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“The Wild West – you’re doing it wrong.”
words of
welcome A
s genres and themes go, the Western is much maligned. Often accused of being a haven for right-wing apologists and overtly sentimental patriots, its heyday has long since passed. Yet the themes explored within this genre are complex and intriguing and bear further scrutiny. Alienation, race, duty, honour, the rule of law, genocide, greed, prejudice, friendship, love, courage, loneliness– all are common threads in the narrative of many Westerns. Their influence should not be overlooked either. From the music of middle-America–including much modern day rock and metal–to epic science fiction such as Star Wars and TV-series like Firefly, the Western’s fingerprint is everywhere. It’s also a genre that defies pigeonholing, constantly being refined, expanded and reinvented by such legendary Hollywood figures as John Ford, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and, in the last few years, it has seen a resurgence in all forms. Once again, Western lore graces the silver
screens; sheriffs, whores and villains spit and cuss their way through Deadwood; and Country music has again taken hold in America–even finding unlikely support and collaboration from the world of Hip-Hop. Such longevity and popularity is not to be sniffed at–the world of entertainment tends to drop unsuccessful, unloved genres like the proverbial boiling tuber. So how has the genre managed to hang on for so long? Where has its influence been most keenly felt; and why should you care? Mount up with The Score (sorry) as we take a ride (sorry) through the dusty plains of the Western (I’ll stop now, I swear) and try to help you see just why you should care about this most divisive of genres. Yee-haw. ... Sorry. Editor
03
miscreants of
KHAI
BAR-HOUND
“El? Who’shh Ellll?” Cursing into his hat, Khai hurls another quarter at the barman. “Bar*hic*man! Whishhkey!*hic*” Fiery liquid pours, spills, corrupts, concusses. Again.
04
DEPUTY
Matty drags Jim’s shattered and prone form aside and steps into the breach. Crossbow-levelled, he takes aim. But “POW” a sneaky shot from El Molyneux takes him out. Disaster.
GAR
GRIZZLY
Slicing off Zombie Chief’s crusted noggin with his +2 Sword Of Infinite Grinding, Gar rushes El, only for grasp the truth at the last moment. Big knife. Gunfight. Oh dear.
GREGM
RUSTLER
Greg sees his compadres fall. “I’m ah gonna carve you up, El!” he growls, whipping out his Bowie knife. El’s companion, Zombie Chief, lurches from the wings. Game over.
LARRY
OUTLAW
Larry levels his sights. El’s temple, vein throbbing, fills his eye. He holds his breath, gently carressing the trigger. But what’s this? El’s wearing Nikes? Well that’s... BANG! Bugger.
TOML
SCALPER
Cocking his massive weapon (steady), Tom strides out and levels his sights at El. Nothing. Again, nothing. Suddenly, he realises that horses can’t hold guns. Tom dies.
GAV
GREENHORN
“EL, YOU SONUVABITCH!” screams the Kid, wading in and blowing Molyneux away with his WipEout sidearm. He stands alone in the bloody dust. Victory is his. For now.
© All content is the copyright of The Score, 2008.
As Jim grapples to marshall his crack team of bounty hunters and ne’erdo-wells, El Molyneux strides into the main street, Fable 2 rifle in hand. “Hey, gringo. I steal you liiiife...”
MATTYJ
The Score is created exclusively using Apple computers and Adobe Creative Suite 3, because they’re ace and Windows smells of feet.
MARSHALL
All images, artwork and screenshots are used for review and criticism purposes only and are the property of their respective owners. All copyrights are acknowledged. If we have failed to acknowledge your copyright, please do not hesitate to contact us so that we can rectify the situation. The Score is completely independent and is not related or affiliated to any company mentioned herein.
JIM
DISCLAIMER: Please note that, while every effort is made to ensure that all information presented in this publication is accurate, stuff happens, y’know? Dates and prices change, sometimes the teaboy/researcher cocks things up and occasionally the universe conspires to make us look less than Utterly And Terrifyingly Right In All Respects. If any such instance occurs, we apologise. Please contact us to let us know so that we can ignore you with aplomb. And punch the teaboy.
magnitude
contents of
courage
08 30
Where The Sun Sets 08 Matty J 18 38
Anti-Heroes 19 Zombies! Part Two 30
51
50
Pump Action 36 Not Country For Old Men 38 5 of the Best: Kurt Vonnegut 44 36
Gremill 50 Chris M 51 Forum of Fantasies 52
44
Counselling the Brakes During the Emergency Exit Procedure 54
19
05
dungeon of
despair
Much will tickle our collective fancies over the coming weeks. Probably not these horrors though.
YOU
TENCHU 4 (Wii)
MAX PAYNE – THE MOVIE
NINTENDO DSi
Yes, you. Sniffing away in the background, futilely fighting that cold with all the authority of a sponge, spilling mucus into everybody’s hair and coughing phlegm into everyone’s soup.
Ninjas are perfect videogame fodder. Really, they are. Silent death-merchants tooled to the unmentionables with all manner of metallic, pointy, slashy, stabby, murdery weaponry? Aye, that’ll do.
Mark Wahlberg. A videogame adaptation. Nu-metal.
Or, as we shall now call it, the Nintendo DSwhy. Well, according to Ninty, the “why” is because we really need another DS that takes pictures and has a screen 0.25 of an inch bigger. 0.25 of an inch.
After the puzzling randomness that was our Autumn, we can now celebrate that Winter is rapidly approaching and many of us have already succumbed to the devastation that is the British Cold. We all sympathise, we all relate and we all wish you Godspeed with recovery.
Controlling it with The Controller That Sense Forgot, however? No. Stop it. Slapping said dumbass-control onto a game series that peaked a number of years ago?
Just stop sneezing in our faces.
06
We said ‘stop it’.
... No, Hollywood. No.
No matter what the ladies say, 0.25 isn’t really going to make a huge difference...
gallery of
Conversely, these beauties have the potential to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Monkeys in stetsons.
glory
GEARS OF WAR 2
FROST/NIXON
SURFER, DUDE
SONIC UNLEASHED
From our initial hands-on with this, just about everything has been tweaked, modified, refined, improved, polished and generally cranked up to unreasonable levels of excellence. It looks stunning; battles take place on a truly epic scale, the like of which the first game never managed.
Michael Sheen as David Frost? Frank Langella as Nixon? An exploration of the infamous Nixon interview? Well, we don’t know how this got the greenlight but we’re enormously chuffed that it did. The trailer–and early word of mouth–suggests a cracking script and some wonderful turns from the central cast. Sheen’s Frost, in particular, looks excellent.
Matthew McConaughy gets a bad rap. It’s understandable, recently he’s specialising in rom-com-genrenonsense and taking his shirt off. Yet, he’s a surprisingly capable actor in the right role–take, for instance, his excellent performance in Frailty, or his scenery-chewing in Reign of Fire.
Yes, we know. Sonic is rubbish in anything but two dimensions. Yet we love the spiky little blue fella; despite his ‘tude and inability to cope with a Z-axis. Hope floats for this one, some of the early screens and footage look... promising.
The addition of an extra player in each team for the online-modes is welcome too; although we’ll reserve judgement on its merits until we’ve hand chance to fully explore it online. One thing must be said, however: Horde mode is absolutely superb fun. It also has to be acknowledge that chainsawing a moronic American teenager in half as he screams and bellows down your ear in a cola-andtwinkies-fuelled rage never, ever gets boring. Ever.
So, we have an intelligent, provocative and interesting political drama, with a superb ensemble cast–none of whom are big names–coming out of a major Hollywood studio. Blimey. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a... pig?
This thoroughly daft tale of a Surfer and his manager (a stoner Woody Harrelson, in yet another piece of pitch-perfect casting) trying to make the big bucks looks superb. Kind of like Point Break meets The Big Lebowski, by way of Orange County. Watch the trailer, revel in some of the best casting we’ve seen in a while and cross your fingers.
We’re almost frightened to say anymore, just in case our dreams are crushed. Again. Please be good please be good please be good please be good...
07
WHERE THE SUN SETS by Jim
W
esterns. The very term is divisive, suggesting as it does a flag-waving, Yankee Doodle Dandy genre, built around the central tenets of America’s right-wing heartlands. As such, it’s no wonder that so many disregard and ignore Westerns as largely offering nothing beyond bland heroics and antiliberal polemics. Nevertheless, these people are mistaken. From the earliest days of the Western, it’s been home to cheesy, right-wing nonsense and overtly misogynistic claptrap, true. However, even in the genre’s 1950s heyday, there were plenty of movies that bucked the trend and offered thoughtful stories and interesting themes and character motivations to go along with the expected heroics and excitement. It’s no surprise that many film-makers have returned to the Western over the last twenty years or so: it offers an almost limitless potential for intriguing characters; moral compromises and dilemmas; and themes that resonate with people of all ages and backgrounds. Of course, if you’ve grown up in the 80s and 90s–as most of us probably have–it’s unlikely that you’ll know much of the history of Westerns, or of the genre classics that simply must be experienced. For many of us, the genre may begin and end with Sergio Leone’s classic ‘Dollars’ trilogy and a handful of modern interpretations such as Dances With Wolves or T he Proposition. Yet to hold this view would be to miss out on many worthy titles, so we thought it was about time that we highlighted a few of the Westerns that we think you really should watch. Westerns that have stood the test of time and hold as much relavance for modern audiences as they did for the audiences of the time...
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THE CLASSICS The Western–along with movies set in WWII–was the undoubted King of the box-office during the late 40s and throughout the 50s. Maybe this is where the genre developed its modern reputation; there was certainly as lot of dross about as studios banged out oaters one after the other. However, there was much to love and admire in this period. For me, the standout triumph was Fred Zinneman’s black-and-white classic, High Noon. Starring a never-better Gary Cooper in the lead role as Marshall Will Kane, High Noon is a movie rich in subtext and meaning, yet eminently watchable as a pure tale of good old-fashioned courage. When Gary Cooper’s lawman, Marshall Will Kane hands in his badge on the day of his marriage, bad news arrives: Frank Miller, a notorious bandit and killer that Kane sent to prison, is returning to town on the noon train, intent on joining up with his gang and exacting his revenge. Initially deciding, at the behest of his friends and wife, to run, Kane– knowing only too well that Miller and his gang will simply hunt him down, wherever he goes–returns to face Miller’s gang. Hopelessly outnumbered, he turns to the people of the town he has served for many years to help him.That help never comes. One by one, the townspeople desert him–even his bride forsakes him, her beliefs as a Quaker forbidding all forms of violence, even in self-defence. Kane will have to face the gang alone.
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“ To pigeonhole it as a left-wing diatribe would be to do it a grave disservice” RECOMMENDED CLASSICS Red River (1948) One of the many Westerns that John Wayne shot with Howard Hawks, Red River is the story of one man’s determination, sheer bloody-mindedness and incapacity to lay aside the anger from a personal tragedy. Unusually, we find Wayne cast in an almost villainous role as the utterly unlikeable Thomas Dunson. Thoroughly recommended. Shane (1953) Alan Ladd gives, perhaps, one of the finest central performances seen in a Western, as a gunslinger desperately trying to escape his past and settle in peace. Famous not simply as a tale of ‘good versus evil’, but also as a story that exemplifies such characteristics as integrity, loyalty and the willingness to do what is right, no matter how difficult; this is essential viewing. The Searchers (1956) Often spoken of as an “important” movie, The Searchers dealt with issues of racial identity, racism, vengeance and unrelenting determination born of tragedy when such issues were beginning to have a real impact on American culture. As pertinent today as it’s ever been, it deserves all the acclaim it receives, so long as you get past the slightly overwrought acting, particularly from the ladies. But hey, this was the 50s... The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) James Stewart excels as the titular Senator Ranse Stoddard in John Ford’s dark, epic tale of tragedy and redemption. Spilling the beans at the funeral of his close friend in regard to the incident that made him famous: the shooting of the outlaw Liberty Valance, Stewart gradually builds a picture in our minds of a man who truly regrets the course of his life; as much as Ford sings a eulogy for a Wild West that, in all probability, never existed. El Dorado (1966) This Howard Hawks classic is often overlooked in favour of its older brother, Rio Bravo, of which it is practically a scene-by-scene remake. Yet I remain convinced that El Dorado is the better movie. It certainly sports the better cast, Robert Mitchum being a far more believable tough-guy than Dean Martin, and a very young James Caan excelling as the greenhorn along for the ride. It’s also damned funny, to boot. I urge you to seek it out.
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Long a favourite of Presidents and world leaders–Eisenhower and Clinton were know to be fans, for starters–its portrayal of a man burdened and isolated not only with a sense of commitment and responsibility for the community he governs, but also a deep well of courage and sense of justice, is second to none. Perhaps because the central figure’s undaunted heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, some have long accused it of being a poster-child for collectivism and Communism. It’s easy to see why too–McCarthyism was at its height when High Noon was shot in 1952 and the movie’s screenwriter, Carl Foreman (nominated for an Oscar in 1953 for the script), was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 and put under pressure to reveal his former Communist associates. Like Kane, he refused to kowtow to what he saw as an illegal, bullying force. For his courage, he was fired and came to live in Britain as a political exile. Yet, to pigeonhole High Noon as a left-wing diatribe would be to do it a grave disservice. Personal courage is celebrated, the bounds of loyalty– whether between friends or between lovers–is explored and the issue of whether hardened criminals should be locked up permanently is tackled.
