I don’t really know who east sky/taktophoto is (or are)*: but his/her/their tumblr republishes sets of images gathered from all over the place (always linked to, generally captioned as per the original, never commented on). The images can be hypercoloured, intricate, abstract, surreal, sexy, ridiculous — sometimes strange wtf artworks, sometimes simply startling photos from nature, hard as this very often is to believe at first glance.
As a kid I only read British comics (Beano, Dandy, Topper, Beezer, Sparky et al), and never graduated to — or really understood — Marvel or DC. They were too vast in conception to catch up with, I felt: too big a universe, filled with too much backstory. As a consequence I only recall two ministories, a Spiderman vs Doctor Octopus which ended on a cliffhanger as the latter hefted one of those water-coolers that sit on top of New York buildings at the former OH NOES, and a Silver Surfer spread where this gentleman floated unconscious in space while a squamous and bubbling mucous-beast crawled though a mirror from an eldritch dimension into an empty (excuse alliteration) marbled mansion OOOOH NOOOOOES. So anyway, I didn’t get much of a bead on what Superheroes were like as people. Lately I have embarked on a study of same — for other purposes eventually to be revealed (possibly) — and have drawn up a table, based on Iron Man1&3, The Hulk (second half only), Capt America, Thor, and Avengers Assemble. more »
Just a quick urgent note to say that Freaky Trigger’s esteemed CHEESE CORRESPONDENT Marna made this^^^ — and that the closing date for pledge contributions to fund a printed edition is Friday pub-time.
(For details run film, and then go here).
or “Lytton must be exterminated when it is convenient”
… being a show-by-show TARDIS-esque (ie in effect random) exploration of Doctor Who Soup to Nuts, begun at LJ’s diggerdydum community, and crossposted at FT.
In which 5IVE and disgruntled chums help a revenant but unrepentent DAVROS to infect his multitudinous metal brood with MORGELLONS the MORVELLAN DISCO VIRUS, as a reward for getting him out of jail. Or something.
A notoriously very-hard-to-follow DO-YOU-SEE allegory for the utter lack of honour among the galactically villainous. Doesn’t help that from the off it’s a switchback of mistaken identity via doubles: meaning that coppers and soldiers and even daleks are not who you immediately think they are. Doesn’t help that I watched it more than a year ago, before various distractions intervened and derailed me, and haven’t revisited (bcz my “method” does not allow me to). So instead of discussing the plot I’m going to bore on abt the Daleks, turning the tables you might say hohoho *sigh*
The setting: two places and two time (Butler’s Wharf and a prison ship in space; 1984 and THE UNSPECIFIED FUTURE ) have been superglued together by a time-corridor. The prison ship is under attack by a space cruiser.
The upshot: more »
This is a project gradually to read and discuss the hundred or so books for children written between the mid-50s and his death in 2010 by disgraced author William Mayne, starting with a rereading of the 30-odd that I own or know. I talked a little about his downfall at the close of this post from last year, and will likely touch on it again. I’ve now re-read a further four, including his very first.
Follow the Footsteps (1953)
(cover image: William Stobbs)
“It doesn’t matter if you get it wrong,” said Caroline. “If we ask Daddy something he always tells us the long way round, which isn’t interesting at all. But he does try.”
“I can’t understand him sometimes, even,” said Andrew,
“That’s something” said Mr Feaste. “Intention better than fulfilment–net result fulfilment. Strange, what?”
As of the early 50s, the genre — established by E. Nesbit, developed by Arthur Ransome, routinised by Enid Blyton, Malcolm Saville and literally dozens of others — was quite tired and predictable: the middleclass children of a family, a dated shade of perkily bland, and often curiously under-examined, all RP and private schooling, arrive in a rural or otherwise characterful locale, and find a treasure, foil a crime or solve a puzzle. Mayne’s first published book for kids doesn’t much break with the pattern (certainly less than you’d expect if you know his later work), but the beginnings of the break are visible. more »
Tom linked to this at Blue Lines, but not everyone is on Tumblr. More here.
For the puzzled: Japanese schoolgirls re-enacting magical martial arts moves from manga, photographing and uploading them. For the record: AMAZING.
(<—I love the pile of schoolbags.)
(quick notes on a partial late-night viewing)
Reliably, Julian Temple still really annoys me. It was already a third of the way in when I switched his Doctor Feelgood doc (I’d only just got in and hadn’t realised BBC4 were screening it tonight), but I was watching because Bob Stanley had told me he liked it. Bob’s judgments are good, and I was probably grumbling about past Temple action when he stepped in to rep for Oil City Confidential: long ago I wrote this about The Filth and the Fury (the word “dinosaur” subbed in there unwanted unpleasingly, grrr), and this about Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (JSTOR sub need, I’m afraid, grrr bah). So yes, I’m still really quite grumpy about these, the first especially.
But then I’m way over-invested in how people write and think about the Pistols, and if I’ve warmed to posh dead Joe a little, I still dislike the Clash enough that anything that doesn’t at least somewhat reflect my irritations is going to bug me. Both times there’s seriously the problem of placing yourself retroactively onside with the lads — of treating a long-ago victory as a battle still courageously to be fought and won. But with Feelgood the issue of belatedly declaring yourself a warrior on behalf of the correctly direction of history isn’t actually quite so much of an issue — like many supposed precursors of punk, their vanishment was by and large the price of its triumph — so I was willing to concede (or at least imagine) that Temple might do well by them.
Well, he does and he doesn’t. more »
It’s 22 years since I last saw Kraftwerk, in Brixton in 1991. I was glad I went but I think I was disappointed, though I probably didn’t say so at the time. I saw them again last week — well, Ralf and his hireling mannequins, and their three-dimensional spectacle — at Tate Modern, an Xmas gift from my sister, and this time I loved the show. Not least because I suddenly grasped something I’d missed before (also: the sound was amazing). The shows they played this time were each based round one of their longer-player releases: the one I attended was The Mix, which came out that same year; their long-awaited response to a pop world catching up with them. Am I wrong in feeling that the widespread anticipation in 1991 was a little dashed at the time: The Mix was greeted as a kind of remixed Greatest Hits, in other words a recap of the near past, rather the next bold step into our shared machine-shaped future? more »
