Rob Wickings's Blog, page 70

Jingle Hell: Presenting The Dead Files: Volume 3

We're back with baubles on.

We wanted to celebrate the success of The Dead Files this year with a collection of z-tales that are a little out of the ordinary. What better way to end 2012 than with dark stories of the apocalypse and the undead (especially if you buy into that whole end-of-the-Mayan calendar escatological nonsense)?

This is our biggest and best collection yet. It skews a little lighter than usual, as we're all about having fun as the skies darken and the air freezes. We introduce new writers in Dead Files 3, including none other than Leading Man Clive Ashenden, who puts a new spin on the idea of giving at Christmas.

There's a glut of great new tales from the usual crew. I take a break from the Gates Of Hell universe to introduce you to a man called Stan and how the end of the world doesn't necessarily mean the end of the story. Bart, Laura, Jethro, Sarge and I invite you to snuggle up a little closer to the lights of the Christmas tree and have a poke at the gift we've left there for you. Yes, it's a bit soggy and it's still moving. That's OK. We know you like 'em fresh.

The Dead Files Volume 3: Tales Of A Zombie Christmas is available now through Amazon as a Kindle download and paperback, and on the UKZDL site in DRM-free formats next week. Go fill your stockings.

The Dead Files Vol. 3 at Amazon

The Dead Files Vol. 3 at UKZDL

 

 

The Road To Hell: X&HT Watched Sightseers

The idea of the English road movie is almost laughable.

 

That is, the idea of a road movie set in a tiny scrap of land should be laughable. I mean, surely, the genre is all about distance, about the transformative qualities of travel, of getting as far away from home as possible and never ever coming back. You can't really do that on a trip up the M1.

Well, yes, kind of. But there's no reason for that transformative journey to necessarily have to be a coast to coast trip across America, or up the Orinoco, or through Europe. Scale is as scale does. It's the shift in the interior map that makes the road movie a success. As long as your main characters have changed when they get to where they were going, then it doesn't really matter how far they've travelled.

And that, my Readership, is what makes Sightseers the finest road movie you'll see this year.

Our sightseers are Chris and Tina, new lovers on their first trip away together. They load up a caravan and head off for a trip up north, shrugging off the protests of Tina's mum, who sees something nasty in the chubby, ginger man who has come to pluck her innocent daughter off the vine. Apart from the fact that he's chubby and ginger, obviously. Initially, we join the lovers in the shruggage; mum is clearly a possessive nutcase.

Except, of course, she's right. Chris is a killer, and one who understands that you don't need Jigsaw-style traps or tricks to kill. If you back a caravan over someone, they'll be just as dead as if you bleed them out in a convoluted fashion over a period of days. A normal person would run screaming from the set-up. But Tina has been living at home a little too long and makes her own erotic-wear out of crochet. She finds the whole thing to be a major turn-on, and all of a sudden we're looking at a Lake District version of Badlands, with worse weather and better scenery.

Sightseers is an absolute, unfettered joy from front to back. It's hilariously twisted, unflinchingly brutal and brilliantly written and acted. Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, who wrote the script out of years of improv and character work, inhabit Chris and Tina completely. When the two break the fourth wall towards the end of the movie, calmly gazing out of the screen, the chill that zapped up and down my spine nearly shook me out of my seat. Comedy has never been so un-nerving.

Ben Wheatley, on a roll from his micro-budget crime thriller Down Terrace and the creepy hitman horror Kill List, has quietly helmed one of, if not the, finest British movie of the year. Shocking, coffee-out-of-the-nose funny, gory and cruel, it's a film that should have you looking askance at every single caravan on the road next summer. I'm just waiting for the howls of protest from the Caravan Club.

 

We Still Believe In Love, So Fuck You: X&HT Saw Elbow

I've never been comfortable with the idea of Elbow as a stadium band.

Somehow, I always saw them as occupying smaller, more intimate spaces, where a whisper can hit with as much force as a howl. That's a failure of perception on my part, and flies in the face of all the evidence before me. I've only ever seen them at huge venues, and they've always nailed it.