Deep issues for a mere “oater”. Even placing such subtext aside, High Noon remains a superb movie in its own right. Well acted, tightly scripted and superbly shot and edited (in fact, Elmo Williams and Harry W. Gerstad won the ‘Best Film Editing’ Oscar for their work here), and beautifully lit in striking black-and-white, it’s a touchstone for how to shoot a small, tense, minimal movie. Rightly regarded as a classic, not only of its genre but of its time, there can be no finer example of why Westerns from the ‘classic’ period should not be passed over.
THE NEW WAVE By the beginning of the sixties, the ‘traditional’ Western, with its blackand-white roles of “good guy” and “bad guy” and its lack of complex morality, was losing favour both with audiences and studios. The fine work of deep, thought-provoking movies like High Noon, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was largely being wasted by genre nonsense. ‘Western’ became synonymous with ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘conservative’–the kiss of death in the newly liberal atmosphere of the times–and the good name of the genre was tarnished. The new wave of Western movies by experimental directors like Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, while undoubtedly superb, did nothing to quell this. In fairness, the movies reflected the times–Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis and many other factors had embittered the appeal of virtue and heroism. People simply didn’t seem to believe in it anymore. Laced with cynicism, a barely concealed loathing for the genre they’d sprung from and a desire to show the Old West as it
truly was (i.e. a blood-thirsty, dirty, dangerous place where life, women and booze were equally cheap) the movies of the seventies hammered nails into the genre’s coffin and made it almost impossible for a traditional Western to be successful. Come the mid-seventies, the Western had split into two distinct types: the cynical (yet brilliant) likes of the Dollars trilogy and The Outlaw Josie Wales and light comedies and genre parodies such as Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, or Blazing Saddles. The traditional Western appeared to be as dead as the proverbial dodo. Still, there was life in the old horse yet. In 1976 Don Siegel (ironically, one of the directors that helped kill off the traditional Western with the many projects he worked on with Clint Eastwood, including Two Mules For Sister Sarah and Dirty Harry) teamed up with the greatest of the traditional Western heroes, John “The Duke” Wayne, to make T he Shootist. Tracing with poignant subtlety the final days of a once-great gunfighter who’s dying of cancer, it was, in truth, an ode to The Duke and the genre he’d become synonymous with.
“ ‘Western’ became synonymous with ‘oldfashioned’ or ‘conservative’” 011
The troubles of the protagonist, John Bernard Books, mirrored Wayne’s real life battle with cancer. No doubt because of this, Wayne turns in the performance of a lifetime, at once melancholy and subtle, yet also determined to go out fighting and spit in death’s eye. It’s certainly the first time we see any real frailty and weakness in the Wayne screen persona. “I’m a dyin’ man, scared of the dark” he mutters at one point, and we get the feeling that this is really Wayne speaking. So progressed was his cancer by this point, that the movie was very nearly abandoned. Fortunately, he recovered and we’re left with a movie that, while certainly no masterpiece, is a beautiful and moving swan-song not only for a genre, but also for a man that made it his own.
‘NEW WAVE’ RECOMMENDATIONS “Dollars” Trilogy (1964, 1965, 1966) Beginning with A Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the Dollar s trilogy set the tone for nearly every Western for the next twenty years. Laced with black humour, stark violence and cynicism, they’ve a true subversion of the genre and a masterclass in film-making. Clint’s ‘Joe’ sets the tone early on: “A man’s life in these parts often depends on a mere scrap of information.” The Wild Bunch (1969) Peckinpah’s claret-soaked masterpiece pushed the envelope in regard to screen violence upon release and continues to amaze with its displays of brutality (rumours persist of real chickens being used for target practice) and a bleak, nihilistic tone. It’s a superb piece of work and, I would imagine, as close to the reality of the Old West as you’ll see from any movie of this vintage. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969) Not so much a Western as a “buddy movie”, this is not only a cracking movie in its own right (seriously, it’s about the most fun you can have with a couple of spare hours... Well, nearly the most fun...) but we have this to thank for just about every “buddy” movie since. Watch it and marvel at two of Hollywood’s greatest actors reveling in the finest on-screen chemistry you’ll see. The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) Many will tell you that this is Clint’s finest Western, if not his finest movie. Well, we’d disagree on both counts, but this brutal tale of a man driven by the need for vengeance and gradually rediscovering his humanity and love for life, is certainly one of the director/actor’s finest works. If you’ve never seen it, you really are missing out.
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THE RENAISSANCE And so we come to the modern day. After The Shootist, studios made fewer and fewer Westerns, the genre having fallen out of favour with modern audiences. Understandable, perhaps, during a period when there were real-life cowboys in the White House and the “greed is good” ethos ruled supreme, something that runs contrary to the traditional Western’s moral stance of heroism and loyalty. True, some found an audience, such as Pale Rider, Eastwood’s remake of Shane, but most either made no impact or got no further than the drawing board. Still, as the nineties dawned, directors and actors that had grown up watching the Westerns of the fifties and sixties started to turn there hands toward a resurrection of the genre. Kevin Costner was the first to really attempt this, his stunning epic, Dances With Wolves, sweeping the board at the Oscars (of which it won 7, including the big awards of Best Picture and Best Director) and many other awards ceremonies. While many proclaimed that this was evidence of a sway in public opinion, that the Western was, in effect, back, some maintained that it was a one-off and that the traditional Western was still redundant in the modern world. As it turned out, both viewpoints were correct, and it was a stalwart of the Western, Clint Eastwood, that proved it to be so. Unforgiven was released in September 1992 to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Again, it swept through the awards season like a tornado, taking home four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. There was no doubt about it, the Western was back.
“ it pulled no punches in its depiction of the horrific effects of violence” Yet, it also wasn’t. Clint had gone on record as saying that this was his final Western, his eulogy for the genre that had made him a star. The tone and story of Unforgiven was certainly far removed from Westerns of the past. Laden with dark themes and criticised by some as an exercise in nihilism, it pulled no punches in its depiction of the horrific effects of violence, corruption and vengeance. Eastwood’s character, William Munny, was a self-confessed murdering thug, at one point growling “I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill”. Not averse to shooting a man when his back is turned, Munny was not the paragon of heroism and bravery that we’d come to expect in Westerns. As a poor widower, struggling to bring up two young children and going on a bounty hunt to try to provide for their future, the out-and-out monster that he could have been is softened, creating a more conflicted, grey-shaded, human character. You never quite know whether you’re on his side or not, he’s undoubtedly a man who has committed wicked deeds, but does that make him a wicked man? Can such murderous talents be justified when the cause may seem just?
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WESTERN RENAISSANCE Such ambiguity runs through the movie, from Ned Logan (played by Morgan Freeman), Munny’s old partner who has may have lost his taste for such work, through to the The Schofield Kid who starts the ball rolling with his desire to make a name for himself as a killer, there are no clear “good” or “bad” characters here. Perhaps the film’s greatest triumph, however, is in Gene Hackman’s character, Little Bill Daggett. Here’s a man who upholds the law as sacrosanct. A man who, traditionally, we should be cheering on. Yet his methods are so brutal, his motivation so black and white (the Law is all, right or wrong) that we simply cannot warm to him. He is, without doubt, a monster, yet one who is, in many ways, in the right. The fact that it’s so difficult to support either side without being complicit in their acts of violence is the film’s central theme–violence corrupts and destroys, even when used for a “good” cause, and there’s no getting away from its effects, or the bloody vengeance that often follows in its wake. As the film suggests, people are complex and their motivation’s even more so. The simple morality of many early Westerns–where the “good” Sheriff can shoot down a town full of “bad guys” and walk off smiling into the sunset–never sat well with reality, as Munny himself says: “It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”
The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada (2005) Tommy Lee Jones’ modern Western is a thing of ambiguity, beauty and intelligence; the barren, hostile landscape of the Mexican border being a character in its own right as Jones’ rancher tries to take his friend’s body home to bury him, dragging his killer along for the ride. The Proposition (2005) Unusually set in Australia, a ruthless lawman apprehends an outlaw and makes him a simple, brutal proposition: kill his older brother (a vicious gang leader) and be pardoned or be imprisoned and see his younger brother hung. A dark, unsettling film, written by Nick Cave, The Proposition is The Wild Bunch of the 21st century. Seraphim Falls (2006) Echoing the themes of The Outlaw Josey Wales, this tells the tale Carver, played by Liam Neeson, on the trail of Pierce Brosnan’s Civil War veteran, Gideon. What connects them, and why is Carver so hell-bent on catching Gideon? Through snowy wilderness, bloody knife-work and (possibly imaginary) visions of the devil, we gradually come to understand the full tragedy that has locked these men into a violent spiral of revenge and desperation. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007) “Boring and overlong”, say some. “Slow-burning, melancholy and beautiful” say others. Certainly, this is one of those Westerns that divides opinion. Those that love it–yours truly included–will tell you that it features one of Brad Pitt’s finest performances as the charismatic Jesse James, and that Casey Affleck is stunning as the envious and faintly creepy Robert Ford, dead set on a path of self-glorification and self-destruction. Roger Deakins’ cinematography is worth the watch alone, deservedly winning an Oscar for the master lenser. 3.10 To Yuma (2007) Of all the Westerns made since Dances With Wolves reopened the genre, this remake of a little-known 1957 movie is, perhaps, the most traditional. Christian Bale’s desperate, poverty-stricken farmer taking on the hopeless task of helping to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous criminal played by Russell Crowe, to the titular train, there to leave for a trial that will most likely see him hung. Unfortunately, Wade’s gang have other ideas. An excellent movie with some exhilarating set-pieces, it helped to prove that a modern, traditionalist Western could still find an audience.
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UNSUNG HERO Amongst all the big name Westerns that have been released over the last few years, one movie has stood out as truly deserving of high praise, yet has sadly been overlooked by many. That movie is the wonderful Open Range. Directed by Kevin Costner, it tells the story of what many see as the last days of the real Wild West - the end of free-grazing (the practice of driving cattle from one place to another, grazing off the land as you go). Working under the grizzled but likable Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall, seemingly reprising his rancher persona from Lonesome Dove), Costner’s cowboy-with-a-past, Charlie Waite, and their two young companions, Mose and Button are driving their cattle across country for sale. After Mose is attacked in a nearby town, they find themselves backed into a corner, chronically outnumbered by a murderous rancher and his hired guns and having to deal with a town run by a corrupt sheriff. Boss Spearman neatly sums up the film, early on: “Man’s got a right to protect his property and his life, and we ain’t lettin’ no rancher or his lawman take either.” Far more a straight-forward morality tale than the morally ambiguous Westerns that have been popular of late, Open Range is none the weaker for it concentration on supposedly old-fashioned values and principles. The torment of Costner’s character as he fights to keep a lid on “old feelings” is clear, as is the burden he bears upon finding someone he cares about enough to want to live.
“ tender, yet never sentimental” The tension is built wonderfully through a tense stand-off and a number of skirmishes, as both sides slowly manoeuvre into a final confrontation, with the people of the town trapped in the middle. When it comes, the fight is blistering, brutal and utterly realistic. No fifty-yard bullseye shots with six-shooters here: gunfights are close, bloody and quick. It should also be noted that it features the single greatest (and loudest) shotgun noise you will ever hear. Yet, despite flashes of violence, it remains a gentle film. Tender, yet never sentimental; sympathetic, yet realistic. The script is minimal and intelligent, allowing the viewer to reads between the lines and watch for expressions and gestures that hint at hidden depths to character relationships, deeper meanings to seemingly innocuous comments. Beautifully shot and scored, with nods to John Ford and Howard Hawks and fantastic supporting performances from Annette Bening and Michael Gambon, Open Range is a Western that deserves far more praise than it has received, both as a modern retelling of classic Western themes–tales of courage, justice, honour and loyalty are as relevant today as ever– and also as a great movie in its own right.
