Thrown For A Loop By Satirical Genius

There are a number of reasons why Armando Iannucci's feature debut, In The Loop, is automatically one of the best movies to be released this year, at least from this humble blogger's perspective, which is a relief after I went on about it in these two posts. However, there is one super-special personal reason, which I'll get to in a bit. First, a list of things to love about this magnificent movie...

1. It was free.

Yes, I got free tickets from a Sunday Times promotion, and got to see it at the lovely Ritzy in unlovely Brixton. The assembled upper-middle-class white people, perhaps fans of India Knight’s column, or that incredibly ugly typeset, seemed to thoroughly enjoy the movie, and we lower-middle-class white people did too. It was all very congenial, even with the C-word flying out of the screen with alarming regularity.

2. The easy transition to the big screen.

I'm sure the cinéma vérité style of The Thick Of It has its detractors, but whatever your feelings about it, it does make translating the show to a bigger screen fairly easy. No matter how modish the style has become, it's kinetic enough to keep the eye distracted from a film that is basically a bunch of people talking to each other a lot. The swift pace and aggressive performances keep the pace up for almost the entire movie.


Even so, Iannucci has fun with the contrasts between cramped and grey Britain, and the golden glows and grandeur of Washington. Even though the characters are stuck in depressing buildings, you still get the sense that Washington is a far more glamourous place than Whitehall. On top of that is one of the funniest visuals of the year; repeated shots of Malcolm Tucker scuttling around Washington, a sheaf of papers in his hand and mobile phone stuck to his ear as he bellows and shrieks torrents of foul abuse at everyone.

That said, would it pass the Billson test? It’s drab, frenetic, composed with what looks like slap-dash haste (though was probably worked out with great care), and certainly seems more interested in the spoken word than the visual aspect, but this is what the show is. Besides, even if it’s not The Fountain in terms of visual splendour, the script by Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche and Ian Martin is a marvellously complex thing, easily as tight and satisfying as their script for the recent specials (finally available on DVD, staggering-genius fans!). What looks like an unconnected series of sweary set-pieces gels in the final act with great precision. Billson’s criticism of British screenwriters is as angry as her comments about directors, and just as accurate:

A lot of British film-makers assume that screenplay equals dialogue, and because the Brits still haven't caught on to William Goldman's maxim that "Screenplay is structure", we get endless exposition and a plodding procession of scenes unfurling like stage plays. Scene begins, there's some dialogue, scene ends, next scene begins, more dialogue and so on. Lawks-a-mercy, we might as well be watching a Restoration drama at the Old Vic.

In The Loop might feature more dialogue than a dozen movies put together, but at least there is plot there. I once attended a screenwriting discussion headed by a very nice lady from the BBC, who said that drama spec-scripts would usually only attract attention if the plotting was tight. With comedy, however, scripts could be poorly plotted but would be considered a success if they were at least funny, which most comedy scripts sent to the Beeb were not.


In The Loop is that wonderful rarity; a movie that has a funny line almost every thirty seconds, but also works like a narrative machine from beginning to end and, as a bonus, features some of the most fascinating and believable characters of recent times. I’m not saying Iannucci didn’t do a great job as director, because I think he did. What he should be most proud of, though, is that remarkable script. When the film finished I said to Canyon that it was this year’s In Bruges. I can think of no higher praise.

3. The peculiar anti-continuity continuity.

Though I thought it might be baffling to have Chris Addison return as a different character than he played in The Thick Of It, he is pretty much the same arrogant-yet-cowardly loser as before, just with a new name. At first this choice was mystifying, but as In The Loop deals with a different department within the government, new characters are necessary if we're not to waste half of the film explaining why these people have switched jobs, especially when it is going to be seen by many more people who saw the show (at least, I hope so). Having Addison play Toby and not Ollie is, thankfully, no big deal.


He's not the only one. Several cast-members appear as new characters who share similarities and narrative links with their previous incarnations, most notably Olivia Poulet as Toby's girlfriend (she played Ollie's Tory girlfriend in The Thick Of It), Lucinda Raikes as a reporter (though we don't find out if she's working for the Daily Mail as with the parent series), Alex McQueen as an ambassador with the same social ineptitude as his Thick Of It character Julius Nicholson. It's not all the same. James Smith gets a promotion, Joanna Scanlan (as seen below) gets a demotion, and Will Smith (no, not that one...) gets a tiny role that nicely pays off his parallel universe character arc from the recent specials.


Only two characters remain the same: Peter Capaldi as Tucker, and Paul Higgins as Jamie, who is only in the movie for a few minutes but tears his scenes apart with even more feral nastiness than in the original series. His arrival late in the movie was greeted with a murmur of upper middle-class approval from the Sunday Times readers in the audience. There was no response from the audience when a familiar voice announced the start of a conference about fifteen minutes into the film. I could very well be mistaken, but the voice (belonging to an unseen man) sounded a lot like a former Thick Of It cast-member who hasn’t been in the show since before the specials, for very well-publicised reasons. IMDb, not surprisingly, has nothing to say on the matter.

4. The amazing cast.

Having everyone come back for this movie, even in an altered state, is a pure joy. By now they know how to do this hectic, profane comedy in their sleep, and it's a relief to find that the two British additions to the cast, Gina McKee and Tom Hollander, are both wonderful. This is not exactly news, of course. McKee is so good that when it seems like she's dropped out of the movie about twenty minutes in I was gutted (she comes back later, thankfully). Hollander is remarkable as the hapless Simon Foster, his craven vacillating providing much of the comedy and plot movement. Even though I adore Malcolm Tucker, I had feared the movie would overuse him, thus denting his impact. Luckily the rest of the characters are inept and venal enough to become just as fascinating as him.


Some criticism (that I really don’t agree with) has been thrown at the movie for moving the action to America (more on the colossal shitbag who said that below). Expanding the scope of the Thickniverse was a clever move from a financial point of view (hello American viewers who will not know what hit them), as well as in terms of narrative and satirical possibility, but it also meant a new set of actors who have not worked under these conditions before. While the UK actors gambol over their lines with precision borne of years spent working on this show, James Gandolfini and his fellow Americans speak much slower. It takes a while to adjust to the change in pace in America, though this is not a criticism of them. Everyone excels, especially Mimi Kennedy as Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy Karen Clarke, Anna Chlumsky as naive intern Liza Weld, and the great David Rasche as the menacing Linton Barwick, who bangs heads with Malcolm Tucker a couple of times.