They are everyone's band now, able to fill the big arenas up and down the country with ease. The trick that Guy Garvey and co. pull off with such aplomb is that they make enormodomes like the O2, where a short tour finished last night, feel more like a Brixton Academy. This is a rare trick, given the scale at which the band now operate, and given the widescreen nature of much of the music from their last two albums, wisely highlighted.

In fact, I can only think of one other band in my (admittedly less than broad) gig-going experience that manage to give music on an epic scale such warmth and approachability. Crowded House use a similar blend of heart and humour, giving a poetic sensibility to the little victories and defeats we all face everyday. Certainly, the best gigs should always be a mix of celebration and communion, and last night Elbow gave us that in spades.

There were end-of-tour shenanigans, of course, which could only help the warm glow. There were cards and cake and singalongs, mexican waves and a birthday. None of this is particularly noteworthy–there will be a birthday at any big gig. But I guarantee not everyone gets a guitar from the lead singer as a gift.

Guy Garvey is, of course, the main focus, an unlikely showman in his rumpled suit and scraggy beard. But he played the huge audience like another instrument last night, focussing on one or two people (the point where he finds the one person singing flat in a stadium-wide singoff is a gem) before speaking without pretence or condescension to all of us at once. He's a warm, avuncular presence who had the room wrapped round his finger from the first notes of the night.

About that voice. It's a gift from the gods, part Peter Gabriel, part John Martyn, a richly expressive instrument. Listen to the way he rolls the word “love” out into the world. As beery balladeer, as football-terrace troubadour, Garvey is one of the finest singers in popular music today. The band he fronts are agile, nimble and sweetly experimental. Listen to Richard Jupp's crazed junglist drum pattern that lifts Grace Under Pressure, one of the surprises tonight, from a simple lullaby into a glorious celebration of the most important emotion of all. Listen to Craig Porter's softly expressive piano work on Lippy Kids, or the angular, wire-sharp guitar of Mark Potter that gives the whole Elbow sound a frame, a structure, a solid support.

Elbow leant heavily on the ballads and anthems tonight; understandable given their newly global exposure, thanks to the Olympics. I'd rather have heard a couple more of their outright rockers, and would cheerfully have swapped out mumbly honkfest Starlings for the banging Neat Little Rows. But then that's me. TLC loves Starlings, and I love the fact that Elbow got away with it and sweet little numbers like Puncture Repair at a gig that should, common wisdom dictates, have been all widescreen all the time. But that's alway been their strength. By addressing the little things we have in common, they speak to us all. As Garvey puts it so succinctly, everyone's here.

Much as I wanted it to be a clear evening, so I could talk about how the crisp cold air made for perfect weather to fly, it was grey and drizzly as we left the O2. We braced ourselves for the queue to the tube and the slow Sunday night trains home. Somehow, that seemed just as appropriate. A quiet reversal of expectations with its own sense of poetry.

 

Spy Vs. Spy: X&HT Saw Argo

I believe that movies can save lives. Argo offers the proof.

At the height of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, there was a tiny bit of good news for America. Six members of the American Embassy staff had managed to escape before the building before it was taken by revolutionary forces, and had found refuge at the Canadian Ambassador's residence. The big question was how to get them out of the country. The answer is told in Ben Affleck's spy thriller Argo, and it's one of those stories that would be too weird to be true… if it wasn't true.

Argo understands one of the great rules of comedy. Play it straight. Although the film isn't a comedy (in fact in places it's almost unbearably tense), it recognises the blatant absurdity of the situation and simply offers it up without winking at the camera. Affleck and Bryan Cranston as his section head are brilliantly stone-faced throughout, Joe Fridays both. They just happen to come up with a plan whereby Affleck is a location scout for a cheesy 80s SF movie, and the escapees are his staff.

It's the detail that Affleck and co. have to go into that make the film such a joy for a kid like me, just finding his feet in the big wide ocean of SF in the early 80s. As he wanders through the backlots of Hollywood, we bump into old-school Cylons, and references to the kind of Star Wars copycats that were rife at the time litter the background. The film they decide to make, Argo, would have been rushed into production at the time, I'm sure. A little bit Galaxina, a little bit Krull, a little bit Starcrash.