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JUST FOR LAUGHS Cat Ballou (1965) Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) is driven to seek revenge on those that murdered her father, dragging along a memorably drunk-for-the-whole-movie Lee Marvin. The fact that two minstrels (including one Nat King Cole) pop up to sing her story on screen throughout just makes this even better. By turns funny, touching and effortlessly bizarre, Cat Ballou is truly one of a kind, and damn funny too. Cat: Some gang! An Indian ranch hand, a drunken gunfighter, a sex maniac, and an uncle! Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) James Garner sends up his smart-alec Maverick persona wonderfully in this classic, all too little seen, Western comedy. As Jason McCullough, the fast-gun hired to be a sheriff in a town plagued by a family of thugs and outlaws, Garner is brilliant; deadpanning his way through the movie and relying more on his quick wits than his quick draw. Brilliant on every level. Jake: You want me to tell Joe Danby that he’s under arrest for murder? What’re you gonna do after he kills me? Jason McCullough: Then I’ll arrest him for both murders. Blazing Saddles (1974) Without a doubt, the quintessential “funny cowboy flick” and Mel Brooks’ best film, Blazing Saddles riffs wonderfully not only on genre stereotypes but also on racism - a very brave thing to do at a time when race was still a burning topic in America, and much of the rest of the world. Cleavon Little’s character, Bart (with Gene Wilder’s gunslinger, Jim, in tow), swaggers through the movie, showing up the townsfolk for the small-minded idiots they really are and getting belly laughs from situations that really shouldn’t get belly laughs. Required viewing for anyone with a pulse. Bart: Are we awake? Jim: We’re not sure. Are we... black? Bart: Yes, we are. Jim: Then we’re awake... but we’re very puzzled. Maverick (1994) In a rare out-and-out comic role, Mel Gibson takes on the role of Brett Maverick, cardsharp, fast-draw and terrible marksman. Harassed along the way by Annabelle Bransford (played by the lovely Jodie Foster in a superb and surprising comedic turn), a fellow card-player and con-artist, and closely watched by Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner), he spends the film trying to raise the $25,000 entry fee for a big-stakes poker game and avoiding messy death. Much funnier than people would have you believe. Annabelle: Well, they’re Indians. They probably just stole the ponies! Maverick: Not everybody’s like you, Mrs. Bransford. Annabelle: What is it with you and Indians anyway? Maver ick: Oh, nothing. I try and shoot one a day, if possible, before noon. How ‘bout you, Coop? I figure it’s their fault for being on our land before we got here.
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RIDING INTO THE SUNSET So what does the future hold for the Western? Well, of late Hollywood has shown a willingness to explore the genre from a number of angles. Whether through transplanting the themes and characters of the genre into modern setting, such as in the Coen’s stunning No Country For Old Men, or going back to the more traditional fare offered by 3.10 To Yuma, as long as an audience is there, Westerns will be made. Of course, the themes still resonate with audiences, and always will. Loyalty, courage, heroism, vengeance, justice, jealousy and such other motifs that Westerns explore are core elements of human experience and understanding. If film-makers can continue to find ways to scrutinize and express these, in the vein of modern triumphs such as Unforgiven or The Assassination of Jesse James..., then the Western will go from strength to strength and continue to find new fans in each and every successive generation.
“ the themes still resonate with audiences, and always will...” 017
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Anti
Everybody loves a good old bad-good guy. If you see what we mean. But who are the greatest antiheroes of all time, and what have they done to make themselves do great? Join The Score as we delve into the murky waters of the heroic badass. Just a quick warning: SPOILERS LURK WITHIN.
HEROES by
Matty J
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When you design a character to be a pastiche of Hollywood’s greatest action stars, there is always a risk it will come out horribly and not work at all. Fortunately, Duke Nukem turned out to be the best of everyone. Duke combines the “best” aspects of Eastwood, Bronson, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, John Nada (from They Live), Jack Burton (from Big Trouble In Little China), and Ash Williams (from the Evil Dead series). What a list. Full of aggression and confidence, Duke is like many of the 80s action film stars–a one man army, able to single handedly save the human race from alien threat. Taking out the alien scum is second nature to him, the first being pleasing the babes who flock to his rippling muscles. Like the best of them, he can command a huge array of weaponry from pistols to pipe bombs and RPGs. Best of all are Duke’s one-liners. Although some of them were lifted wholesale from Evil Dead, they are still golden. For example: “Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride”, “Damn, you’re ugly”, “Your face, your ass, what’s the difference” and “What are you? Some bottomfeeding, scum-sucking algae eater?” It made the games that extra bit of fun to play.
Duke Nukem
As a mercenary for hire, Deadpool doesn’t really fit the ‘hero’ mantle. The ‘Merc with a Mouth’ was a Weapon-X reject (the same project that involved Wolverine); he was imbued with the same healing powers as the aforementioned X-Man which, although successful, left his face a horrible, scarred mess. Slung into the project’s prison, Deadpool killed several guards and escaped. Establishing himself as a gun-for-hire, he worked for criminal organisations, including the Kingpin, and initially battled against other heroes such as Wolverine (whom he defeated by puncturing his lungs and slashing his face), Cable, and other members of X-Force. One of the most interesting aspects of Deadpool comics is that he is very much aware he is inside a comic. For example, when Deadpool meets Bullseye in issue 28, Bullseye asks “How long has it been?” to which Deadpool replies “Issue 16, Greece. What’s up Bullseye?” This goes on in many future issues and becomes a constant, to a highly comedic event. Deadpool even talks directly to the reader, with comments such as “None of this is really happening. There is a man. With a typewriter. This is all part of his crazy imagination.” Plus he looks like a freaking Ninja, and that’s cool.
Deadpool Rorschach Rorschach, all things considered, is not a very nice person. He believes in moral objectivism, a definitive line between Good and Evil. No middle ground, no ‘grey area’. Nothing stands in his way of getting the right thing done, to bring justice to those who deserve it. He kills; he has few social skills (if any), he smells, is brutally honest and takes the law into his own hands. He is described as “extremely right wing” Yet, there remains a likable quality to him. He is ruthless in his pursuit of the truth, willing to hurt as many as it takes in order to get to the one perpetrator.
However, as the people he hurts are ‘bad people’, it doesn’t matter; in fact it’s good that he is hurting these criminals. One feels that underneath the inkblot mask, Rorschach is a complex, deep and psychologically tortured man, and once his reasons for who he is are revealed, we feel an unnerving, even slightly unnatural, amount of sympathy for the character. Uncompromising even in the face of certain death, Rorschach is a hero in perhaps the purest sense of the word.
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Always willing to take the necessary step, even if it means hurting or killing those around him, he is, however, often stopped by others before he can finish the job. Put simply, Wolverine is a bad-ass. Quick to fight and keen to settle an argument with fists, or rather claws, rather than words, Logan is the hero who gets the job done. Plus he doesn’t look half bad for a 120 year old.
W“Heodlovesen’trine look
half bad for a 120 year old”
Marv
Named after the last two digits of the barcode tattooed to his head and his possession of the 47th chromosome, Agent 47 was specifically created as a killing machine. Created being the correct word, as 47 is a genetically modified clone, a combination of five different people’s DNA. Not just five ordinary people, but five of the world’s most deadly criminals: a Chinese crime lord, a terrorist who was a member or the Hitler Youth, a Russian arms dealer, a Latin American drug baron and 47’s creator; a genetic scientist deemed insane. A hit man for hire, he is regarded as the best at what he does.
Agent47
Perhaps the quintessential anti-hero, Wolverine is full of attitude and reluctance to help others. A bundle of hatred, and seemingly disliking many of his fellow X-Men and heroes, Wolverine has few friends, but a great many enemies. Logan, as he is called by his few friends, such as Professor X, is very popular with comic fans, and that popularity has been reignited thanks to the recent X-Men movies, even awarding him his very own spin-off film.
Agent 47 possesses superior strength, athleticism and intelligence over ‘normal’ humans, and will not let anyone stand in the way of getting his job done. Although the level of brutality and ‘innocent’ killings is ultimately up to the player (levels can be completed with no detection and by only killing the target), 47 can–and will–kill anyone he feels necessary. When a priest and a reporter discovered his identity, they were quickly dispatched without a second thought. He’s bad to the bone, he can’t help it he was made that way.
Frank Miller described the 7 foot slugger as “Conan with a trench coat”, although Marv really is much more than a muscular body. Admittedly, he does favour simply using his immense physical presence to resolve a conflict, but he often shows signs of a higher intellect than he believes himself capable of. He can logically work through multifaceted and mystifying situations and reach a conclusion better than most detectives on Sin City’s payroll–although that might not be saying much–and he possesses a great strategic mind when it comes to fighting. There are many characteristics which make Marv an endearing character. He has a high level of respect for women, even though his extremely scarred face makes him unattractive to all of the opposite sex. So highly attuned is this level of respect that he is more than happy to beat senseless any man who physically abuses women. Above all though, he is just impossibly cool. One of those guys that makes you want to buy a trench coat, a pack of cigarettes, and talk in a husky voice. Plus, he is willing to jump feet first through a police car windscreen while it’s speeding towards him. Fantastic.
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Randle McMurphy
A man wronged by the army that he served so well, Fenix is one of the last bastions of hope for the human species. He was sent to prison, in a mockery of a trial, for Dereliction of Duty, because he left his post in order to try and save his father from dying. Fenix is famous within the military for his actions in combat, although Marcus plays this down as he feels his actions shouldn’t be regarded as ‘cool’. Along with the rest of Delta squad, Marcus has reestablished himself as a key member of the CoGs by planting a Lightmass bomb deep in the Locust Hollow. During the mission he gets promoted to Sergeant and becomes leader of Delta.
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Randle McMurphy: McMurphy is a victim of his own doing. Convicted for battery and gambling (but avoiding statutory rape which he boasts gleefully of) he is sentenced to a reasonably short prison term. However, clearly thinking he is being very clever, he declares himself insane in order to get sent to a mental institution rather than jail, as he believes it will be an easy ride. Unfortunately for him, McMurphy encounters Nurse Ratched, and the battle that ensues between them costs Randle his freedom, his mind, and ultimately his life. McMurphy hates what Ratched has done to the spirits of the other inhabitants of the ward, breaking their spirits so she can have full control. So, he tries his utmost to usurp her power and give the patients back some dignity and freedom that he believes she is denying them. McMurphy hustles the patients, makes comments about Ratched’s figure, organizes a deep sea fishing trip, and captains the ward’s basketball team, among other activities. Ratched tries all she can to stop him, including giving him shock therapy. After Ratched ends up causing one of Randle’s friends to commit suicide, he attempts to kill her. She has him lobotomised, and he enters a vegetative state; ending up being smothered by another friend of his, The Chief, so that it doesn’t appear that Ratched has ‘won’.
Marcus is an excellent soldier. One of the best to ever don the ton of armour–highly skilled and motivated in eradicating the threat to humanity. He comes across as somewhat reluctant at times, but it is more a feeling of disbelief at where the powers-that-be send him and what he has to do. Although he always listens to his commanding officers, he certainly doesn’t respect the desicions they make as he feels they don’t understand what it’s like to be on the front line. He is able to use any weapon to great effect, from pistols to sniper rifles, and has a great tactical brain which is why he is so highly regarded amongst his companions. Apart from his father, not much is known about the personal life of Fenix. All we know is he can wield a chainsaw with as much precision as a Royal gardener.
Marcus Fenix
Macbeth
As the central character, he is not exactly a likeable fellow, although there is a morbid fascination in watching his journey, as if to find out just how low he will sink, who next will fall to his cold, bloodstained hands. By the end, Macbeth has lost everything, his friends, his family, his honour; there is now little to do but wait for MacDuff to exact his terrible revenge...
Tyler sums himself up very well “I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.” This is, essentially, why he is an excellent antihero. He spends his time telling you that your life is worthless, you are nothing, everything you work for does not mean anything, that you are the “all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world”. Yet, rather than hating him for it, you become enamored with him. Tyler is society’s rebel, he refuses to interact the same way as everyone else, and rather than the usual view that one would find it impossible to live that way, he flourishes and becomes more than just a man against the system. Durden becomes a leader to those around him, to those seeking out a way to break free from the constraints of modern society. You have to respect a man who has a thought process of “If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”
Kain possesses the powers you would normally expect from a vampire, with a little extra thrown in. He has enhanced strength, speed, and is immortal (barring normal vampire dispatching techniques). Along with this is the power to become mist, make large jumps, bend people to his will, use both telekinesis and pyrokinesis, transform into a flock of bats and even create lightning in his palms. Phew. Kain has a huge lust for power, and is relentless in his pursuit of it. However, despite his bloodthirsty ways, he has a great intelligence, lending himself to comparisons with the like of Hannibal Lecter.
Kain
Murder, paranoia, conspiracy, psychosis... Macbeth has it all. However, Macbeth himself is not predisposed to murder, but finds it necessary on his path to the crown. In fact, his first act of murder affects him so badly his wife has to step in to clean up the mess and set the housekeeper up for the fall. As time goes on, many more are murdered under Macbeth’s command, including MacDuff’s wife and children. Seemingly no longer caring for the amount of people that suffer due to his blind ambition, Macbeth can see no way out of the situation, except for more murder: “I am in blood; stepp’d insofar that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as to go o’er.”
First things first: Kain is a vampire. He was a noble, murdered and brought back to life as a blood-sucker. Kain then took it upon himself to start a crusade against his assassins, in the hope that he might be restored to his previous human status. However, as time goes on he becomes more and more besotted with his lifestyle; his growing estrangement from mankind takes over and breeds within him hostility towards his former kind. As his mission progresses he increasingly enjoys his vampiric ways, finally deciding that it is a blessing rather than a curse. He believes vampires are gods, who are tasked with trimming human existence, cutting the fat of the species away. If left unchecked, humanity would spread across his kingdom like a plague.
“He spends his time telling you that your life is w o r th TYlerthe ‘all-sinleginssg.., .ayoll-duaanRceing Durden crap of the world.’” 023
“even if he re f u s events will con es, somehow and he’ll end u spire against him p mission anywaygoing on the ...”
