The internet is replete with comics; in fact they’re probably second in number only to lolcats at this point, which means that whether you’re looking for single panels of physics-based humour, stick figures discussing other comics or artfully rendered cherubs talking in dirty limericks then your heart’s strangest and most specific comic desires are only a few clicks away. Of my current crop of favourites Hark! A Vagrant is probably one of the best, like a broader church, less narrative Action Philosophers, which mixes historical strips with staples of popular and culture and gleeful absurdities. Best of all, it’s made the transition to the handy paper-based format known as the book, for when you aren’t just killing time and fancy spending an entire evening or a lazy Sunday afternoon guffawing.
Hark! A Vagrant is the work of Kate Beaton, a graduate of history & anthropology whose real talent seems to lay in uncovering the stranger elements of history (Jules Verne wrote Poe fan-mail? wtf?) and laying them out in all their comic splendour. The black-and-white art is detailed and communicative without being overly cluttered, with the stylised characters foregrounded to tell their stories and the famous figures instantly recognisable despite being. Still the highlight of the art has to Beaton’s cartooning, which is second-to-none, and even where the book reprints some rougher sketch material or older, slightly less-detailed strips the characters have a nuance of expression which sells every setup and every punchline effortlessly.
The comic balances a love of the literature, pop culture and history it deals with and an anarchically iconoclastic approach to their central figures and conceits and while the references to Canadian history are some distance outside the areas I can claim even a passing familiarity to, the strips are generally accompanied by enough in the way of annotation that they make sense even to the clueless foreigner. The humour is clever and ludicrous by turns, witty and incisive but never cruel, and the sense of the enjoyment that has been taken in the craft is evident on every page. The book, in short, is a joy, and the website contains a wealth of addition material, including more background on a number of the strips, that you should check out. Buy the book, visit the site, and look forward to many more years of Hark! A Vagrant.
Let’s start with a statement of intent and a disclaimer: This is not intended as an attack on all religions, on all faiths or on all practises of the same. Despite my occasional bemusement I have no problem with people believing almost anything they choose or feel called to believe and living their personal lives according to whatever dictates and doctrines make sense to them. Although I’m, obviously, both an atheist and a staunch secularist I count people from several faiths, with varying levels of piety and orthodoxy, amongst my friends and family and have found that they’re just as tolerant of my lack of faith as they expect me to be of their beliefs. Even where we have disagreements, not always stemming from religious differences, we accept that the other person has the right of self-determination, to live how they choose and to accept whatever metaphysical consequences there are for that right.
Chances are, if you’re reading this in the UK, then you already know of Tyrannosaur or at least follow the careers of one or more of its main cast, Peter Mullan and Olivia Coleman, or it’s director Paddy Considine, whose first full-length film this is, being an expansion of the preceding short, Dog Altogether. Any one of those names is usually enough to recommend a film, with all three together, particularly in the kind of bitterly brittle drama British cinema excels in, being something of a perfect storm even before the awards and accolades began to gather in the blood-stained dirt around their ankles. If none of this means anything to you then I’d suggest an introductory course comprising Orphans, Neds, Exile and The Red Riding Trilogy. Or you could just take my word for it…
Concerns first emerged when the Fox Searchlight banner filled the screen, the in-house indie films of major studies apparently existing as the result of a business model which acknowledges no such thing as irony. But I think Election was a much-better film than your at-best foggy memory of it deserves, and I think George Clooney is of that odd subgroup of male actors whose movie star status is pinned to a handsomeness which obscures his actual talent. Granted it got him through some fairly ropey misfires (his Batman costume had nipples) and that rather leaden stint on ER… Anyway, this is not about George Clooney.
There’s something undeniably hypnotic about Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, about the regular progression in the increasing otherness of the images on display, but for all the delivery is calm, almost purposefully dull in Florence Delay’s placid and measured French, there’s an air of the delirious about some sections of the film, where visual calamity and asynchronous cacophony combine until the film feels like it’s going to burst with an intensity which can abate as quickly as it forms.
It was the perils of straying too close to my hometown, and the hometown of my first love, I suppose, which changed me from down-on-my-luck to extremely-down-on-my-luck in the matter of a second, or slightly less. It was freezing out, one of those days when a combination of icy rain and a wind that seemed to cut through even the thickest coats dropped your body temperature to something barely above freezing, almost as soon as you stepped outside. It was also one of those days when events conspired to keep me outside for a disproportionate amount of time, flitting between depressing appointments and frustrating meetings.