Gandolfini is also terrific, playing straight comedy in a way he’s not had a chance to do before. One of the highlights of the movie is the showdown with Malcolm, one of the few moments in the film where the humour pauses. I don’t remember specifics, but I do know I held my breath throughout.

5. Comedy heritage.

This superb cast, most of whom have worked with Iannucci before, either on The Thick Of It or earlier works, reminded me of the repertory of performers that would appear regularly in the films of Preston Sturges, whose hyper-modern comedies still feel fresh even today. While In The Loop has been compared to Yes, Minister (obviously) and old Ealing comedies (I'm not 100% sure about that, but I'll go along with it), I'd say Iannucci has been influenced as much by Sturges as anything else.


The frenetic pace, the irreverence, the seriousness of purpose (for example, Sullivan's Travels and Hail The Conquering Hero are pointed comments on social issues as much as they are kooky knockabout fun), and the beautifully wrought plot and characters, are all reminiscent of Sturges' films. Considering how that great director's work is not as well known in the UK as it should be (at least as far as I can see), it's strange to see someone dabble in the same waters.

6. There's a lot more where this came from.

Apparently a lot more footage was shot than was used. Though the final product is structured so well that a director's cut would probably not work anywhere near as well, we can hope for a lot of deleted scenes in the DVD. Until then, here are some scenes with Jamie being a total scumbag. Navigate within the window for more scenes (the first two are in the movie, but the movie discussion and confrontation with Gina McKee are not).

7. Topicality.

It’s obvious from a look at any synopsis that Iannucci and co. were inspired by the Dodgy Dossier that got us into the Iraq War, but I was unprepared for the level of extra detail he would add. With Tucker standing in for Alastair Campbell, Simon Foster is a movie version of Clare Short, vacillating over whether or not to resign in protest over the push to war. One of the funniest moments in the film comes when Foster convinces himself it would be braver to stay on than it would be to resign, but the depressing thing is that that’s almost a direct transcription of Short’s thinking, as explained far down in this fascinating article by Iannucci about the making of the film. This being a comedy, there is, sadly, no Robin Cook analogue.


The joke that got the biggest roar of approval, though, has to be what must have seemed, at the time, to be a throwaway joke about expenses. Even more surprising, after this week's controversy about Damian McBride and the smear-mail cregarding David Cameron , shouty spin-doctors seem even more topical. It goes to show how well the filmmakers understand the thinking of our leaders. Speaking of which...

8. Every time Malcolm Tucker swears, Alastair Campbell winces.

In polite conversation I make no secret of the fact that I think Alastair Campbell is primarily responsible for one of the darkest moments in recent British history, namely the campaign of dishonest bullying aimed at the BBC in order to dodge some awkward questions about the march to war, a series of events catalysed by the dodgy dossier used to such wonderful satirical effect by Iannucci and co. During that period, his embarrassingly brazen avoidance of responsibility, desperately squirming out of danger by setting the easily controlled British press after the BBC, was sickening to watch, especially when the press not only jumped into line like a brainwashed army, but would occasionally comment on how effectively they had been manipulated, as if to pay tribute to Campbell's Macchiavellian genius.


For fuck's sake, all he did was act like a kid trying to escape a bollocking for firing a spitball at teacher by pointing out that Jenkins has a nuddy mag in his desk and is far more deserving of the birch than he is, the difference here being that any Etonian headmaster would ignore such a desperate attempt at diversion and then wallop the living shit out of the kid, instead of letting him off and expelling poor Jenkins who was just holding that copy of Razzle for James "Portly" Fortesque, honest sir!

As if Campbell's despicable and immoral face-saving exercise wasn't bad enough - an exercise which, let's not forget, lead to the death of a renowned scientist and complicated all investigation into the march to war, dragging the conflict out at the cost of many more lives - the BBC has since kept bringing the sociopath back, over and over again, to host shows and participate in interviews and generally act like it's no hard feelings. Well fuck that, there are fucking diamond-hard feelings, and I'll bet there are plenty within the BBC too. His actions have damaged investigative journalism and engaged enquiry in England more than any logistical or financial shortfalls listed in Nick Davies' Flat Earth News, and it's doubtful we'll ever see a restoration of backbone in the fourth estate. Of course that could just be me letting pessimism overtake me, but that's an easy thing to do post-Hutton enquiry. The whole sorry experience damaged my perception of politics and journalism to such an extent that I cannot see my faith ever being restored, especially now Paul Foot has sadly left us.


Of course, it's blatantly obvious that Malcolm Tucker is based on Alastair Campbell. Only an idiot could deny it. An evil idiot at that. Yes, the man himself was invited to see it with "Zoot Suit" Kermode, and was bored by the film. I also like how he criticised Iannucci for not understanding how certain things worked in politics.

Of course, politicians and advisers have their own ambitions. But they have more than that. Some of the scenarios - like a secret meeting being overwhelmed by attendees because its existence has been announced on TV; or Tucker being able to keep out of the papers something a minister said on radio; or the minister being confined to the back row of a meeting while officials take centre stage - would have benefited from advice from someone who has been inside a government loop or two.

What advice? Like this? [From the Iannucci article I'd linked to above]

I'd established contact with a political blogger out in DC who fixed me up with US State Department staffers and Senate workers and Pentagon officials and even a CIA guy, who could brief me on the ins and outs of Washington life. At least two people told me that Condoleezza Rice was a bit rubbish. She got rather star-struck in Washington and never really stood up to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Both of the guys I met said: "And, as a result, people got killed." The CIA guy added: "And that's what really pisses me off!" and as he said it, for the first time in our meeting, he looked rather frightening. He had the look of a man who knows how to empty someone else's bowels out by simply touching a vein.

That sounds like he knew what he was doing, Mr. Campbell. Yes, his hilariously defensive comment piece was the thing that inspired me to write this post (well, that and the sheer awesomeness of the movie) but pretty much everything that I wanted to say about Campbell's snippy response to the movie is summed up in this comment piece by George Pitcher.