Rin cew ind Max Payne
Max has it all; working for the NYPD as a Detective, a wife and newborn child with a home in the suburbs, the stereotypical American Dream. This perfection doesn’t last long, though, as his family gets killed by some criminals high on drugs that break into his home. This puts Max on a revenge mission, taking a job as an undercover agent deep inside a Mafia family: perfect anti-hero territory. His mission takes him through the criminal underworld, from the Mafia to Russian mobsters, and finishing up in a huge drug-dealing corporation. Payne leaves a vast amount of dead bodies in his wake, hellbent on avenging his dead family.
Of course, Max is a tough guy. He gets put through a lot on his mission, getting turned over to the Mafia as a rat, injected with an overdose of a drug and left for dead, and at the end of it he’s arrested as the police think that he is involved. To be fair, Max had killed upwards of 600 people over just few nights, but they were all criminals. So that’s okay. To top it all off, Payne manages to pull off the leather trench coat look, something which immediately grants him ‘awesome’ status. Indeed.
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Born with the spirit of a wizard, but the body of a long distance runner, Rincewind does in fact spend a lot of his time running away from things. So much time, that he ends up looking at running away as a sort of religion, so firm is his belief that running away from things is vital. If pointed out that he always runs into trouble, Rincewind replies “Yes, but you can run away from that too, that’s the beauty of it.” Rincewind’s inclusion here is due to the fact he doesn’t try, or do, anything heroic at all. He avoids it at all costs, and actively tries to not be involved. Unfortunately for him, others always seem to land him in danger. Rincewind also believes in karma, except his is preemptive Karma. Even if it looks as if there is something good going to happen to him in the future, Karma makes something bad happen to him right now to pre-empt it, and keeps doing so, causing no good things to happen to him ever. In The Last Hero, Rincewind is asked to go on a dangerous mission. He refuses, but states that the refusal is merely for appearances “because even if he refuses, somehow events will conspire against him and he’ll end up going on the mission anyway.”
Lester Burnham
Lester is a loser. He is boring; he has no interests in anything and might as well be “dead already”. However, that all changes and he becomes reinvigorated with his existence due to a key event. Firstly, in a flash of brilliance, Lester blackmails his superior at work for $60,000, just as he was on the brink of being sacked. Then, as further rebellion against his former high pressure position, he takes a job at a fast food chain, revelling in the apparent disgust from customers that a 40 year old would work there. Furthermore, continuing his pursuit of liberation, Burnham trades in his family saloon for a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, which is his dream car. He starts running and working out–he wants to “look good naked”–and takes up smoking weed as he enjoyed it so much when he was younger. What could encourage a man to make all of these drastic changes? Well, a sexy 16 year-old friend of his daughter, of course. Lester becomes infatuated with her after watching her cheerlead (in a much parodied scene), and has many sexual fantasies about her (again, parodied to death). In many ways, Lester really is a man to look up to. Unhappy with his life, he changes every aspect, and starts feeling happy again. He even gets the opportunity to sleep with the object of his desire, but turns her down after she reveals she is still a virgin and therefore stops being the sexual vixen of his dreams, and becomes just an innocent 16 year-old girl. Still, it’s a shame a closet homosexual decides to kill him after his advances are rejected by Burnham, but in death he “can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life”.
w o r r a p S k c a J n i Capta Michael Corleone He participates in fraud, racketeering, bullying, thuggery, murder and theft. He kills his brother. He is not a nice man. So why do we have sympathy for Michael Corleone? Why do we care about him?
Maybe it’s because we’ve seen him fall, we’ve seen him try and climb from the mire only, as he acknowledges late in his life, to time and again get “dragged back in”. Maybe we like Michael because we can understand why he made the choices he did, why he started down a path to eventual selfdestruction: the love of his family and desire to do all he could to protect them. As an object lesson in the corrupting nature of power, Michael Corleone is beyond compare. As a hero, he is flawed, corruptible and, ultimately, impotent against the forces he seeks to control and defeat. Perhaps that’s why he’s so likable–he’s believable.
Jack Sparrow could probably be described as the coolest man in modern film. The only reason to even bother watching the overly bloated Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Depp’s portrayal of the enigmatic Captain is nothing short of brilliant, and even managed to garner him his first Oscar nomination. As far as the other characters in the Pirates universe are concerned, he is a horrible man, only out for himself. If ever you think he is doing something for the good of the group or to be a hero, you are wrong. Sparrow puts it best himself: “Me, I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly stupid.” Obsessed with rum and seemingly constantly drunk, Jack slurs his speech and appears to be incapable of walking in a straight line. However, this is all part of the Captain Jack swagger, leaving many to wonder if he plans all his actions out. His vocabulary is beyond many he encounters, including Commanders of the Royal Navy, some of it being more than a little embellished and not necessarily in the OED. Jack is not actually a particularly good Pirate, really, considering he doesn’t actually like to fight. This reticence is the reason he lost the Black Pearl to mutiny. Above all, though, we love Captain Jack for almost single-handedly bringing pirates back to into vogue. For that we love him dearly.
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When you’re the son of a demon, there is a fairly hefty chance that you yourself are going to be a bit of a cool guy. Dante’s father, Sparda, rebelled against the demon emperor, and defeated him and his army in order to save the human world. Sparda then lived his life in the human world, fathering Dante and his twin brother Vergil. Therefore Dante has powers above and beyond that of a normal human, including great speed, strength and agility. He uses these powers as a mercenary who specializes in abnormal cases, choosing those that involve demon hunting.
Nick Naylor
Nick Naylor is a very likeable man. He has to be, it’s his job. He is the man who tells you that smoking is good for you, and you believe it. You want to smoke, it makes you cool. Naylor is “the Sultan of Spin”, a wizard with words, the Vice President and chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. It’s a group which researches the link between smoking cigarettes and cancer but, as it’s funded by the cigarette companies, finds no link. It is Nick’s job to inform the world of these ‘facts’ and defend the rights of smokers.
Even when he gets kidnapped by a group of anti-smokers, who stick so many nicotine patches on him he almost dies, he refuses to give up. If anything, it makes him want to do it more, as he knows he is getting through to people. Besides, you just have to love a man whose job it is to defend companies that kill 1,200 people a day, going on to a talk show to go face to face with a teenager with cancer. He not only manages to turn the crowd around from booing and hissing to cheering and clapping, but even shakes the hand of ‘cancer boy’ afterwards. He may be absolutely mind-blowing in his subdued villainy, but we love him for it.
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Dante gets his popularity from his cocky, self-assured attitude, which has been well earned. He is fearless and confident, and willing to fight anything that crosses his path, including huge fire-breathing demons. He’s the lovable rogue, the guy who makes wise cracks and slightly dodgy one-liners. Dante has a nice range of weaponry at his disposal. He carries his trademark twin pistols, Ebony and Ivory, that never have to be reloaded, which is handy considering just how many enemies he has to dispatch on a regular basis. Backing them up is his sword. Well, giant sword. It was left to him by Sparda, and has been imbued with magical properties. Dante is a dab hand with it, able to concoct a variety of moves with which to dispatch the demon hordes. Plus, he makes gray hair look good.
y “h e w a s t r ic k e d rb in A r e s in t o m u r d e g h is fa m il y ” Seeing as how the first thing you can do in God of War is have a threesome with two hot chicks, Kratos was always going to endear himself to many. Straight after satisfying the ladies, he slices his way through some enemies and then takes on a Hydra. Nice start. From there, he confronts more and more elaborate enemies, until he battles the god of slaughter himself, Ares. Pretty impressive stuff, even for an ex-Spartan. Kratos has all the qualities of a good antihero. He was tricked by Ares into murdering his own family, sparking a mission of revenge to try and expunge the memories of his dead wife and child (whose ashes have been fashioned to his skin). The mission takes him to hell and back, very literally, while picking his way through a veritable who’s who of mythical beasts. Kratos also possesses one of the coolest weapons ever designed, the Blades of Chaos: a pair of blades chained to his wrists, allowing him to flow through enemies with beautiful precision and devastating effect. He’s amoral, willing to sacrifice innocents to get his way, and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. Even if that means defying the gods themselves. He is ruthless, savage, merciless, cold-blooded, callous and any other word you can think of for basically being a bastard. Still, it makes him great fun to play as, and we wouldn’t want him any other way.
Dante
Kratos
“Bless me, Father, for I have just killed quite a few men”. When you think of the term ‘badass’, this guy should really be one of the first people you think of. Perfectly played by Antonio Banderas in Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico, El Mariachi is one bad dude. Strolling into town with nothing more than his guitar case (more on that later) he’s on a mission to kill the men who not only took the life of his lover, but worst of all shot his guitar playing hand. This leads to a very high body count for such a small Mexican town, as El Mariachi works his way through seemingly every single person there.
El Mariachi
Back to the guitar case. What seems like an ordinary case actually holds a small arsenal, with enough weapons to support a small country hidden below the façade of a guitar. In a brilliant scene from Desperado, the guitar case’s full extent is slowly revealed to a bar full of people itching to kill El Mariachi. What follows is an epic gun fight featuring all sorts of weaponry, and a tasty neck break at the end. Not only is he one of the best characters created, he also gets the girl in the movie. Who happens to be Salma Hayek. Bastardo.
Niko Bellic
“Hey! Cousin!” That’s right; it’s everyone’s favourite Serbian, Niko! You could say that Niko is a victim of his environment. His father was an alcoholic and bullied, and his brother was killed in a school bombing during the Kosovo War. Angered, Niko joined the army to fight in the war himself, and consequently committed many acts of violence which impacted on him greatly. After the war was over, Niko entered the criminal underworld in order to make money. During a smuggling run to Italy, the boat Niko was stationed on was attacked and sunk, Niko managing to swim to safety. However, the leader of the operation blamed Niko, so he ended up joining the merchant navy and eventually wound up in Liberty City, persuaded by his cousin’s claims of riches and success. However, Niko soon discovers Roman has been embellishing his success and quickly returns to his criminal ways. Bellic is tough. He doesn’t blink an eye when violence is required, whether it be beating a guy up for not paying his racket money, or shooting up a whole warehouse of gang members. He won’t take any crap from anyone, and will not be treated like a second-class citizen, no matter who you are. Even if there is a gun in his face he’ll tell you you’re an idiot (well, worse than that). Niko will just simply get the job done. You want some drugs moved? Call Niko. You need a car picked up? Call Niko. Some guy needs capping? Call Niko. You want to go bowling? Call Niko...
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Real men smoke cigars. Real real men smoke cigars and wear ponchos while shooting Mexicans and spouting witty one-liners. Therefore, as far as we can ascertain, Clint Eastwood’s ‘The Man WIth No Name’ is the realest real man that’s ever walked the dusty plains of God’s green earth. Or the Mexican borderlands.
Det. John n o s u g r e F ’ e i t t ‘Sco
Either way, ‘The Man With No Name’ (or “Joe”, “Monco” or “Blondie”, or as he’s actually known in the movies–yes, he has three names you stupid, stupid director person) is a very cool dude. Not exactly a likable chap, however. Willingness to cheat you for a fistful of dollars? Check. Willingness to shoot you in the eye at a moment’s provocation? Check. Yet he’s never as bad as the folk he’s shooting, thumping, cheating or otherwise giving a good leadpeppering to, so that’s alright. We think. But still, that poncho’s cool.
James Stewart’s portrayal of Detective John “Scottie” Ferguson in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is magnificent. You may wonder how he could be considered an anti-hero, but his actions in the final run of the film are pretty despicable. You could say that circumstances have driven Scottie to that final point, and even sympathise with him. However, there is a great sense of uneasiness when watching his actions, an embarrassed discomfort at how he conducts himself that earns him a place here.
The Man With No Name
He descends from highly-regarded Detective to a mental patient, a man obsessed with his mistake, having been unable to save a woman he loved. Upon his release, his obsession returns, haunting the places he and the object of his affection attended. A chance encounter with a remarkably similar looking woman causes a level of fascination that, quite frankly, is scary. Gradually, he forces her to change her appearance to resemble his lost love. However, it turns out his mania is not unfounded as Hitchcock wonderfully reveals that the two girls are the same. Scottie, consumed with rage, confronts her atop the tower he thought she had fallen from. She reveals she loves him, and all is well. It doesn’t last long as she get scared by a shadowy figure and falls to her death. Scottie is cured of his Vertigo, but at the most horrific cost.
Jack Carter
Sarcastic, amoral, brutal, vicious and egocentric. These are probably the nicest things you could say about Jack Carter (As Michael Caine portrays him, for the purposes of this article, the Stallone remake-come-abomination never happened, okay?). He spends the entire film stomping, shooting and punching his way through a series of almost-as-despicable-as-he-is gangster sorts. Because he’s doing all this to find out who killed his brother and why, we’re supposed to be okay with it. And, to be honest, we are. Mostly.
