Interview with Stewart Lee

It seems right that I start my interview with Stewart Lee by asking about an e-mail he had sent to promoters of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, criticising a poll they had created to find the public’s Comedy God. He’d suggested that no one would vote for 1981 winners Frank Chickens. The e-mail then became public and was picked up by Twitter users who, en masse, began voting for them.

Who is your comedy god? Is it the Frank Chickens?

Well, that was a complete accident in that I sent this e-mail at 12:15 at night having had three pints. If I’d had two I wouldn’t have been bold enough to send it and if I’d had four I would’ve been asleep.

I only mentioned them as an example off the top of my head as something that’s sort of like art from the past when the awards were a bit more arty, a bit more cabaret based and if you have a poll like that, they’re exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t get mentioned because no one knows who they are.

Funnily enough, if it meant that the corporate funding thing ended up trickling down to them it’d be really funny, because it would’ve done what corporate sponsorship was supposed to, rather than going to somebody who’s already a multi-millionaire.

Richard Herring and Robin Ince have kind of taken the baton in trying to get votes for the Frank Chickens.

I think that’s really great. The Fringe is supposed to be about things like that. It’s not supposed to be about consolidating the reputation of hugely successful established people.

In light of this not being in the spirit of The Fringe, are you any less looking forward to Edinburgh?

Nica Burns said she thought this vote was going to be a bit of summer fun, to give people the opportunity of voting for Michael McIntyre or Russell Howard to be Comedy God of All Time, because the only people who vote are the sort of people who vote for things that happen in the last six months, but it will be fun now because this is going to create a dialogue about what the point of the festival is.

I always look forward to The Fringe enormously. I’m so excited by it every year, going through the programme and seeing what’s on… When that thing was first announced, I was thinking it was going to ruin it, but now it could be anyone, which is really good fun.

You’re playing at The Stand, which is quite a small venue. Surely you could fill a bigger room?

The good thing about The Stand is the infrastructure in place and they’re really fair so you earn as much there as you would doing a 400-seater in the comedy festival. By the ‘comedy festival’ I mean the big four venues, because the overheads are lower.

Now when I tour, I do slightly bigger rooms, 500-seaters, whatever, and I think the best space for a comedy gig is 150-160-seater room. So, at least I know I ram the gig in in that room and I know where the laughs fall and what the timing is.

When I do a vast echoey room that should never have comedy in it, like Reading Town Hall, instead of actually playing that room, I’m playing the memory of the Stand.

The Stand is a great place to work out the show every year because it’s the perfect comedy room. What you try and do is hang onto that feeling, ‘cos a lot of these big rooms you can’t hear anything, the acoustics are really bad and you can’t see anyone. You have to have at the back of your mind what a proper gig is, and impose that timing over those big rooms.

You don’t feel contaminated by being there, by all the shit of the world. It’s just really nice. There seems to be a perfectly good reason why everyone there is on.

So, it’s not part of some Kitson-esque desire not to be too popular?

No, but there is a desire not to disappoint people on a Friday night. If I was in a big venue at one of the big four, people would come out for a Friday or Saturday night, decent, ordinary people who’ve hired a babysitter, and they don’t actually want to see me, some of them. They go to a comedian who’s got good reviews - and that’s me - and actually they wanna have more fun than I can give them, and at The Stand the chance of disappointing an average punter is less.

I really noticed that when I did Underbelly’s big tent. On Friday and Saturday nights, people in good faith had spent a lot of money coming out and they weren’t expecting to be bored by a borderline avant-garde monologue. [laughs]

Because you’re doing material in preparation for the second series of Comedy Vehicle is there an element of you don’t want too many people to have seen it already?

The BBC have cut all their budgets by about a third, so, in my mind, I’m quite keen to make up the money a bit.

I’d like to have got paid as much for this material as I did for the last stuff. I am doing a tour for a month in October of 500-seater rooms, where I’ll be doing this stuff. I don’t think people can really complain if you do something on television that you’ve only done live.

You’ve got your book coming out in August, which has been described as a commentary on three of your previous shows. Can you elaborate on that at all?

It’s about 365 pages long of which about 120 pages is text of the last three stand-up shows. They’re heavily annotated. The footnotes outweigh the shows by a ratio of about two to one. In between each one there’s a chapter about what happened professionally to me in between those shows.

It’s about the processes of doing stand-up. It’s focused on a very narrow area from 2004 to 2008 and getting those shows together.

