18th May2013

‘The Stone Tape’ Review

by Mark Allen

Stars: Jane Asher, Michael Bryant, Ian Cuthbertson, Michael Bates, Reginald Marsh, Tom Chadbon, John Forgeham, Philip Trewinnard, James Cosmo | Written by Nigel Kneale | Directed by Peter Sasdy 

I’ve never been a huge fan of ghost stories, largely because most of them feel (if you’ll excuse the pun) insubstantial and are more often than not resolved cheaply and without much in the way of originality. Which is to say nothing of the BBC’s insistence on producing at least four dusty Victorian-era spooky tales every Christmas. With exception, if you’ve seen one ghost story, you’ve seen them all, and The Stone Tape is mercifully one of the former.

Set in an ill-kept Victorian house, an electronics research team stumble across a room in which a female apparition appears at regular intervals to scream and just as quickly disappear, leading them to believe that she’s a psychic impression left in the stone walls of the room, hence creating a (wait for it) “stone tape”. This is exciting news for project leader Peter (Bryant), as the team’s goal is to discover a new recording medium and this might just be exactly what they need, but head programmer Jill (Asher) is significantly more unnerved, being that she’s one of only a few that can actually see the spirit.

What follows is the team’s attempts to both capture the activity on conventional recordings and exorcise it from the room so that they can keep their Thwomp-sized computers in it – the film was made in 1972, so laptops were barely even a fever dream at this point. The Stone Tape hasn’t dated especially well, the superimpositional special effects hardly convincing and the histrionic melodrama of most of the performances coming off more comical than creepy.

That said, the audio commentary with film critic Kim Newman and writer Nigel Kneale goes a long way toward redressing these issues by giving us historical context and discussing the recording methods of the day. I’d actually go so far as to say that I enjoyed Newman and Kneale’s commentary much more than the actual film, which is by no means a detriment to something that tells a compelling, unique story on what was clearly not the biggest budget.

It’s not exactly the spookiest tale I’ve seen, but I hardly think it’s supposed to be; the story is more of Peter’s brutality in removing the ghost and Jill’s desire to understand the spirit’s torment. There’s no happy ending, but if you’re familiar with Kneale’s work on Quatermass then I’m sure you’re used to it by now.

Definitely worth checking out if you want something a little more experimental with your supernatural tales (see also: Ghostwatch) if not for Newman’s insights alone, The Stone Tape is out on DVD now.

Category : Movies, Reviews
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14th May2013

ABC releases first trailer for Marvel’s ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’

by Mark Allen

After ABC’s announcement that they’d picked up Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D - Marvel’s Avengers spin-off - for its first (but hopefully not last) season last week, the internet was drip-fed tantalisingly brief teasers like character IDs and a six-second trailer on Vine.

Well, now they’re playing a little less hard-to-get with a slightly more satisfying promo trailer:

Are you excited? I’m excited, and not just because Joss Whedon’s involved; even from this sliver of footage you can tell there’s meat on the bones. Check out io9′s in-depth look at the clues given in the trailer (Flying cars!) and let us know if you think they missed anything.

[Oh, and if enough folks tweet the hashtag #CoulsonLives we all get to look at an extended trailer. Who says social media doesn't bring people together?]

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13th May2013

Panel Discussion #005 with Jack and Mark

by Mark Allen

JandM-Comics

8th May 2013

Batman #20, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, DC Comics

It’s taken me some time to come around to Scott Snyder’s run on Batman but now I’m fully on board. I couldn’t stand the Court of Owls plotline when I first read it, but since then, I’ve made a real U-turn on my Snyder-based opinions. I have always rather liked Greg Capullo’s art on the book. The recent Death of the Family storyline managed to take a fairly gimmicky set up and create something effective with actual emotional resonance. At the moment though, we’re pretty much treading water with Batman until the duo’s Zero Year arc begins next month (which, in spite of everything, I’m cautiously optimistic about, which speaks volumes for the amount of trust Snyder has garnered from me).

This is the second of a two part arc starring Clayface, one of the more inexplicably popular Batman villains. Without wanting to sound too damning, the books feel like they’ve been put out to keep the fans happy rather than to serve any greater story purposes.
Similarly, the nod to Batman Beyond in this issue feels like fan-service. In addition, the machinations of the plot, which sees Clayface imitating Bruce Wayne in order to, uh, cause havoc and do crimes, mean that we’re now expected to believe that Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon and most of the Gotham City Police Department are stupid enough to not realise that Batman is Bruce Wayne. The dumbasses.

Still, the art remains great and there’s some decent work done with the death of Damian (not that that helps with the possible compromising of secret identities). The backup story, Ghost Lights by James Tynion IV and Alex Maleev is also kind of fun, if, indeed, light and features Batman and Superman sorting out some paranormal activity.

Batman and Red Hood #20, Peter J Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Cliff Richards, DC Comics

Since the aforementioned death of Damian, the Batman and Robin book has begun a rotating cast of sidekicks with Red Robin last month, Batgirl next and Red Hood this issue. Carrie Kelly from The Dark Knight Returns has also cropped up again, though what her role will be in the long term is unclear. It’s hard to see them shoehorning her into the Robin role in this continuity and it would seem that the Harper Row character introduced in Batman is better suited anyway, but we haven’t seen her in a while. Anyway, this ish sees Batman hanging out with Jason Todd in a fairly chummy way (after the events of previous Red Hood and the Outlaws books), kicking arse and setting things straight before having a big argument and obligatory hero-on-hero punch up.

I’m a fan of Jason Todd, particularly in the New 52 continuity and it’s interesting to see how his relationship with Batman has evolved after recent events. Again, some of the content of the book feels gimmicky but Tomasi is smart enough to add relevance and a level of interest to the thing. It’s like buying a packet of cereal for the free toy inside but then enjoying having an additional bowl full of delicious and nutritious breakfast fodder more than the freebie. Or something like that. Do you even get free toys in cereal anymore? I don’t know.

Of the two Bat-books this month, I much preferred this one, primarily as it feels like it’s going somewhere. It manages to juggle the events of the other Bat-titles as well as tell its own story, which given the complexities of the Bat Family, is no mean feat. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the title long term – can you really have a book called Batman and Robin without a Robin? – but I’m quite happy to enjoy where this grim and moody take on a grieving Batman goes for now.

Avengers #11, Jonathan Hickman, Mike Deodato, Marvel (Mark)

For all the praise that’s previously been heaped upon Hickman’s Image work in this column, he doesn’t half push his luck when it comes to superheroes. I stopped picking up this book’s sister title New Avengers after issue three when I realised that, along with being unable to justify overpaying for two Avengers comics every month, NA was really just telling a different version of the group-of-powerful-men-decide-the-world’s-fate story Hickman is so fond of and telling much more coherently in Manhattan Projects.