It’s probably wrong that we cheer him on. It’s probably wrong that we want him to wreak his vengeance, to storm through those nasty Geordie gangsters like a dodgy curry through someone with IBS. But yet... He’s just achingly cool. He even has a pump-action shotgun, and everyone knows how cool they are. The man even has a great collection on oneliners. For instance: “You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself”. Y’see? That’s funny. And cool. And badass. We’re pretty sure that ticks every necessary box on the “funny, cool, badass antihero” list. Yes.
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Léon
THE GREATEST ANTI-HERO OF THEM ALL: Assassin, plant-lover, befriender of pre-teen girls, innocent man-child and hat wearer par exellence, Léon is, frankly, as cool as bad guys get. Yes, bad guy. There’s no denying it, he’s a bad guy. He kills people. For money. Man-child or no, this puts him quite firmly on the “bad guy” side of the moral fence. Still, those that he has to fight against are, in our eyes, badder “bad guys”. From Matilda’s abusive and neglectful parents to Gary Oldman’s corrupt, pill-popping, scenerychewing cop, everyone else makes Léon look like a paragon of virtue. The opening scene sets the tone beautifully. Silently, deliberately, Léon infiltrates a penthouse and, one-by-one, picks of the highly-paid bodyguards before quietly disposing of the main target. Then he goes home and drinks some milk while watering his plant. Later on he annihilates an entire SWAT team with the kind of panache that most of us will never know. Damn it. After being coaxed into an awkward friendship by Natalie Portman’s (in her best ever role) precocious street urchin, he teaches her how to care for plants, how to do sit-ups and how to ‘clean’ (i.e. how to blow someone’s head off from 300 yards away). Which is nice. He does all of this while wearing the worst braces, vest and beanie-hat combo the world’s ever seen. He even manages to pull of wearing Lennon-style sunglasses. Léon is the coolest bad guy we’ve ever seen.
‘Léon’ illustration by Tom Waterhouse www.2dforever.com
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By GREG
Part 2
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You Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things . . .
While the zombie movie has had peaks and troughs of popularity, our rotting friends have been a staple of gaming since the days when the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum roamed the plains. This issue, The Score looks at zombies in videogames.
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ossibly the first undead themed game arrived in 1984 in the shape of Sandy White’s Zombie Zombie on the Spectrum, which was itself a sequel to his acclaimed 3D Ant Attack, often heralded as the first example of the survival horror genre. Looking back, it’s a testament to the power of the imagination, and the skill of the programmer, that anyone ever thought that it had anything to do with zombies. It hasn’t aged well, though little from that era has. In 1990 a little publisher called UbiSoft released its first ever game across the home computer formats of the day. Zombi was an icon-driven arcade adventure which had the player controlling four characters trying to survive in a shopping mall full of zombies. Sound familiar? Like most games of its time, it was unbelievably difficult with most decisions ending with you dying badly, the same way. Again, and again and…again. Yet for fans of the film it kept dragging you back with its masochistic mix of promise and punishment – although the latter far outweighed the former. Things really kicked off for the undead in 1993, when a humble little shareware game called Doom was unleashed by iD software on the PCs of the day. Featuring the now ubiquitous lone space marine facing off against an army of beasties including the humble zombie cannon-fodder, Doom’s zeds are not your typical shambling flesh-eaters,
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preferring guns to teeth and gums. Doom was insanely popular and by 1995 it was estimated that the free version of the game (which only included the first set of levels) was installed on up to 10 million computers worldwide. It was nothing short of a revolution and its advances in 3D graphics, interactivity, network play and mature themes (if you consider punching zombie soldiers into meaty chunks mature) established iD as one of the first genuine superstar videogame developers. The series continues on to this day, with Doom 3 continuing the trend for mind-frazzling visuals set by its older brother and Doom 4 on the way – which will no doubt require a PC with the processing power of fifty networked Terminators to run properly. Those zombies will look lovely, mind. Like Wolfenstein 3D before it, the zombies in Doom were arguably there to stave off too many accusations of unacceptable violence by the hysterical moral majority, which may have been an issue if you’d spent hours eviscerating and detonating actual people. To be honest, it didn’t really work, especially given the spectacular levels of violence that the game (for the time) let players indulge in. The original game is referenced even now, in today’s world of Manhunt and Soldier of Fortune, as a touchstone for the alleged corrupting influence of videogames on children. While the zombies in Doom were little more than humans with slightly green skin and red glowing eyes, there hadn’t yet been a decent gaming portrayal of the archetypal Romero style zombie. That was, until 1996, the revolution in home gaming created by the launch of the Sony Playstation and the birth of a monster in modern gaming: Resident Evil.
Look Out!ster! It’s a Mon
With the success of the Playstation, gaming in the 90s crashed headlong into mainstream culture. While Tomb Raider was a pop culture sensation in its own right, Japanese developer Capcom plundered decades of western horror pop-culture to create their Biohazard (renamed Resident Evil in the West) series. Released in 1996, the original game was a stunning blend of beautifully rendered (though largely non-interactive)
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backgrounds, fixed camera angles which wound up the tension brilliantly as players would often be unable to see the groaning corpse shuffling towards them, tense gunplay, jump-out-of-your-seat shocks and hilariously camp voice-acting and dialogue. Most importantly though, the series gave gamers their first really accurate encounters with the zombies that most of them had grown up watching on VHS in the 70s and 80s in films like Dawn… and Day of the Dead. The similarities were so apparent that George A Romero himself was hired to direct the trailer for its sequel. The game and its many, many sequels and spin-offs (which at present stand at 18 titles including the four straight sequels, numerous light-gun games such as Resident Evil: Survivor and handheld console titles like RE: Deadly Silence on the DS) deal with the release of the zombiecreating T-Virus in Raccoon City by the evil Umbrella Corporation. The player takes control of various special-forces agents in an attempt to survive the outbreak and destroy the source of the infection. The series has followed the story from the haunted house setting of the first game and out into Raccoon City and its environs for the immediate sequels and prequels. However the series, which had wrapped up its main storyline by the end of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, was in need of a new direction – away from its existing mythology and traditional zombieblasting. With Resident Evil 4, the series certainly got that – and in the end Capcom and creator Shinji Mikami produced the most critically acclaimed installment so far. Resident Evil 4 is a study in how to reinvent an established series without actually changing that much of what made it appeal to its fans in the first place. Relocating the setting of the game to the mountains of Spain and changing the core enemies from zombies to a homicidal quasi-religious cult of ‘Ganado’s’, RE4 places the player in an utterly alien environment, with unintelligible but recognisably
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o s e r e w s e i t i “Similar that Romero apparent was hired to direct the trailer”
human opponents who want nothing more than to hack you to pieces. By making the people and places you encounter less out of the ordinary than the zombieinfested city of the first game, the game achieved a level of disturbing atmosphere and imagery that was quite unlike the preceding titles. By the first major encounter in a grim village, hopelessly outnumbered by Ganado’s coming at you from all angles, your ammo running out and no sign of refuge in sight the game had proved itself as a major leap forward in the survival horror genre. The intentionally awkward (or badly designed, depending on your opinion of the game) controls made surviving many encounters a matter of strategy, shot placement and crowd control. However, nothing ruins a carefully planned set-piece like the sheer animal panic that the sound of a revving chainsaw could instill in a player. Regardless of the fact that you are not facing zombies as we all know them, everything about these encounters contains the classic ingredients of a zombie attack. Despite a descent into a far hokier and traditional plot as the game progressed, Resident Evil 4 remains the highlight of the series so far–at least until the fifth iteration is released. Already plagued (pun intended) by accusations of racism, the next installment sees the action relocated once more–this time to Africa with hordes of black-skinned villagers attacking and being killed by the white-skinned hero. Pitched as a kind of ‘Black Hawk Down with zombies’, Resident Evil 5 looks to continue the series’ trends of extreme violence, shocking imagery and, more likely than not, ludicrous dialogue. Resident Evil has continued to be amongst the most eagerly anticipated of videogame franchises and has become, like the Metal Gear and Halo titles, one of those games where an army of fans await every iteration with baited breath. So popular has it become that the name itself has transcended the media on which it was created, spawning a wide variety of merchandise, movie adaptations, anime, books and action figures. However, Resident Evil is not the only kid on the block that knows how to stage a good oldfashioned zombie apocalypse.
Frank? Frank!?
FRAAAAANK!! What is it about Capcom and zed-heads? Not content with defining the survival horror genre with Resident Evil, the launch of the Xbox 360 saw them release what must surely be regarded as the definitive zombie-based title with the stunning Dead Rising. A superbly realised homage (and some–lawyers mainly–would say blatant ripoff) of the classic movie Dawn of the Dead, Dead Rising sees players faced with, literally, a shopping mall full of zombies and shops stuffed full of things to kill them with. It’s like a dream come true for anyone who’s ever been stuck in the Metro Centre on Christmas week. Players take the role of Frank West, a slightly sleazy freelance photojournalist who finds himself stranded in the Willamette Parkview Mall with a rag-tag band of fellow survivors, some government agents, various fruit-loop psychopaths (chainsaw juggling clown anyone?) and literally thousands of zombies - the power of the new generation of
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hardware allowing up to 800 of them on screen at any one time. Played in a kind of accelerated ‘real’ time with day and night cycles, over the course of three days Frank has to try and uncover the truth behind the outbreak. You also have the option of not following the main story at all and doing whatever you feel like – which will mainly involve arcing jets of gore and the inventive use of a tailor’s dummy. However, wise players would work on earning as many experience points as possible in order to rank-up Franks abilities. Once you reach the realms of level 30+, the game becomes a beautiful ballet of carnage with zombies splattering before Frank’s mighty fists and feet. There’s also the option of getting various ‘scoops’, which usually involved charging around saving survivors stranded in the huge mall or battling the memorable ‘boss’ style psychos which populate different areas of the map. The fact that you can do all or none of this while dressed in children’s clothes, or just your pants, is merely one of the things that make Dead Rising one of the weirdest games around. Whatever you’re wearing seamlessly carries over into all of the dramatic cut-scenes, which makes for some unintentionally hilarious undermining of tension. One of the most memorable things about playing Dead Rising is the unrestrained brilliance of its humour. It is quite simply one of the most bizarre, pitch-black and full on mental games out there. Whether it’s jamming a shower head into the skull of a staggering zombie and watching the gore spray out of the nozzle; trying on the vast array of clothes available in the many boutiques (the sight of Frank crammed into a tight dress and rubbing himself in the mirror surely ranks as one of the most disturbing sights in video-gaming); or trying out the simply huge array of weaponry available (hot frying pans, katanas, guitars, lawn-mowers, guns, sledgehammers, park benches, motorcycles and cream-pies are just a fraction of what is at your disposal), the world of Willamette Parkview Mall is up there as one of the most original sandbox environments around.
less is more
While games like Resident Evil and Dead Rising use the power of their console platforms to infuse their zombie-infested world with ever more realistic visuals, atmospheric music and cinematic storytelling (B-Movies are cinematic too, y’know), there is one game out there that attempts none of this and yet has drawn to it a substantial cult following that any big budget game would kill for. Urban Dead is a free-to-play, online, text-based adventure game that uses none of the fancy bells and whistles of Capcom’s big hitters but still manages to plunge players into a convincing world of never-ending zombie apocalypse. Launched in 2006 and created by Kevan Davis, a freelance videogames designer, Urban Dead is a Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Game (MMORPG) in which you and your friends can battle the undead as survivors, or eat the living as a zombie. With over one and a quarter million registered players, and around 30,000 of those active, Urban Dead might look like a cross between a council database and a C64 text adventure but the community that has sprung up around it has made it an experience that can be difficult to walk away from once it gets its teeth into you. Taking place in the towns of Malton and Monroeville, quarantined after a zombie outbreak, players take the role of either human survivors or zombie predators in a battle to control the
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city. The game itself is cyclical for its users, as dead humans rise again as zacks (as they have been named by the community), which can also be revived back into people by human characters with the right skills and equipment. The game itself is turn-based, players starting out with 50 action points which replenish by one every half an hour. This often turns sessions into tense fights for survival as, unless the humans can get themselves somewhere safe and barricade themselves in, they’ll find their character alone, unable to defend themselves and open to attack. Experience points are earned through combat and other actions and these can be spent on upgrading your character, which will be one of either military, scientist, civilian or zombie. The richness of the game world in Urban Dead isn’t to be found in its production design, or in any creator-enforced, clichéd plot about deadly viruses. Like any good MMO game, it’s the stories created by the community that show the strength and coherence of the game world. Thus, you have the tales of heroism of the Battle of Blackmore and the horror of the various Sieges of Caiger Mall, where hordes of over a thousand organized zacks were repelled by vastly outnumbered human survivors. You also have unique events like the peaceful protests by zombie players annoyed that they had less options for their characters than the humans, where the gathering of thousands of zacks at Malton Central Park led to server issues that were only resolved when creator Kevan Davies improved their options and the protest stopped. Therein lies the key to success and survival in Urban Dead–large groups working together toward a common goal. There’s a sense of community that defending humanity from the zombie hordes seems to create–one that is equally as strong as the desire of some to see those humans served up as a main course. Groups and organisations like The Channel 4 News Team, the Ministry of the Dead and the Ridleybank Resistance Front have all played a major role in making Urban Dead one of the most popular undead-themed games around, and one where the story might never end. The popularity of the zombie in videogames is at its zenith in today’s world of über-powerful consoles and online communities but, really, they haven’t away since the days of the 48k and 64k home computers. There’s something about the idea of a zombie apocalypse that obviously appeals to the gaming community (and let’s face it, the ‘geek’ community at large) because everywhere you look, you’ll find home-made tributes to the undead The advent of user-created content, originating in the PC mod-scene, has enabled access to a flood of zombie-content. From the professionally developed Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods Brainbread and Zombie Panic!, to the ‘Infection’ game variants created within the Forge of Halo 3, it seems that there’ll always be a place for the dead in the games we play. Surely it’ll only be a matter of hours before Sony’s family friendly Little Big Planet becomes host to a few hundred variants on Night of the Living Dead played out with a dozen hungry little sackboys. At least, until some zombie complains that they are offended by the portrayal of their culture. Next issue, the final part of The Score’s own zombie trilogy will look at the living dead in print, from bona-fide apocalypse survival guides to cannibalistic superheroes.
