Mindless Mad Men #6 – At the Codfish Ball
May 4th, 2012
Amy: It was a classic yoof versus age episode this time around, wasn’t it? A very sixties theme if ever there was one, but, as is usual with MM, even when it was crying out for them it didn’t include any hippies – as one would expect, the intergenerational clashing was subtler than that. So, let’s see: SCDP vs Mr and Mrs Heinz, The Drapers vs the Calvets, Peggy and Abe vs Peggy’s mum, Don vs the anti-tobacco awards people and Sally and Greg vs Bluto, Betty and everyone over twenty. It was clever the way Sally and Glen’s phonecall bookended the hour, like this was the ultimate conspiracy, one that could only take place in darkened rooms outwith the adult world, *outwith the main plot*, in the narrative sink around it. This is where the real secrets are hatched, the real war formented, where adults are brought low by telephone wires and the culprits never caught – where teenage girls learn how to “spread their legs and fly away”.
Illogical Volume: There was a definite youth vs. age theme running through this episode, but what was interesting to me was how performative both sides of this divide were. It was all about people playing at being adults, playing at being children, cutting themselves to fit the cloth, Manhattan as a giant Wendy house with your gorgeous new granny going down on uncle Roger out back.
(Shades of Bluebeard – what’s behind the secret doors in the land of faerie adulthood?)
Sally Draper’s debut appearance as a young adult, complete with make-up and go-go boots, is the cracked mirror reflection of Megan’s Heinz pitch – you’ve got youth and adulthood, past and future, and two competing fantasies of childhood and adulthood all jagging into each other here as the young girl tries to dress up like her version of a fairy tale princess so she can can go to the ball. Note the fact that she complains about the lack of stairs when she arrives at her destination, and the way her excitement at going to this sort of ball clashes with then eventually echoes Glen’s mention of “balling” during their first secret phone conversation.
While we’re talking about those phone calls (love your conspiracy angle amy!), I enjoyed watching Sally turn a childish accident into a source of very adult pride (she looked after her gandma and kept her calm!), all by way of creating a portal into her papa’s world.
Mindless Mad Men #5 – Far Away Places
April 27th, 2012
Ad: Wow. Far Away Places was another extraordinary episode by just about every yardstick I can throw at it in a season that’s seen even better.
So three trips: a trip upstate to Howard Johnson’s, an acid trip, and a power trip/a trip to the cinema. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. In the words of Burt Cooper, “everyone has somewhere to go today”.
Mindless Mad Men #3 – Mystery Date
April 12th, 2012
Amy: This episode wrapped its themes around itself so tightly the drama could have suffocated, but in the end it never got so arch that it failed to pack a punch even though as a construction it was pretty close to immaculate and, so, highly conspicuous.
Ad: Absolutely. It was testimony to the fact that Mad Men is only superficially realistic – realism is never so overtly self-conscious of its themes, or given to blurring the lines between dream and reality, for that matter.
Amy: It’s enjoyable to watch Weiner and co unpacking the theme of change in all these different ways, isn’t it? In Mystery Date it was all about the intrusion of an unknown element into the characters’ lives – a date with someone they didn’t know, a situation they couldn’t plan for. Basically they’re all Cinderella in Michael’s commercial, aren’t they, turning round to confront the stranger? We could break it down every which way, but that’s just a bit too anal for me. I think we should just play it by ear and discuss the threads we liked most.
Your date with mysterious mindlesses continues after this jump
‘Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts’ – an interview with filmmaker Patrick Meaney on his new documentary
December 1st, 2011
The Faceless Mindless Collective are back and this time Patrick Meaney, film-maker and director of Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, is in reach of their terrible teeth in their terrible jaws.
Patrick’s new documentary, Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts, focusses on the life and works of pop-comics very own futurologist, ‘Internet Messiah’, hard man auteur, and features extensive interviews with the man himself and a great many of his friends and collaborators. It’s well worth a watch even if you have only a passing interest in the guy behind Planetary, Transmetropolitan and the Authority.
Ellis turns out to be not just a true original, and maybe slightly scary, but also hugely loveable. Who knew?
We get stuck into it (Patrick, with our blunt fingernails) after the jump
Note 2 – Uno Moralez
November 18th, 2011
Night. A boy lies slumped on the pavement.
A car pulls up, the door opens and a red woman calls him over.
He gets in.
Uno Moralez’s pixel art has an infernal heat.
Question: are there any good creepy US TV movies other than Salem’s Lot?
October 11th, 2011
Great moments in bastardry – Twin Peaks
September 21st, 2011
Huge spoilers from the start
I struggled with this one for all of five seconds until I remembered that my favourite TV series ends as it began, with the threat of many more bodies wrapped in plastic
The battle between BOB, the evil spirit that haunts the woods surrounding Twin Peaks, and Special Agent Dale Cooper, is nothing less than a Manichean struggle between good and evil. BOB is the home invader, the predatory paedophile, the serial killer. He’s every tabloid nightmare made fantasmal flesh. Worse, he’s the madness that made the good man Leland Palmer rape and kill his daughter, Laura, wrap her corpse in plastic and throw it in the river. Dale Cooper on the other hand is the answer to the question, what if Buddha were a policeman? In constant communication via dictaphone with his forever absent personal assistant cum spirit guide, Diane, Cooper’s a coffee loving, pastry chomping saint with a badge. The kindly face of authority come to rescue us from All Bad Men, and guess what? He fails, and he fails catastrophically.
Rogue’s Review: Cybermen
September 9th, 2011
A woman’s fingers erupting from a robot’s wrist, a wet brain punctured by wires and encased in metal, animal hair sprouting behind a cyborg faceplate, emotions crushed beneath inhibitor technology.
Cybermen? It could be argued.
Comics & Conflicts – tickets on sale
August 12th, 2011
A reminder that Comics & Conflicts is going ahead at the Imperial War Museum, London, Friday August 19th and Saturday August 20th, and it’s jam packed with interesting stuff.
Guests include Garth Ennis, Pat Mills, David Collier, Mikkel Sommer, Sean Duffield, Dave Turbitt & Adrian Searle, Eileen and Francesca Cassavetti. Last-minute extras David Blandy and Inko, creators of the anime-collage autobio-documentary and manga-inspired comic CHILD OF THE ATOM
The event also features a full-day academic conference, talks and panels, a comics workshop, free film screenings from 4.30pm on the Saturday of the documentary Comics Go To War
Plus art exhibits of Joe Colquhoun’s originals from Charley’s War and more.
Alex Fitch is hosting a special Comics & Conflicts preview broadcast from 8-9pm Tuesday 16th on Resonance FM.
Full details and links to book are here
A feature article on the main guest creators is here
Comics & Conflicts: war in comics – a two day event
July 20th, 2011
Comics & Conflicts is a two day event that will explore stories of war in comics, graphic novels and manga.
The conference will explore the ways in which comics around the world represent and articulate the experience and impact of war and conflict. Topics to be covered include the impact of 9/11, the relationship between the image and reality of war. Established and up and coming comics artists are also participating.
Speakers include Pat Mills, legendary creator of Charley’s War; multiple Eisner winner Garth Ennis discussing his Battlefields series; and Martin Barker and Roger Sabin who’ll be talking about the depiction of war in the Guardian’s comic strip Doonesbury.
To read more about the event visit the Comica website
