Fantastic Four : Film Review

Fantastic Poor no, wait Fantastic 4 out of 10... no Oh I give in, this film is too half assed for anything but lame jokes

You know whats good in superhero movies? Superheroes, doing superhero stuff. There is barely any of that in FF4, apart from a dull fight on a rocky knoll at the end. There aren't even any 'lets find out how to use our power' montages. Montages of boring people building inter-dimensional doo-hickeys there are plenty of, but no super heroics. Oh,and when Reed Richards turns all stretchified, HE RUNS AWAY TO SULK IN THE JUNGLE. Ohhh, feel the heroism

Also, whats good in superhero films are interesting bad guys. In FF4, the bad guy is at first a sulky hacker (you can tell he's bad cos he plays FPS games in a darkened room whilst using his Google Glasses) but then he turns into a clean cut scientist for no reason who's only evil trait is using people's full names (and maybe he has a crush on Susan, sorry, Sue, Storm but hey,  lets never mention that after one line of dialogue)

Then he gets killed after travelling in the inter-dimensional doo-hickey, and despite  the 'maybe crush on Susan' thing as well as inventing a super awesome machine, NO ONE laments his death, or even mentions it. (Seriously, no one even says 'A shame that jerk Vicktor died huh?)

And then, right at the end, he turns up again, sulks a bit and makes a few people's heads 'splode and then goes to his rocky nest to get killed by the FF4. Oh, did I mention his mask? It looks like he's wearing a fishbowl full of tinsel on his head. And as for the lame Ghostbusters gag ("There is no Vicktor, only Doom") It's the 2nd worst joke in the entire world. The worst joke being the last 2 lines of this film...

So we have no super-heroics, no bad guy, what about the characters? Maybe the film could work as a character study? Well, no. There is literally no chemistry between the four leads. Rather than write any dialogue to show them bonding, the film cuts to montages of them laughing so you get the idea they are like, a super team. And the film's Yoda - Sue's dad and ersatz Morgan Freeman - keeps saying things like "You're a family" and "Together you can beat them". In fact everything he says is a cliche.

There are a million other things wrong with this film. Why does Reed Richards have scars all over his face? Where did they come from? Why is the Human Torch so boring? (They needed a much more charismatic  actor to play him, like, oooh Chris Evans. Oh, wait...) Why is The Thing all morose and not a wisecracking irascible Brooklynite with a heart of (maybe actual) gold?

Why is the film so damn miserable? It should have been a mix of Spiderman and Guardians of the Galaxy, tonally, not The Dark Knight. Hell, even The Phantom (SLAM EVIL!) is more fun than this.

And finally, where are all the female characters? I'm not suggesting that the film makers should have gender swapped the FF4, but poor Kate Mara is literally the only female with a speaking part in the film. Couldn't someone even have a love interest? A female best friend? Sexy scientist? Judy Greer as Ben Grimm's mother?

As if you haven't suffered enough through the film, it wants to keep kicking you when you're down. The climax is a mediocre fight where NO ONE uses their powers in an interesting way apart from PUNCHING THINGS (Seriously, you have a film where one character is invisible, yet you never have her using that in any even vaguely clever way - compare the Boss fight of FF4 with the Boss fight in Ant-man, (a film that knows how to get the most from a superhero with a wacky power) or even the dimension hopping madness of Thor 2's Boss Fight and you'll see what a missed opportunity this was.

Finally, the worst joke in THE ENTIRE OF CINEMATIC HISTORY punches you in the gut and then the credits roll. And you realize that despite a truncated running time of 1 hour 30, you have aged 130 years.

(Whilst writing this review, I kept typing FFS instead of FF4. That sums this film up perfectly)

Charles Stross : Neptune's Brood

Book Review : Accountants In Space!

A thrilling tale of intrigue, betrayal and interstellar accountancy, Neptune’s Brood mixes hard science, pulp plotting and economics of space travel with reckless abandon.

Neptune’s Brood tells the story of Krina, a post-human in the distant future, an accountant and specialist in fraud, as she searches for her missing sister. She gets drawn into a web of conspiracy and a galaxy wide con job that could threaten the fabric of the economy of star systems. Soon Krina is kidnapped, chased by assassins, arrested and has a run in with an accounting firm with heavy weaponry.

 I’ve been a big fan of Charles Stross’s novels for a long time now, but I’ve much preferred his Laundry novels (James Bond meets HP Lovecraft with a side order of extra geekiness) to his sci-fi tales. However, Neptune’s Brood (which is a set in the same universe but not a sequel to Stross’s earlier novel Saturn’s Children) was immense fun.

The fundamentals of the galactic economy that are the basis of the novel took me a little while to get my head around, involving slow, medium and fast money, but Krina fills in the details as the plot unfolds. Stross writes with a keen eye for the ludicrous but the novel never slips into parody. Weird characters and settings just enhance the oddness of the far future, from deep sea-dwelling squid humans who mine radioactive volcanoes to deranged post humans who are transporting the bones of ‘Fragiles’ as they call the original humans in a space going church. There’s even space for a Monty Python reference to be thrown in.

