Lawrence of Arabia

I finally got around to watching Lawrence of Arabia, one of those films you’re expected to watch at some point in your life. It’s presented fairly preciously – it’s 216 minutes split over 2 DVDs, with an intermission, and there’s five minutes of blackness at the beginning of each half with an orchestral overture, because apparently that’s how the director intended it. Good thing he didn’t intend us to watch the film facing east with underpants on our heads; you know the cinephiles would insist on it.

Anyway, like many of the classics it’s a series of set pieces with quite a lot of air in between, like the bits of Hamlet when he’s arsing about with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It’s been edited down to three hours before, and frankly it could’ve lost more without many people noticing. Lawrence’s real life was obviously more complex, and some of the more important details are unsuitable for a film made in the early sixties… it takes a while before you realize there aren’t any women in the film! If it’s ever remade (and you just know someone in Hollywood is working on it) there’s room for a really, really gay version.

Peter O’Toole is astonishing, of course. It’s amazing he ever worked again, so strongly does he inhabit the character. In the end, the film is more a stunning technical and visual achievement than straightforward entertainment – a film for film fans, like Citizen Kane and Intolerance.

Technical problems

I’ve been uploading cartoons to the Jitterati website for four years now. At some stage Comic Genesis changed the admin page that allows you to refresh and update pages immediately, and since then I’ve been using an ftp program to add things, which isn’t exactly flexible. I could probably quit Comic Genesis entirely to create a ComicPress site, but not until I have some spare time.

Six of the Best by Murray Ball

Six of the Best
Murray Ball
Hodder Moa Books 2009

A few months ago, a handsome new Murray Ball book appeared in the shops, in the same format as the deluxe Footrot Flats collections published a few years ago. There are certain obvious marketing problems associated with this product. It’s not Footrot Flats. It comes in a sealed slipcase, with no text on the front or back to explain what it actually is. And – gulp – it costs a hundred bucks. You would have to frickin’ love Murray Ball to buy this straight off the shelf.

Anyway, thanks to the fantastic resource that is the Central Library, I lugged home a copy. Six of the Best consists of six comic strips Murray Ball has produced over the past forty years. The most significant selection is from the Punch cartoon Stanley, a much sharper version of the dreadful B.C.. The caveman Stanley is a similar character to the Dog, although less sympathetic. There have been two previous compilations of these cartoons, although they are super-out of print. You would think this would be a definitive collection, and yet although the images are sharp and the paperstock high quality, this is a dreadful, dreadful compilation. The cartoons have been shuffled, making nonsense of the storylines. The scans of the cartoons are uncorrected, so there are hairs, pencil lines and stray pieces of ziptone on the pages. For some reason the daily strips, half-page ‘Sunday’ strips, and full page magazine strips have been segregated, so the quality and chronology zips up and down. A missed opportunity.

The other cartoons are for serious Ball fans only. Bruce the Barbarian is from Labour Weekly, a vivid if unsubtle attack of Thatcherism that would seem gauche even in a student newspaper. The Prophet is a short-lived anti-imperialist cartoon from the Noughties. The Doctor is an average medical-themed strip, but Nature Calls and The Kids are both charming comics which show a strong Leo Baxendale influence.

Ball’s strength has always been in his unsentimental characterisation, and his main weakness is his portrayal of female characters. The Seventies were not a progressive time for him. Most of these strips have dated badly and I wouldn’t pay a hundred bucks for the book, handsome though it is. Bizarrely it’s advertised (on the inside) as being the third part of a collector’s trilogy, the other two parts being the Footrot Flats collections, even though the first book (a selection of the daily strips) only covers five out of 19 years. I wish they’d reprint the original collections – I’m missing vols. 1, 2, 13, 16, 17 and 22-27.

So, some gaps there.

Halloween party

Another excellent flat party. It was more talky than dancy until someone stopped messing with the volume control on the stereo. For some reason there was a prodigious amount of wine and women in their mid-twenties, but I am not complaining. It didn’t finish until 3:30am. No-one threw up, broke windows, puked on the neighbour’s cat, started a fistfight, or decided that the “least drunk” should drive, so it wasn’t a party for the newspapers.

Decidedly Non-Party Soundtrack:
Psonic Psunspot ~The Dukes of Stratosphear
Permanent ~Joy Division
The Gorey End ~The Tiger Lillies & Kronos Quartet

Party prep

Soak chickpeas. Clean Venetian blinds. Vacuum. Move loose stuff into cupboard. Chop up crepe paper. Borrow ladder. Nail crepe paper to ceiling. Install cobwebs. Clean bathrooms. Make hummus. Make 8-hour playlist. Rearrange lounge furniture. It had better be a good party.