Within 24 hours, Campbell had demonstrated exactly why the yobbish In The Loop character, Malcolm Tucker, is so obviously based on him. Humourlessly beat up on a critical journo, then affect nonchalance at your own grim mirror-image the next day. The Guardian's Digested Read feature on Campbell's column today could read: "Honestly, I couldn't care less. Here's 800 words about how I couldn't care less."

Amateur psychologist as Campbell is, he must have turned his hobby on himself (which is after all his favourite subject) in today's column. Is it not the reaction of the bullying child in the playground that everyone eventually turns on, pointing and laughing at him, so he has to react with "Bor-ring! Can't you see I don't care?"

Brilliant. I also like Iannucci's response to the criticism:

We should have posters done. They would say: 'A disappointment, Alastair Campbell'.

Of course Campbell cares, though his faux-apathy might really have been triggered because Tucker is shown, at times, to lose track of the multiple deceptions he has created. I have a suspicion that the mad dashing, which often looks panicked, is as far from Campbell's image of himself as you can get. Nevertheless, don't forget that this is the man who raced across London and barged into a Four News broadcast to ladle further heaps of smelly lie-manure all over the acquiescent and terrified BBC. Of course, I'm making a huge assumption that Campbell is concerned with his image, but considering how vanilla his Wikipedia page is, I'm beginning to wonder if he has a hobby. Surely no one else is going to clean it up whenever it gets altered to discuss anything other than his unpleasant-sounding battle with depression, or his support for Leukaemia Research.


Or maybe the world has moved on now, and that page has remained untouched and information-free for years now. How soon we forget. At least we still have Tucker, and the thought of Campbell watching and trying to figure out how to spin the fact that he has been part of the creation of a monster, a hilarious character who nevertheless represents everything that is wrong with the world today, an amoral crocodile-man wrecking the lives of all around him just to accomplish whatever the goal is for that day. In The Loop is a magnificent achievement on a number of levels, but I take special pleasure in the mental image of that man, the one who installed Cynicism 2.0 in my soul, sitting in a screening room with a bequiffed William Friedkin fan, fidgeting in his seat as his personality is filleted with such precision. Thank you, Peter Capaldi, and thank you Iannucci and co. You completed me, somehow.

It's The End Of Civilisation As We Know It

Saw this poster at our nearest tube station, with the Metropolitan Police instructing we, the masses, on how to handle a suspicious bag on the train.


So, if the instructions in the black bubble are to be believed, we're not supposed to do anything? I can't believe it. All of those right-wingers warning that the left would go all Neville-Chamberlain were right after all. The terrorists win! Someone tell Mark Steyn I was sorry to have doubted him.

Canadian Actor Saves Atheists From Assassins

Though there is nothing more boring than hearing someone telling you about their dreams, I'm going to totally tell you about the dream I just had, because it was strangely awesome. Yesterday, after spending two consecutive days obsessively reading The Huffington Post, Salon, The Daily Dish, Daily Kos, and various other websites pointing out the scary facts about vice-presidential candidate and nemesis of the polar bear Sarah Palin, I had a minor panic attack while washing dishes (not the first time), and then a really scarily detailed vision of what the world would be like if Palin became Vice-President and then President (because I'm thinking worst case scenario, here). It entailed Righteousness testing for all citizens, judging Americans for their loyalty to the Judeo-Christian God, and anyone who failed would be interred in camps for retraining. If that didn't take, they'd be shot. It was seriously terrifying, so terrifying that I forgot where I was and nearly stabbed myself in the hand with a soap-coated knife.

I think I know where it comes from. Recently I read God Is Not Great by that pissy souse Christopher Hitchens (the quality of the book is inversely proportional to his likeability), and having also read The God Delusion by the man Dawkins, and Sam Harris' The End Of Faith, it's made me very jumpy when it comes to my atheism and how it is viewed by fundamentalists of all different flavours. While I obviously have nothing against religiously inclined individuals, monolithic institutions do scare me greatly, and the thought that I would be punished for not believing in God weighs heavily on me. I appreciate that the books mentioned above are the atheist equivalent of the Daily Mail's Hate Your Neighbour ranting (though much better written, obviously), and that the effect they had on me (XXXtreme ennui and terror) was my own fault for gobbling them down, but the fact remains, they put the fear of not-God into me. Yes, my mind has come to the conclusion, after reading about her vehement belief in God, that Sarah Palin (seen here with a crustacean representing her soul)...


...is the living embodiment of Mrs. Carmody from The Mist.


Be afraid. Be really really really afraid. Another contributing factor to my upsetting vision is Ed Zwick's The Siege, which was on Sky Movies this weekend. When it came out years and years ago I thought it was passably entertaining, but then with my feeble understanding of the Middle East I didn't think it was insensitive either, especially as the real bad guys were Bruce Willis and Annette Bening (well, other than the poorly sketched Islamic terrorists who are just boogeymen with no dialogue and no inner life except "Kill Infidels!"). The thing that struck me most were the horrible scenes of New York Muslims interred in concentration camps, which were shown as an example of policy gone wrong, as a huge over-reaction and disastrous decision, and not as a possibly good idea should it ever come to that. At its best, it shows that Posse Comitatus is probably a good thing. Sadly, it's not at its best very often. For the majority of its running time, it's lunk-headed and doofy.


Of course, seeing it now with a bit more knowledge at hand, it is also prescient and uncomfortable viewing, not to mention dumb, cliched, and offensive on many levels, but if you don't focus on the ineptly presented politics, Bening and Denzel Washington have an entertaining chemistry, Tony Shalhoub is great value as ever, and OMG! Look, in the supporting cast! Lance "Intensity" Reddick (operating at minimal intensity, which is still pretty goddamn intense), and Aasif Mandvi in a depressing role as Cowardly Muslim What Gets Chased Everywhere. Seeing one of our favourite Daily Show correspondents saying little more than "Durka durka!" prior to getting roughed up by Bening's goons was a miserable experience. And what does he get out of it? Denzel feels sorry for him getting beaten up when it turns out he is a mere patsy, and then gives him a cigarette as an apology. Yay? Here he is in happier times.


