Ah Mondays, where fresh-faced souls, reinvigorated by a hearty weekend break, head out into the sun to take on a whole new set of challenges and mingle amongst their fellow citizens! Bollocks, right?! Well, at least it’s not fucking raining here in South Yorkshire. In fact, it’s downright warm. I’ve actually inverted my sleep pattern so as to avoid the agonising daylight I get here on the top floor of my block of flats. I’m pretty sure it’s different from your sun. It’s also nice and quiet when you wake up at midnight, so it kinda feels like I have the entire estate to myself. No boy racers revving, no kids screaming, no adults screaming, no dogs barking. Just one fat nerd and his man-cave.
So, what’s been going on within all this darkness? Quite a few things, but my motivation to write any of it down has been lower than it could possibly be. That’s nothing personal, of course, it’s just my brain decided it’d had enough of doing anything productive for the best part of a week. But, here I am, hitting keys and hoping something will come out of it.
Let us explore the power of words together!
NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
As with most anime, UK distribution of Evangelion has been sketchy since the demise of VHS. I will never understand why it was easier to produce those giant, fiddly blocks of plastic than simple discs of data, but apparently it was. The odd Evangelion movie would float about in shops, but it wasn’t terribly clear to me where they stood within the franchise. Anime franchises aren’t simple, after all, as they can and do span multiple films, series, OAVs, video games, novels, their original manga, and improvised street theatre. Then, a few weeks ago, I subscribed to a well-known streaming service for a month, and there was Neon Genesis Evangelion, just sitting there, daring me to look at it. “Are you the first incarnation?!” I wondered, “Or are you a remake/reboot/prequel/inspired-by load of bollocks?”. As it turned out, it was the original, which was a surprise, as I mistakingly thought said streaming service only hosted newer productions. So, yes, over the weekend I’ve been watching the original 1995-96 Evangelion, and I am completely 100% organic made-in-England no added sugar swept away! And I have no idea why. On the surface, there isn’t much else to this show that other mecha anime, such as Gundam and Patlabor, have. It’s big robots fighting, while humans argue below. But it’s clear that the mecha fights were the last thing on the minds of the producers, who knew to keep such moments reduced down to intense skirmishes, rather than gratuitous battles. I’m on Episode 7 now, but I still have no idea what the “angels” attacking our human heroes are. Are they extra terrestrials? An enemy nation? Terrorists? Rogue AI? I do not know. Yet not knowing, whether their origin has actually been mentioned or not, doesn’t seem to matter. Instead, I’m being drawn in by the strange cosiness of the show’s tone. It’s nice. You could almost call it “a soap opera that just happens to have giant robots fighting every now and then”. And so I will! I actually care what happens to the handful of maudlin main characters, not their mecha overlords. I’m riveted by the humans’ thoughts and feelings and interactions and awkward silences. The sparse-nature of the robot skirmishes helps to heighten their importance, which has the knock-on effect of increasing my interest in them. A controversial opinion, perhaps, but I just find giant robots and kaiju boring as hell. With Evangelion, however, I don’t get up and go put on the kettle when the walking superstructures start appearing out of Tokyo-3. Amazing! In fact, I’m enjoying it all so much that I’ve bought the recent physical boxset, which includes (along with the original series) what appear to be nebulous re-edited film summaries and remakes. I’ve also bought the ANIMA series of audiobooks, which I think I will now save until I’ve finished the original 26 episodes, as I believe it’s a sequel storyline. Although the word “alternate timeline” has come up in my research, so it might be safe to audioread them without fear of being spoiled. Hmm, if this paragraph goes on any longer, I may turn it into a full review, but I think I’m pretty much done here. Let me know if you’re an Evangelion fan too and which character you cosplay as. Or LARP as. I’m not sure which is politically correct anymore. So yeah. Onwards!
ALIEN: ROMULUS
While I do own Alien Covenant somewhere on disc, I have no plans to watch it. Yes, Prometheus pissed me off me that much. But, with a new director and a promise of actually being faithful to the world of the original trilogy (I count Resurrection as a spinoff), I decided to brave last year’s Romulus. And I’m now stuck halfway through. It feels like enough has happened to just call it a day. I really can’t take anymore running around in the dark that my poor eyesight is unable to discern anyway. I get it, there’s an alien on a space station with an evil robot and an evil corporation and a female protagonist and cow prods and flamethrowers and blah blah blah. Can’t we just have a film set in this wonderful fictional universe without having to repeat stuff we’ve seen before?! An open world video game set in the Alien universe would make my dar. My life, even. Some of the music cues in Romulus are unique and interesting. The annoying cockneys are at least real cockneys and not transatlantic “mockneys”. I think the filmmaking is good, but I can’t really see any of it to say for sure. The CGI clashes with the retro look, which takes me out of things regularly. I dunno, I do want to watch the second half but, urgh, do I really have to mummy?! Please let me know if it’s worth it, dear readers.