With this issue of the ostensibly more straightforward series centring on the recently expanded Avengers *ahem* franchise Hickman and Deodato take us to a Hong Kong fight movie by way of Ocean’s 11 as a team of lesser-known (but still, I’d imagine, world famous) heroes infiltrates a casino in order to get their hands on a secret new weapon the villain community is clamouring for. J-Hix simultaneously goes for big laughs – Cannonball and Sunspot get drunk with a bunch of AIM henchmen, Black Widow wants to hurt people a lot – and super-serious interior monologues from Shang-Chi (Master of Kung Fu, don’tcha know) as he fights poorly defined bad guys in unnecessarily intercut action scenes for most of the issue. The last page tangentially ties this story into the overall plot of the series but I can’t help feeling that this issue was an opportunity for a fun, throwaway comic ruined by Jonathan Hickman’s need to have REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS happen every five minutes.

Über #1, Kieron Gillen, Canaan White, Avatar (Mark)

And speaking of important stories: here are a bunch of Nazis with superpowers rewriting history in Gillen & White’s WWII revision. The opening splash page depicts Hitler struggling with a gun in his mouth on the eve of his defeat and suicide in Berlin in April 1945, but the following scenes not only show the Führer being prevented from offing himself but also set up the series’ conflict – that of a desperate but still immeasurably powerful Germany versus resourceful Brits and ragged Russian POWs, specifically a spy who’s just blown her cover (and her “panzermensch” escort) and a captured sniper respectively.

Über definitely has the feel of a good war comic; some grand ideas are in there and are enough to make the story compelling and fresh but at the same time Gillen is careful to ground the story in reality as much as he can so we don’t forget that a lot of this (aside from the laser-eyed-aryans) isn’t too far removed from truth. I’m certainly looking forward to the the rest of the series, especially if White’s art remains as impressively detailed and expressive as it is in issue #1 (seriously, that first shot of Adolf is something to behold).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Season 9 #21, Andrew Chambliss, Georges Jeanty. Dark Horse (Mark)

I’m going to put this briefly, because readers of this comic are divided into those who read all of it and those who read none: if you’ve been reading Season 9, you’ll know that Buffy has been regularly disappointing, especially in comparison with its far superior sister book Angel & Faith. Well, #21 is a long overdue step in the right direction as disparate plot elements come together, the core cast return to their rightful places and the final showdown of the season looms ahead. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than we’ve been getting before now. All else are spoilers, unfortunately…

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11th May2013

‘The Fallow Field’ Review

by Mark Allen

Stars: Michael Dacre, Steve Garry | Written and Directed by Leigh Covey

The-Fallow-Field

El Mariachi has a lot to answer for. As does Clerks. Both were made in the early ‘90s on incredibly low budgets ($9,000 and $30,000 respectively; Clerks filmmaker Kevin Smith famously maxed out all of his credit cards to finance the film) and achieved previously unheard-of success from new directors, as supposedly ‘independent’ film budgets of that era – like those of Reservoir Dogs and Sex, Lies and Videotape – came in at around the $1million mark. This helped to kick-start guerrilla movements and independent movies proper, and surely had some impact on bringing us to our crowdfunded present, where dead TV shows can be resurrected by the cash of fans and a boatload of promises. It also sent an unfortunate if optimistic message to the general populace of the world:

We made a feature film without any money. Why don’t you?

Now, I’m not saying I want to live in a world without movies like Clerks and El Mariachi or the filmmakers who conceived them, but when I watch a film like The Fallow Field I often catch myself thinking that we might have been better off if no-one had seen his black-and-white arthouse comedy and he’d simply gone bankrupt.

Yeah, it’s going to be another one of those reviews.

Billing itself as “Memento meets Wolf Creek” – which is in itself a ludicrous bar to set for a film with a paltry (according to IMDB) £9,000 budget – The Fallow Field is an exercise in murky-to-nonexistent plot, dull, pretentious camerawork and the kind of bad acting usually reserved for compensation adverts. Writer-director Leigh Covey places us somewhere in deepest, darkest Sussex as Matt, a supposed amnesiac who’s just been dumped by both his wife and mistress (who has the decency to bone him before dropping him like a bad habit, thus meeting the naked flesh quota required for budget horror flicks) and ends up returning to a mysterious farm, where a quite obviously evil and insane farmer invites him in for tea and then, wholly unsurprisingly, murders his dumb ass which, somewhat surprisingly, he’s apparently done before. He proceeds to bury Matt in a field and before long he’s up and walking again, albeit chained up and forced to help the farmer carry out more gruesome murders and resurrections until he’s had enough of it.

All of that suggests at least some kind of coherent narrative, which unfortunately isn’t the case, as the drawn-out dialogue serves to confuse rather than intrigue and most scenes extend far beyond the limits of normal human patience (or at least mine, anyway). It struck me while watching that The Fallow Field would have been way, way better off being made as a short film; its premise of a stretch of land having astonishing, if temperamental, regenerative powers is at least an interesting one, but not one that can really be sustained by tiresome dialogue and bad acting over 90 minutes. And the title alone is enough to pre-bore an audience – before popping the disc into my player and seeing a disfigured hand on the title screen, I had no idea it was supposed to be a horror flick. ‘Fallow’ isn’t exactly high on the list of horror buzzwords, is it?

So while it tries to compel, scare and be atmospherically creepy (though it does occasionally succeed on this front, the score setting an eerie tone in some of the early scenes), The Fallow Field fails to materialise into anything approaching a satisfying horror experience, and will likely drive viewers to their smartphones and laptops long before the credits roll – which, incidentally, contain the best part of the movie: a rollicking rock song that’s totally and utterly out of the step with the proceedings, and all the better for it.

The Fallow Field is out on DVD now.

Category : Movies, Reviews
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08th May2013

Panel Discussion #004 with Jack and Mark

by Mark Allen

JandM-Comics

I don’t know about you, but I thoroughly enjoyed last week’s crossover team up with Mark. Hey Mark, that’s ill skills you got there! As a result, I picked up Jupiter’s Legacy. I’ve not read it yet, but I am looking forward to it.

(That bit might seem like I’ve written it about myself, but that’s just because I was able to post the article before Jack. I’m not that egotistical. Promise. – Marvelous Mark)

1st May 2012

The Movement #1, Gail Simone, Freddie Williams II, DC Comics

I’ve dabbled with Simone’s work on Batgirl, which despite her being on, off and on again during its New 52 run over what seems like office politics, has been consistently strong. Barbara Gordon is arguably one of the more complex characters of the Bat Family and in Simone’s hands she’s been both likable and relatable. The plots have been decent too, striking a good balance between fitting into the world of Batman and setting Batgirl’s own path.