Even if it wasn't a cracking bit of spy fiction, Argo would work as a beautifully crafted bit of 80s nostalgia. All the details are there, from the crackly TV reception on 14 inch analogue TVs to the facial hair. My god, the facial hair. It can't be coincidence that Argo has been released in the UK in time for charity lip-hair fest Movember. There's inspiration to be had from the mo-action on display, of which Affleck's is a particularly fine example. A joy to behold.

A friend grumbled to me that the one problem with Argo is its leading man, and I can see his point. Ben Affleck is a fine actor and a better director, but here he just seems a little too doe-eyed, a little too prone to giving himself moody close-ups that show off that Silvikrin-clean do. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on the casting decision–he's the one A-lister in a cast that shines but is hardly stuffed with above-the-line names. That being said, you really should be forming a queue to see a film featuring actors like John Goodman, Alan Arkin and the aforementioned Cranston, regardless of the Hollywood eye-candy on the poster.

Argo is an absolute joy from start to finish. Sharp, clever. Funny, tense and exciting, it's by far a more satisfying movie experience than that silly Bond nonsense. I recommend you stick around through the credits too, when you get to see some of the real faces behind the drama. Which just goes to show. Truth really can be stranger and more fun than fiction.

Ladles and germs, Tony Mendez IS Ben Affleck!

 

Let’s Play Master And Servant: X&HT Saw The Master

I really should have hated The Master.

And yet, I couldn't help but like it. It's so wildly, brazenly absurd that I found myself warming to it more and more. It's never boring, and frequently howl-out-loud funny. Maybe it just suited the mood I was in on a cold and rainy Thursday in Oxford, when I was more ready to be entertained than I thought.The plot is an unfocussed mess. Most of the characters are either ciphers or caricatures. The film doesn't have an ending. It gets to 2 hours and 23 minutes and finishes. It's overblown, over-acted, pretentious and so far up its own backside that it can lick its own tonsils. It should have driven me into a boiling rage.

A hunkahunka burnin' love.

The film is largely told through the cracked warped lens of Freddie Quell, a WW2 veteran who leaves the service with a very skewed view of the world. He's sex-obsessed, and a highly creative alcoholic given to creating cocktails out of dark-room chemicals and swilling mouthwash out of bathroom cabinets. He's an extraordinary creation, and my main reason for loving this film. Quell is damaged goods, one side of his face drooping as if from a stroke. He looks as if he's wearing his clothes backwards, and is easily sparked to a thrashing, incoherent rage. Joaquin Phoenix plays him like a broken cockerel, strutting with a limp and a sneer, always at an uncomfortable angle to the world around him.

Quell hooks up with a group that are even stranger than him: a curious pseudo-scientific cult called The Cause. The film-makers have been careful to play down the parallels to Scientology, but it's pretty obvious what The Cause and its charismatic leader Lancaster Dodd are supposed to represent.

Dodd is clearly a charlatan and a buffoon, blustering his way into gullible rich old women's lives, taking over their houses and bilking them out of large amounts of cash. You wonder how anyone ever falls for his shell game–although Dodd has charm and smooth talk to spare, his high talk and horsefeathers are full of holes. As the film goes on, it becomes clearer still that he's not even the brains of the operation. His wife, played with a doe-eyed innocence that sharpens to steely resolve by Amy Adams, is great here, balancing Philip Seymour Hoffman's volume with a quiet sense of almost banal evil. The moment when Peggy keeps Dodd in line with a briskly-administered handjob speaks volumes about the relationship between the two, and how the balance of power within the Cause is distributed.

Master-bater (sorry).

But it's the relationship between Dodd and Quell that forms the central mass around which the film spins. It's something akin to love, a lot like addiction (Dodd becomes as partial to the taste of photographic chemicals as Quell), and frequently subject to Freddie's paranoid delusions. He imagines Dodd calling him to England with a phone call in a deserted cinema auditorium, or capering around a gathering of the faithful where all the women gradually lose their clothes. You start to wonder just how much of the film is simply going on in Freddie's head. Would Dodd really serenade him with a tearful rendition of “Slow Boat To China” before letting him go forever? You honestly start to doubt everything you're seeing. In the end, the film takes on the aspect of a fever dream, a hazy hallucination shot through with bizarre tight-focus choices and saturated colours.