So, with all of this playing on my nerves, nerves that are already shot due to frustrating economic and employment concerns, last night I dreamt that the UK had been hit by a massive influx of atheists flying over from America to avoid the pogroms against them, orchestrated by Sarah Palin-Carmody with miltary force. N.B. I'm using the word in the sense of violence against any group, and not in its (regrettably) more common anti-Semitic form. As the UK cannot cope with the effects of this huge exodus, it goes all Children of Men as camps are set up throughout the country to house the Americans. And yes, I'm aware that this is a fucked up dream. Even worse, President Palin-Carmody demands the return of all of the atheists for immediate religious retraining and righteous punishment by her Christian militia, and PM Gordon Brown, still in thrall to the American machine and concerned about the growing anger over the rise in immigration, strongly considers this. At about this point I turned up in the dream, as someone helping out at the camps, working as an liaison between the Americans and the British soldiers running the joint, but just to complicate matters I kinda woke up at about this point, and thought, as is often the case when half awake, that I was dreaming the best goddamn movie ever, and started to plot it out in my semi-conscious state. That would account for how I got replaced in my dream-movie by Nathan Fillion, someone several thousand times hotter and more charming than me.


Yes, the hero of this movie, played by Nathan Fillion, hears that the government is thinking of shipping the Americans back to the States, and helps lead a rebellion against this. The Americans, in horror, decide to stay within the camps, which in turn causes more trouble for the government. Unable to remove the Americans without terrible consequences, and with the British troops unwilling to act against them out of sympathy, the government allows fundamentalist black ops assassins to infiltrate the camp containing our hero, which is where the dream got a bit stupid. For a start, they were stealthily disguised as black leather-clad ninja-bikers with machine guns, and as they try to mow down the defenseless atheists, the hero takes them down, yanking one ninja-biker off his bike, snapping his neck with the machine gun strap, and turning the gun on the other assassins. Awesome violence ensues as he saves the atheists! Then, however, he starts to suspect that someone in the camp is not who they seem. And that someone is played by Sean Connery.


I know, I didn't get that either. Sean Connery tells Nathan Fillion that there is evil afoot, and while they sit around a camp fire eating marshmallows, Connery reveals that Gordon Brown has allowed the assassins free run at the camps, and thinks the slaughter of the atheists would get a sticky political situation off his back. Our hero is rightly disgusted by this, and storms into the visitors gallery in the House of Commons. Mid-debate, our hero reveals the dastardly plot to let the White House fundamentalists send their ninja-bikers into the concentration camps to kill the atheists, and there is uproar among the MPs as Gordon Brown slumps down onto his bench, shredded copies of Hansard fluttering around him, his sneaky and cowardly plans responsible for his downfall. I also remember thinking, while half-asleep, that that would be awesome.

Sadly my subconscious wasn't done yet. Upon returning to the camp to tell everyone the good news, a random American informs our hero that he has found out that Sean Connery is not who he seems to be. He is actually Allan Quatermain, as played by Sean Connery in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen! (That must be because I've been thinking about Colonel Gentleman from The Venture Brothers recently.) Realising this, our hero chases Quatermain down to his ramshackle house in North London, where he lives alone with his enormous collection of goth porn. Quatermain insists that he regrets nothing, and that he is happy with his life as a collector of depressing pornography. However, our hero cannot escape with the knowledge of his true identity and depraved hobby, and so Quatermain pulls out a toy laser gun, modelled after something from an old Flash Gordon serial, and fires it! Except it doesn't go off as expected. In a weirdly elaborate effects sequence that played out in scarily vivid detail in my brain, a super-close-up of the gun shows electricity running through it, vaporising the plastic, causing it to explode. Quatermain doesn't die, but the words, "Don't let her down!" are splattered across the wall in hot plastic. The End!

Well, the end of the dream-movie, which wraps up with a title card and the frozen image of the plastic message, leaving me, Canyon, and Jaredan from World of Wahhhcraft sitting in a cinema, surrounded by geeks in Watchmen t-shirts. Yes! It was not my movie we saw, it was Zack Snyder's Watchmen, transformed from a deconstruction of the superhero genre into a cross between The Siege, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and some bad Mark Wahlberg action movie starring an undervalued Canadian acting genius. As we spilled out into the street, the nerds and fanboys rejoiced at this version of Watchmen, proclaiming it an enormous success (though I remember bitching that Moloch had been written out), and then all began cheering, "Fuck you Fox! Fuck you Fox! Fuck you Fox!" At that point, one of our cats put her paw squarely on my trachea, and I woke up.

I reckon, as long as I take out the Allan Quatermain references but keep the goth porn and ninja-bikers, and maybe add some transforming robots, I've got a hit on my hands. Watch this space!!!

Adventures In Awesome: Howard The Duck: Media Duckling

A while back I came to the defence of the much-derided movie Howard The Duck, explaining that residual fondness for the Marvel Comics character and love of ILM's amazing work had been strong enough for me to look past the lack of satirical bite, but had a bit of a dig at the most recent Marvel incarnation of Howard the Duck, as written by Ty Templeton and Juan Bobillo:

Marvel have recently started rehabilitating the character, firstly with a Max mini-series a few years back, and now again with Ty Templeton and Juan Bobillo setting him in the modern era, with all of its attendant satirical fodder. Sadly, Templeton is a good writer, but doesn't have the anger that Gerber had, so the first issue of the latest mini is certainly brash but not quite as biting as it could have been... Let's hope the character can shake off the crap surrounding it and be used as an astute commentator on the nonsense of modern life, especially since Warren Ellis stopped writing Spider Jerusalem.

Seems I shouldn't have spoken so soon. I just saw this interview Templeton did with Newsarama this interview Templeton did with Newsarama, during which he not only admits to liking the movie as well, but has this to say of the criticism levelled at him for taking on the project:

I'm very aware of a large group of Howard fans who consider anyone who isn't named Steve Gerber working on the Duck, a form of blasphemy. Obviously I don't consider it blasphemous, or I wouldn't have taken the gig, but I get where these uber-Howard fans are coming from, and I'm disappointed I won't be able to reach them with this story. I think, they might actually like it when it's all said and done. The four issues build slowly (the first issue is fairly tame compared to what's coming up) and we're heading towards a big finale that Howard fans should enjoy.