As such, my curiosity was suitably piqued enough to pick up Simone’s new DC title, The Movement, which is ostensibly DC’s kind of after the fact response to the Occupy movement. In this issue, we’re introduced to a bunch of variously super-powered yoots, who are spearheading a movement of resistance against Coral City’s corrupt police force (for starters). The Dark Knight Rises proved that if you’re going to make comparisons between political movements in fiction and in real life, it’s possible to be very ham-fisted about it. How much The Movement is intended to reflect the real life Occupy movement is debatable and it should be judged on how well it portrays the complexities of political protest on its own terms rather than how similar it is to real life movements. It could go either way at the moment, from intellectually stimulating to ho-hum superheroics with some tokenistic political posturing thrown in.

However, there’s potentially a decent base to build on here. I’m not going to read this every month, but I will be interested in reading a trade. The characters – the ‘possessed’ and depressed Burden in particular – seem interesting and there was a soupçon of Runaways about the book that I liked. Apparently we can expect familiar DC faces to crop up sooner or later; personally, I’d be more interested in reading something new and interesting than having Superman popping up or similar so here’s hoping Simone implements her cameos with taste and restraint.

Super Dinosaur #1, Robert Kirkman, Jason Howard, Image Comics

Image rereleased a bunch of number one issues this week, prior to Free Comic Book Day, priced at $1 in a canny move to grab some floating voters. Amongst them were Morning Glories (did I mention I liked Morning Glories…?) and the attention-grabbing Super Dinosaur. I’m a big fan of dinosaurs and have a vested interest in all ages comics, so I picked it up.

It’s written by Robert Kirkman, known for writing some obscure title called The Walking Dead and is about a genius kid, his scientist dad and their talking T Rex friend. They fight bad dinosaurs in order to save the world from some plot device or other. A wisecracking dinosaur with robotic arms and rocket launchers is amusing but our protagonist Derek Dynamo is a bit too annoying for his own good – Kirkman may joke about it, but I wouldn’t want the amount of times Derek says ‘awesome’ rubbing off on any kid of mine. (I could write a long-winded article on how overused the word ‘awesome’ is in twenty-first century pop culture, but I’m not going to. See also: epic).

Still, it’s dopey fun but also unafraid to touch on slightly more sombre themes, as demonstrated by Derek’s dad, Doctor Dynamo’s declining abilities.  The style and tone lend themselves to cheap and cheerful Saturday morning cartoons and if you’re looking for a book that delivers silliness and levity, then look no further.

Ten Grand #1, J. Michael Straczynski, Ben Templesmith, Image/Joe’s Comics (Mark)

I’ve been a big fan of Ben Templesmith’s sinister, evocative art ever since reading Fell, the profoundly dark and comic homicide detective book he did with Warren Ellis once upon a time and, as with Frank Quitely (see last issue), will pretty much pick up anything with his name on it. Ten Grand feels very much like it takes place in the next town over from the Snowtown of Fell in that the cityscape is grim and claustrophobic and the characters a hair’s breadth away from bottling little old ladies for crack money, though it has more of a supernatural bent in that our hero Joe is a heaven-sanctioned enforcer who, after dying a righteous death, gets to be reunited with his dead wife in the afterlife for five minutes before being resurrected to carry on his good work.

So not exactly a feel-good story, but certainly an original premise. I’ve never been overly impressed by Straczynski – though I did get a kick out of his reinvention of Thor and admittedly I’ve only ever seen one episode of Babylon 5 – but the story kept my attention and fresh spins on noir tropes like getting information in strip clubs (the girl servicing Joe gets possessed by his angelic minder) make for intriguing reading, even if a scene in which a demon hacks Joe’s laptop in an internet café did remind me a little too much of that Buffy episode with a demon in the ‘net.

I liked that we were dropped straight into the action and the backstory was dealt with in snippets of dialogue and flashbacks, allowing us to really feel what the tone of the book’s going to be like from the off. I did have one slightly major concern going in – that the main conceit of Ten Grand rests on the overdone thriller trope of the dead girlfriend/wife (see the films of Christopher Nolan, every serial killer story ever etc.) – and while in this instance it’s dealt with in a novel fashion (and may well be a statement about such stories) the preview page showing Joe’s wife in a flowing, ethereal dress does make me feel a bit weird about the whole thing. That said, the premise would certainly have me hooked even if Templesmith’s deliciously twisted art didn’t so I’ll be picking up issue #2 for sure.

BlackAcre #6, Duffy Boudreau, Wendell Cavalcanti, Image Comics (Mark)

This one-shot issue comes straight after BlackAcre’s first story arc, which introduced us to the book’s dystopian future, the titular, insular city-state and the harsh world beyond its walls, not to mention leads Hull, Lee and the conniving Sinclair. Issue #6 focuses on a member of our supporting cast, former BlackAcre security member Greene, and details his gradual rise to power in the strange religious fundamentalist community that spans the forests and countryside of America.

I wasn’t immediately taken by BlackAcre initially as the plotting seemed a little spotty and the pace was incredibly inconsistent, but I can never say no to dystopia and there’s just enough depth to the world that I’m interested to see how it’s fleshed out later on down the line.

All that said, issue #6 is probably Boudreau and Cavalcanti’s strongest as it tells Greene’s story (the parts relevant for now, anyway) in one go, making for an economical, informative bit of character building. Boudreau’s dialogue still errs on the side of overwritten – the pace problems tend to be with drawn-out action sequences and not letting panels breathe when they really ought to be silent – but the characters all sound like real people and his southern accents stay quaint without straying into irritating (something I like to call the Rogue Syndrome) and the art is without a doubt Cavalcanti’s cleanest and best yet.

Hawkeye #10, Matt Fraction, Francesco Francavilla, Marvel (Mark)

SPOILER ALERT! is not something you’re likely to read in a review of Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye book, but it’s definitely appropriate now and, as Fraction has said, it’s “a continuing experiment”. Oh, and David Aja’s not actually around this issue, but he’s ably replaced by Francesco Francavilla who brings a fresh approach to proceedings rather than attempting to ape the Spaniard’s inimitable style.

Where was I? Oh yeah, that spoiler: Grills is dead. If you’re not reading this comic, you won’t understand. If you are? You’ll know my pain. A tertiary character at best, Grills lived in the same apartment block as Clint Barton, worked a mean rooftop BBQ and consistently mispronounced Barton’s superhero name as “Hawkguy”, thus earning him a special place in the hearts of goofy nerds the world over. Hawkguy also helped him move his dad’s stuff out of his New Jersey basement in issue #7, proving once again that Clint is pretty much a real nice guy, even if he does get himself into the occasional scrape.