I really like Dave Allen, but the only book about Dave Allen is a biography about what he had to eat and who he was friends with and there isn’t anything in it about how he wrote the material. Every time I watch him I think, “Who are you, and what are you trying to do here?” and “Were you aware of how timings work?” and stuff like that, so it’s kind of a book about the method.

It’s really written for people that really like comedy. It’s not like a fun book to read on the beach.

So, I guess some of it might go into detail about how the show 41st Best Stand-Up evolved from its previous incarnation of March Of The Mallards.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it might have been a preview of that I saw where there was a ridiculously drunk woman completely heckling you. You often have these intricately choreographed monologues that command a certain level of…

Concentration?

Yeah, a level of intelligence and a degree of patience from the audience. I think she was arrested at the end as well?

Where was it?

At the Soho Theatre.

Oh God, yeah, that’s right. They were squatter anarchists from Stoke Newington. I think they were high on drugs, and I think they liked me but were just incapable of concentrating.

It’s happened about four times to me in the last five years where someone’s been in the room and I think, “If you’re out of your mind on something you just can’t get a grip on what I’m doing at all.”

They were arrested by the police and taken away because they started fighting the audience.

I can imagine heckles can interrupt the flow quite significantly.

It doesn’t matter, really but with heckles like that… a normal heckler you kind of deal with and it’s finished. With someone who’s chemically altered, they’re unaware of how they fit into their surroundings. So, they don’t know when they’ve lost or when it’s over or when it’s finished. It wasn’t really their fault. They just misjudged the amount of LSD they took.

Many people think, “Ah, it’ll be really funny. Let’s get pissed or get on acid and it’ll be great,” and actually it doesn’t really work for me, that.

There’s a video on YouTube where someone at Edinburgh walks across your stage.

Yeah, what a prat. He was called Chris. It was really frightening that, because that was around the time of all the Christian Voice threats and I was aware of something happening and I didn’t know what it was going to be. I thought he might be coming for me and it was really weird and his friends were filming it.

I thought what was sad about it was I don’t mind being upstaged or humiliated, but he did it again a second time in the closing two minutes of the show, which was the point where I talk quite seriously about what I felt about my son and put a woolly giraffe on my head and he just blew that bit. There were 75 minutes leading up to that and you could never get that back.

I met him, actually, weirdly about a year ago. I was in a pub round here, The Cross Kings, and there was a girl standing next to this bloke going, “Tell him, tell him it was you,” and he went “It was me, I walked across your stage.” I totally lost my temper with him and people were wondering what was going on, but I was so angry because, first of all, it wasn’t like a heckle, it was really frightening and threatening and also there were 400 people in there and he’d wrecked the end of it. He’d wrecked the emotional payoff to the show.

The pretentious artist part of you thinks, “I was taking people on an ‘emotional journey,” and it didn’t have an end to it and he fucked it and he’s a prick. And I really hated him.

Someone sent me an e-mail saying “Our friend Chris walked across your show, ah,” and I went, “Well, just don’t ever come and see me again because you obviously misjudged it because you ruined the story of it,” and they went, “I thought you were all right. I’m going to tell everyone I know to never see you again,” and I thought, “Good, don’t care, don’t come.”

It also made me think about venues. The problem with that venue is that the raked seating went down to the floor like an amphitheatre space and I try not to do that for big shows now. The public can’t be trusted not to do something like that and you have to put a pit between them and you like animals in a zoo.

Do you look back at earlier work at all?

No, because it’s in the past. It was interesting going over the last three shows for the book. The one from 2004, about half of it I don’t like. I wouldn’t write that now and I don’t identify with it.

I kind of think I should be moving on, really. Sometimes I look at things to check I haven’t accidentally ripped off something I’ve already done. [laughs]

Talking about that, do you think you’ve perfected your voice now?

I think I know what it is now, but when I do look at stuff from the mid-nineties I can tell exactly who I’ve been listening to.

In 1989, I’ve got a tape of me and I sound like a cross between Ted Chippington, Arnold Brown and Norman Lovett, and I basically was. There’s no more to it than that.

So, when people see Jack Whitehall and go “that bit’s like Michael McIntyre, that bit’s like Ricky Gervais”, he’s really making the same immature mistakes that all comics make. It’s just that he’s unfortunate enough to be 20 and doing it on television. Most people work that out in private.

You did feature him on your website in a section titled ‘Plagiarists’ Corner’, which caused a bit of a stir.