And how. When I wrote my original Howard post I had only read that first issue, which had seemed mild in tone compared to Gerber's furious work. The following issues are full of satire, righteous anger, comic in-jokes, smut, and anarchic energy. Howard battles the evil M.O.D.O.T. (Mobile/Mental Organism Designed Only for Talking), based on the original, evil M.O.D.O.K. (Mobile/Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing), who has attempted to take over the minds of Americans everywhere by using his enormous brain and a series of radio and TV talk show host-robots to generate a never-ending stream of useless trivia that distorts our perception of serious issues around the world.


Templeton skewers the ridiculous media and its trivial preoccupations, as well as gun control issues, the war on terror, immigration paranoia, and a million other things that need satirising. Plus, Bobillo's art is just as good, if not better, than his work on Dan Slott's magnificent She-Hulk, and there's even a bit of fourth-wall japery added for good measure, as Ink Destroyed My Brush points out here. It was exactly the Howard we need in this century. Apologies to Templeton for doubting him (I'm sure he's read this [/delusion]). Get this book! It's one of the best things Marvel has put out in years.

A Disturbing Curio

A while back I took a trip down Memory Lane on a Nostalgia Segway while drinking a Recollection Smoothie, and wrote a billion words (or thereabouts) on my childhood love of Role-Playing Games, and the sad passing of Gary Gygax. While "researching" that post, I came across some archives with pictures and information about old RPGs and board games, and spent some time reminiscing about the old Games Workshop games (Judge Dredd, Talisman, the Risk-knock off Apocalypse), the Dune board game (a lot of fun, but I once won it in one move, so perhaps it's not the most thoroughly play-tested game ever), Steve Jackson's Illuminati (I would have enjoyed it more if I'd actually read Illuminatus, though I would think a 10 year old reading that would be enwrongened for life), etc. It was fun. Until I stumbled across this board game from several years ago.

The United States is in economic turmoil contributed to by droughts, bank failures, and the loans the Third World has defaulted on. Lately, there has been an emergence of radical grass-roots political groups. The whole nation seems to be polarized. Overseas, relations between the United States and the Pan-Arab Coalition, an Anti-American alliance of nations, have continued to deteriorate.
The President and Congress have decided that a war against the Pan-Arab Coalition will pull together the divided United States. However, Britain is refusing to support the move, completely isolating the United States. Congress has called a joint session, asking all Congressmen, governors of the fifty states, the President, and the Supreme Court Justices to attend to help make the crucial decisions that will decide the fate of the nation.
At this momentous meeting, five brothers bring together the parts to a small nuclear bomb. They know it has just enough force to eradicate the leaders of the Great Satan and turn the United States into the Shattered Slates.

Oh boy. A bit more research, and I found out it was co-written by a Karsten Engelmann, who also wrote the suspicious sounding Objective force representation (U.S. Army War College strategy research project). I have no idea what it would contain, but I assume it's like a dissertation on warfare. I also have no idea what you can learn at the U.S. Army War College, or what the courses would be like. Sun Tsu 101? Advanced von Clausewitz? Film Studies and Semiotics (course studies Patton, Rules of Engagement, and The Green Berets)?

What made me squirm is the thought that it appeals to the kind of Islamophobic warmongering mindset that has become especially rabid over the past decade or so, but then I guess people who live in that kind of world need a gaming outlet just like the rest of us normal, well-adjusted, not-actually-hate-filled people. If the nerds of the world, those who have been picked on by bullies, gain a release by playing a level or two of Call of Duty 4 or Gears of War, thus making them feel more confident, I'll wager that old-time military enthusiasts would play re-enactments of Waterloo, modern espionage experts would play something like Twilight Struggle - The Cold War, and xenophobic US survivalists would get a kick out of being given free reign to fly in the face of reason and go apeshit on some Muslims (either that, or Leo Strauss played it a lot).

What troubles me more is that the game was published in 1990, while the "Free World" was meant to be focusing on the USSR, and before the first Gulf War. Call me naive, but I guess this woke me up to the fact that Islam has been considered a threat to Freedom for a lot longer than I thought. No seriously, call me naive, because it did surprise me a little. I'd put that kind of revelation into the folder marked, "Things I Kinda Knew But Never Really Put At The Front Of My Mind." Still, we've come a long way since then. Now we can laugh about the oncoming Clash of Civilisations (C) Samuel Huntington.

The goal is to liberate the world, ending fear and terrorism forever. Not likely in this day and age, so you can also play as the terrorists, fighting for a world without empires. The politics of the game can become complicated but nothing that a little neighborly aggression can't solve. There's political kidnappings, suicide bombers, nasty propaganda, and some intercontinental war thrown in for good measure. The Axis of Evil spinner on the game board comes into play to dole out Terrorist cards which can be used against your opponents to stop development of a country or, even worse, flow of it's [sic] oil revenue! It won't be long before somebody gets nuked. But that's okay. It's just War on Terror - The Boargame [sic], right? Ages: 14 and up. Manufacturer: Terrorbull Games [again, sic]

The Daily Mail [sick] hated it with their customary blustery rage, but at least interviewed the developers, which was unusually generous of them. I recommend reading that article, it's unintentionally funny. That said, it's not the weirdest or most tasteless concept for a game I've read today. Please please please, someone buy me a copy of Kablamo.

It’s the year 1918, and being part of the Russian nobility shortly after the revolution is no picnic. The Bolsheviks have confiscated your land and belongings, you risk ending up facing a firing squad for being an enemy of the state, and your fancy title is no more than an insult to most common people. There are a few upsides, though. Your noble friends in misery are now more than willing to try your own favorite version of the nation’s number one roulette game, and life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

At least not for a short while…

Kablamo is a fast-paced board game of Russian roulette, where a good memory, improvisation skills and a keen sense of humor all come in handy. The object of the game is to be the last man standing. Every player has a revolver loaded with six bullets lying in front of them. The bullets lie face down and may not be looked at once loaded into the revolver, forcing players to memorize everything. Each turn, players simultaneously fire one bullet. If a player fires a live bullet -- tough luck, that player is out. Fortunately, most bullets aren't live, but allow players to use various effects such as Greased Cylinder, Trigger Happy and Bolshevik Rules. To survive, players must use the effects cleverly and at the right moment. But most important of all, they must keep track of the live bullets since they constantly trade places between the chambers of different revolvers. In the end, the player who manages to dodge all live bullets and outwit every opponent will be victorious.