And then someone went and killed him at the end of Hawkeye #9. A mystery man at that, and one who is unveiled to us both as he piques the interest of Kate Bishop – the other Hawkeye – at an upper-crust Manhattan soiree and in increasingly violent flashbacks to his childhood growing up in an unnamed, war-torn country, losing his family and subsequently becoming a cold-blooded, greasepaint-faced killer for hire. Every issue ups the game in some way and #10 is no different (because it is so different, kind of like how you’re unique just like everybody else), the intercutting flashback structure of the issue allowing Fraction to give us a slice of gorgeously-worded NYC history from the lips of Kate and an equally eloquent rebuttal on the mutability of the past from our mystery killer. Francavilla’s jagged panel borders and rich blues and reds give a starkly different feeling to the book; one that’s entirely appropriate for an issue that focuses on someone other than Clint.

Also interesting: Clint only shows up for the last three-ish pages, so if there was ever an issue of Hawkeye for people who can’t stand Hawkeye, this is it!

Category : Comics & Graphic Novels, Reviews
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03rd May2013

‘My Ex 2: Haunted Lover’ Review

by Mark Allen

Stars: Ratchawin Wongviriya, Atthama Chiwanitchapan, Thongpoom Siripipat, Marion Affolter, Pete Thongchua | Written by Adirek Wattaleela | Directed by Piyapan Choopetch

my-ex-screen

Those are some pretty exciting names right there. I wouldn’t even know where to begin pronouncing Chiwanitchapan or Thongpoom, but I’m having a lot of fun with them nonetheless. Such is the joy having met only one Thai person in my life so far. I lived with the guy for a year so you totally can’t call me racist for enjoying these subjectively silly names, all right?

Okay, good. Glad we got that cleared up. Why am I babbling on about Asian names, you yell? Well, that’s because the credits are pretty much the only enjoyable part of My Ex 2, a movie whose title could easily be mistake for a garbled text message or – if you squint really hard – some kind of maths formula. For a really bad movie. The theme I’m going for here is that you shouldn’t buy this film.

For posterity’s sake, the story – although I’m sure you’ve heard this one before – concerns a vacuous young actress being told by her vacuous (yet hateful) friends to dump her smug, vacuous, cheating boyfriend, but she’s just too “nice” (read: totally without backbone, dimensionality or anything resembling a personality) to flip him the bird. Cue his other girlfriend meeting a grisly end after jumping from a tall building (I’ll save you a lot of hard work: IT WASN’T SUICIDE) and haunting our heroine (loosest sense of the word possible; I’ve eaten more heroic cornflakes) and her annoying mates as they lounge in a bunch of exotic – and secluded, natch – locales for mostly no reason except I think there’s a film shoot at one point and oh yeah people start croaking and there’s a Shocking Revelation That No-One Could Have Seen Coming unless maybe you saw My Ex in which case they both probably have the same ending but I really hope nobody has the misfortune to see two of these blandfests in the first place anyhow.

The movie is a parade of shock tropes used and abused way past their effective use-by date and no number of serene establishing shots of tropical water hostels(?) can disguise the blandness of the whole affair. All that would be bad enough to make Tex Mex 2: Electric Boogaloo just another shitty, boring movie, but it goes one step further into actual ham-fisted interminable tripe as its third act reveals information that really should have been given to us very near the beginning and alters our sympathies (as if they were ever there to begin with) to such a significant degree that the whole sodding affair feels like a massive exercise in futility. No scares, no thrills, no characters of any description to be seen anywhere…but hey! A post-credit scene reveals what I can only pray isn’t a lead-in to the next sequel but a coda in which the main character’s OTHER ex realise he needs to stop dating expressionless weirdos and goes on to star in a nice romantic drama involving an ice cream shop or something. I’m not going to hold my breath or anything.

My Ex 2: Haunted Lover is released on DVD on June 3rd from MVM. God knows why.

Category : Movies, Reviews
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28th Apr2013

‘Turn Me On, Goddammit’ Review

by Mark Allen

Stars: Helene Bergsholm, Malin Bjørhovde, Beate Støfring, Matias Myren, Henriette Streenstrup | Based on the novel by Olaug Nilssen | Written and Directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen

I’ve had something of a soft spot for coming-of-age stories ever since I read JD Salinger’s perennial classic The Catcher In The Rye. Whether it’s the tough but good-hearted lessons of Stand By Me and Almost Famous or bleak but profound entries into adult like The 400 Blows and Kes, they usually contain a great deal that I can relate to on an emotional and thematic level, even if I never grew up in Paris, toured with a rock band or found a dead body in my youth. I did get drunk in a park once, but that’s about it. Realistically I think I still enjoy these stories because, despite having been legally adult for quite some time, I still haven’t quite come of age yet and can still find something to relate to.

In Turn Me On, Goddammit, that thing happens to be the sexual fantasies of a 15-year old Norwegian girl. Okay, I think I might have lost some of you there. But stick with me.

The aforementioned teen, Alma, is going through a rough patch. She lives in the arse end of nowhere with her mother and calls a telephone sex hotline on a regular basis because she doesn’t know how to solve the problem of the boy she likes being liked by her best friend’s sister. Alma tends to hide these problems so deep that they eventually resurface as sexual fantasies involving whoever’s around at the time (bar family members, you weirdo). Things are made infinitely worse when the boy she likes – Artur – pokes Alma’s thigh with his penis at a party. We’ve all been there, right, fellas? When she tells understandably tells her friends about this likely therapy-inducing incident he denies it, making her the laughing stock of Skoddeheimen with the highly subversive nickname “Dick-Alma”.

The story plays out more or less the way you’d expect, with Alma learning how to deal with her problems, finding out that growing up and moving away’s not as easy as she thought it would be and gaining some self-respect along the way. It’s pretty funny, too, Alma’s erotic daydreams offering a frank depiction of raw, unsubtle teenage desires (a particular favourite of mine is when our heroine pictures her grocery store boss performing an amateur striptease in the magazine aisle of the store only to be interrupted by her crush and his kid sister).

Turn Me On, Goddammit doesn’t have a lot more to say than that but at 74 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome. What connected with me was Alma’s sense of unrequited longing and over-the-top sexual frustrations which ostracise her from not only her friends but the local community at large, a feeling which I think most folks who’ve been through puberty (or, in my case, may well still be going through it) can relate to on some level. Also, it’s refreshing to see what is essentially a teen sex comedy forego the presumed logical conclusion for this kind of movie and not actually end in a sex scene at all – Alma’s mother’s certain to make sure of that.