Plagiarists’ Corner was rather misrepresented by the Internet media. What happened was loads of journalists kept saying that Jack Whitehall had this bit that was like me and so I tried to contact his management about it and ask what was going on and no-one would tell me anything.

So, I said to the guy who does the website, “Put this clip up of me doing that bit and the clip of him. But also put the bit of Ricky Gervais that people say is like me, put the clip of me doing something that’s the same as something Paddy Kielty did,” and Paddy Kielty’s thing predates me. And I didn’t know about it.

If you looked at what I actually put on the website, I had them in chronological order. I wasn’t saying Paddy Kielty had copied me, I was saying I did the same as him after he’d done it. And then I did a thing of Mark E Smith from The Fall slagging me off in a song saying that I’d copied one of his lyrics or something for a routine.

I put them all on there with no comment, the idea being you had to decide for yourself about how this works. But, what it did mean, was that all the clips of Jack Whitehall doing this bit that he supposedly copied off me, which I’ve still never seen, were all taken down by his management, so who knows?

With a young kid you do police it a bit because you don’t want people coming up to you going “You’ve copied Jack Whitehall and you’re 43 years old.” [laughs]

You’re doing previews for the second series of Comedy Vehicle and, as you mentioned, a tour later in the year. So, it’ll be out sometime next year?

It has to go out before April. Maybe March sometime?

Even though it was well received, I don’t think you were expecting a second series?

When it was going out, I expected a second series because it got such good press and the viewing figures were pretty good. The BBC, the people who were in charge at the time, were playing clips of it in conferences and going, “This is the sort of thing we should be doing,” but then all the people who commissioned it left and the deadline by which they told me they were going to renew it lapsed and I just assumed they wouldn’t recommission it.

About nine months later, I go into this meeting with the new head of BBC2, which I thought was going to be an encouraging turndown where they go, “We don’t want another one, but if you have any ideas bring them to us.” and then by the end of the meeting she wanted me to do another one on a reduced budget later at night.

I think they may’ve discovered a load of viewers for it that they didn’t know about, by factoring in iPlayer and Internet hits. Also, I think The Persuasionists did so badly in that slot that my figures suddenly looked quite respectable.

Will the second series allow you any more creative freedom?

There was only one thing they stopped me doing last time. A quibble about whether dogs were a cultural taboo in Islam, so I couldn’t have dogs flying planes dressed up like terrorists.

The thing is I don’t swear, really, so the sorts of things people complain about aren’t really in my shows. And the sort of people that watch a programme to complain about it would find my show so boring that they wouldn’t be able to watch it. They wouldn’t even recognise it as comedy.

In the week when  I did religion a few people rang in to say, “I noticed you didn’t do any jokes about Islam,” but I did. I did them at the end of the show. The BNP, the Christians were already ringing in without watching the programme. And then someone else rang in to complain about me making fun of Stephen Hawking in a week in which I mentioned Richard Dawkins. so I think they’d misheard it.

Is series two going to follow the same format of stand-up interspersed with sketches?

Because of the budget cuts that are applicable to comedy across the BBC, which I think are in the fallout of Sachsgate, but also in anticipation of the Conservatives trying to dismantle it, there isn’t the money to spend on this show as there was the last one.

So, there probably won’t be any film of like a 40-foot Del Boy falling down or a massive river of sick shooting out of the television. The stand-up will be the same, but I’ll have to find something more economic to do in the spaces.

If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One DVD is released in October, but do you have anything else in the pipeline for the independent label GoFasterStripe to release?

I found a recording of me doing stand-up in 1988 which is awful. I’m going to give them that. I found another of me doing stand-up in 1995, which isn’t particularly good either. I’m going to give them that. I’ve got one I think is from 1998, but I’m not sure. The first stand-up gig that I did that is more than five minutes is the first one and the other one is the first Edinburgh show I did.

The theatre shows you’ve done, like Pea Green Boat and What Would Judas Do?, you didn’t really tour, so do you have any desire to do shows like those again?

Other people are touring What Would Judas Do? now. There’s a company based in Bath that have done it in Bath and Newcastle from my notes with different actors improvising the story, so I’m really pleased about that.

About four years ago, I started to make a profit touring, which I’d never done before and I’ve got a little kid so I think I should do the stand-up while the interest is there. I think pretty soon the interest will wane and I’ll go back down again and less people will come. Or I’ll not be able to think of anything and then I’ll write some theatre again, but at the moment it keeps coming so I’m going to keep doing it.

And how about a DVD release of Fist Of Fun or This Morning With Richard Not Judy?

