Jolly Good Show!

Just got in from seeing Martha Wainwright in concert at the Royal Festival Hall...
Wow!!!
Not perfect, but really really amazingly good.
The reason it wasn't perfect was because, well, I think her 2nd album isn't so strong, and whenever she did a song from it with the band (pretty much the first half hour), it just seemed so by-the-numbers and workman-like... a bit flat (and the band's two 'solo' numbers didn't quite work either).
The stuff from the first album was so much more organic and exciting to watch...
And that wasn't it...
(Sorry about all the ellipses...)
You see, the Wainwrights are famous for doing lots of family things on stage and collaborations and the like. So Martha brought on loads and loads of guest singers including Ed Harcourt, Romeo from Magic Numbers, Beth Orton (!) (who I thought she said was 'Seth Gordon' and i got really confused until I realised who it was) and best of all - this guy called Shlomo who is a human beatbox thingy - yeah I know, sounds rubbish, but it was AMAZING and he performed my favourite song with Martha - This Life from the first album.
And of course, we got Bloody Mother Fucking Arsehole, which is such a brilliant song.
Strange audience though - very grey and old! The couple in front of me must have been in their 60s. (Not that I'm being age-ist or anything.)
So I may not have left the concert dying to listen to Martha's new album again, but it certainly made me want to put Beth Orton back onto my ipod and investigate Shlomo more (http://shlo.co.uk)

(Oh, quick anecdote, I first saw Martha at a much more intimate gig a couple of years back - La Scala I think in Kings Cross - but she didn't come on stage til 9.30 so I totally missed the end of it as I had to get home)

The Shitter

Japanese Horrors are just getting stupid these days...
Check out the first 5 mins...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nQmF0Wuu7s

Stephen King

I joined the Stephen King fan page on Facebook and wrote some negative things about one of his books...
And then who should pop up in the next message - but Mr King himself :-o
Looks like he reads the page!!! Hope he didn't read my message lol

Who'd have thought it...

The Mist

I'm a huge Stephen King fan and I often read some of his amazing stories and think they'd make great movies... But of course they rarely do, as we know. Desperation, Rose Red (okay, not a book, a screenplay), The Shining TV movie - all suffered in the lame hands of Mike Garrick...
The Mist however fares a lot better. The original is a great little short story (around 200 pages - too short for a novel, too long for a short story) and the adaptation is a real treat. It's actually got some decent acting in it too (Thomas Jane and X-Files' Laurie Holden are cool), which is unusual for a King adaptation (even Annabeth Gish let me down in Desperation). The monsters are fun, there are some great shocks and twists and it's really entertaining.
Only a few quibbles - Marcia Gay Harden's religious zealot character does get a bit much in places, and they could have probably halved the screentime if they'd cut down on her - and how she could recruit the entire store to her twisted way of thinking is anyone's guess.
The new ending is - as much reported - very bleak indeed - and perhaps a bit unnecessary.
It actually might even have made a decent TV show but... well you'll see why it can't be...
All in all, definitely worth a look.

TV stuff

Lost - Woah... Still great stuff. Shocking to see Claire in the cabin - best moment in ages... Thought Locke, Ben, Hurley traipsing thru the jungle was a bit dull...

Oz - going through season four on DVD - a bunch of Chinese immigrants (including Lost's Ken Leung/Miles) turn up and inexplicably speak English to each other (in 'herro, how are roo' voices)

Secret Invasion 2

A weird issue - nothing much happened... We want Skrull revelations, and all we got was a human revelation which only appeals to 80s fanboys (like me lol) and the arrival of tons of Super-Skrulls (zzz). The Mockingbird revelation seems to contradict a lot of what has gone before...
I do quite like this crossover - and the Maleev Avengers issues are quite cool - loving Doctor Druid's son.

Spandex!

Been dying to draw some Spandex stuff all week... Finally got round to it today...
Think I've just about nailed the team now... happy with them... Just finalising a few things - but this is in a pretty good shape now...
And the aim is to launch it at Bristol 2010 (which sounds like the future doesn't it). Bristol 2009 would be nice but I don't think it's very practical...

Back

Jeez I haven't posted for ages - been so busy...
Will update later...
It's Bristol today - and I'm not there :-(
Maybe next year...
O Men 2.6 has finally gone out to subscribers!!!
More from me soon...