Turn Me On, Goddammit is out on DVD now from Element Pictures.

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26th Apr2013

Panel Discussion – X-Men: Legacy

by Mark Allen

No-Jack-Comics

Hey folks – Mark again. Last week saw a fluke of scheduling for my pull list which meant I only got one comic from the store, that being X-Men: Legacy #9 from writer Si Spurrier and artist Tan Eng Huat. This series has been one of the best surprises from Marvel’s recent relaunch, so I thought it’d be worth talking about while we’ve got the time.

First off, Marvel isn’t publishing anything else like this book. No-one is, quite frankly. Spurrier and Huat’s ongoing tale of David Haller, disenfranchised mutant and son of the recently Charles Xavier, is as thought-provoking and challenging to the medium as anything coming out of Image or any creator-owned project. The story follows David, commonly known as Legion due to the myriad powers he possesses within him, as he attempts to control both the hundreds of malicious personalities that threaten to take him over at any moment (the psychic prison he kept them in was irrevocably broken at the start of the series and is the location for most of David’s internal struggles, his narration being announced over loudspeaker) and the destiny of his race, being fed up with the X-Men’s conservative reactive modus operandi and taking on a much more proactive approach.

Legion’s mantra – “I rule me” – is a central theme of the series, both in terms of our lead’s struggle to maintain dominance over the powerful personalities that threaten to wrest that rule from him and his self-actualisation and evolution from histrionic villain (see: the 1990s) to complex, sympathetic hero, which David has arguably already become; his self-effacing Scottish dialogue creates a great deal of humour and makes him very personable, something that’s definitely required in order to create relatability in a character with 4ft hair.

Another refreshing thing about X-Men: Legacy is its perspective on freedom of choice and political ideology, as David eschews the X-Men’s isolationist ideals and tries to help out mutants in trouble by making their lives better for them as opposed to their race, as in #8 when David and his psychic crush Blindfold ponder in what direction they could push a newly-developed mutant to possibly create a better future. In the end he makes the best choice for the individual as it goes against David’s ideals to recruit people to serve his agenda unwittingly – that sounds more like his dad’s bag – though he’s not totally opposed to a little rule-bending as we see in issue #9, which riffs on Watchmen and Minority Report to have David stop a series of heinous crimes before they’ve ever been committed. Blindfold’s vocally uneasy with the whole concept, and while David isn’t laughing maniacally while he flaunts his contradictory morality, he’s firm in his belief that it was the right thing to do.

That said, he’s rarely on solid ground, and whether it’s astral beasties beating the hell out of him, manipulation from floating eyeballs or visits from a hallucinatory golden Xavier – not to mention the fire-breathers and atomic maniacs running around in his own head – it’s safe to say that David Haller’s got some issues, and I’m perfectly content for Spurrier and Huat to continue treating them without resorting to fisticuffs every other page.

Even if you’re not an X-Men fan I’d heartily recommend X-Men: Legacy, mostly because it doesn’t actually feel like an X-book at all, and in fact insults their accumulated tropes with amusing regularity. The X-Men comic for people who hate X-Men comics, if you will.

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24th Apr2013

‘Knightriders’ Blu-ray Review

by Mark Allen

Starring: Ed Harris, Gary Lahti, Tom Savini, Amy Ingersoll, Patricia Tallman, Ken Foree | Written and Directed by George A. Romero

knightriders

Have you ever heard of Knightriders? Because I sure hadn’t when I got the screener from Phil in the mail. The name’s something of a red herring and made me think that it’d be a hokey TV movie starring David Hasselhoff, but I was pleasantly surprised to find not only that there were no talking cars in the movie whatsoever, but also that it was written and directed by master of horror himself George A. Romero. But even knowing that I’d no idea what to expect, being that the first five minutes of the movie consist of Ed Harris waking up in a forest with a princess, flogging himself in a river and kneeling – naked – in front of his sword before putting on a suit of armour and riding a motorbike back to his renaissance fair/stunt jousters in rural Pennsylvania.

…Yeah, me too. Anyway, getting over the fact that Romero had clearly made a conscious decision to make Knightriders between Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow I settled into the feel of the movie, which is decidedly lighter than most of his other fare, but not without moments of darkness: for every hick line spouted by hoagie-eating hicks (ably played by Stephen King and his wife Tabitha) there’s a mother who gets pranged by a rogue bike; for every sex joke Tom Savini’s pretender to Harris’s throne Morgan makes there’s a heartfelt discussion about the troupe announcer’s confused sexuality; and for every clumsy flirtation between Harris’s Lancelot and a local girl there’s, uh, some uncomfortably-placed domestic violence between her parents that’s never resolved or even mentioned ever again.

So the movie’s not exactly sure what it wants to be, but that’s okay because it has plenty of fun trying to figure that out. Romero’s films have never been know for high production value or spectacular action sequences but Knightriders gives them a good enough go, with ramps, motor-lancing and a pretty ingenious sidecar/chariot-style hand weapon battles actually making for pretty entertaining fare – up to a point.

With a high-concept, low-budget film like this, you’d imagine the shorter the better, and Knightriders’ 150-minute runtime proves your imagination right. King Harris’s court becomes something of a soap opera fairly quickly, with the group falling apart due to outside interests and Ed’s own Arthurian delusions which see him hallucinating and putting his life in danger to protect the ideals he thinks wearing plastic armour and smashing melons with cardboard axes represents.

This was Harris’s first lead role in a movie and he plays King Billy (yep) as straight as a ruler, which is pretty much how the movie sticks together. Regular Romero players Ken Foree and Tom Savini (on top rambunctious form as ever – a bizarre photo shoot involving him and lots of leather is particularly enjoyable) turn up and there’s a great deal of humour to help the chubby pot plod along, which ends exactly as you’d think from the first 15 minutes.

…Well, apart from when (Spoiler alert, but it is 32 years old) King Billy finally flies the coop and kisses the fender of a speeding semi truck at the very end. Seriously. The last scene is his funeral and everyone else moving on to the next town. It’s f***ed up.

So yeah, it’s far too long and is never too sure what its own message is (other than being an analogue for its director’s career), but it’s just enough of an oddity to stay on the right side of charming/interminable. Oh, and the accountant from Jurassic Park is in it as basically the same asshole but ten years younger and equally slimy, which is kind of almost worth the rambling second half. Much like this review.

If you’re a hardcore Romero fan and you haven’t seen Knightriders then you really ought to check this out. If you just want to see what happens when The Once And Future King looks like in leather? Well, I guess it beats Excalibur there.