BABYLON 5
I’ve had the complete Babylon 5 franchise boxset collecting dust on a shelf for about a decade now. Every other month I ask myself: “So, Jim, are you going to finally tackle Babylon 5 this week?!”. Well, I think now is the time. I’ve dug it out of my boxset mountain, blown off the dust, and checked a story chronology online (so I know where to kick things off), therefore I will be watching the movie The Beginning very soon. Actually, I’ve already watched it, but I want to watch it again for clarity, as there’s a lot of world building in it that flew over my head on the first viewing. So, yeah, I’ll get to the main series eventually, which I only watched an episode or two of back when I was a wee teenager, so there’l be plenty to discover. Will I become engrossed in the epic space drama, or will I just be annoyed that it feels like a low-rent Star Trek?! We shall see…
JOHN WATERS
As I similarly discussed above regarding anime, the films of John Waters have been poorly, if not at all, distributed in the UK over the years. I’ve seen Serial Mom, but that’s about it. No, that is it. I’ve seen (heard, really) Waters’ guest appearance on The Simpsons, I’ve watched the documentary I Am Divine multiple times, and yet I’ve never seen the legendary Pink Flamingos. Then, during my annual check to see if his films have started being released over here, there they were! Three John Waters films released in the UK on Blu-ray by Criterion! And I now own them. I did try to watch one, but found I was totally in the wrong mood for it, and you do need to be in the right mood for John Waters. But at some point this week or next week or the week after, I shall indeed be sitting down to Multiple Maniacs, Female Trouble, and, yes, Pink Flamingos. I’m tempted to make it a full-day marathon, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to cope. I shall meditate on the matter with Yoda at the Jedi Temple.
ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES
Actually, the 3-film boxset of Arthur films. At least, I believe there are only three. Erm, I hope there are only three. I won’t say much here, as I do wish to crank out a full review, but I’ve watched the first of Luc Besson’s Arthur trilogy. But, like Babylon 5: The Beginning, I feel the need to watch it again, now that a few things about the mysterious (to me) film series have become apparent. My feelings are mixed to positive. There is some confusion in there. Some joy. Some boredom. But mostly, erm, mixed to positive. Perhaps just mixed. Coming soon, basically.
DISENCHANTMENT
I will go to my grave not being able to understand why I can’t focus on Disenchantment. Technically, it has everything in the right place: it’s a Matt Groening show, it’s set in a fantasy universe, it’s a dark comedy, it’s well made, the voice acting is great, the jokes are funny. But, alas, I just can’t seem to get into it. I can’t even remember its title. I regularly have to look it up to remind myself. That can’t be a good sign, surely! People can’t even remember the name of your damn show. But I don’t hate Disenchantment. In fact, I sort of like it. I even want to like it more. But there’s something about it, similar to the way I feel about Guillermo Del Toro movies, that is fundamentally missing and fails to capture my heart. If you have the answer, please furnish me with it. I’ve just restarted watching it for the second time, getting further with it than before. You know, beyond the second episode. All I can say is, thank goodness for John DiMaggio! The show seems to be upping his character’s involvement, which it really, really needs. His medieval fantasy king talking with what I assume is a New Jersey accent is just a constant joy. There’s also Maurice LaMarche in there too, who I always cheer “Yay! Maurice!” for any and every time I hear him in anything. He genuinely seems like a sweet guy in real life too. Oh and the great and truly potty Tress MacNeille is also present. I can only hope something will click with this show eventually, as I really want to love it as much as I love The (Early) Simpsons and Futurama. Don’t let me down, universe!
MUSIC
I’m what you might call “in between genres” right now, which is somewhat frustrating. When this happens, I usually turn to instrumental stuff, so I’ve been hitting Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre and Miles Davis pretty hard this week. I really should expand my field of listening, but I’m not feeling particularly adventurous right now. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for by including this little stream-of-conscious rant, but hey-ho. If there’s anything you can recommend that has the chance of keeping me busy and off the street, then do say hello.
HARRY CALAHAN
My review of Dirty Harry has bizarrely attracted 163 views so far, which is pretty damn crazy. It’s never the reviews you think! I did begin watching Magnum Force, but found I simply wasn’t in the mood. I will hopefully make a return and satisfy whoever the hell is so interested in my thoughts on the first one, but it doesn’t feel like it’ll be soon. I really need to be in the correct mindset to watch a film, and sleazy 70s cop thrillers just ain’t where I’m at right now, punk.
Well, I’d say that’s all for now, kittens. I’m still watching a lot of classic Joel-era MST3K, listening to that pre-history podcast, and generally trying to stay off the booze. My birthday’s coming up, which I was considering having a drink for, but I’m scared I’ll fall off the wagon permanently. And I’ve been doing so well! I guess I’ll see how I feel closer to the time. For now, I shall leave you to the springtime and whatever else is going on in the world. I have almost completely cut myself off from it, much to the relief of my stress levels, so I dearly hope all is well.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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