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K
lat-chak BOOM! Wibblywibblywibblywibbly... Fwooooossshhhhh. Klat-chak BOOM! Klat-chak BOOM! Glakka glakka glakka glakka glakka... It’s uncommonly rare for a game to embed itself in my poor, addled old brain. It’s even rarer for it to do so merely by dint of its sound effects. Yet, such is the case with Syndicate. Although it has been around for... ooh, too many years, frankly, it remains one of my all time favourite titles. “Why”, I hear you cry.
sojourn into the murky underworld of games” I reply. Here was a game that offered reams of choice, customisation aplenty and the chance for truly skillful, tactical play. Yet what did I do? Ran around assassinating policemen with my shotgun and then herded pedestrians into corners with the Persuadatron (Molyneux, you pillock, that’s the worst name for a sci-fi persuading gadget ever) before getting a nice barbecue going with my flamethrower, or whipping out the mini-gun and going all ‘Predator’.
pumpaction “Because it’s the single most visceral audio experience I’ve ever encountered in my long, lonely
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Child that I was. Am.
Jim
by
“i have never driven through radcliffe in a vauxhall nova”
Anyway, my point. I’m getting to it. This wasn’t because I was some kind of ‘delinquent yoof’. I have never set fire to a grandmother. I have never driven through Radcliffe in a Vauxhall Corsa, hurling knives, beer cans, obscenities and the dashed hopes of my parents at anyone within range. No, it was simply the fact that the sound was so well designed, so achingly addictive, that I simply had to keep playing, just so that I could hear the “Klat-chak BOOM! Wibblywibblywibblywibbly... Fwooooossshhhhh” of a shotgunPersuadatron-flamethrower combo. It was–and remains–a work of audio genius. This is not to say that excellent sound design acted as some sort of plush veneer on a sub-standard game. Oh no. Syndicate was a joy to play. From infiltrating enemy headquarters, capturing a scientist and then “escorting” him back to your HQ, to
assassinations and glorious running rampages where the streets seemed to teem with enemy cyborgs; there was a delicious variety to the game–laced with pitch black humour and a difficulty that was step enough to fill-in for Everest. Of course, visually, it doesn’t really stand up anymore;. While its isometric design has a certain charm and is particularly well-realised and detailed–it’s clearly a “homage” to Blade Runner–it’s beginning to show its age. We can’t help thinking that a modern re-interpretation would look absolutely stellar. Possibly contentiously, the one thing that we wouldn’t change would be the viewpoint. The isometric layout works very well, allowing you to see plenty of your surroundings and plan your course and method of attack. Forcing this into the now ubiquitous first or third-person viewpoints would rob it of much of its atmosphere and would certainly damage the sections of the title that require a more thoughtful approach.
The fact that your cyborg agents looked like comedy French Resistance fighters from ‘Allo ‘Allo certainly didn’t hurt proceedings. Yes, you could bionically enhance them so that they could take MASSIVE DAMAGE, think their way around Einstein and run faster than me when there’s a spider in the room. But what really made the game, what really clinched the deal, was the fact that you ran around in a trench-coat with a bright red beret. As you would if you were a super-enhanced cyborg spyassassin trying to operate covertly. I even used to commentate in a “comedy” “French” accent. ‘Zut a lors, I ‘ave meesed wun!’ Klat-chak BOOM! ‘Ohoho! Now I ‘ave you, mon ami! Death to zee Capitalist peegs!’ I loved this game. I still love this game. You should too. If you’ve never played it, or maybe never even heard of it (maybe you’re very young, new to videogames, or just an idiot), go
and buy this game immediately. I’m not even kidding, go and get it right now. You’ve no excuse, it’s easy enough to get hold of, it appeared on the PC, SNES, Amiga, Megadrive, even the Jaguar and 3DO. If you want something more modern, there’s the equally excellent Syndicate Wars on the original PlayStation. Go on, you’ve no excuse, it’ll only cost a few quid and you can even play it on your newfangled PS2 or PS3, of you must. Back? Got it? Yeah? Excellent. Now play it. No, seriously, bugger off and play it. Right, you’ve played it now, have you? It’s good, isn’t it? It’s more fun that it has any right to be, isn’t it? It’s possessed of the single best shotgun sound-effect ever recorded in the history of man, ever, yes? In fact, I still apply the “Syndicate test” to any game that features a shotgun. And that’s entirely Peter Molyneux’s fault. It’s entirely his fault that an entire generation (or three) of shooters have failed to satisfy me in any real or significant way. In combination with the fact the Fable 2 is currently consuming my life and colouring my opinionof all other videogames, I can come to only one conclusion: Peter Molyneux is evil. He must be stopped.
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Not country FOR FOROLD MEN MEN by tom
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Country and western. Do those words fill you with such bile that you want to puke up your Shreddies and throw a handful of stick insects down a well? Does the sight of a regiment of identically dressed faux-cowboy mothers from Surrey formation marching with their thumbs in the waistband of their jeans (and having the gall to call it dancing!) make you want to strap a tripping gorilla into the Oblivion ride at Alton Towers? Does the hellish screeching emanating from the cake-holes of so many abominable country ‘starlets’ make you want to roundhouse kick a Frankenstein?
If the answer to any of the above questions is ‘yes’, fear not friend, for you are not alone. For many, the phrase ‘country and western’ serves as a synonym for ‘laughable’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘universally hated’ when it comes to describing music. Epitomising the worst extremes of the assumed cultural wasteland that is middleAmerica, country music is often written off as solely the preserve of raccooneating rednecks and overweight divorcees with multiple hyphenated first names. Rampant stereotyping aside, it is fair to say that the vast majority of the popular country music that we are subjected to is formulaic, irrelevant and frankly, extremely annoying. rom Garth Brooks to Billy Ray Cyrus, from Shania Twain to The Chicks With Dix or whatever they’re called, so much irritating and pointless music is made under the banner of country and western that it is in fact entirely forgivable to want to avoid anything with even a hint of country influence behind it. I mean seriously, have you listened to ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ recently? That song is just the same idiotic verse over and over again for three and a half minutes.
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Hold Your Horses There are bound to be readers now champing at the bit to mention the name of a certain Mr Cash, and to them I say why are you wearing a bit? What are you, a gimp? Haha, BURN etc. But yes, there exists a subset of country artists who fused gospel, blues and the nascent attitudes of rock and roll to create a truly compelling sound. Sadly though, that legacy seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years, and their achievements are increasingly overwhelmed by the deluge of pop-tainted rubbish that now pollutes the genre. Despite the ill health of mainstream country music, its influence has popped up in a number of unexpected places over the last twenty or so years, cross-pollinating with a myriad of styles to great effect. Indeed it has spawned a whole sub genre known as alt-country (or alt.country if you want to be a pretentious twat), comprising bands and singer-songwriters such as Calexico, Bright Eyes, Cat Power and Lambchop who have fused indie and country influences to carve out their own niche. Alt-country has spawned some undeniably impressive albums over the years, but for our purposes here, it’s a little too easy. No, what I want to try and draw attention to are the dusty corners of some less obvious genres, where the fingerprints and preoccupations of country music have thrown up some easily overlooked, but fascinating hybrids.
"its influence has popped up in a number of unexpected places" 039
The Mob Goes Wild Country music shares much of its 20th Century history with that of blues and rock, from the first time Bob Wills added an electric guitar to his country band in 1938, from the days of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley setting teenage loins afire during the 50s and 60s, and through to the hard rock years of the 70s when bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top enjoyed a vast following. This trend continues through to the present day, and so-called Southern Rock having seen something of a revival of late, popularised, somewhat unfortunately, by brain-dead celebrity breast-wedder Kid Rock, with his hugely irritating Skynyrd-sampling 2008 single All Summer Long having received massive radio rotation, and hitting the top spot in many national charts. However for those looking for Southern Rock with a little more substance, Maryland’s Clutch have proved themselves time and again to be the thinking man’s party band. When a group has albums in their back catalogue with titles like Pure Rock Fury and Blast Tyrant, you’ll no doubt be expecting ‘slamming riffs’, ‘untamed aggression’ and ‘a fat, ugly drummer’. Clutch deliver such hard rock staples in spades, but what’s less predictable is the increasingly prominent country and blues influences making their way into the band’s output. The addition of Hammond organ and harmonica on later albums has marked the band’s transition from the more standard hardcore/metal sound of their early work, and singer Neil Fallon’s lyrics have evolved, taking on a more surreal, vibrant quality, often making references to history, mythology and religion. Clutch are that badass band you imagine playing behind a steel cage in a dirty biker bar in the middle of Nowheresville USA, matching every thrown beer bottle with a middle finger and a roar, except after the show they’ll come and chat to you about John Wilkes Booth, obscure blues history and cryptographic occultist Johannes Trithemius.
"Clutch have proved to be the thinking man's party band" 040
Down With The Prophets Moving from whiskey-soaked hirsute riff shovelling to the more experimental end of the rock spectrum, Texas’ Lift To Experience provided a dazzling, but sadly shortlived vision of where country music could be headed. They released but one album before self-combusting, 2001’s The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads, but that one album was so epic and so complete that it felt like an entire career distilled into less than ninety minutes of music. Instrumentally, the band fused soaring post-rock guitars with timeless, sky-scraping melodies, but Josh T. Pearson’s lyrics steal the show. Like some kind of Old Testament California Man frozen in time and thawed out during the post-hardcore explosion of the mid-90s, Pearson soaks the album in potent religious imagery, without ever sounding hackneyed or preachy. The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads, a quasi-concept double album, revels in that traditional preoccupation of country music – religion, and the apocalyptic prophecies of the Book of Revelation. The record tells a loose story of the end of days, with Texas serving as the new Promised Land, and the band as the chosen few, receiving visitations from angels and messages from The Lord while “minding their own business drinking their lone-star beer and smoking their Winston cigarettes”. It’s at its
best when consumed as a whole, allowing the imagery and narrative plenty of space to intertwine, and giving the epic scope and structure of the music the appropriate breathing room. One detail that’s easy to miss is that the song titles, when read together in sequence, form a kind of pseudopsalm summarising the concept. This inspired touch is a sign of the incredible confidence which informs the entire album, with Pearson proclaiming towards the end of single These Are The Days, “we’re simply the best band in the whole damn land… and Texas is the reason”. It’s hard to disagree.
Offered Up To The Stars And The Night Sky Post rock has seen a number of bands bring country influences to the table, despite their typical wordless approach seeming at odds with the rich storytelling aspect that pervades much of the best country music. The reason may lie in the ability of guitars, drums and violins, and the spaces between them, to effortlessly convey the sense of isolation, expanse and beauty of the desert and prairie landscape that informs so much of the country genre. A prime example is Dirty Three, a band centred on the mournful violin of Warren Ellis (also of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds), who over the course of seven albums have proved that you certainly don’t need lyrics
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Wicked And Weird to be lyrical. Ellis’ aching, plaintive melodies are effortlessly evocative of a place and time that most of us are unlikely to have experienced first hand (unless there are any bicentennial men out there). The rough-edged tone of the violin, and the loose, tumbling backing from Jim White’s drums and Mick Turner’s guitar, make every song feel like the soundtrack to an evening spent around a campfire under the stars, in the company of a couple of friends and a bottle of whiskey, with all the promises of an unexplored wilderness ahead of you. It’s tough to pick a highlight from Dirty Three’s exceptional back catalogue, or from their (and in particular Ellis’) roll call of collaborations but, if pushed, 2003’s She Has No Strings Apollo remains melodically their strongest album, and due to its live recording it retains the raw, soulful edge that many feel is slightly lacking in its follow up, Cinder. For a collaboration, look no further than their split with fellow slow-burning stargazers Low, from the 7th instalment of the In The Fishtank series. Ellis’ emotionally charged playing finds a perfect match in the fragile, pristine vocals of Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, with an epic cover of Neil Young’s Down By The River providing an unexpected highlight, and a testament to the potential of this stripped-bare, modern take on classic country music.