Well, funnily enough, we’ve just had an e-mail from the commercial arm of the BBC wanting to do it. A guy said, “I can’t believe this hasn’t come out.”

Rich is really excited about it. He said there was a note attached to the tapes that they’ve found saying we had blocked the release. I don’t know what that’s about, because we haven’t. All the outtakes tapes are in a warehouse where they are within a few weeks of being destroyed. They’re about to hit their dump-by date, so he’s trying to claw them all back.

Finally, let’s have your Edinburgh recommendations.

I recommend seeing: Scottish folk singer Dick Gaughan, the folk singer Bert Jansch, the English folk singer Eliza Carthy, the band Beirut, the German progressive rock band Harmonia who are doing something with the drummer from Sonic Youth, and the comedians Hans Teeuwen, Carl Barron, Kevin Eldon, Simon Munnery, Bridget Christie, who is also my wife, Daniel Kitson doing a play, and Josie Long.

I’m going to see Neil Hamburger. I don’t know what he’ll be like and I’m going to see Tommy Tiernan. don’t know what that’ll be like. Phil Kay as well, that’ll be good.

In theatre, Derevo have got a new show called Harlekin. They’re a really great Russian clown group. Grid Iron, who are a great theatre company, have got a show called Decky Does a Bronco. I’m going to go and see that. Then there’s loads of other good stuff that’s on that I don’t think I’ll have to book for.

Thank you, Stewart!

Thank you! That was really good fun.

Jon Ronson probably wasn’t Joan of Arc in a past life

I attended a talk on the merits of the narrative non-fiction genre in Notting Hill the other month. I was a huge fan of Jon Ronson, but hadn’t really heard of either of the other speakers; Blake Morrison and Isabel Losada. Blake was really good and interesting and Isabel… well, it’s a little telling that on Amazon the majority of the books on her recommended reading list are her own.

The next day I conducted an interview with Jon for Den of Geek. We covered a range of subjects but during our last ten minutes briefly discussed a bit of the sceptical movement. It didn’t really tie in too closely with the media-related talk, so I’m publishing it here.

I’ve seen you a couple of at the Sceptics in the Pub meetings in Holborn and I know you attended TAM London the other weekend. How do you find those kinds of things?

I’ve thought a lot about this actually and the conclusion I came to is that the good stuff about them kind of outweighs the bad stuff. The main thing, as I tweeted about afterwards, is that sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand about what’s true and what’s not true. And not enough people do that and I think it’s really valuable. So there’s a bit of over-love of Randi but I just think they’re good spirits, and they’re factually right.

It amused me last night when Isabel brought up past lives and you slammed it as simply being wrong.

I was just a bit grumpy, but for fucks sake don’t we know by now that it’s bollocks? I was past-life regressed once and it’s so obviously a scam. You’d have to be an idiot to not think it’s a scam. What happens when you’re being regressed is you’re just desperate to please the regressor, so you just come up with fucking suits of armour and Joan of Arc and whatever shit you can come up with.

How do you define yourself then with regards to the sceptic side of things? Which category do you fall under?

Ooh…  I don’t really know. My main sort of problem is they can be aggressive and hostile towards believers. I was talking to Adam Curtis the other day and we were talking about the sceptics and he said the same things: there’s no life after death but it doesn’t matter because look at all the wonderful things in life. Adam’s point to me is “what about someone who’s just about to die?” and he’s got a point. There is some comfort you can take from religion and there’s no problem with that. So even though I know as well as I can know that the sceptics are right about everything the fact that they’re not particularly humane is the thing that stops me from being a 100% supporter. An atheist is a weird thing to call yourself, I think. My initial gut feeling about that is why do you want to advertise yourself in that way? I see myself as a writer.

We Are Klang interview with the one who isn’t the skinny Matt Lucas or the fat Rik Mayall

Having never seen the sketch trio in action, but having heard great things about them, I watched the first two episodes of We Are Klang genuinely excited. I was under the impression that with the (albeit delayed) commission of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle the BBC finally seemed to have learned that decent comedy from established acts deserves a place in its schedule.

After then watching a few YouTube’d clips of their live show, from the interview I conducted via email with Steve Hall from the group, I think my question about making compromises for the TV show is probably the most pertinent. Many of We Are Klang‘s live reviews cite their unbridled passion for going too far; for being deliberately offensive and having fun with it. Perhaps that’s what makes the ‘Edited for TV’ version a bit of a let down. There are a few moments of inspiration, like the Jew song, that translate for TV relatively complete from its stage incarnation, but by-and-large it comes across as a CBeebies version of Bottom.