Contents: 5 Revolver boards
20 Live Bullet tiles
67 Action Bullet tiles
13 High Velocity Bullet tiles
1 Ammunition bag
1 Rules folder

Next to Eve Online (once we get a more powerful computer, that is), that's the game I want most. Kablamo, bitches! KABLAMO!!!

Iron Man FTW!!!

This morning, prior to seeing Iron Man, we caught a Sky Movies preview show that featured Robert Downey Jr. (who we love) commenting on how bloggers can wreck a $165m movie if they disapprove of how comic characters are portrayed. Well, luckily for Marvel Studios, this is merely one of many blogs that adored Iron Man, not only for its fealty to the subject matter, either introducing elements straight from the comics or cleverly redefining them, as with Jarvis (wonderfully voiced by Paul Bettany) or the Ten Rings of The Mandarin, and not only because the cast was uniformly wonderful, and yes, not only because it was an absolute hard-rocking blast of an action movie, perfectly mixing humour and drama, but also for making something both light and dark, entertaining and serious, and all of it based around the main character arc and laced with real-world relevance.


I was impressed that the film is set in a world where the War On Terror has occurred but the conflict is something that informs the overarching story, is an element that is a fact of life and not a metaphorical touchstone in place of a story (which is something that has threatened to overwhelm a lot of recent fiction). We've finally moved on from pointing out that we are in a new century with a new kind of war and then patting ourselves on the back for it, and are now telling stories that are set in that world without making a big deal about it. It's a lot easier to swallow and, even though this film touches on serious issues, is a lot more fun as well.


Though it might seem like these newly unpretentious storytellers have become blasé about the war, I see it as artists now attempting to figure out ways to live in this world instead of trying to figure out what went wrong and who we should blame, which gets us nowhere. Iron Man concerns one man willing to take responsibility for the way the world is, and tries to right that wrong. It's fair to say Ayn Rand would be disgusted with it.


All of this would mean nothing if the film was trying to address these issues metaphorically, so we're lucky that Jon Favreau and his team of writers are willing to do that old school trick of making the surface story and character arc reinforce each other, which all stories should do, but often don't nowadays, and yes I realise that makes me sound like David Thompson or Leslie Halliwell or something. Sorry.


The core of the story is something universal: coming to a realisation of what it is to be heroic, and then flying in the face of universal disapproval in order to be a hero when all around you are threatened by your idealism. In the face of values so distorted that expansion of territory, exploitation of resources, and dominance of worldview can be spun until they appear to be heroic endeavours, Iron Man dares to say that's bullshit. It can be something as simple as saving people from murderous bullies, especially when they are empowered by the byproducts of our society, and if we don't even do that, then we really are lost.


As I've said before, in superhero movies there is not enough heroics, with heroes fighting supervillains because of some disagreement between them instead of being super-citizens improving our world. In Iron Man Stark sets out to improve the whole world, to right a wrong that he had never noticed before, and for which he felt a responsibility. It's a character story brilliantly realised on a global scale, a fight to save a soul that, as the opposite of collateral damage, might save the world.


I loved one small scene in the middle of the film, with Stark flying to Afghanistan to save the village of his own saviour, Yinsen (played by Shaun Toub, given much better material here than in that most mealy-mouthed of worthy movies, Paul Haggis' Crash). His interest is in destroying his own weaponry, which has fallen into the hands of the Ten Rings terrorists, but while doing that he saves the villagers from forcible relocation and murder and repays his debt to his murdered ally. In one of the few moments that might be seen as being a message related to the War on Terror, Stark disarms one of the Ten Rings lieutenants, and instead of dealing with him himself, leaves him to the villagers and flies away.


Certainly that could be seen as a comment on the Iraq situation, but it's also a moment that originates in who Stark is. He won't kill an unarmed man, and the outcome of that stance is that he will leave the situation to be dealt with by those who should deal with it. Perhaps once the playing field is levelled by taking away the weaponry made by the powerful who have a vested interest in maintaining conflict, then we might be able to truly step back from these international conflicts instead of making them worse. That said, I really don't think the Ten Rings terrorist was easily forgiven for his sins and then let go. Which sucks, but apparently freedom is messy! (And yes, hopefully that's the last time I'll ever quote Donald Rumsfeld.)


Not only does he save the villagers, but he also saves a pilot endangered by his own clumsy mid-air antics, again taking responsibility for what he does (another great visualisation of the arc Tony moves along). I'd have liked more of that random heroism, but there's a lot to get through, and the point is made. He is a real hero trying to help everyone. Marc Guggenheim and Paul Gulacy's excellent Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk mini set in the Sudan might have been a more realistic portrayal of what happens when superheroes get involved in real world troubles (in that complex geopolitical issues cannot be resolved by people who merely have the ability to punch things very hard), but Iron Man is smart enough to avoid having our hero attempt to stop the war altogether. He can only deal with the terrifying weaponry he has built, which, as I said above, might be good enough, certainly for his own redemption. And yes, in our world that might seem idealistic and naïve, but in the world of the film, it echoes and reinforces that character arc from ignorance and arrogance to humility and responsibility, which is very satisfying.


Peter Bradshaw, in a review I think was written moments after he stubbed his toe, so needlessly dismissive is it, carps that...

Iron Man, for all its disposability, makes a cheerful and unpretentious change to the current crop of war movies. At least at first. But I am sorry to say that it is guilty of the sneaky chauvinist trick of making the ultimate villain an American: a mannerism common to many Hollywood movies that cannot quite bring themselves to accord foreigners the status of effective enmity.

But the whole point of the movie is that Stark is responsible for the warfare he grows to despise, and that is dramatised in the conflict with his other half, Obadiah Stane. Making the villain an outsider would dilute the arc to pointlessness. Besides, the scene is set for blowback in the second movie, with The Mandarin seeking revenge for his betrayal by Stane. Maybe then Bradshaw will be happy.


Of course, this is all well and good, and is merely my way of saying how pleased I was that the film feels like it was crafted from the ground up and not just cobbled together. Marvel Studios doesn't need my praise, as figures just in show that the film is an enormous hit, earning $200m worldwide since Thursday. That it didn't earn as much as the appalling Spider-Man 3 is the only bad thing about that, but then let's hope that this marks the beginning of a trend, with superhero movies made by people who understand how the genre works and funded by those same people. Or course, Iron Man's huge box office is good news for the studio, but this Financial Times interview with Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel shows that this hopefully fruitful period of nerdvana might still not last long.