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One marriage which at first sounds doomed to failure is pairing country with hip hop, indeed it is surprisingly common to hear “I like everything except country and rap” as a summary when discussing musical tastes. This combination has certainly thrown up some heinous abominations, such as hog-wrasslin’, cousin-bothering, rap country bumpkin Bubba Sparxxx, but when in the hands of less ‘touched’ artists, the results can be far more encouraging. Buck 65 has been ploughing an unusual furrow for over a decade, and despite 2007’s Situation marking a return to a straighter rap sound, the mid period of his career saw him carving out a distinct niche in the world of leftfield hip hop. Hailing from the backwoods of Nova Scotia, he’s always had a rickety, broken down charm that belies both his age and the genre in which he operates. Buck comes across like a gravel-voiced old man sitting on his porch telling stories to passers-by, scratching on homemade, steam-powered decks, and albums such as Square and Talkin Honky Blues prove him to be just as entertaining to listen to as that awesome old man I just made up. His 2003 single Wicked And Weird was an old-fashioned road song in the truest sense, a love letter to rusty cars and dusty roads. On record, Buck’s raps are backed by twanging banjo, bass and slide guitar, but before the release of the track’s parent album Talkin Honky Blues, he was performing the song in a stripped down, virtually a cappella form that honestly wouldn’t have sounded out
"they've managed to scrape the makeup from the acceptable face of country" of place in the corner of Deadwood’s Gem saloon. The sight of a rapping Canadian dressed in overalls, brandishing a miner’s lamp, stomping his foot and accompanying himself on a Jew’s harp is not one that leaves the mind easily, and encapsulates everything that makes Buck 65 such a breath of fresh air in modern hip hop.
Country Roads So hopefully there’s enough evidence here to at least prevent country music from being taken outside and kicked in its collective knackers. Each band mentioned above has taken a pinch of country (if you’ll forgive the expression), applied it to their own music and ended up with a result that confounds expectations, and takes their genre in a fresh direction. Whether it’s adopting the distinctive instrumentation, finding a flair for enthralling and portentous imagery, or simply inheriting an attitude handed down from generations of grizzled frontiersmen, all of these musicians have managed to scrape the make-up from the acceptable face of country and dig down to
the honest core of this ultimately misrepresented musical legacy. Sadly it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see the fruits of these artists’ efforts filter back into the mainstream, and the country music we hear on the wireless will still be dominated by the Shanias of this world. Let’s face it – bands and labels will always rake in mega-bucks in the US by churning out album after album of unchallenging pop songs sung with a Southern drawl. But let’s write them off. Strike them from our definition. From now on when we talk about country music we are talking about those bands that are still pushing the boundaries, but respecting the traditions of this venerable music form. And finally, here’s hoping that their achievements inspire a generation of successors to take up the mantle, and keep proving to the world that country music is about more than just crying because your pig’s left you and your daddy’s done drunk all the moonshine.
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Five of theBest I
n April 2007 the world lost one of its great literary talents. For close to fifty years Kurt Vonnegut had graced us with his particular brand of winding, endearing and honest story telling, providing insight and entertainment to millions and inspiring a new generation of writers. Vonnegut’s novels are packed with imagination, humour and humanity; veering between genres, from autobiography all the way to pure science fiction, often within the space of a single book. His ramshackle approach to narrative and structure belies a keen eye for thematic clarity, and lends his work an apparently effortless conversational style that makes for easy digestion and which handsomely rewards repeat readings. An eventful life informed an equally eventful career, with the author’s work prompting both accolade and outcry; but throughout it all, Vonnegut retained a unique voice that will be sorely missed. The Score takes a look at five of Kurt Vonnegut’s best, a selection that no discerning bookshelf should lack.
Kurt Vonnegut by Tom L
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The Sirens Of Titan (1959)worst thing that could pos i d
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he Sirens Of Titan’ tells the story of Malachi Constant, a man born into riches and in possession of remarkable good luck that sees him becoming the wealthiest man on Earth. He unwittingly becomes subject to the machinations of forces beyond his understanding and is propelled on a solar system spanning journey that sees him take part in a Martian attack on Earth, become marooned on Mercury, be installed as a Messiah figure for a new religion and ultimately travel to the moon of Titan to meet the man responsible for setting him on this path, Winston Niles Rumfoord.
In Constant’s journey, and the vortex of layered forces that surrounds him, Vonnegut tackles that most perplexing and divisive of human themes – religion. With a story filled to the brim with individuals shrewdly manipulated towards unknowable ends by forces outside the scope of their immediate comprehension, ‘The Sirens Of Titan’ can be read as a damnation of religion as a tool for control. Do not dismiss the book as atheist polemic however: Vonnegut paints a graceful picture of a solar system full of individuals merely longing for hope, direction and an end to their loneliness. That ‘The Sirens Of Titan’ was only Vonnegut’s second full-length novel is astonishing. Even this early on in his career his trademark style of loose, almost casual story telling is present and correct, and masks a plot so elegantly constructed that it virtually necessitates multiple readings to fully absorb. When all the narrative strands eventually come together, and the realisation hits that everything that has come before was in fact a seemingly effortless set up to a perfect punch line, it’s impossible to shake a palpable feeling of awe at the sudden, blinding revelation of the scope of Vonnegut’s achievement. Imagine how you might feel if the first time you got in a plane, and saw your world from the air, you suddenly realised that the lights dotting the countryside spelled out a jaw-dropping secret. The conclusion of ‘The Sirens Of Titan’ leaves the reader with a similarly inspirational and humbling shift in perspective.
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Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) T
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On Tralfamadore, says Bil y Pilgrim, there isn’t much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the- Twhoralfamadori a n mi n d, he says, i s Charl e s Darwi n ttahughtat corpses that thoseare whoimprovdieementares. Someantit togoes.die,
he book that m ade his name, ‘Slaughterhous Vonnegut’s fic e-Five’ is Kurt tio nalised accoun World War Tw t of his experi o. Vonnegut se ences during rved in the US scout, and was Army as an in captured in 19 fantry 44 while on op German lines erations behind . He was held as a prisoner witnessed the of war in Dresden Allied firebom , and bing that oblit erated the city In ‘Slaughterho in 1945. use-Five’, Vonn egut recounts through the ch these events aracter Billy Pi lgrim, an Optom become “uns tuck” in time, etrist who has experiencing and from his pa uncontrollable st, present and jumps to future. These his war time in jumps take hi carceration to m from the moment of his comfortab his own murde le post war life r, from to his time spen alien world of t in captive on Tralfamadore. the The Tralfamad orians, first m entioned in ‘T are explored he Si in greater deta il here. They ar rens Of Titan’, perceiving all e described as of time simulta neously, an id Pilgrim’s nonea that paralle linear existenc ls Billy e, with Vonneg his favourite th ut again explor em ing with these over es of determinism and freew arching ideas are the more di ill. Coupled observations rect and viscer on war, and its al affect on those jumps in time involved. Pilgri appear to illus m’s trate two truths demonstrate th of war. Firstly, e extent to whi they ch the human dislocate itsel mind is forced f from its pres ent situation in to times of true ho or der to survive rror. Secondly, they serve as that for those a chilling rem involved, no m inder atter how long in question oc ago the events curred, their ex periences will contained in th never be safe e past. ly ‘Slaughterhous e-Five’ attracted release, not fo widespread cr r the standard iticism on its of the writing, of the language but for the qu . Vonnegut didn ality ’t irreverence th at was common hold back on the cursing an d place amongs conversations t the combata , and the use of nts’ the word ‘mot particular outra herf**ker’ caus ge. Due to this ed controversy th banned from e book was many Americ an libraries and sc seems fairly lik hools, but it ely achievement as that to Vonnegut, this was as much of an the work’s late r acceptance for educationa as a text suitabl l purposes. e
Breakfast of Champions (1973) V
onnegut’s darkest novel, and a vicious satire on the vacuous nature of 1970s middle America, ‘Breakfast Of Champions’ sees the protagonist, car dealer Dwayne Hoover, gradually losing his grip on reality due to the “bad chemicals” in his head. Hoover’s descent into madness is catalysed by an obsession with the writings of dishevelled, unsuccessful science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, in particular a story in which a man discovers that he is the only being in existence with free will, and that everyone else around him is an unthinking, unfeeling automaton. Hoover’s bad chemicals lead him to believe that the book is a message aimed directly at him, a belief that eventually leads him on a bloody rampage. Trout is a common character in many of Vonnegut’s books, and serves as his fictional alter ego, as well as his outlet for allegorical story sketches and ideas. The book’s epilogue sees Vonnegut himself entering the story to meet with Trout, to bring him “a wholeness and inner peace” and to set his creation free. Despite the religious overtones inherent in such a meeting, the heart of this dimension-crashing rendezvous, and the story’s true core are the twin themes of determinism and purpose.
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Dwayne Hoover is a man who has achieved everything his society has told him is important but feels hollow to his core, entirely devoid of purpose. A man who, mistakenly, comes to realise he is the sole possessor of free will when in fact that realisation is driven by chemical forces in his brain; forces he is powerless to resist, or even identify. Trout on the other hand unwittingly provides Hoover with the inspiration for acts of meaningless cruelty, but is himself merely the puppet of his creator. For a novel sprinkled with black humour, and crude drawings of cows, underpants and vaginas, ‘Breakfast Of Champions’ packs a devastating emotional punch, and leaves the reader feeling bruised and broken at its conclusion.
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Galapagos (1985)
‘G
alapagos’ is something of a rarity amongst Vonnegut’s novels, as one of the key characters is female. Throughout the majority of his work, women are depicted more as ciphers than characters, rarely being given much breathing room in the narrative, and are often (in his early books in particular) portrayed as status-hungry, manipulative and vacant. Whether this is a product of the culture and society in which he began writing, or if it came from another, deeper source (Vonnegut’s mother lost her mind and committed suicide in 1944) is not clear, but it remains an unavoidable facet of his writing. The woman in question is Mary Hepburn, a widowed teacher who joins a small cast of characters on “The Nature Cruise Of The Century” aboard the Bahia De Darwin, a ship bound for the Galapagos Islands. The cruise ship acts as an accidental escape capsule for its passengers, as the world around them crumbles due to a crippling economic crisis, and a virus renders the rest of the human race incapable of reproduction, leading to its extinction. The story is narrated by the ghost of Kilgore Trout’s son, Leon, from one million years in the future. By that point in time, the passengers of the Bahia De Darwin have sired a new human race that has evolved to suit its new conditions. Flippers, beaks and streamlined skulls (and hence greatly reduced brain size) are the characteristics that define a successful organism on this bleak island habitat, as catching fish and avoiding sharks are now the order of the day. This physical evolution has necessitated a reduction in the attributes that had previously caused the species to thrive, most significantly their big brains, leading to a divorce from the complexities and tribulations that high intelligence brings. Despite this apparent rejection of the over-complication of modern society, ‘Galapagos’ buzzes with cultural references, from the quote spewing proto-PDA Mandarax to a hilarious appearance from the Bahia De Darwin’s Captain Von Kleist on ‘The Tonight Show’. The playful structure and faintly ridiculous narrative makes for an amusing and accessible read, and it remains the closest Vonnegut came to producing a light-hearted adventure yarn. True to form however, ‘Galapagos’ is peppered with just enough wry commentary and subversive wit to keep it’s head bobbing above the dangerous waters of farce.
‘heI’l whitesl pered, you whathis eyesthe Human soul i s , Mary’ , ” cl o sed. ‘Ani m al s don’knowst havwhene one.yourItbrai’s thne ispartn’t workiof nyoug ritghhtat. II alcoulwaysd doknew,aboutMary. T h ere wasn’ t anyt h i n g it, but I always knew’. 048
Timequake (1997) F
irst published in 1997, ‘Timequake’ came at the end of a period of creative difficulty for Vonnegut. He had not completed a novel for almost a decade, and the critical reception for his last couple of works had been mixed. In 1996, he found himself holding a story that was not working, nearly ten years of work that was looking likely to be wasted. So Vonnegut gutted what he had already written (what he refers to as ‘Timequake One’), and proceeded to reconstruct and rewrite the remains as part science fiction ramble, part autobiography. The central premise sees the titular Timequake zap everybody back ten years, forcing them to relive whatever they had done during the preceding decade, with all the knowledge and memories of what was to come, but without the ability to change their actions. The fictional half of the book follows Kilgore Trout in the chaos that comes in the wake of the end of the ten-year rerun, as the world’s population finds themselves unable to handle the sudden return of their free will. Trout becomes an accidental hero as he snaps people out of their stupor with the cry of “You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do!”.
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Interspersed with these fictional passages are what makes ‘Timequake’ truly special. Vonnegut sprinkles anecdotes, jokes, reminiscences and observations from his life throughout, making this his most personal work, and the closest to a memoir that he ever produced. These stories are by turns hilarious, touching and heartbreaking, and together they make Timequake into a manual for living, an instruction set on how to leave the world in a better state than which you found it.