Every time you think you've got a handle on The Master, it swerves on you, throwing in another fist fight, a moment of high melodrama, an uncomfortable sex scene. You're left giddy, slightly high, off-balance, as if you've been slipped one of Quell's dark-room creations. The acting is on the high end of scenery-chewing, but it's carried out by actors that know how to walk that tightrope without looking absurd. It's not as if The Master isn't absurd, because it's crazy as a crackhouse rat. Paul Thomas Anderson's films are always deliriously weird, but this beats the frog storms and the giant prosthetic penis and the milkshakes by a nautical mile. This is no incisive assault on the birth of Scientology. Instead, it's a whacked-out treatise on the nature of faith, family and friendship, with a central character that learns nothing and is all the stronger for it.

As I left the cinema, two old Oxford dowagers offered up a plummy critique: “My dear, I have to say I found half of it completely incomprehensible.” So did I. But I didn't see that as a bad thing.

 

 

Z-Day Debrief

It was a day of firsts, in all kinds of ways.

If you were in the vicinity of Battle Library in Reading yesterday, you might have seen some rather strange sights. A guy in a hazmat suit wandering around, accompanied by another in full camo gear. A girl erupting out of a side room, screaming her head off, chased by something that looked very much like a member of the living dead. A tall, wiry chap looking like he was about to soil himself. That last one was me, 10 minutes before I was about to stand up in front of a paying audience and read from a piece of my writing.

And that hadn't even been the most stressful part of the day.

Yesterday was Z-Day, a celebration of all things zombie held by Reading Borough Libraries. There were workshops, screenings and talks, and a little bit of zombie literature. Which was where I came in. In my remit as contributing editor of the United Kingdom Zombie Defence League (UKDZL hereafter) I was to pimp out our increasing collection of short story anthologies, and do a reading. I would also talk about the guide my friend and partner in shenanigans Rob May (Sarge hereafter) had put together to help the citizens of Reading retake their town post zpocalypse.

That angle had got us some interest. In the course of the day, I would talk to the man from the Reading Chronicle, and get myself on local radio. And that, Readership, was where things got interesting.

BBC Radio Berkshire is a twenty minute walk from my house. It's based in the same building as BBC Monitoring, which keeps an eye on the world's broadcasting. Caversham Park is a beautiful old manor house, set in grounds that for the most part are now publicly accessible. Soft rain fell as I was buzzed through security and into the building. I was early, of course. I wasn't going to keep the BBC hanging around.

At just after 10am, I was ushered into Studio 1 to shake the hand of Henry Kelly. I had grown up watching this guy on Game For A Laugh and Going For Gold. Now, here he was, charming and chatty, and I was waving a plan to help retake Reading from zombies at him. Surreal? You have no idea.

We chatted on air for a little under five minutes, joined on the phone by Sarge, calling in from Dorset where he's freelancing on the reshoots for World War Z. We were gently jibed at and prodded by Henry, who viewed us as hoaxers. We agreed absolutely, but the best hoax is one that's played straight-faced. He probably thought we were nutters. But he was very pleased with the badge I presented to him before I left. Our charm offensive worked, I think.

Tell you what, see what you think. Here's the interview

Back home for a coffee and a bite to eat. TLC assured me that I sounded calm and serious. She didn't say sexy. Fair enough. It's hard to sound sexy when you're talking zpocalypse.

Nice as it would have been to call a trip to local radio the achievement of the day and curl up on the sofa, I knew things were barely getting started. I loaded up a wheelycase with a stock of copies of The Dead Files, badges and a copy of the plan, and zoomed off to Battle Library. OK, for zoomed read plod through gridlock. Appropriately nasty weather conditions had slowed traffic to a zombie-like crawl.