Most studios in Hollywood have offset the risks of film production by raising money from private equity groups and hedge funds. Marvel has taken a different route, using the film rights to its characters as collateral for a loan without forsaking any equity in its films.

Since Marvel tends to be a “fiscally conservative company”, Mr Maisel had to work hard to come up with a financing package that did not expose the comics group to undue risk. After convincing Marvel to launch the studio in 2003, he spent two years structuring a $525m loan financing deal, which was underwritten by Merrill Lynch and secured against the theatrical rights to films that would be produced by the studio.

The financing covers Marvel’s releases until 2012 but does not give the banks any equity in the films. Instead, the banks will receive the capital plus interest and will have the right to make future films using the 12 comic-book characters included in the deal in the event of the company defaulting on its payments. The financing structure guarantees the release of Marvel’s first four films and will be followed by an evaluation period. Assuming the films have performed well, Marvel will retain the theatrical rights to the 12 characters.

The message is, even if the trailer for The Incredible Hulk looks really boring, we fans have a duty to see it at the cinema. Why? Because if you've not yet seen the film, the final pre-credits line of the film and the post-credits cameo appearance by Sam Jackson will make your head explode with pure nerd joy. At our screening, the nerds who stayed behind for that final scene burst into applause at it, even though they knew what was coming. Marvel Studios must succeed, and keep hold of those twelve characters. Our nerd dreams depend on it.

A Stone Crashes Through The Oval Office Window

Baffling though it is, rumours that Oliver Stone's next movie would be about a drunk, obnoxious George W. Bush acting like a jerk in the Oval Office appears to be true. I'm really staggered by this. Not because the widespread dislike of the man has passed me by, but because this has been announced while he is still President. A couple of years ago left-wing pundits bemoaned the fact that Bush was getting a free ride from a pliant and craven media who were too chummy with the White House staff to effectively report their malfeasance, moral turpitude, cowardice, incompetence, and other crimes which are seemingly infinite in number.

Since then, Stephen Colbert roasted the President with a speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner that qualifies as one of the most astonishing displays of chutzpah of modern times, a watershed moment in the War on Unreason and Wilful Insanity that attracted opprobrium from the chastened media, but several awards, most notably a Spike TV Guy's Choice Award for Gutsiest Move, a Shades Of Caruso Award for Best Thing To Have Ever Happened Ever, and best of all, the endorsement of none other than Morpheus! (It's at 4:48 on the video linked to above.)


Not only did he get PWNed by the derision of a man who once held his own against Agent Johnson on top of a moving truck for a good few minutes (not easy), but Bush's approval ratings sank to -1 googleplex% or something, which has freed many people from their inhibitions about roasting the man who once thought a mandate meant winning fifteen votes more than the other guy. It might have been more than fifteen. I'll check later, though it sounds about right.

Even with this wave of unpopularity and increase in prez-razzing, Oliver Stone (his post-Alexander bankability partially restored thanks to the modest success of World Trade Center) has gone beyond any satire yet announced, and has seemingly been given permission by the cosmos to go all out on Dubya's ass even though he's still "in charge of the Free World". A preview of what appears to be the first draft of W makes me wonder if it is meant to be serious or not. Could this be Stone's attempt at a potentially successful political version of Meet The Spartans, complete with references to flight suit harnesses pulled too tight and pretzel-induced comas? Amazing.


Stone attracts a lot of flack, and I understand why, but I've remained fond of his work, even when it looks like the temper tantrum of a sentient Avid editing machine whose CPU has been filled with presidential biographies, tracks from The Soft Parade, and gallons of radioactive testosterone. JFK can be attacked for its theorising, but the way those theories were presented, in that incredible, enormous final speech by Kevin Costner, is a masterclass of editing. Nixon has a cluttered narrative and ugly visual style, but it's fascinating and underrated despite that (and Anthony Hopkins gives what might be his best performance). I even enjoyed Any Given Sunday and Alexander, though that's probably only because I'm bonkers-berserker-crazy about Al Pacino and historical epics, even when they're a bit/a lot crap [Delete where applicable].


With a few reports of reviews blasting the script for a total absence of subtlety and featuring what sounds like slapstick scenes of Bush Behaving Badly that are so bizarre I have a really hard time believing they are really going to be filmed, the casting decisions announced so far are the only reliable barometer of what the movie will be like, and the choices are a mixture of inspired and baffling. Mom and Dad Bush are perfect (James Cromwell being the go-to old guy du jour), but Josh Brolin, though "hot" right now, doesn't seem like a Bush type to me, unless the film really is going to tip over into spoofery. I like Elizabeth Banks, and look forward to her realising her potential, but even then I'm unsure.

As for the rest of the casting, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair seems about right, though surely Michael Sheen has been contracted to play Blair into the foreseeable future. I doubt Gruffudd would be given a chance to create a performance as terrific as Sheen in The Queen (who was totally robbed at the Oscars that year). I don't even know where to begin with Thandie Newton's casting as Condoleezza Rice, though. Her patented bottomless African sadness seems worlds away from Rice's steely demeanour and clinical, emotionless intellectualism. Plus, appearing in this will further delay the inevitable filming of Chronicles of Riddick II: Space Conan In Space.

But what about the other players in this comedy of bad manners? There's been some speculation already, so here are my suggestions. First, Mr. Known/Unknown Knowns/Unknowns himself, Donald Rumsfeld, who could be played by Canyon's all-time favourite actor, Jude "Mike Novick from 24" Ciccolella, though playing someone as cock-sure as Rummy means we won't get to hear Jude's catchphrase from 24, "My! God!", used whenever anything happens. Seriously, anything. War, gas attacks, beer frothing out of a can, Sky+ box runs out of memory, etc.


If there was a flashback, young Rummy could be played by Chris Evans (not that I'd wish that on our hero Evans, but the likeness is remarkable). Note that Evans has his top off and is showing some flesh. You're welcome, ladies (and some gents).


