This week: job appeal; end quote; eyes, eyes, baby; ice is nice; sticky situation; the Victorian error; the sweet science; alchemist the point; spice world; bathroom humour; Dave Suze you; older youngster; Dave spends 500 Days in the Wild; some thoughts on Madame Web; nerds on the loose; misrepresentation in the movies; super high expectations; Sweeney bod; Mothra-in-law; ape shit; on the Roadhouse; all about Steve (Martin); great Brains, never going back again; album art; the cultural filter; pivotal comedy; Fields day; element of Dangerfield; Carrey on; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; can-coctions; mutating memories; scraping the bottom; nowt clear as folk horror; master of puppets; pod in heaven; Liman of action; plan Z; and, finally, pooped out.
Question of the Week: What’s an audiobook you’d recommend?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s a movie remake that’s better than the original?
Thanks for listening.
If you’d like to see Gallagher on the couch, you can follow this link to a YouTube video!
The REAL Madame Web!
We couldn’t find Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, but here’s The Bank Dick:
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I really haven’t listened to all that many audio books but years ago I listened to a few Star Trek novels and an auto-biography by William Shatner. At the risk of dating myself, they were on tape when I had them and they sounded exactly like you expected to sound with Bill Shatner behind the wheel. Remember the NPR Playhouse Star Wars radio serials they did back in the 70’s and 80’s? I can remember actually tuning in every Sunday afternoon to listen to those when they aired, they were kind of like audio books but acted-out with sounds and music. Those broadcasts expanded upon the story greatly and years before any other media had a chance to, backstories about Leia on Alderaan, Obi-Wan’s expertise as a Jedi on Tatooine and even Luke taking a crash course on piloting an X-Wing before the Battle of Yavin. I enjoyed them so much I also tuned into another NPR radio production of “The Lord of the Rings” and again this was years before what Peter Jackson did.
I think Horror remakes have been the most successful genre with updated versions of “The Thing”, “The Fly”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and possibly “Cape Fear.” The most vivid comparison for me between what was an original disaster and a bold remake would be “Casino Royale.” It also was given the risk of introducing Daniel Craig as 007 which isn’t an easy task. The only thing I enjoyed from the 1967 version was the Burt Bacharach / Herp Alpert score which my Dad had in his album collection. Without any blessing from the Sneaky Dragon staff, I’ve been fan-casting a remake of “The Great Race” for years now even though the original is an all-time favorite of mine.
After Dave’s review of “Madame Web”, I think I’m persuaded to check it out. I have not watched any of the recent Sony “Spider Detour” films, so I really have no opinion on any of them. Something Dave mentioned gives me a reason to watch “Madame Web”, it was what he said about the audiences being turned against female casts. I agree that it’s become a sad trend to judge a movie only because the cast is predominantly women actors and I’ll support those films on principle. My best friend is one of those movie-goers who flat out will not watch “The Marvels” or “Birds of Prey” just because the cast has mostly women actors. Just today it was announced that Marvel Studios cast a woman in the Silver Surfer role and my friend said he was out over that, “You can tell me all about it”, he said to me in a text. We’ve discussed it all enough that we just don’t bring it up any longer, I’m not changing his mind but I need to be the positive opposition to offset his decision and see these films.
We have the solar eclipse coming our way on Monday! We’re in the “Path of Totality” which sounds ominous and chaotic like a prog metal band but all it really means is that where I live is getting a 100% total blackout. I’m just hoping it’s a clear day so we can experience the full effect!
Okay Sneakers around the world, I’m off to the eclipse! I’ll be standing in the PATH OF TOTALITY, trying not to burn my eyes out of my skull…
Have a great weekend everyone!
Here’s wishing fair skies to Ed and all my relatives in the path of the eclipse. When I was in high school, our science department organized a trip to see a total solar eclipse in Goldendale in southern Washington State. We were a really motley crew of eclipse enthusiasts from different grades and across cliques. We drove down in a school bus (not a comfy Greyhound bus) so it was a bit of a bone-rattling ride. We stayed overnight in a church basement or community hall. In the morning, it was overcast but when the eclipse started, the clouds parted just in time. Then it got totally dark and the stars came out and it was awesome! People had come from all over the U.S. and Canada and there were school groups and families and druids and hippies so it was a very groovy time.
For any insomniacs out there, I’d like to recommend – not an audiobook per se – but a podcast and YouTube channel my sister-in-law told me about. It’s called Boring Books For Bedtime. A woman reads chapters from various non-fiction books in the public domain: ancient Greek horse care advice, The Origin of Species, bicycling tips, candy making recipes, seed catalogs… All in a monotonous cadence that quickly sends you off to sleep.
Dear Sneaky peeps,
This week has been overshadowed by the gloom cast by the bleak and untimely death of comic book artist Ed Piskor. The details of his death are very upsetting and I worry I’d be trivialising them by summarising them here – perhaps you’ve spoken about him this week. I knew him less through his work than through his superb ‘Cartoonist Kayfabe’ Youtube channel, in which he and Jim Rugg interviewed great comic book artists, and pored over the details of the best in US-centric comic art. There’s an oversaturation of comic book culture at the moment, but the focus on the graft and skills required to actually work in the comics medium set ‘Cartoonist Kayfabe’ apart – that and the sheer volume of output they were somehow able to create. Piskor’s work covered an admirable range of subjects, from the history of Hip Hop to properly gruesome gore comix, alongside prestige superhero volumes. We can only guess at the rich output that he had ahead of him. The industry has lost a champion, in both senses.
This week’s chat about Dakota Johnson made me think of her turn in ‘Wounds’. Anglo-Iranian Director Babak Anvari’s follow up to ‘Under the Shadow’, is an unusual, experimental horror film with a properly nasty aftertaste. Johnson has a rather thankless ‘girlfriend’ role, but her relatable humanity makes her slide into oblivion all the more tragic. At the time I saw ‘Wounds’, I was impressed at her leading man’s bravery in portraying an utterly irredeemable piece of shit, burning his well-established reputation as a squeaky-clean handsome-dan cheeseball. The actor in question? Armie Hammer. I wonder how the film works now.
This week’ new-to-me discovery is of George Pal’s ‘Puppetoons’ – a technicolour marvel of animation art, which I happened across at the British Film Institute. There’s a compilation available on Amazon, and goodness me are they something – a missing link between Fleischer and Laika. I’m going to dive in to these properly next week and will report back.
To your questions:
Great Audio books: A cheat, but the original radio plays of ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ remain a high watermark of audio craft, and I’ll love them as long as I live. The scripts are surprising, the voice cast is stellar, the sound effects perfect. The background music is thrilling – particularly when it acknowledges the text, such as when Peter Jones says ‘Scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs’ or ‘quantum packets of guilt’. Bert Coules’ ultra-cosy 1980s-2000s radio adaptations of all the Sherlock Holmes stories are solid favourites, only surpassed for comfort listening by his four series of ‘Further adventures’.
Two books from the beeb: William Hope Hodgson’s weird fiction masterwork ‘The House on the Borderland’ is available on YouTube, read in the warm Irish tones of Jim Norton, aka ‘Bishop Brennan’ from Father Ted:
Finally, ‘The Man Who was Thursday’, read beautifully by Geoffrey Palmer, whose voice ranges appropriately from authoritarian to wavering.
Tip of the hat to you both,
Peter.