are there? I’ve never seen the same one twice, but I’ve never asked to see them. They’re just always there.
My take? Subway Takes should not keep being in my phone all the bloody time.
100% agree
***
July 10. I’ve had calls a couple of times from a number which leaves no message and, when I google it, tells me it’s ICE agents in Milwaukee!
Anyone else getting these? Anyone know why anyone in the UK would?
****
July 12. An excellent movie, Crime 101, with some of the best car chase set pieces since Baby Driver, and a splendid script well directed. I can’t understand why it’s not widely spoken of, raved about, and talked of as an Oscar contender. The casting certainly suggests that’s what they were going for (it stars Thor, the Hulk and Catwoman, with the Hulk’s dad, and an almost Joker)
They hang a lampshade on the movie’s influences, with an amusing conversation about Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. Recommended
PS: When people have been slagging off the title, why I don’t know, I’ve responded below by referencing the ‘learning’ part of the 101 bit. Totally forgetting that the 101 is the road the crimes take place on. It’s not a spoiler, the opening shot is the road and it’s referred to throughout (and on the poster). I just forgot the double meaning whenever I was replying to the Title Critics this fine film has attracted, for some reason.
Bugger - updating this bit of diary at the start of September, I find I have just spent half the day virtually remaking this video for Youtube. I totally forgot I had already made it! It added no views to the bloody podcast when I made it in July, I imagine it will do the same two months later.
****
July 12 My antique shop finds from yesterday: five Buster comics from 1969/70 for three quid, plus a bundle of Beano’s containing strips by me, in bargain bags of 5 for a quid!
Yes, keeping hold of your old Beanos really is a long term investment kids
***
July 13. Looks like those of us owed money by Leicester Comedy Festival / stroke / Big Difference are getting nowt
Now we have to work out which one owed us money. The company that just got closed down or the charity that closed it down.
Comedy, eh?
****
July 13 I can report, anecdotally, that Netflix is slipping in our viewing too. It’s totally lost it for movies, not having had a Saturday Night Movie for us to watch for ages. That battle is won every time by either Now TV (which has Sky Movies) or Amazon Prime (which has recently taken to having sponsors who don’t interrupt the movie with ads).
The only place worse for movies than Netflix is Apple TV which only has its own movies, none of which has ever been that great.
When Disney has a movie it’s a big one, but they’re few and far between, and if you don’t like Star Wars, Marvel or Pixar you can whistle.
As for TV series, this article nails the big problems: the cancellations and the wait between series. That and variable quality and the result for us is, best TV comes from:
1) BBC iPlayer (Inc Channel 4 & other broadcast)
2) Now TV (which has HBO and Sky Atlantic)
3) Apple TV (they don’t come often but when they do they’re great)
4) Netflix (it still has enough good to outweigh the bad)
5) Disney (which has Hulu)
6) Amazon Prime (those ads are the kiss of death. We refuse to start new series because of them)
Do we watch too much TV by any chance?
****
July 15. It's the 90s all over again. Not only are we between Doctors Who, but Radio 1 is having one of its do-overs. Anyone else remember 1993, when Roger Bannister [citation needed]* took over and fired the old guard?
Tragically we were on holiday in Greece so we missed hearing Dave Lee Travis's legendary resignation speech ("There are things going on at this radio station that I just don't agree with...") but it was great to live through the Cool Britannia makeover of Radio 1. Out went the naff and cheesy DJs in nylon bomber jackets, like Bruno Brookes, DLT, Simon Bates, Adrian Juste, Garry Davies, and in came the cool kids: Danny Baker, Nicky Campbell, anyone remember Emma Freud on daytime? Mark Radcliffe, Zoe Ball paired with Kevin Greening? Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley's Evening Session? Comedy shows by the likes of Chris Morris and Lee & Herring?
It didn't last, and within a couple of years Chris Moyles came along, calling himself "the saviour of Radio 1". Bannister called him "the new DLT". Plus ca change.
* I know it was Matthew Bannister! That was a joke.
This is the sort of graph I love to wake up to. History, stats, class warrior chippiness, what could appeal to me more? It’s a breakdown of every PM’s first cabinet showing how many of them went to a private secondary school.
Look at the contrast between Attlee’s 25% posh and Eden’s 100%. We’ve always been a funnily class divided country haven’t we?
Eeh, I love me a good bar chart.
***
July 15. Happiness is discovering all the money you're owed. The chore is spending half the morning chasing it all up - including two schools that owe me from October last year!
The embarrassing part is coming to that school who you accuse of not paying you and they did (oops). And the annoying part is the schools whose email comes back and tells you they've broken up and won't be back in the office till September.
Oh the life of the itinerant visiting author / stroke / artist.
****
July 17. Marvel comics is apparently moving from its lifelong home of New York to LA, following in the footsteps of DC comics. Very much the end of an era, especially for those of us who grew up reading Marvel comics and very much romanticised that Manhattan location.
Spider-Man in particular portrayed those valleys of skyscrapers as the very heart of the drama. That topography, and those incredible buildings drawn by the likes of Gil Kane and John Romita, coupled with knowledge that the Marvel Bullpen itself was right there, just round the corner from J Jonah Jameson’s office, filled my mind with wonder. Frank Miller’s Daredevil just added to this, managing to romanticise those roof-mounted water towers and the notion of people living in the subways.
Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Santorum was in Greenwich Village, the only image I had of that fabled location. The Avengers had their offices there, and the Fantastic Four of course had the Baxter Building. The number of times I saw Manhattan swung round, flown through, and smashed to bits by superheroes defies description and beggars belief.
So when I got to work for Marvel, and every week would send off artwork in a Fed Ex box to that Manhattan address, the romantic dream scenario was complete. Sadly I never got to visit their offices which, I’m told, weren’t all that.
Now the comic biz, which is a fraction of a shadow of what it once was, has left the city where it was all born. Where the great newspaper strips used to come from too, back when that was a thing. (Will Eisner’s New York studio is another dream location from the distant past that lives, exorbitant NY rent free, in my head). All gone now, but we’ll always have the comics, meaning many of us will remember the cartoon version of the city way clearer than the real thing ever was.
***
Re: Marina Hyde article: A tiny niggle, but I get bugged by Marina’s regular use of the phrase “we’ll get to that”. She does it on the Entertainment podcast and she does it in this article.
And the trouble is, because of my short attention span, I am never sure whether, when she says “and we’ll come back to that” that she does actually come back to it.
I mean I’m pretty sure she does get to all the things she says she’s going to get to, there’s just something about the delay and suspense that puts me on alert every time. Cos of course when we do get back to the thing she said we were going to get back to, I’m mentally trying to tick it off on my list of thing we were going to… I’m overthinking this aren’t I?
****
July 18: Well this was a stunning film, caught on telly yesterday. So many images full of so much information going so fast, it’s an astonishing feast for the brain. You could watch it again and again and spot different details every time.
I had seen the first of these, in a cinema, about eight years ago, but hadn’t seen this yet, largely cos Hev can’t bear the frenetic visuals. (She’s not epileptic, but I’m betting anyone who is has a problem with it too).
Of course I didn’t realise it was going to end with a “to be continued” card, which is immensely frustrating and something I’m famously not a fan of. And the final part doesn’t come out for a year yet. Which means, if you were in primary school when you saw the first instalment in 2018, you’ll be seeing part 3 just as you go off to university. (For comparison, matching to my childhood, episode 1 comes out when Jon Pertwee is Doctor Who, episode 3 comes out in the Peter Davison era. Yes, that tells us nothing, good comparison Kev)
Anyhoo, Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse recommended. Naff title ( had to double google, was it Into or Across or Something Equally Forgettable?) notwithstanding.
***
July 19. Another good movie last night, The Housemaid. Another one on Amazon (who are now beating Now/Sky in the Saturday night movie battle, and another month passes without Netflix having a movie worth watching). And this one came with a new mystery twist…
No adverts. At all. None before the movie, none during. On Amazon, who have been notorious for spoiling their movies and shows with unwanted ads.
It was so spooky, when we realised, that both of us have been scouring our accounts to ensure we didn’t buy anything on Amazon which led to us accidentally upgrading to the ad-free version of Prime. (We didn’t).
Has anyone else noticed ads not appearing on Prime movies all of a sudden?
Oh anyway, The Housemaid, recommended.
****
July 19 Re Article about Netflix
Very good and informative article. I hadn’t realised how ubiquitous the Audience Capture model is (you build your audience with lots of expensive content, then reduce the content while raising the prices).
I noted last week that Netflix had fallen down our watch list (no movies for ages and, last week we noticed, only two shows in Continue Watching, both of which we’d given up on)
I could conceivably cancel Netflix and not miss it. What a liberating thought.
The Scottish Falsetto Socks doing a fleetingly rare gig last weekend at Nottingham’s Splendour Festival. They’ve been in hibernation I’m afraid but I hope to drag them back out soon.
****
July 24. Today's dilemma with AI: when it looks better than the alternative. Look at these ads from a local pub in my town, don't they look a million dollars? They produce an ad like this for every event, every week, and I simply can't imagine how they could get something looking so good any other way. Could they commission an airbrush artist who, not long ago, would've been charging a grand an image for something this polished? I don't think so.
This is a big quandry for those of us opposed to AI, when it really looks amazing. You might quibble with the typography, but seriously who other than a design professional cares that they have a different logo every time? There are no typos, no kerning faults, and most importantly no glitches or hallucinations in the images.
Yes it's free now but it'll cost them money in six months, we all know that. But right now, how and indeed why should I say anything to them about it? What would you say?
Yours, ready to be accused of being both an Enabler and a Spoilsport.
****
July 29 I just watched one of the best bits of TV sci fi ever, Turn Left, an episode of Doctor Who from 2008 that I’ve not watched since then I don’t think.
Everything, from the whole premise, through the brilliant writing, to the incredible acting. Just perfect. And the way it fitted into that TV series, which I guess it only makes sense if you’ve watched all of up till then (actually you’d get by if you watch just seasons three and four) is genius.
Maybe you had to be there. But for me this is about as good as telly gets.
My Books And Where To Find Them...
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
No comments:
Post a Comment