Sean Azzopardi’s 100 Days of Winter

I feel as though I’ve been neglecting my blog recently! I’ve had lots of things on my mind – trying to finish the fourth chapter of my Ph.D, worrying about the revisions I’m going to have to make on my previous writing, and generally just feeling a bit anxious about the future. I’m desperately in need of some part-time work, but I have found a few good leads, so hopefully I’ll have some luck in the next few weeks.

One consolation through this has been the feeling that I’m having more success with my creative endeavours. I’ve got lots of fun projects on the back burner, which I hope to blog about soon. A very important day was my visit to the Birmingham Zine Festival (you can read about it here). Looking at all the varied publications on offer, I felt inspired to be more confident about my own work.

I bought lots of cool stuff that day, but my favourite purchase was Sean Azzopardi’s 100 days of Winter. The first thing that drew me to the book was the bold artwork. There’s something very appealing about the layout of the cover, with paper floating down like snowflakes.

The collection represents Azzopardi’s attempt at producing one page of diary comics over a period of 100 days. As it was, his project ran aground around day 55. However, it is the story of this failure, and the way life keeps intruding upon aspirations, that makes this book so special.

Azzopardi’s artwork excels at conveying expression and emotion, and his pages flow nicely, rarely being broken up into panels. We’re given a great sense of the flow of his life, as he deals with work pressures, health problems, and the upsetting business of looking after his beloved cat Nobby, who is growing older and more infirm.

There’s a real delicacy in the portrayal of life’s complications. While sad things happen, this is not a depressing read. There are nice moments of humour: I particularly liked the page about Miles Davis and Aphex Twin! The comic ends on a hopeful note, as Azzopardi looks toward the possibilities of the future. But don’t take my word for it – go and look at the author’s website and buy a copy here. It’s a real bargain, at £3 including postage and a free sketch!

I was really pleased to see some Azzopardi work at the Hypercomics exhibition in Battersea Park. Also, I snapped a photo of this drawing of Sherlock (by John Cei Douglas) queuing for the toilets at a music festival! Cool, huh?

Kevin McCarthy

Last night I re-watched Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956). It’s a story that’s been adapted for the screen a number of times (by Philip Kaufman in 1978, by Abel Ferrara in 1993, and most recently by Oliver Hirschbiegel in 2007) but that original is still the best.

A large part of the film’s success is down to its star, Kevin McCarthy, who died last weekend. As the small town doctor who gradually comes to realize that something is terribly wrong with his community, McCarthy convinces us of the film’s fantastic premise. His move from confusion to paranoia to outright hysteria is brilliantly played.

King Donovan, McCarthy and Dana Wynter

The fact that Philip Kaufman gave McCarthy a crucial cameo in his remake will always endear that film to me. Looking over the obituaries, I realized that I haven’t seen many of McCarthy’s other screen appearances. I’d very much like to watch his episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.! He was never a great star but that distinctive lantern jaw made him immediately recognizable – if he’d been British, he might have been a great Dan Dare!

There’s a nice reminiscence by McCarthy’s friend Ed Gorman here. And do go and find Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, one of Hollywood’s greatest science-fiction films. “They’re here already! You’re next!”

Little grey cells and knitting needles

Agatha Christie was born 120 years ago today.

When I was a nipper, just after I’d exhausted all of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I began collecting Christie. After much hoking through charity shop bookshelves, I amassed quite a collection. Some years later, in one of those foolish teenage moments, I got rid of the lot.

Some people can be quite sniffy about Christie. Few dare to criticize her intricate plotting, but it’s often said her characterizations were very broad. I’ve always felt this misses the cleverness of Christie’s mobilization of class stereotypes, and the precision of her social observation. She’s no Wodehouse, but Christie is often much funnier than her detractors credit.

I’ve recently started buying Christie books all over again. I’m going to try to keep hold of them this time.

Here’s the title sequence to Granada’s Poirot series, with David Suchet:

And the BBC’s Miss Marple, with Joan Hickson:

Birmingham Zine Festival

This weekend, Dolly Clackett and myself got the train over to Birmingham so that we could attend the first Birmingham Zine Festival. We met lots of interesting comics and I got a drawing printed!

The cool poster by James Nash!

When I was younger, I always wanted to create my own fanzine. Somewhere there are notebooks full of my plans for a Sherlock Holmes (or was it Doctor Who?) zine. I had the Letraset and everything. But somehow it never got done. Probably I couldn’t afford the photocopying.