I arrived late, therefore, and I wouldn't be the only one. I arrived just as a youth theatre performance of the opening of Night Of The Living Dead was getting started. It was surprisingly disturbing, and the use of strawberry string candy as a gore effect was remarkably effective.

The man behind the performance was Chris Lambert, hazmat-suited, impressively-moustached, and our MC for the day. Drama teacher by day, zombie-head by night. Enthusiastic and frighteningly well-informed, he would make sure the day ran smoothly.

I introduced myself to Miriam, the librarian who had brainchilded Z-Day, and set up my wares. Soon, there was a tug at my sleeve. Laura Hamilton, one of my fellow Dead Files authors, had come down for the day with her partner and editor Matthew. Sparky, chatty and fun, it was great to finally met someone I'd rabbited at on Twitter. Soon afterwards, we were joined by another Dead Filer–Jethro Jessop, who'd come in for the afternoon session. All of a sudden, I felt like I had a support crew.

BUY BUY BUY

 

I grabbed a quick five-minute chat with a gent from the Reading Chronicle, who seemed very interested in the Reading Defence Plan, suggesting I offer it to the Borough Council following an FOI request about the town's preparedness for a zombie incursion (nothing to do with us, I swear). Worth doing, and I'll keep an eye open for articles mentioning us in the next week or so.

Before I knew it, Chris was inviting me to the front of the room, and there I was, Kindle in hand, introducing the opening section of The Key To The Gates Of Hell. The last time I'd done anything like this was at primary school. I was nine. I was reading some Star Wars fanfic. It seemed to go down well.

Reading your own work is hard. It's performance, and it's tough to do right. You need to keep yourself slow, pitch your voice a little lower than normal, and remember to look up every now and again. Don't let a slip or stumble knock you sideways. Try to breathe every now and again.

I wasn't expecting the torrent of questions afterwards. A lot of people were interested in the plan, in my favourite z-movie. I even got the “how hard is it to come up with ideas” question. I think I answered them all satisfactorily, but to be honest with you, the whole 40 minutes is a bit of a blur. If I fumbled, I apologise. I'm new at this. Give me six months and I'll have it nailed.

After that, I was happy to sit at the back, sell and sign some books and badges and enjoy the show. Fortean cryptozoologist Richard Freeman gave a mind-boggling talk on the undead African creature of legend, the Tokoloshe. This veered away from the zombie remit, but was head-mangling enough to hold my interest throughout. The phrase “ethereal penis” will be with me for a while.

Lee Miller and Joanne “Bob” Whalley talked about the symbolism and cultural meaning of the zombie in a talk that mashed up performance, video and yoga. They were definitely on the side of the zombie. Mushy liberals. I'll have to keep an eye on them.

Lee and Bob and their mushy liberal propaganda.

I joined Lee, Bob, Chris and Richard for the final panel discussion on top zombie moments in film. There were some crackers here, from The Serpent And The Rainbow to John Carpenter's The Fog. I raised the flag for my all time favourite, Return Of The Living Dead, the film that introduced both fast zombies and the first appearance of the word “braaaaaaains.” I was reminded and need to reacquaint myself with Dan O'Bannon's Dead And Buried, and find I need to check out the moving French film Les Revenants, a treatise on the nature of grief.

All too soon, we were saying goodbye. Jethro, Matt and Laura vanished back into the storm. I joined Miriam, Chris, Richard and some other chums for pie and beer at the extraordinary Sweeney And Todds, a basic and brilliant restaurant that's been a fixture in Reading for the last 30 years. I know, I've only just discovered it. I'm shaking my head as I write this. We discussed the merits of Doctor Who vs. Star Trek, and the possibilities of getting Alan Moore to do a reading at Battle Library. I signed Chris up for contributions to Dead Files 4, and invited myself onto Richard's Fortean fiction collection.

I'd have loved to stay and yak all night, but my introvert tendencies were digging in. Too much social interaction physically exhausts me, and I'd had a barrelful. I made my excuses, picked up my cases and headed home. A half hour after leaving the pub, I was in bed.