This is just my own viewpoint, and certainly the press had great things to say about the debut episode in the listings sections. Chortle seem to have ignored it, the British Comedy Guide have mixed reactions and Cook’d & Bomb’d hate it (probably because Chris Morris isn’t in it). Perhaps I’m in a minority, but I’m not really sure who to place the blame on, and I don’t know who it’ll appeal to: it’s pretty tame juvenile humour for an adult show, but still a little too sweary for a child audience. I imagine longtime Klang fans are going to watch it, but ultimately be disappointed in the toned-down nature of the show.

It’s like picking up your dog  from the vets after a check-up. You’re happy to see him back, he’s overjoyed to see you but as he runs to greet you, tail wagging, he’s developed a bit of a limp and you notice he’s been castrated. You’re angry and confused. You ask the vet why he performed the unnecessary operation and the vet replies, “Well, he wanted to get on primetime BBC Three.”

You kick the vet in the face. You kick your dog in the face.

Dan Atkinson wrongly believes the Ang Lee Hulk film was superior

I met Dan at the King’s Head in Crouch End, a pub that houses one of the oldest Comedy Clubs in Britain. I haven’t seen him perform live yet, but I can’t wait to. If he has half the energy and enthusiasm he displayed in the interview I’m sure he’s got to be pretty great.

Our chat took an interesting turn when he brought up his extensive graphic novel collection. As something of a collector myself, and a big fan of a number of the titles Dan mentions, I had to hold back on talking to him about them and concentrate on my more generic stand-up related questions. Once the interview finished we did gang up a little on the woman from Avalon, Dan’s management company, when she dared suggest it might be a bit pretentious to call them anything but comics.

Dan mentions he could bore me for hours with an on the craft of comedy and his comedy manifesto, so I offered to take him up on the challenge. If there’s one thing I don’t think I do enough of, it’s transcribing ridiculously long interviews.

Josie Long interview

I met up with the kind and exuberant comedian Josie Long for an interview just before she went off to plunder charity shops for her London is Funny column. She suggested a pub in Holborn for the venue which turned out to be a BNP hangout with a distinct smell of dead rat. Next time I’ll choose.

Here’s an extra added special bonus piece of conversation around my question about her atheism. I brought up the only other thing of note in Holborn: the Sceptics in the Pub meetings.

Josie: How are they? Are they great?

Me: It’s quite good; I’ve seen Robin Ince there, Jon Ronson, Ben Goldacre… It sometimes creates a church-like atmosphere in itself.

Josie: Yeah, ‘cos people are so… but you know what? It’s a way that people bond and that bonding is for good.

Me: You can tell that the bonding there is the only bonding some of the attendees get.

Josie: Aww, yeah, lonely dorks. People need ways to look after one another a bit and be kind to one another and anything that does that can be good. More and more I find I have to organise community events. Where I live there’s a resident’s group and they have meetings and it’s so lovely and I wish there was more things like that in cities ‘cos in villages you have your village mayor, and when you have kids you have your school fête so it’s more for people who don’t fit into established community categories; something to bring them together.

Richard Herring: nyum, nyum, nyum

Just before Richard Herring had his iPhone stolen, I was sat for an hour with him in the lounge of Shepherd’s Bush’s ridiculously poncey hotel, K-West. This is an establishment which refuses to admit on its website that it’s in Shepherd’s Bush, despite the fact it is directly behind the second best shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, and refuses to include the location in its address. And a freshly squeezed orange juice will set you back £4.95.

I forgot to ask him why Nostradamus’ horse was called David Collins, but here are an extra couple of questions that were omitted from the interview for space:

Do you consider yourself a geek?

Not really. I think we’re just people and people are quite nerdy generally. I’m not massively into technology; I don’t understand all that stuff. I think other people would think I probably was a geek. I like comedy and I like computer games a bit, and I spend a lot of time on the internet so… yeah, I suppose I am, thinking about it.

You seem to write far less on your blog about Scrabble and poker lately. Do you just not have time for those any more?

I think the poker one I was playing a lot of it at the time, but people didn’t really enjoy reading about it. I’m not playing as much poker but I still play Scrabble just not as much as I did. I think I just spend more time on the internet now but I’ll just use that time on Twitter or Facebook or just trawling the internet over and over again. I’m always doing other stuff when I’m watching TV now; I just don’t have the attention span. So I’m not doing those things as much but they’re being replaced by even more tedious things to waste my life with.