Knightriders is out on Blu-ray now from Arrow Video.

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23rd Apr2013

‘Baise-Moi’ Review

by Mark Allen

Starring:  Karen Bach,  Raffaëla Anderson | Written and Directed by Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi | Based on the novel by Virginie Despentes

BAISE_MOI

Baise-Moi is not an easy film to watch for a great many reasons, the foremost of which, after all the controversy surrounding the film’s dealt with, is that it’s really quite dull. Based on co-writer/director Virginie Despentes’ novel of the same name, the story follows two victimised, harried young women – occasional porn star Manu and prostitute Nadine – as they escape the misogyny and casual violence of their lives by screwing and killing their way across France.

…And that’s about it. The sex scenes are real (stars Bach and Anderson were both porn actresses up to the time of shooting) but not particularly insightful or revealing (apart from the obvious) but the violence is utterly unconvincing, showcasing lumpy blood effects and removing any sense of verisimilitude we might have previously gained. The low budget really takes a bite out of the production value, with most of the scenes taking place in bland hotel rooms and the grainy video photography giving the film a dirty rather than a gritty look.

I’ll give it this: the first twenty minutes aren’t bad, as far as it goes. We get a snapshot of our heroines’ normal lives before they’re thrown into chaos which involves both consensual and non-consensual sex, the latter in the film’s most brutal scene – a double rape that’s more violent for the victim who resists than the other – Manu – who just wants their attackers to “get it over with,” an incredibly unsettling attitude that suggests rape is just something that happens to people in their situation. Unfortunately, that’s really the only striking observation Baise-Moi makes across its running time (a lean 74 minutes, which still feels too long)  as this all-girl Bonnie & Clyde team up and cause havoc without rhyme or reason, shooting up a brothel, killing a woman for her debit card and sexing up a couple of barflies among various similar exploits.

I hoped there’d be some worthwhile comment on feminism to take away from the film, but the contrivance of Nadine and Manu’s meeting (one stops the other at the subway entrance for literally no reason. “What?” “I dunno.” As good a reason as any to go on a crime spree, I suppose.) and its Roger Corman-esque construction – scenes of meaningless sex and violence held together by the main characters and next to no plot – soon wear thin and give the impression of just another exploitation film with tits and gunshots, which I’m certain was not the filmmakers’ intention.

In fact, the best part of the DVD release is the special features which include a making of featurette and interviews with the directors and cast and shed a light on their history, what they thought Baise-Moi was supposed to be saying and the censorship and controversy surrounding its inital release in 2000. It’s an interesting novelty 13 years later, and I can’t fault anyone for trying to break down boundaries, but it’d be nice if they could make a watchable movie in the process.

Baise-Moi is out on DVD now from Arrow Video.

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15th Apr2013

‘Warriors of the Steppe: Myn Bala’ Review

by Mark Allen

Stars: Assylkhan Tolepov, Aliya Telebarisova, Kuralay Anarbekova, Ayan Utepbergenov | Written by Muhammad Mamyrbekov, Javik Sizdikov, Timur Zhaksylykov | Directed by Akan Satayev

Myn-Bala

It’s a story we can all relate to: boy sees entire tribe slaughtered by enemy warriors, goes into hiding with survivors and becomes the greatest freedom fighter his country’s ever seen. Oh, and he also meets a girl, though that’s not terribly important.

Warriors of the Steppe: Myn Bala is the story of the oppression of the native Kazakhstani people by the Dzungars (a Mongol tribe descended from Genghis Khan) in the early 18th century and how a young boy grew into a powerful yet compassionate leader. It’s an aspect of world history that I knew almost nothing about before so there’s a vague history lesson among all the arrow-slinging and speech-giving but I suspect that pinpoint accuracy was left by the wayside in favour of spending the $12 million government-supported budget on as many village-razings and complex hangings as they could afford.

Indeed, within the first three minutes we’re shown our hero Sartai’s motivation become crystal clear when as a boy his village is burned to the ground and his parents killed in front of him. Escaping into some tall grass with a small group of survivors, we skip forward an unspecified number of years to see Sartai having grown into a strapping young man now skilled in archery, riding and swordplay who spends most of his time fooling around on the plains with his mates. But since when does that lifestyle ever last? Soon enough the brutes come a-calling once more, and over the course of various skirmishes, arguments and deals with neighbouring tribes Sartai builds an army strong enough to stand against their tyrannical oppressors. Did I mention that he meets a girl as well?

The production and costume design feels authentic and the fight choreography is solid, but it all just feels a bit too small. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by mega-budget Hollywood actioners or that I just simply wasn’t drawn in by the story – a problem compounded by a pretty sloppy subtitle job on my screener (which we have been assured have been corrected for the retail release) – but large, dialogue-heavy chunks of Warriors of the Steppe felt like padding to justify the scope of the movie, which makes for itchy viewing. Clearly the filmmakers wanted to make something on the scale of Mongol or 300, but while $12 million may be the biggest budget Kazakhstan’s seen for a local picture, it just can’t buy the legions of extras and high-stakes action it needs for an audience to buy it. The film also suffers from a well-intentioned but plodding script (if my dubious subtitling is to be believed), as  our hero is given many moments that prove him to be more courageous and merciful than his kinsmen but it all feels a little by the numbers and a great many campfire arguments and war-room discussions could easily have been lifted with little to no damage to the story.

Credit where credit is due: the cinematography does capture the breathtaking vistas of Kazakhstan’s countryside rather beautifully, and one dream sequence involving Sartai’s deceased parents (and a traitor who will remain unnamed) was compelling enough, if oddly reminiscent of similar scenes in Gladiator - except, y’know, way less corny.

That said, most of the scenes do take place in very similar locales, and the novelty of nomadic encampments and mountain-view horsing around soon wears thin. Obviously it must have been difficult to implement varied locations given Warriors of the Steppe’s period setting (hence the enemy’s gilded tent interiors offering a contrast, presumably), but the fact remains that much of the film blurs into variations on one or two scenes which really detracts from any sense of progression the filmmakers  might want to impart.

Oh, and speaking of progress: Sartai meets a girl who he wants to marry. He says she’s clever and pretty and that she’ll make a good wife, and we pretty much have to take his word on it because she doesn’t get a great deal to do or say other than bear Sartai’s sprog at the end. Well, there is one sequence where the other female character, Sartai’s warrior buddy, sacrifices herself so that she can escape their attackers on horseback, despite being a much less interesting character. I was really expecting a whole Some Kind of Wonderful romance subplot with Friend Girl, which would have been at least a little more equal than simply having Sartai fall for the Walking Womb, but I guess I’m not too up on my Kazakhstani sexual politics.