Z-Day was an extraordinary, remarkable milestone for me. I won't forget it in a hurry. Thanks and hugs to Miriam Palfrey, the Queen Of The Zombie Librarians, Chris Lambert, and everyone that turned up and made the day so enjoyable.

I like to think we made Reading more prepared for the hard days ahead. And if not, at least we had a little bit of fun.

Fancy a free copy of the UKZDL's Defence Plan for Reading, that led TV and Radio's Henry Kelly to exclaim “It's all about explosives!”?

Fill your boots here.

 

Tomorrow Is Z-Day

Tomorrow in Reading, the undead are rising.

You think you'll be ready. You think you're prepared. But when the hammer finally falls, when there's no more room in hell, you realise that you left something to chance, and the zombie horde are coming for you.

We can help with that. Reading Libraries' Z-Day is an event dedicated to helping you get your head around all things zombie. There are workshops on basic survival, a Night Of The Living Dead For Kids and some great sounding presentations on playing (un)dead and the freakish creature known as the Tokoloshe. I will be delivering a dose of zombie literature. I'm reading the opening sequence from The Key To The Gates Of Hell, as an introduction to the world that I'm quietly building in the pages of The Dead Files.

Speaking of which, I'll also be bringing along copies of both volumes to sign, as well as UKZDL and BZDL badges. I also hope to share some exciting news about volume 3–the Christmas Special, and the future plans for the League, Verse Publishing. You think we've done a lot in 2012. 2013 is going to shear the top of your head off with amazement. With luck, there should be a couple of other Dead Files authors on hand, so now's the chance to pick up a collectableZ-Day treat for yourself.

I'm appearing on the final panel of the day as well, about top zombie moments on film. If anything, I'm more nervous about this than the reading. I think we'll have a few surprises for you.

If you're in Reading, get your ass down to Battle Library in Oxford Road and join in the grisly fun. I'm reading at 1:30, and the final panel is at 4, but there's plenty on through the day.

Be prepared. Join us.

 

 

The Sky Is Falling: Why Skyfall Should Be The Last Bond

I have never been more conflicted about any Bond film than Skyfall.

There are some truly amazing moments in the movie, from the opening chase to the neon-soaked Shanghai fight scene. It's the best-looking Bond ever. If Roger Deakins doesn't win the Oscar for best cinematography, then something is very rotten in the state of California indeed. Javier Bardem is an impeccable villain, doing creepy and sociopathic in the way that only he can. Ben Whishaw cements his reputation as the thinking girl's geek. Adele's theme song is an outright stomping histrionic magnificent triumph.

And yet, I can't help but think of Skyfall without an ever-growing sour pit in my guts. As the 50th anniversary rolled around, I guess the idea was to make the most Bond-like Bond movie possible. In a lot of ways, the creative team have succeeded beyond all expectations. Everything that's ever been wrong with the Bond franchise is amplified to a ridiculous degree in Skyfall, to the point where it would be nice if it was only self-parodic, instead of gleefully eating its own tail.

Bond films have always been flabby and over-padded. Skyfall is at least half-an-hour too long. I'm not putting the blame for that on the extended dialogue scenes that Sam Mendes insisted on. They at least give a bit of depth to characters that would otherwise be bare sketches. Instead, the interminable globe-trotting that has been part of the DNA since Ian Fleming first sat at his typewriter is still firmly in place. In the fifties, his audience loved the idea of being whisked off to foreign lands. The escapism was a major part of Bond's early success. Nowadays, the ten minutes of travelogue that have to be shoehorned into the narrative just slow things down.

The borderline misogyny at the heart of the Bond narrative is front and centre in Skyfall. Of the three lead female characters, two wind up dead, and the only survivor is deemed insufficiently skilled to be anything more than a secretary. Killing off Judi Dench's M and replacing her with yet another white upper-class male tells you everything about the mind-set in which Bond still moves.

In fact, everything about the Bond universe is mired in a bygone age, a fantasia with its own weird logic. It's a world in which the twilight world of secret agents can be discussed in open tribunal, in which the idea of a double-0 is common knowledge. It's a world in which Britain has a famous spy. Think about that phrase a second. It's nonsense, and it's the kind of nonsense that is all over Skyfall like a rash. Bond apparently has no gadgets in this film, apart from the Walther PPK with the palm-print lock that's straight out of Judge Dredd, a locator beacon that works instantly and world-wide. And let's not forget the car with the twin machine-guns.