Wonder Woman: The Animated Movie

Remember the days when He-Man would be forced to plough through a small army of Skeletor’s moronic henchmen? When the Turtles fought hordes of faceless foot soldiers? Without exception the non-human characters would be despatched by being thrown off-screen and then shown to be dazed, but crucially alive.

The first sequence of this movie gives us an extended battle between the Amazons, lead by Queen Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) and Ares, the God of War (Alfred Molina, no stranger to playing comic book villains) and his army, the likes of which we haven’t seen before in animation. The exhilarating five minute sequence, very reminiscent of Frank Miller’s 300, culminates in a beheading.

Whew.

Zeus (David McCallum) steps in to stop the Amazons slaughtering Ares, who is instead bound with magic gauntlets and made effectively mortal. Only another god can set him free. As a form of compensation, Hera (Marg Helgenberger) offers the Amazons a new beginning on the island of Themyscira where they’ll be shielded from the ravages of ageing on a man-free utopia.

We cut to an unspecified period later and, on a stormy evening on this paradise island, Hippolyta is moulding herself a child out of dirt (there’s only so much entertainment a tropical island can provide). After pricking her thumb and smearing blood on her claybaby’s forehead, lightning strikes it and it turns into a real one. Unsurprisingly, the baby starts to cry. I bet Wonder Woman keeps the story of her birth a close secret; if her fellow Justice Leaguers found that out they’d piss themselves laughing. Especially Batman.

After the credits, and all grown up now, Diana wonders aloud after a fight with Artemis (Rosario Dawson) what was so bad about men. Is it possible they’ve changed? Her mother shows her Ares all locked up and explains that you can’t trust the wicked disloyal nature of Man. Hmm.

Later, injured in a dogfight, fighter pilot Steve Trevor’s (Nathan Fillion) plane crashes in a lake on Themyscira. After evading furious naked Amazons in a nearby waterfall, Steve soon encounters a furious clothed Amazon: Diana. He attempts to run away again and she kicks him in the balls.

Taken back to the Amazons, the introduction of the Lasso of Truth makes Steve admit that he thinks Diana’s breasts are impressive. The Queen proclaims that the true nature of Man is laid bare. Hmm.

Hippolyta decides that he’s to be taken back to his home country, and the emissary to the outside world is to be chosen by a contest. Diana wangles her way in under disguise and predictably wins while Steve is threatened with castration.

She suits up, hops in her invisible jet (yes!) and embarks on her mission to take Steve back to the USA…

This is the latest in the line of direct-to-DVD animated movies from DC and Warner after Justice League: New Frontier and the anthology-style Batman: Gotham Knight and, unlike its predecessors, this is very much an origin story.

Unlike Batman and Superman in previous DC Animated series, Wonder Woman has only ever been a supporting character. With this release we begin to realise that this hasn’t been a disservice to the character; the studio and DC just wanted to do justice to the Amazonian princess.

We’re all familiar with the story, but the mandate from DC was to ensure the movie stuck to canon as much as possible (it follows the Gods and Mortals arc by George Perez from 1987), to bring the saga up-to-date and relevant and to make it big. I’m confident this is going to be seen as the definitive telling of her origin. With a script by acclaimed current monthly writer Gail Simone and a production team led by Bruce Timm, this 71-minute movie revels in its Greek mythology versus a modern day sensibility backdrop.

From the first kick to the balls in the opening sequence you can tell the film has a heavy feminist slant. In fact, when the second comes mere minutes later, you begin to wonder if this might be a recurring theme of the movie. And it is a bit heavy-handed.

You get the feeling that if Diana hadn’t met a misogynistic idiot like Steve Trevor, she wouldn’t have much justification for her anti-male stance. However, the two characters’ comic rapport is exceedingly well written in the main with some very funny one-liners, especially one that pokes a little fun at some of the stranger Greek myths.

After the first epic action piece you know this movie isn’t going to pull any punches. This is rated 12 and is pretty intense. The characters are all well established; each Amazon has her own distinct personality and look, a mean feat when you consider the art style. Though in keeping with the Bruce Timm style, this is a new look for Wonder Woman, designed by director Lauren Montgomery, that has elements of both her Justice League Unlimited and New Frontier looks.