Meeting the cartoon historian

I was invited to a NZ Cartoon Archives function tonight at Capital Books. British cartoon historian Dr. Mark Bryant happened to be in town, so the Archives and Press Corp got together for a chinwag. I was the only cartoonist there, and for a time the youngest person in the room by 20 years, until a rather brusque Phd student turned up. He was unimpressed until I mentioned Brunswick, and I hope none of you will think less of me that I found his momentary flicker of awe extremely satisfying. I also met a certain famous illustrator who had never heard of me, but was extremely miffed that it took me a few minutes to recollect who he was. I had to choke back a mighty oath when introduced to someone as “the young aspiring cartoonist”. It’s all comparative, matey-boy.

The best conversation I had was with the guest of honour, who was not at all well. I think he was gratified that I was a fan of H.M. Bateman and Fougasse, and helpfully pulled out a copy of his Dictionary of 20th Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists when I asked what kind of injury crippled Fougasse at Gallipoli. He’s also the only person I’ve ever met who’s actually sat at the Punch table.

More graphic novel reviews

Nicolas
Pascal Girard
Drawn & Quarterly 2008

A matter-of-fact, rather melancholy book based on the author’s own childhood and the loss of his younger brother from lactic acidosis. Being a naturally resilient young boy, he doesn’t really see what the fuss is about, until years later in adulthood when he finally processes his grief. A small and brief book (72 pages) with simple drawings, this is a good example of a story which is best told in graphic novel form – not something to be extended into a novel, or provide a readymade storyboard for some bloody high-concept cash-cow film.

A Drifting Life
Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Drawn & Quarterly 2009

An autobiographical account of the early career of famous cartoonist Tatsumi who pioneered the gekiga style of comics in Japan, taking inspiration from American cinema and pulp fiction to develop a new and gritty style of visual storytelling. This 856-page book tells the fascinating story of the young and somewhat naive cartoonist escaping from an inevitable fate of civil service in 1950s Japan through his passion for comics. Encouraged by his idol Tezuka Osamu, he develops his craft with the assistance of his occasionally jealous brother, and is later alternatively exploited and supported by Japan’s emerging manga industry. His claustrophobic worklife is given historical context by interesting vignettes of Japan’s difficult and often humiliating postwar reconstruction. Something of a brick of a book, and not for readers with weak wrists.

Appetite for Detention
Sloane Tanen
Bloomsbury 2008

Tanen has published several unsentimental books using photos of tiny pipe-cleaner chickens in model settings acting out the neuroses of 21st century humans. This one is unusually narrative, following nine students from various classic cliques through the school year. This is unaccountably hilarious when depicted using tiny chickens.

Animal Collective
Fupete & Jacklamotta
Drago 2007

Not really a graphic novel, more a collaboration between two Italian artists which has resulted in this charming collection of drawings about made-up animals, including the Post Elephant (whose parents watched too much Blade Runner and have seen things you people wouldn’t believe), the St. Freak Kalimocho, and a curious creature known as the Giraffe. Fupete (Daniele Tabellini) draws cute animals with details picked out in gold, like Klimt if he were a six-year-old girl, and Jacklamotta (Robert Rebotti) produces smudged and scratched Photoshop collages.

Jaquie Brown and the in-joke vortex

It’s good to see a new series of The Jaquie Brown Diaries. Last year this was easily the best NZ comedy on air. The rise-and-fall of Jaquie Brown’s hyper-alter ego was fun to watch because of an extremely good and focused cast, despite the easy and somewhat lazy premise of satirizing Auckland’s media scene. The new series continues to deal with her epic decline*, but unfortunately by making a lot of in-jokes about Auckland radio it seems to have disappeared somewhat up its own arse.

I’ve never heard of James Coleman, and I suspect many people outside Auckland who’ve never listened to Channel Z or watched Sunrise have never heard of him either. Jaquie returns to Radio “Hautaki” to work with her crass, angry, balding nemesis, but it’s not actually funny unless you know it’s based on the past working relationship of the actors, and how are those of us outside a very small Auckland industry expected to know this – without reading about it in the magazine supplement of the Sunday Star Times?

It’s like those scenes in Family Guy when Peter Griffin will mug at the camera and recite a line from an ’80s American TV ad – it’s in the shape of a joke, it’s delivered as a joke, but because we were never exposed to the original object of reference, it’s not actually funny.

Still, Friday’s episode did made local comedy history by finally giving Josh Thomson (Welcome to Paradise’s Tongan John) something funny to do on TV. At least, I think it was him.

* Like Scarface without the cocaine.

Sunrise