Which brings us back to the whole 50th anniversary chicanery. It's nice to see the DB5, but it's clearly been shoe-horned in to poke our nostalgia gland rather than to serve any motor (sorry) to the story. It's part and parcel of the whole queasy sense of deja vu at play in Skyfall. I'd argue that the plot, or at the very least the villain's motivation, has been rehashed from The World Is Not Enough. From the attack on MI5 to the focus on M as a target, we've seen it all before.

The thing is with Bond, you've always seen it all before. Every film has to hit certain plot beats, certain soundtrack cues, particular lines of dialogue. But I got the feeling in Skyfall that we'd reached critical mass. Bond has to have this drink out of this glass while wearing this suit while flirting with two women simultaneously and scoping the room out for possible threats and there's only so many ways you can do it. It all just starts to feel like a mashup where there's only one song available to cannibalise. The snake is starting to eat its own tail.

It doesn't help that Daniel Craig suddenly looks as if he's aged 20 years. The young, virile 007 of Casino Royale is suddenly a scarred, exhausted soldier who's had one too many knocks. I wonder what the timescale is supposed to be between Quantum Of Solace and Skyfall. How long has M been protecting Bond for? There's an interesting story here about the last battle of an old hero. Sadly, the Bond construct will never let it happen. It's too much of a cash cow for everyone involved, from sponsors to the Broccoli/Wilson cartel, a shrewd bunch that have seen what happens when you try to change a formula. From Lazenby to the failed experiment to Bourneify the franchise that was the universally derided QoS, the reaction has always been the same. The illusion of change, quickly subsumed back into the same old paradigm. If only they'd cop to the well-known fan theory that James Bond 007 is a rank, rather than a character. Like Doctor Who, it could be interesting to change things up. A black Bond. A female Bond. Nice, but it'll never happen.

If the best that talented, world-class directors like Sam Mendes and a writer with the nous and intelligence of John August can provide us with when hamstrung by the same old baggage is a a film that ultimately promises a huge step backwards, then the franchise is in my view in big trouble. Bond back in Whitehall, M back in Bernard Lee's old office with bloody Moneypenny guarding the leather-clad door? Smells like a return to the bad old days of creaky old Roger Moore to me.

Maybe it's about time to call it a day. We've seen it all. Once, nobody did it better. Here in the 21st century, the game has changed, and it's blatantly obvious that Bond cannot adapt to the new landscape. The last great Bond film, Goldeneye, at least made a nod in the right direction, allowing Bond to flounder a bit in a world where the old certainties had collapsed with the Berlin Wall. Ever since, we've seen the franchise stutter and trip as it tries and fails to respond to a changing audience. The very fact that the big climax of Skyfall features the destruction of, rather than a secret volcano base or space station, an old and creaky building that's no longer fit for purpose, should perhaps be seen as an omen.

 

A reading in Reading for Z-Day

Next Saturday, you have the chance to see me in public, reading from one of my Dead Files stories.

As 2012 shapes up to be one of my best years ever as an indie author, I’m about to pass another milestone: the public reading. As part of Battle Library in Reading’s Z-Day, a celebration of all things zombie, I’ve answered the call to share my work with you lucky, lucky people.

I plan to read the opening section from my Dead Files Vol. 1 story, The Key To The Gates Of Hell. It’s a neat, self-contained bit that hopefully should leave people wanting more. Who knows? It’s an exciting moment for me. I could be reading in front of literally dozens of people.

The event is also a chance to meet up with some of my fellow Dead Files authors. L.A. Hamilton and Jethro Jessop have both said they’ll be there, and I’m hopeful for an appearance from the man that started it all, the mighty Sarge. Dependent, of course, on his other zombie related responsibilities.

Whatever else happens, it promises to be a fun day, and tickets are going fast. Can I see any of you there?