Vice-President Dick Cheney was a tough one, and after much consideration, I realised it had to be Andrew Stehlin in full 30 Days of Night vampire get-up.


I know that a choice like that seems kinda lazy on my part, and many people will be horribly offended that I compared Cheney to a heinous bloodsucking maniac who thinks humans are cattle to be exploited, but you have to understand I haven't yet seen 30 Days of Night (my Hartnett allergy kicking in), and I'm only guessing that that vampire is anywhere near as evil as Cheney actually is. If I've sold Cheney short with the comparison, I apologise.

Compared with Dick, finding an actor to play former Secretary of State Colin Powell was easy. It could only be Terry Crews, especially if played in the style of his bravura performance as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Mike Judge's magnificent Idiocracy.


Often credited as being the person who took George to one side and told him, "That smug thing you're doing? Faster! More intense!", Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove can only be truly captured using animation. A perfect design was featured in Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away: Boh the demanding baby, seen here about to have a terrible temper tantrum.


That said, there will be no transformation into an adorable mouse like at the end of the movie. Perhaps instead he can be turned into a Golgothan, like in Kevin Smith's Dogma. It would at least match his nickname. I wish I knew George Bush well enough to get a nickname. I wonder what it would be. Twinkle-Tits? Dirt-Legs? Jam-Head? I have to admit, the guy has mad (as in eccentric) nickname skillz.

Chief of Staff Andrew Card, once voted Least Likely To Be Mistaken For Leo McGarry From The West Wing, exists, at least in my mind, to tell the President that everything is going just fine and the people love him and no, the mob outside the White House with burning torches and pitchforks are there to attack Bill Clinton and they haven't yet realised he's not around anymore. Who better to capture that optimism than the happy half of the Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas.


With the roles of his parents so well cast, it's only fair I spend more time trying to cast Jenna and Barbara Bush than I have everyone else here. And, three minutes later, here's my choice! Jessica and Ashlee Simpson!


I chose them because they are real sisters who are blonde and brunette, and not because there have been lascivious claims made about their private lives. That would be rude of me, and really, the Bush daughters deserve no heavy criticism. It's not like they invaded Iraq to ensure worldwide oil production remained at a steady pace allowing oil producers to ramp up the price of petrol leading to many billionaires becoming super-mega-trillionaires or anything like that. They just like beer. Me too! Yay Bush daughters! (Please read the Greg Palast interview I just linked to. It will change the way you see everything.)

As I said above, the Ioan Gruffudd casting is potentially quite interesting, but Tony needs a perfect Cherie if we're ever going to take him seriously. Who better than ubiquitous cover girl and smiling fan Jessica Alba, so that we can duplicate some of that supernova-hott sizzling chemistry from the universally adored and acclaimed Fantastic Four films.


Their smoking sexxy scenes together (such as the one from the first film where Reed gets distracted by an equation, and Sue nags at him about it, or the one from the second one, where Reed gets distracted by an equation, and Sue nags at him about it) was obviously the number one reason those films just about made a profit set fire to the international box office as if it had been blasted by a fireball from Johnny Rumsfeld-Storm's hands!

Continuing the Marvel adaptation theme, former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton reminds me of Nick Nolte, whose gruff, unpredictable, and scenery-chewing performances are a perfect fit for someone who walked into UN HQ on his first day and started to eat the building from the inside out.


Let the Evil Soar! Using special technology like what they used with Oliver Reed in Gladiator, former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be played by Julian Beck from Poltergeist II: The Other Side, though again, there may be an evilness deficit at work. The magic of CGI effects can fill in the blanks there.


Some of these selections have stumped me terribly, but this one might have been the easiest casting choice since choosing Morgan Freeman to play God in the Almighty movies. Former press secretary Scott McLellan could only be played by a similarly reanimated Oliver Hardy.


Convicted/pardoned lawyer and assistant to the President I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby brings to mind clueless cultural pundit, mediocre novelist and dire kneejerk newspaper columnist Tony "former Mr. Julie Burchill" Parsons.


Of course, Libby could only go about doing his master's bidding with the help of a member of that pliant, supine, mesmerised press corps, most notably Robert Novak, whose ghoulish ruthlessness, unearthly aura and total moral decay would be perfectly captured by Angus Scrimm, AKA The Tall Man from the Phantasm movies.


Speaking of malleable puppet-men and craven, misguided Bush-enablers, what about two Brits who reiterated the White House line about WMDs so enthusiastically that I'm surprised their mouths didn't fly off their faces with the effort. Former Home and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw resembles food critic Anton Ego so strongly that I think Brad Bird had already made the connection...


...and former Defense Secretary Geoff "Buff" Hoon's air of hyper-confident machismo and brawny ambition are a perfect fit for a reanimated Benny Hill:


The reports on Stanley Weiser's script don't reveal much, other than some peculiarly broad dialogue ("I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of shit's throat"? Really?), but there's a good chance we will at least get to see Bush winning the nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 1999, so they will have to cast someone as rival John McCain, and who better than lovable old man Mickey Rooney. Everyone loves cuddly old Mickey Rooney! Perfect to play lovable cuddly funbucket McCain!


Of course, McCain was exposed to lethal doses of Gamma radiation several years ago (it was covered up), and his renowned McCain Smash! episodes mean there might have to be a CGI option kept back for any scenes featuring his response to his defeat.


Once those scenes are finished with, Weiser and Stone will inevitably move onto Bush's next victim, Saviour of the World Al Gore, who is the living embodiment of Professor Frink.


But will the script show his re-election in 2004? If so, John Kerry is going to turn up, and after throwing out several lookalike candidates for the role, I realised that the half of the world that reacted so negatively to the peculiarly anti-narrative finale of No Country For Old Men desperately wants to see a rematch between Llewellyn Moss and Anton Chigurh, and so the coveted role of John Kerry can only go to Academy Award winner and Stone Fox Javier Bardem.


Now all we need is for the film to feature scenes of Bush gnawing on ribs and wiping his hands on various world flags, yelling "Fuck youse all! I'm presidentin' up in this bitch" every five minutes, riding around the White House on a plastic car shaped like an enormous eagle, and offering to arm-rassle everyone he meets (and ordering Secret Service guys to shoot anyone who beats him), and I would pay lots and lots and lots of money to see it.