If you like your space opera full of action and adventure, with a dash of thought provoking social commentary (the economics of space travel in this book and the way debt is passed on from generation to generation) the I can’t recommend Neptune’s Brood enough

Ray Parker Jr : Ghostbusters

Songs that I loved : The first single I ever bought

Once upon a time, there was a small boy.  He was, as all small boys are, obsessed with mud, things that explode and running away from girls.  He had a passing dalliance with Star Wars (which he would return to with a vengeance in later life) but the first truly awesome thing to swim into his purview was a film about, erm, men who bust ghosts.

I was obsessed with Ghostbusters, after seeing it in a cinema which is now a TK Maxx, and even went so far as to fashion my own unlicensed particle accelerator out of two Robinsons squash bottles, a vacuum cleaner nozzle and a snake belt.  I had the sticker book, the view-master, the computer game on my Commodore 64 (although I never could guide Ray (or it may have been Peter, the sprite was so poorly rendered) through the Stay-puft Marshmallow man's legs) and, in the days before VHS tapes - yes, it was THAT long ago - owning the soundtrack was the closest thing to watching the film again.

So it came to pass that the first ever single young Dan owned was the Ghostbusters Theme by Ray Parker Jr, bought from the record counter at Morrisons supermarket, back when such things were still, erm, things. Indeed, my copy still has a sticker on the sleeve with my name on it, from when I took it to a school disco, although I have long since lost the means to listen to vinyl.

The song itself stands up pretty well, in a sort of cheesy, borderline camp 80's kind of way, and I'm pretty sure it is the strongest song in Ray Parker Jr's back catalogue (pop quiz - can you name another song by him?)

So as first records ever bought go, I'm not at all embarrassed by my choice.  The second song I ever bought was 'Hole In My Shoe' by Neil for the Young Ones which would have been slightly more embarrassing to admit to...

Gareth Powell : Ack-Ack Macaque

Book Review : Pulp sci-fi fun with added monkeys

In an alternative future where England and France joined to form a union in the 1950s, a journalist seeks to track down whoever murdered her husband, the young heir to the throne is on the run after discovering a dark secret. Throw into the mix a cigar smoking, swearing, monkey with a penchant for banana daiquiris (who would surely be voiced by Ron Perlman in any film adaptation) who flies a Spitfire and battles Nazi ninjas and a conspiracy theory that threatens the future of humanity and you have quite a heady brew.

Alternative realities! Virtual worlds! Airships! Explosions! Talking monkeys! Ack-Ack Macaque crams so many pulp elements together that at times it feels like its about to burst at the seams.

Luckily the book just about holds itself together. Throwing so many ideas around with reckless abandon, it sometimes feels like the narrative is moving too fast, and ideas or concepts that I would quite happily have spent more time finding out about speed past in a blur. With a structure built around a series of cliffhangers, occasionally plot points seem to pop up from nowhere, or end abruptly.

The joy end exuberance of the writing, characters and story swept me along until the end and helped gloss over most of the shortcomings of the novel, but it did leave me with the lingering suspicion that Ack-Ack Macaque was slightly less than the sum of its parts. Like an action movie that is more style than substance, it might be best not to think too hard about, but just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Radical Dads : Universal Coolers

Album Review : A lo-fi pop joy

It feels like all the music I'm listening to at the moment has fallen directly though a timewarp from 1995. Now I'm not a huge fan of musical nostalgia, but it seems to me that there are some pretty good reasons for bands taking musical cues from the grunge/post grunge era right now.  That rough 4 track analogue sound in the prefect antidote to the precision (pro) tooled perfection on a lot of guitar music that's been popular over the last few years. Also, if you're looking for inspiration, there were some pretty good albums kicking around in 1995.

Radical Dads sound like they have been listening to two of 1995's best records - Pavement's Wowee Zowee and Sleater-Kinney's eponymous debut album, with bits of Sonic Youth thrown in, and a lot of their own demented strangeness, on Universal Coolers.  That's not to say its a carbon copy of an album recorded 20 years ago - the whole album has a wonky charm all of its own.

Like the best albums (and yes, I have totally fallen in love with Universal Coolers) this is a grower. It takes a bit of work to get into the first few tracks, which sound a little fuzzy and murky. By the the 3rd track, Slammer, and then In The Water, the hooks start to dig in and not let go.  And whilst Lindsay Baker might not have the strongest voice, theres a sweet cracked charm and vulnerability to her vocals. And as we all know, despite what X-Factor judges might have us believe, beauty lies in imperfection, not stage school theatrics.

And by the time the album closer Cassette Brain rolls around, slowly building to a beautifully timed climax, its hard not to  be a smitten kitten for these tracks.

It's not all grungy guitars and lo-fi production though, theres a shiny pop heart to most of these songs, especially the title track, with some sing-along choruses propped up by fuzzy riffs and squally feedback, if you like that sort of thing (And you'd be a fool not to)

As far as lyrics go, who the flip knows what half of these songs are about? (Possibly a concept album about an air conditioning factory?) And what exactly is a "Desperado Dude Lens"? Much like Pavement or Beck, bands that  took a lot of flak for obtuse lyrics, the heart of these songs is in the mood, not the words and yes, I did dance around the kitchen to the album more than once - the official ATS seal of approval for any great album.




Radical Dads live here on the interwebs, where you can buy a copy of Universal Coolers, if you can't find it elsewhere