Wonder Woman’s establishing cast is gradually introduced, not necessarily where you’d expect, but in a way that works well. A couple of reviews have complained about the lack of explanation about the invisible jet, but for me, just the inclusion of the jet is almost enough to give the movie a 5 star review. According to the commentary there was going to be a line explaining it, but the writers couldn’t think of any reasonable justification. The time is much better spent on character development and plot arcs, though.

With a comparatively short running time and considering it’s an origin tale, there is a lot of story and it’s only toward the end that you feel certain things may have been rushed or overlooked.

There are plenty of sequences throughout the film that take your breath away with both their amazing backgrounds and the very rich colour palette. The opening battle scene has such a distinct look with lots of reds, yellows and browns and there are a number of large scenes with an unbelievable number of moving elements onscreen at once.

Extras

Like other DC Animated releases, this 2-disc set pack contains a huge amount – and variety – of additional content. On the first disc alone we have an informative commentary by the creative staff. These people are seasoned professionals in the world of commentaries so you don’t just get awkward play-by-plays of the action. They go into huge amounts of details on creative decisions as regards the story, the history of the character and the rating. Character design and what had to be left on the cutting room floor also play a big part. The director is very free with her praise for, among others, the Korean artists for their work during the large crowd scenes with loads of moving elements, but it doesn’t turn into a love-fest.

A first look promo of the next movie, Green Lantern: First Flight and short documentaries on previous movies also feature, as well as a 10-minute history lesson on Wonder Woman and the evolution of the character.

The second disc backs this up with two further comprehensive documentaries focusing on the history and the mythology of Wonder Woman and two of Bruce Timm’s favourite episodes of Justice League Unlimited prominently featuring the character.

For my money, this is the best of the DC Animated Movies so far. Dedicating a movie on this scale to a character unproven to stand alone in the world of animation could be seen as a bit of a risk, but a production team this dedicated and faithful to the property means you end up with something especially beautiful.

As well as an origin, we get distinct arcs for each main character leaving an opening for a sequel featuring an enemy very familiar to the Wonder Woman mythos.

Film: 5 stars

Disc: 5 star

Metalocalypse Season 1

I invited Ian over at the weekend to watch Metalocalypse. It’s a cartoon broadcast on Adult Swim I hadn’t seen before, but given the subject matter and my fondness for Adult Swim I was confident I’d like it. I’d received a screener copy from Den of Geek to review and, though it took me a while to work out how to say the name of this show correctly, I really enjoyed it. I mention in my review that you don’t need to be drunk to watch it, but that’s precisely what Ian and I aimed for, and at 12:30 on a lazy Sunday afternoon we were quaffing White Russians and filling our faces with takeaway pizza.

We watched the entirety of the first disc’s 10 episodes, pausing only to watch a couple of episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. You know, for some variety.

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You’d think Dethklok would have nothing to worry about. They’re the number one metal group in the world, with an economy larger than Belgium’s. They live in Mordhaus, a foreboding tower reminiscent of Skeletor’s Snake Mountain, and travel via various Dethklok branded vehicles to their gigs. This is a band whose fans will risk death to attend a recital of their 30 second coffee jingle.

But they’re a metal band – of course, they have problems. Ridiculous infighting, egos growing wildly out of control, girlfriends almost tearing the band apart, disagreements with the record label, and that one time when they accidentally summoned a giant Finnish troll…

Voiced by the two co-creators, Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha, Dethklok is comprised of the brooding Nathan Explosion on vocals, fastest guitarist in the world, Skwisgaar Skwigelf, second fastest, Toki Wartooth, William Murderface on bass, and Pickles the drummer. Ever watchful of the band’s movements is a secretive group, The Tribunal, led by Mark Hamill’s Senator Stampingston. Constantly attempting to infiltrate and destroy Dethklok from within, the Tribunal’s attempts are constantly confounded by the band’s incompetence, generally resulting in a spectacular variety of deaths.

The show has often been compared to Spinal Tap, and this isn’t an overstatement. Minus the faux-documentary style, the cartoon follows the mundane activities of the group doing normal things while remaining true to their ideals (which essentially boils down to continuing to be as metal as possible). There are so many references to other bands it’s untrue. From a hilarious Guns n’ Roses pastiche, to the fast-food chain Dimmu Burger, to the sheer number of guest voices from genuine metal groups (Metallica, Cannibal Corpse, Faith No More, King Diamond). Like Spinal Tap, the dialogue is all too quotable, and the show has spawned a music CD release with another on its way.