,dea d d
I can’t finish this article without taking Vonnegut’s lead and mentioning myself in the closing stages. I don’t know if anyone else does this when they read a book, but I always turn up the bottom corners on pages that contain those rare sentences or phrases that I find particularly moving, significant or inspiring, that make me stop reading so I can savour them for a few minutes. My copy of ‘Timequake’ has a corner turned up every two or three pages.
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Who will watch the Watchmen? Will we ever get to watch the Watchmen? Will the watchers of the Watchmen ever be happy with it? Why does writing ‘Watchmen’ this many times make the word look all weird and wrong? Anyway, the film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ epic graphic novel is nearing completion and I’ve been pondering a few of those questions. Watchmen is widely considered to be one of, if not the, greatest comic book series/graphic novel ever written. Published in the late 80s, it’s been credited with creating the graphic novel format, smashing preconceptions that comic were for kids, making the blind walk, the crippled see and several mysterious spontaneous pregnancies (or it would’ve if anyone other than overweight, spotty males with arrested development actually read comics – of course, I’m kidding). So why am I wondering whether we’ll ever get to see it? Well, the rights are in dispute – and given their not exactly smooth gestation from page to screen that’s hardly a surprise. Although given the amount of money that’s already been spent on bringing it to film I hardly think that the two studios concerned will spit the dummy and refuse to allow it to be seen. However, stranger things have happened. I mean, look at Guy Ritchie for heaven’s sake – he made Swept Away AND Revolver and people are still giving him money for Cockernee Wide-Boy Heist Lark 3. The question of who will watch it and whether they’ll be happy should be the more pressing concern for those involved in its production. Apart from,
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it transpires, Alan Moore, who has washed his hands of any attempt to adapt any of his work – and with the abhorrence that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen who can blame him? Watchmen is beloved of so many comic-book store fanboys that you can guarantee that they’ll never be happy with whatever Zack Snyder comes up with. They’ll attend the previews and first weekend screenings, but as soon as the forums and websites start filling up with incoherent bile then the rest’ll avoid it like small talk with a girl. So what about everyone else? Well, essentially, what we have with Watchmen is a big-budget adaptation of a comic that 85% (that’s real maths, kids) of the mainstream cinema-going public have never heard of, starring a cast of unknowns playing vigilante heroes no-one has heard of in a murder-mystery plot that takes in the cold war, nuclear Armageddon, the deconstruction of the hero archetype and a massive bright blue radioactive penis. Does this sound like the spiritual successor to Spiderman 3? Despite my cynicism though, I’m actually looking forward to seeing it. I’m a huge fan of Watchmen and comics in general, despite being a well-balanced, responsible adult in my 30s with children of my own. I’m just realistic that it’s never going to reach the giddy heights of quality that Alan Moore’s source material achieves. Unfortunately that’s not enough for some people, who will demand Zack Snyder’s head on a stick for the grievous offense of not having the right shade of leather for
Rorschach’s coat. So, in defence of the upcoming film and any other adaptation of challenging material, here’s a novel idea: Why don’t we just accept that it’s not possible to adapt some literary material into 150 minutes of cinema? Why don’t we put our unrealistic expectations aside and try to enjoy the films for what they are - which I fear is exactly what we’re going to have to do with Watchmen. When Terry Gilliam (a man not exactly known for his willingness to back down from a project) declares it ‘unfilmable’, what he’s saying is that it is unfilmable in terms of the degree to which he is willing to stray from the source and accept studio compromise - not much I would imagine, given his track record. When Zack Snyder (a director I have lot of time for following 300 and his reimagining – urgh – of Dawn of the Dead but who isn’t yet in the same league as Gilliam) then goes ahead and adapts it, what you’re going to end up with is a film that has some of the same themes as the comic but will be chock full of compromises placed there at the insistence of the studio funding it. So who watches the Watchmen then? I will, I just won’t be judging it on it’s slavish adherence to the source material. I have the source material available to read at any time - a film adaptation, good or bad, isn’t going to change my mind about how awesome it will always be.
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WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHMEN ?
t a n w o d w o h S l a r r o C l a c o L the Y by Chris M
our local pub, taxis flying by as people come and go. You enter, preferably with friends in tow, and you scope the scene. Regulars prop up the bar, stabilising their drunken bodies. In the corner, four old gentlemen, engrossed in a hectic game of dominoes. At the back, on stage, are a young band, blaring out covers as the clientele sit, heads nodding in unison. The typical rough locals sat lonely, shaven headed, an empty glass in their hand waiting for someone, anyone to eyeball them. A gaggle of women all laugh frivolously, eyeing up the local male ‘talent’, their prey for the night. The barman struts his stuff, locked in conversation with anyone who cares to listen. The whole décor is oak laden, a style that man, and time forgot. It’s a regular scene, experienced by many people all over the land every weekend night. Now exit that scene, re-enter and see it with a new perspective… Your local bar, horses tied to posts at the front. You enter, on your own for fear of violence, and you scope the scene. Regulars prop up the bar, the spurs in their boots stuck violently into it to stabilise their drunken bodies. In the corner, four old gentlemen, engrossed in a game of poker, winners whooping with delight as the loser grips his gun. At the back, on a ramshackle stage are an old band, banjos being strummed rigorously as the clientele ignore it nonchalantly. The typical rough locals sat, ten gallon hats perched on their heads, hands locked to their waists, a finger on the gun safety. A gaggle of women all laugh frivolously, pimping their wares to any rapscallion who wishes to pay the price for love. The barman struts his stuff, serving sarsaparilla, bourbon and rum to all and sundry. The whole décor is oak laden, contemporary and stylish… Look a little deeper on your night out, and you’ll see the resemblance. The modern pub is a reflection of a time of yore. Just watch out for those damn shootouts when you decide to stumble home…
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BOND, JAMES BOND. mr.crayon: Anyone for a Bond thread? IMOs to follow: Best Bond: Timothy Dalton Best Film : License to Kill Best theme: Living Daylights. (A-Ha) Tilt Araiza: Connery seems to enjoy killing way too much. In the books, Bond is capable of killing ruthlessly, but something about it eats away at him (viz. Goldfinger in which he’s in a state of despair over killing a guy, even though it was self-defence and Man With The Golden Gun where he can’t bring himself to shoot Scaramanga in the back of the head). Fleming’s Bond is a killer, but he’s a hot-blooded killer, not cold-blooded. I was totally won over by Daniel Craig and C a s i n o R o y a l e , but before that I was very much a Dalton/Licence To Kill man. Yix: I suspect we’re all in agreement, regardless who’s the best Bond, that McGoohan would’ve made a pretty bad one. mr.crayon: I read this thing once where Bond asks for a drinks shaken to dilute the drink even further. Some might say he is being sensible on the job, others may call him a jessie. Also, Jason Bourne or Bond who would win? Euan: Bond in coolness. Bourne in killing him in the eye.
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DESIRE Yix: I want to be dragged away for an event or occasion kicking and screaming. Y’know, actually kicking and screaming as though my life depended on it. Having my life depending on it would sweeten the experience no end. I want to shout at someone, “Stay away from my children!” and genuinely mean it. Because it is an phrase I identify as being quite feminine, I would be satisfied to hear my future sweetheart (the poor unfortunate soul) do so. I want to have my eye shot through, leaving only an unnaturally large, bleeding, gaping hole but still be alive so I can slowly stand up and look my assailant full-stare with the space where my eye should be. I want to learn how to ride a skateboard facing against the direction of travel. We all have unusual wants and desires, most likely drawn up in the throes of daydreams and play-thinking. What do you want? Tom: I want to have open chest surgery under local anaesthetic so I can see inside myself. This probably won’t happen. I want to kit a hot-air balloon out with a massive sound system so I can float in the sky at night listening to Stars of the Lid at massive volume whenever I want. This might happen if I get really rich somehow. When I’m 70ish (so probably with 10-15 years left to live) I want to cryogenically freeze myself and leave instructions to wake me up for a month or so every thousand years. This may or may not be medically possible, but my missus also made me promise that I wouldn’t do it if she was still alive when I get to that age. Subatai: I want to be shot in the chest [with both a pistol and shotgun. No, not at the same time] whilst wearing a bullet proof vest to see how painful it really is. I want handshakes to be replaced by high fives. I want mobile phones to not have speaker functions and a limit on length and volume of ringtone. I want police to have the ability to take action more readily. I want a set of jet wings like Fusion Man so I can get around more easily. Larry David: Run over Jeremy Clarkson in a car that he dislikes Become Prime Minister and sell Buckingham Palace to a German Hotel chain to annoy Daily Mail readers. I’ll then force the Royal Family to move into a squalid bedsit in Glasgow and re-distribute their wealth to people who actually deserve it. Punch Mark Ronson in the face Seduce Megan Fox Become head of the BBC and immediately cancel Last Of The Summer Wine, burn all remaining copies of Keeping Up Appearances and run over Jeremy Clarkson again in the BBC carpark. Take my C.V to ITV and cancel Coronation Street and anything with Simon Cowell in it. Then I’ll run over Simon Cowell as he’s leaving the building and I’m on my way to the BBC to run over Jeremy Clarkson again. In an electric car.
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Counselling the Bra ke the Emergency Exit s during Procedure by Khai The courtyard of St. Engelbert’s Boys Sch ool. The courtyard is ple asant and breezy, wit h illumination uncom approaches the last fortably bright as the stages of a supernova sun . St. Engelbert’s can empty bottles littering be seen in the backgr the windowsills and ound, Silas Ultrase, the hea by the entrance. Jogge dm aster, sprawled naked rs loop a circle UL, a row of archery target the Aurora Borealis s has been set up R UC (optional). There and are occasional crowd s of bored-looking par ents. When the CURTAIN rises, Felicity Express, mid-forties and plump Darster, late-forties -looking, and Henfrie and a kleptomaniac, start shouting. They fashion and are quick are both industrious, to temper although embrace easily placated with the mention of sweet corn. Express Oh, good sho w! Good show, you kn ow. Darster I know, I kn ow. Express And that qu ick flick of the wrist – oh! His mother wo Darster Mmm, I kn uld be so proud, you ow. Especially if she know. wasn’t dead. Express Oh, what an awful accident that was, you know? Darster What, lookin g for a jelly mould in the streets of Coven Mafia gunfire? Oh, I try and stumbling int know, I know. o Express Still, it wa s bound to happen. She was one of them, Darster What, poor? you know. Express shudders an d signs the cross as Samuels Gin, early-t up a camera and tripod hirties, enters and set opposite. He is hand s some, amiable and a unfortunately driven brilliant composer by self-piteous study of monkeys. His play act is skilful and con is maladroit but the vincing. Express Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Gin Hmm? Express You can’t do that here (striding tow ards Gin), you’re no you know? t on bloody holiday, Express carries Darst er and a small group of Daily Mail readers in her wake. Express You have to get permission from every parent on site, and police. You know as well as tell the sch ? In case you’re one ool of them. This could hands, you know? easily fall into the wr ong Darster There’s pae dophiles everywher e, we’re told. Express And terror ism! Terrorism funds paedophilia, you kn Darster And gays. Ma ow! ybe lesbians too! Express … what’s tha t got to do with anyth ing?
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Darster I’m just say ing, is all. Express So you can either leave right thi s instant or we’ll arr do that, we have cit est you – we can izen’s rights, you kn ow! (whispering) I’v arrest someone! Yip e always wanted to pie! Gin Look, to be hone st, I didn’t know thi s was a problem and to cause a fuss, especi I don’t really want ally today. How about if I make copies for want one? anyone here, if they Express Ha! See! Th at’s precisely what we ’re on about, you kn of pornography, right ow! Wilful exchange here in the school as well! You should be Africa or something locked away in ! Darster (to Gin) Act ually, that’d be quite nice, yeah, cheers. Express Henfrie! Darster What? He’s my bloody son too, you ’d think I’d be alrigh Gin Cool, what’s you t with this! r address? I’ll send it to you on disc. Express Henfrie, ho w can you trust this man? He looks like Darster Darling, he’ one of them, you kn s wearing a corduroy ow. jacket. Daily Mail reader (whispering) Kiddie -fid dlers don’t wear cor Express That’s how duroy? they get you, you kn ow? That’s how they Darster By wearing get you! corduroy? Daily Mail reader I bet he’s an Arab too . Gin Actually I’m qu arter-Dutch. Daily Mail reader That’s in Arabbia, isn ’t it? Express Henfrie, I absolutely forbid you to exchange our add DVD-obsessed, cordu ress with this roy-wearing paedop hile. End of story! Darster Come on dar ling, don’t you want to have it on tape, ou off the competition? r son beating Express He’s only got the one limb! What is he possibly going to Daily Mail reader win? (excited) Is it like a really massive limb cripples have those‘cause sometimes Express And who the hell are you? Henfrie, we’re goinExpress pauses to siz e up Gin. A spoonful of javelins emerge L, crowd who remain en narrowly missing a tranced with the offsta ge mud wrestling. Express You know. I’ve never seen you around before. Not evenings. Or the fun at any of the parents’ draisers. Who’s you r son here? Gin What?... Oh, Ch rist’s spine, no! Dear Go d no, I wouldn’t sen Christ! d my child here.
Gin exits
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