Z-Day is held at Battle Library, Oxford Road, Reading on Saturday 24th November, from 11-4. I believe I’ll be reading sometime after lunch. More details on that once I have them. Tickets are £3, or £2 if you’re a member of Reading Borough Libraries.

For more info, check out the Facebook page which includes a couple of fun little promo videos for the event.

Zombie rights? PAH. Zombies have the right to suck on the hot end of my boomstick.

No, wait, let me rephrase that.

Blonde Wig And Blue Contacts: X&HT Saw Benny Loves Killing

I want to talk to you about a film you've probably never heard of, and almost definitely haven't seen.

What's the point to that? It's going to come off as, at best, film-crit snobbery. At worst, you'll ignore the post (oh, he's off again) and move on somewhere else.

You'd be right, of course. But I have my reasons, and I'd ask you to bear with me just this once again. The counterintuitive nature of reviewing a film that hasn't been properly released yet somehow suits the mood of the work in question. Because Benny Loves Killing is a film that defies any conventional approach.

Let's plot-dump, so you at least have an idea of what I'm talking about. Benny is a film student who wants to make a horror film. She fails pretty conclusively as her life, such as it is, falls apart around her. She is belligerently homeless, flitting from sofa to sofa, living out of a single holdall. Her film course is purely theoretical, and her tutors are at a loss as to why she should try to make a film when it will automatically fail her and cut off her funding. She's a drug addict, adrift, a stranger in a strange land. When she tries to change herself to better fit in, she only succeeds in making herself more alien and creepy. In a blonde Louise Brooks wig and blue contacts, she tries to disguise herself; a remodelling that has disastrous consequences.

Benny Loves Killing is an exercise in queasy absurdity. Shot in London with a largely foreign cast, it looks and feels skewed and uncomfortable. It delights in frustrating our expectations, much like its heroine. It has horror-film elements (and a few chilling moments) but the gorefest blowup you're expecting from Benny never happens. She's a bit odd, but she's by no means a deranged killer. She seems unable to process the most basic forms of human interaction. Relationships with everyone from her mum to her producer friend are spiky and fraught.

The relationship between Benny and her mother anchors and guides the film. The two women are equally fucked-up, and equally unable to admit to their flaws. They're both self-absorbed junkies. They bicker and snipe, arguments standing in for conversation. Misunderstandings are leapt to and offence taken with a kind of glee. For Benny and her mum, there's no other way to talk.

As a satire on indie film-making, it's a lot more straightforward and searingly observant. Benny, it becomes clear, has no idea how to make a film, leaving all the heavy lifting to her producer while she airily declares that she is making a different sort of horror. Not so–although we see little of the nudity and blood promised in the script, she seems to be making a straight-up slasher. But she can't even talk her lead actress into shedding her clothes for a shower scene. The ad hoc, slung-togther nature of her film is something I've seen in person far too many times. A camera, a couple of borrowed rooms and a bucket of fake blood do not make for a convincing movie.

Benny is a broad, almost cartoonish creation, defiantly self-deluded, pathologically unable to compromise. She should be maddening, unbearable. She isn't. Pauline Cousty's performance is nuanced and vulnerable, frequently letting the mask slip, allowing the panic to peek out. She's set herself a path without the faintest idea of how to navigate the pitfalls, choosing instead to forge ahead until she hits a pothole. You spend the majority of the film waiting for the carcrash. It doesn't ever appear in the way you expect. This Haneke-like willingness to play with audience expectations is, to my mind, one of the film's major strengths.

OK, admission time. Benny Loves Killing was written and directed by Ben Woodiwiss, best known for his subtly subversive script for Blood And Roses. He's therefore a friend and fellow-traveller through the murkŷ territory of lo-to-no budget film-making. His feature-directing debut is as low-key and thoughtful as B&R, delivering a character study with a satirical bite and a few sharp things to say about independent films and film-makers. You could argue it's an easy target, but in an era when low-to-no budget moviemaking is a viable option, it's always worth making the point–just because you can make a film, it's doesn't necessarily follow that you should.

In Ben's case, though, I'm rather glad that he did.