Like other Adult Swim cartoons, each episode lasts around 12 minutes, and tends to end rather abruptly, without any definitive resolution. That’s fine, they don’t need to be any longer. It’s entirely long enough to parody an aspect of metal without becoming a tired concept and, if boredom does set in, you’ll be on to the next episode by the time you realise it. There’s a continuing plotline running throughout the season concerning The Tribunal, but each episode works just fine watched standalone.

When a show can feature Kirk Hammett as the voice of the Queen of Denmark, you know the show doesn’t take itself seriously and neither should you. You don’t need to be drunk, stoned, or even a massive fan of this particular genre of music to enjoy the show; the only real difficulty is in understanding some of the voices. But that’s a small challenge, and soon you’ll be singing along to the infectiously metal theme tune and then, before you know it, you’ve become one of the fans who will run the risk of having their face torn off to see another episode.

What the show loses in taste and decency, it makes up for with sheer unbridled violence. And metal. If you don’t like Metalocalypse you’re probably really mean or boring.

Identical to its Region 1 release, the show is presented in faux widescreen (a disappointing non-anamorphic 1.78:1). Sound is Dolby Digital 2.0, which holds up perfectly well, but you can’t help thinking more would’ve been better, given the subject matter, and the dialogue in the episodes remains censored although a minor concession is made by covering the worse swear words up with guitar chords.

Extras

Thankfully, though uncensored, the extras on the 2-disc set seem at first to be rather meagre in offering, but it turns out that the majority of them are hidden as easter eggs. For a box set that has over 70 minutes of bonus material, that’s a lot of clicking around.

Sorely lacking in audio commentaries, you’ll notice that the bulk of the extra content is either uncensored versions of scenes in the show, or extended scenes.

An accurately animated guitar lesson (“The Skwisgaar Skwigelf Advanced Fast Hand Finger Wizard Master Class”) for the previously-mentioned coffee jingle and an extended version of Murderface’s bass solo head up the first disc with other notable extras like Nathan Explosion reading Hamlet, a tour of Mordhaus, and Murderface playing the Paperboy-esque videogame, “Wheelchair Bound”.

Episodes: 4 stars

Disc: 3 stars

Ghostbusting

Here’s a writeup for Den of Geek (my first) about a celebrity(!) première screening I went to for the new Ghostbusters Blu-ray. A nice experience with a free bar and olives. I would be not be opposed to doing it again.

Due to the tube strike it ended up being a hideously long walk from Acton to the Soho Hotel, the posho venue for the screening. We weren’t quite sure how to act among so many Z-list celebs, so concentrated on taking full advantage of the bar before realising we hadn’t actually eaten a great deal and then stuffing our faces with Haribo Marshmallows from the press pack. Those suckers are big.

The film was good (as I knew it would be) and I was impressed with Blu-ray, though I still can’t quite see the need for it in a regular home environment.

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It’s safe to say that the Blu-ray release of Ghostbusters was, for both Sony and the fans, a Big Deal. With the simultaneous launch of the Ghostbusters video game on the franchise’s 25th Anniversary, a promotional website for the disc itself at GhostbustersIsHiring.com, as well as plenty of talk surrounding the possibilities of a filmed sequel featuring the majority of the original cast, this was a launch that deserved a heavy amount of publicity.

And so it was that Dizzee Rascal, a semi-finalist from Britain’s Got Talent, and a whole host of ex-Big Brother housemates gathered in the lobby of the Soho Hotel, eagerly awaiting a screening of the Blu-ray. The screening itself was delayed a little while, presumably due to the increased congestion as a result of London’s tube strikes (though tellingly the theatre was only approximately 50% full) but everyone dutifully filed in, took their seats and listened to Dave Berry’s introduction.

After a very brief video introduction from director Ivan Reitman, we were straight into the movie. Granted, it was playing in a cinema environment, and hardly the usual venue for watching a Blu-ray, but I have to say the transfer looked and sounded flawless. The film holds up astoundingly well with an audience; all the laughs came at the right places and the actors carry the film through Ramis and Akroyd’s dialogue beautifully, garnering exactly the reactions they aim for – except, perhaps, when an unknown voice shouted at Egon, calling him a loser for collecting spores, molds and fungus.

And that was it, though it would’ve been nice to see a preview of the game in action, or some of the additional Blu-ray content which the US premiere featured. Attendees received a copy of the disc and of the game (a timed exclusive on PS3 in PAL regions), some marshmallows and a packet of Angel Delight (which has always reminded me a little of ectoplasm, but I’m not sure that Bird’s necessarily intended that particular association).