So it was really inspiring for me to see that the world of zines and alternative press comics is still thriving. The event was held upstairs in The Victoria, and was packed full of artists and browsers. I was only able to buy a handful of the work that was on offer, and I feel sad about the stuff I had to leave behind. But everyone I met was very kind, and happy to talk about their work. I particularly enjoyed seeing some artists sitting sketching!

Here are a few of the nice people I bought from (click the names to be redirected to their sites!):

John Allison

Miss Tukru

Phillipa Rice

Sean Azzopardi

Time Bomb Comics

Decadence Comics

As the event was so crowded, I didn’t get a chance to look at every stall that I wanted to, and I’m sure there’s lots of great stuff that I missed. Sorry if I haven’t mentioned you here!

Best of all, Footprint Workers Co-Op collected drawings from exhibiting artists and visitors and printed these up in a lovely commemorative booklet. I feel really privileged to have my own little sketch (of Dashiell Hammett, of course!) collected alongside the work of so many talented people.

Fame at last!

I’m already plotting a Squeezegut Alley zine and my first comics pitch as a result of this weekend. Seeing the great work being produced by talented and committed people was really inspiring. I felt humbled by their evident enthusiasm for the world of zines and comics.

So thank you Birmingham Zine Festival! Maybe next year, I’ll have my own zine to sell!

Guest blog at Silkworms Ink!

One of the reasons The Somerville Arms is the best pub in Leamington is that there’s always someone interesting to talk to. Also, Paul the landlord has the best collection of jazz autographs and he serves great beer. Last week, I found out the new guy behind the bar had just finished his Shakespeare dissertation and got talking to him about writing. As I left the pub, he scribbled down the name of a website I should check out.

The website was Silkworms Ink and my first blog for them can be read here. It’s on a subject that’s very close to my heart – jazz’s sense of humour! I hope you can dig it, baby…

Pekar and POW!

There’s an interesting piece on the New York Times website about Harvey Pekar’s legacy (read here), which raises the question of his posthumous work. It seems there are a number of books to come, stories which Pekar had written and sent out to his illustrators. It’s especially upsetting to read of conflict between Joyce Brabner (Pekar’s wife) and artist Tara Seibel, which may scotch plans to release strips from The Pekar Project.

In order to alleviate any gloom brought on by reading the above, here’s a marvellous poster for the first (yes, there were two!) Sherlock vs. Jack the Ripper movie A Study in Terror (1965). I particularly like that “Elementary, my dear Watson” gets its own speech bubble after the onomatopoeic punch-up noises!

BIFF! CRUNCH!

Powell and Pressburger’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’

Powell and Pressburger’s Sherlock Holmes (1947) is one of the great lost films of British cinema.

Movie mogul Alexander Korda

Made at Pinewood Studios, it was a lavish Korda production, designed to be even more definitive than the recently-finished American Universal series starring Basil Rathbone. Where the Universal films had been made in crisp black and white, Korda’s production was shot in lavish Technicolour. Where the Universals had been 70 minute B-pictures, this was an epic two and a half hours long, taking Holmes and Watson from their first meeting in 1881 to the brink of the First World War.

Michael Powell

For this big-budget operation, Korda chose his star writing and directing team, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who brought technical mastery, an eye for spectacle and an ear for dialogue (previous work included  A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp). Powell had loved Conan Doyle’s detective since childhood, later writing in his autobiography,

“Both my grandfather and my uncles told me that on the City platform at Forest Hill Station, crowded as usual with businessman, with umbrellas, gloves and top hats, waiting for the 9.15 to London Bridge, they had seen every man of them, on the day of publication with his head in the Strand Magazine devouring the latest Adventure. In the crowded carriages six a side, every man was either reading Sherlock Holmes or discussing him. Just as with Jules Verne the pictures, as much as the text, created the immortal folk figure. The lean face, the deerstalker, the Inverness cape, captivated the world. (…) I am convinced that Holmes and Watson would never have become household heroes without pictures. For the first time, and all over the world, a storyteller’s images, as well as his words, were known and recognized. Sidney Paget and Arthur Conan Doyle were the parents of the silent film, the sound film, the colour film, TV, video tape, of all the audio-visual storytelling inventions of the next ninety years.”

Powell and Pressburger

Pressburger’s screenplay lovingly recreated that bustling Victorian world, cleverly showing us the gaps between Holmes the man and Holmes the ‘folk figure’. This was quite unlike any previous film interpretations of the character – setting Holmes firmly within a larger social picture of Empire innovation and expansion. Most daringly of all, Pressburger chose to make the narrative fragmentary and episodic, giving us many overlapping cases and events, set over a forty-year period.