That aside, Warriors of the Steppe has some fine action and gorgeous landscape photography as well as a fairly universal ‘David and Goliath’ theme, but suffers from overwrought dialogue, a pace-less plot and far too many silly hats.

Warriors of the Steppe: Myn Bala is out on DVD May 13th, courtesy of 101 Films.

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13th Apr2013

Panel Discussion with(out) Jack Kirby – Issue #3

by Mark Allen

No-Jack-Comics

Hey gang, Mark here. Jack’s on holiday this week so I’ll be covering for him this and next week and then adding my own two cents to his ten dollars. I’ll try not to mess up the furniture arrangement.

Saga #12, Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples, Image

Saga is always exceptional, and this week is no exception. With this issue they finish up the second story arc and their first year (happy anniversary, guys!) with a look at the series’ most disturbed antagonist, Prince Robot IV, as he arrives on a distant planet to investigate a lead from earlier on. This is largely a two-hander as His Highness probes intergalactic novelist D. Oswald Heist’s literary pacifism and the possibility that everybody’s favourite crossbreeders Alana and Marko might want to pay him a visit.

The book’s mix of heartbreaking flashback, rising tension and dry, writerly self-deprecation from Heist mean the pace never lets up even as not a great deal happens plot-wise, aside from the set-up for the next arc which more or less takes place on the very last page. Saga does an excellent job of carrying the story even when it spends the odd issue or two bringing us up to speed on the supporting cast and never once feeling like it’s treading water. Oh, and it’s pretty much the king of cliffhangers.

Hawkeye #9, Matt Fraction & David Aja, Marvel

It felt only fitting to mention everyone’s favourite Hawkguy after Jack’s comments on #1 last time – and it doesn’t hurt that #9 is just a great comic, albeit probably not the best introduction to the series for new readers. Despite the book’s flexible policy of ‘done-in-one’ stories, #9 picks up some threads (and panels) from a couple of previous issues and employs Matt Fraction and David Aja’s penchant for non-linear structure they’ve displayed previously, though this time with a twist (and guided beautifully by colourist Matt Hollingsworth’s subtle palette changes).

While all that might sound horribly convoluted and painful to read, Fraction and Aja pull off yet again the trick of creating a rich, dramatic and dynamic story with flecks of ’70s thrillers, romance, crime and plenty of humour thrown in for good measure, and all before a gut-punch of a shock ending that, instead of going directly against the regular tone of the book, feels like exactly the progression we’ve been edging toward for a couple of issues. Oh, and there are a pair of goons drawn like Charles Bronson (the actor) and Charles Bronson (the prisoner) who get beaten up by Kate Bishop. Kate Bishop is awesome. ‘Nuff said.

(Though if you want a little more depth and irreverent humour you should check out Fraction’s Hawkeye #9 walkthrough on his Tumblr.)

Uncanny X-Men #4, Brian Michael Bendis & Chris Bachalo, Marvel

I promised myself this wouldn’t be all fawning praise (who wants to read that?), so here goes: Uncanny X-Men #4 was complete and utter meh. Not a damning indictment, but I don’t have the issue to hand and I’m struggling to remember its content.

…

Oh yeah – Cyclops’ team of ‘revolutionary’ X-Men head to Logan’s school to recruit some newbies and Emma Frost gets psychically schooled by her former proteges the Stepford Cuckoos. That’s about it. There are some hi-larious hi-jinks with some new mutant teens back at the base, but Brian Bendis writes everyone as a teenager so it’s hard to differentiate. I’m having the same trouble with this book as Jack had with All New X-Men: the concept is interesting, but there’s just no forward momentum to the plot and, while I like the bulk of cast of each series, I just don’t recognise them in these pages. Bendis got a chance to define the Avengers for more or less a generation, and I think he did a fine job, but it seems like he thinks he can approach the X-Men the same way and forget swathes of character history just to fit his story and (yeah, I’ll say it) frankly tiresome dialogue. Chris Bachalo’s art is the main reason I’m buying Uncanny, and it’s hyperactively brilliant as usual, but with him leaving for the next few issues, I’m hoping for a pretty convincing reason.

Star Wars #4, Brian Wood & Carlos D’Anda, Dark Horse

Now onto beloved characters done right for a change: Star Wars #4  might be the best issue so far. With Leia’s black ops X-Wing team initiated and Darth Vader relocated to the second Death Star, the post-New Hope story really feels like it’s getting into full swing. Wood treats us to moments both iconic (Vader bringing an uncooperative subordinate to a sharp end, Leia’s squad diving headfirst into a stream of TIE Interceptors) and and relatively fresh (Luke romantically involved with a girl that isn’t a blood relative!), in addition to strengthening Leia’s myriad key roles in the Alliance and really giving the courage and fortitude we all knew was there in the movies but never really got to see a chance to shine here.

Carlos D’Anda’s art gets better each issue, with his familiar characters striking a resemblance without falling into portraiture and newer faces remaining memorable. With D’Anda and the recent news that Wood’s Local collaborator and Saucer Country artist Ryan Kelly will be joining the book for an arc come issue #7, there really is no reason not to be picking up Star Wars if you’re a fan.

Fantastic Four #6, Matt Fraction & Mark Bagley, Marvel

Some last Fraction love to end with, as I think this deserves a special mention. While I’ve never been a huge fan of the WORLD’S GREATEST COMICS MAGAZINE aside from Jonathan Hickman’s recent run, I do appreciate their unique dynamic and am usually willing to give them a shot. Fantastic Four‘s sister book FF really hit the ground running, Matt Fraction’s humour and rose-tinted perspective on ancient continuity that I know little to zero about and Michael Allred’s ever-charming figures never failing to put a smile on my face, whereas the main comic took a few issues to really gear up and let us know what kind of story this is going to be.

And what a story this is. Again, Fraction’s doing one-shot stories, but with a cosmic twist, and in #6 we’re heading back to the Big Bang so Reed can show his kids Frank and Val what the creation of a universe looks like. They find an unexpected prisoner trapped there, however, and chaos (as ever) ensues. While the revealed villain is a little underwhelming, that’s not what the FF is about – it’s about marrying a love of science and a love for humanity’s ideals into shaping a world that’s better for our kids so they can be better people in it. And that’s no clearer in any issue than it is in this one.