Eric Portman

For their Holmes, Powell and Pressburger chose Eric Portman.  Suitably aquiline and direct, it was hoped that Portman would challenge the public’s attachment to Basil Rathbone. Sadly, Portman’s warm Yorkshire accent was criticized in many contemporary reviews as inappropriate for the role. Despite this, his steely intelligence (previously seen in Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale) was universally praised.

Perhaps the film’s masterstroke was in casting the husky-voiced, gentlemanly Roger Livesey as Dr. Watson.

Roger Livesey

As far from Nigel Bruce’s bumbler as it was possible to imagine, Livesey was utterly convincing as the compassionate military man, bringing humanity to Holmes. One of the great pleasures of the film was to hear Livesey’s comfortingly growly voiceover introducing each case. No other actor has managed to invest the words ‘Giant Rat of Sumatra’ with quite as much comedy.

Livesey in make-up as the older Watson

Another fortuitous piece of casting came with Francis L. Sullivan as Mycroft Holmes.  Fresh from playing Mr. Jaggers in David Lean’s Great Expectations, Sullivan brought mystery and swagger to the part of the enigmatic government official.

Francis L. Sullivan as Mycroft

In many ways, this is the ultimate Sherlock Holmes film. It’s such a shame that it doesn’t exist.

While the Michael Powell quotation above is genuine, everything else is invented. You could say that this is my fantasy film, a movie that could have happened (I’ve tried to make the casting and production details as plausible as possible) but just didn’t. There’s a charming sequence in Colonel Blimp in which characters excitedly discuss the forthcoming installment of The Hound of Baskervilles in The Strand Magazine. Imagine what Powell and Pressburger might have done with a location shoot on Dartmoor, and with Conan Doyle’s “spectral hound”! Imagine their Reichenbach Falls (I’m seeing a Jack Cardiff matte shot, filmed in Wales)!

Oh well, it’s a happy daydream…

Dick Lochte’s Top 20 Private Eye Movies

Over at Ed Gorman’s blog, there’s a fantastic set of detective-related lists. Dick Lochte, the President of the Private Eye Writers of America, has compiled three lists of “Essentials”: Top 20 Private Eye Novels, Top 20 Private Eye Movies and Top 20 Tv Private Eyes! Naturally, my eyes immediately went to the list of movies. Here are Dick’s choices (and I’ve linked each title to its imdb page so you can follow up on those that intrigue you!):

1. The Maltese Falcon (Huston/Bogart version)

2. Chinatown

3. Murder, My Sweet

4. Out of the Past

5. The Big Sleep (the original, not the Mitchum-Winner remake)

6. Twilight (Lochte notes “with Paul Newman, not the vampire crap”!)

7. The Big Lebowski

8. Vertigo

9. Hickey and Boggs

10. Zero Effect

11. Kiss Me Deadly

12. Devil in a Blue Dress

13. Gumshoe

14. Farewell My Lovely

15. The Thin Man

16. Harper

17. My Favourite Brunette

18. Night Moves

19. Tony Rome

20. PJ

He also gives honourable mentions to The Big Fix, Michael Shayne Private Detective, Fast Company, The Runaround, Face Down, Nick Carter Master Detective, Hammett and Shamus.

I’m especially pleased to see the underrated Twilight, Gumshoe and Night Moves get mentions. Personally, I’d put The Thin Man a bit higher, but then I’m biased! And does anyone know where I can get a copy of Hickey and Boggs?

I can’t see any serious omissions, though I am fond of It’s a Wonderful World (1939, W.S. Van Dyke), which has James Stewart as a PI taking Claudette Colbert on a Capra-like adventure…

How about you, dear reader? Is your favourite Private Eye movie on the list?

Gumshoe trails #5

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so I thought I should pick something rather special. The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston) constantly tops polls of the greatest private eye films. It’s a very faithful adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s steely novel, with one of the great film ensembles.

Amazingly, this was Huston’s first film as director. No doubt his job was made much easier by his wonderful cast: Mary Astor as the duplicitous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as effeminate Joel Cairo, the expansive Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman and Elisha Cook Jnr. speaking through clenched teeth as the gunsel Wilmer.

This is the film that convinced Hollywood that Humphrey Bogart could be a romantic lead (in a sadistic kind of way). It’s a brilliant performance, by turns controlled, vicious and sardonic. Bogart is Sam Spade, and this is the film that made him a star.

The trailer displays many of those pleasurable features we’ve identified in others from the period. There’s the outré framing device, here Gutman addressing the audience directly. Look at the way he casts his eyes around, as though surveying those beneath him! Also, there are those wonderful captions describing the actors. I’m not going to spoil these ones. Just watch the video – they’re hysterical and yet magnificent.