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07th Apr2013

‘Gun Machine’ Review

by Mark Allen

Written by Warren Ellis | Published by Mulholland Books

NYPD detective John Tallow doesn’t care about his job all that much. He could be good at it if he wanted to, but he’s more content to sit in the passenger seat and let his partner Jim Rosato be the hero. That is at least until Jim’s head gets blown off by a shotgun-wielding naked man and John has to step up and take him down solo, which he does as calmly as possible, despite Rosato’s brains sliding down the wall behind him. But the administrative and emotional fallout of a dead partner soon become the least of his problems as the damage caused by the shootout result in Tallow’s discovery of an entire apartment filled – floor to ceiling in every room – with guns, each one connected to a single unsolved murder.

Over 200 cold cases just got re-opened, and Tallow has to solve them or get the short shrift from his superiors. Probably both, he doesn’t get to the bottom of things quick enough. But even as he tries to piece together what so many guns (some more than 150 years old) are doing in strange swirls behind an terrifyingly well-barricaded door, cogs are turning that put our hero in the crosshairs of exactly the man he’s looking for. Only this guy’s not your regular serial killer…

I can’t quite remember how I first encountered Warren Ellis’s impressive body of work, but it was somewhere between reading your usual entry-level Alan Moore and getting into the more esoteric Grant Morrison stuff that I found an affinity for the renowned British comic author’s intelligent, concise storytelling, his boundless enthusiasm for science, ideals and new boundaries…and, of course, his deft hand with profanities. Stories like Transmetropolitan, Planetary and Ministry of Space are brilliant signature works (and I’ve always had a soft spot for his madcap Marvel books such as the unapologetically insane Nextwave) but I never really appreciated how well Ellis could turn a phrase until I read his first novel, Crooked Little Vein.

That book – following a private dick across the US on a search for the secret Constitution via the seedy, fucked-up underbelly of the country – was both hilarious and grotesque and, though wide in scope, still felt like a character study, albeit one done on the road and amidst many bizarre vignettes that would be almost Lynchian were they not so damn funny.

Gun Machine goes the other way, keeping the action in Manhattan for the duration and taking on much more of a procedural structure while still keeping focus firmly on characters, two in chief; Tallow’s perspective is the one we’re given for most of the book, but every few chapters we are treated to a view of the world as seen by the story’s antagonist, a schizophrenic known only as “the hunter” whose vision of New York City shifts between the modern-day and pre-colonial days on Mannahatta, with lampposts regularly morphing into trees and cars becoming wild, roaming animals before our eyes. His treasure trove of guns compromised, he sets out to restore balance to his life which means pulling the different fragments of the story together before the detective on his tale can and dealing with him accordingly.

Like Ellis, the hunter is efficient and methodical but not in the manner of most fictional assassins: his work is for a greater purpose, one which will be revealed to us in time. The difference in tone between the two leads is somewhat jarring at first, being that Tallow’s scenes involve more conversation and internal sleuthing and less trying not to go batshit crazy on the streets of New York.

Ellis handles dialogue with incredible economy, injecting even fragmented snippets of conversation with the kind of subtle wit or veiled threat that wouldn’t feel out of place on an episode of The Wire. And that comparison’s an apt one, as the story not only concerns corruption in the ranks and shifting blame onto the powerless, but also what can go right – and wrong – when a capable but dispassionate member of the force decides that he is actually good at his job after all.

John Tallow is a classic Ellis protagonist: solitary, crabby and bordering on misanthropic yet sharply intelligent, tech-savvy and hiding a sturdy moral core and intense fascination with the world underneath all that apathy. He’s easy to sympathise with right from the start because, although most of us don’t serve in the NYPD, we do know what it’s like to be tired. And Ellis makes us feel just as tired and worn out as Tallow within the first four pages, allowing us to savour every well-earned cigarette or epiphany as he does. It also doesn’t hurt that he has a hugely entertaining supporting cast to create a little levity when things get too heavy in the form of CSUs Scarly – doesn’t like people, pretends she’s “fucking autistic!” to get them to leave her alone – and her lackey Bat, who’s way into tech but not so much into eating, as it doesn’t agree with his stomach: “I, as a rule, don’t eat food.” They’re like a comedy double act that might be on the verge of killing one another at any moment, and any scene with the three of them together, no matter the subject, is a completely painless read (unless there’s actual physical pain involved).

Despite most of Gun Machine‘s page count taking place in offices, bars and apartment blocks the book rockets along at a fair pace, the hole Tallow is uncovering getting deeper and deeper by the minute with him slipping ever closer to the rim. As I mentioned before, the dialogue rarely bores and always has a purpose, meaning the scenery never becomes more interesting than the story, except perhaps when it becomes the story, as in a superb string of chapters that take place in a facsimile of the gun-covered apartment thought up by Tallow so that he can develop a clearer insight into the killer’s mind, a technique that’s eerily reminiscent of William Petersen’s profiler in Manhunter. If you’re having trouble picturing the hunter’s apartment, the promotional trailer for the book captures it beautifully:

(Yes, that is Wil Wheaton narrating. The art is by Ellis’s Fell collaborator Ben Templesmith and the video was directed by Jim Batt.)

That trailer captures the feel of the hunter’s chapters (and Tallow’s when he’s in proximity to him) superbly: Ellis imbues him with a single, rigorous purpose that’s almost a crusade in his own mind, and we’re witness to the horrific lengths he’s willing to go to in order to continue his “life’s work”. He may be stuck in the past, but Tallow doesn’t seem overly fond of the present either. At several points in Gun Machine we’re treated to a series of reports on the police radio band: murders, stabbings, shootings, muggings, all turned up to 11 in the worst ways but just background noise for Tallow, who finds them oddly comforting. This is a man who doesn’t care about the outside world when we first meet him, but as he learns more about the people’s lives that have been ruined by the events he’s investigating, a sense of wanting to be in the world resurfaces in Tallow, something that’s well-earned and satisfying to experience.

As the the book moves toward its conclusion Tallow edges closer and closer to personal danger, but throws caution to the wind and circumvents ordinary procedure in true Warren Ellis fashion to give you a classic story told in a way you’ve not quite seen before. Much of the hunter’s inner monologue bemoan’s the city’s changes, and Tallow doesn’t seem to care a great deal for modern-day Manhattan himself, being something of a recluse and history nut. But that doesn’t stop him utilising both the city and its ultra-modern trappings in a rather ingenious yet somewhat unsettling manner: the hunter stuck in the past is finished by a man from the present using the tools of the future.

There are precinct politics to be dealt with, but Ellis wraps up the loose ends of the plot with little fanfare and soon gets to the real meat of the ending, which is the relationship between the hunter and Tallow, who have a mutual respect for one another despite the gulf of murder between them. We’re left feeling like the world’s not necessarily going to be a better place for all this, but that John Tallow might just be a better man. And that’s more than you can say for most procedurals.

Gun Machine is on sale now.

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