A Week on the Jokerside — 6 March 2017
Kicking off Monday with our regular round-up the best, boldest and latest bits and bobs from pop-culture that have caught Jokerside.com’s eye over the past week!
All powered by the pop-culture blog with long-reads, cartoons and a smirk!
This week Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Paul Nash, Brian Eno, Beatles, Nintendo Switch, Logan, Gotham and… A proper Goodbye Twelfth Doctor…
JokerSnippets:
Star Wars original cuts strike back: And thus, with a mighty strange choice of picture, did the Guardian tackled the anniversary rumour that Disney could be ready to release the original, un-tampered cuts of Star Wars back to theatres EVERYWHERE. The barely guarded moral at the centre is: be careful what you wish for…
Fine-tuning a Beatles classic: If anyone hadn’t noticed yet, this should get the uniforms back from the dry cleaners… Either the forthcoming 50th re-release will corrrect a hideous cultural mistake or cruelly mis-represent one of the greatest, if not the greatest, evolutions in pop history. Of course, Jokerside came down firmly in favour of Revolver as the Beatles’ seminal work during that album’s golden anniversary last year — but if only it was that simple… Revolver simply wouldn’t be the same without that segue into the Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Hello Aquaman: Oh hey — another big week for reveals, wasn’t it? How about these slick sub-aquatic moves form the King of Atlantis: Zack Snyder knows has to throw a birthdays. Justice is near…
Marvel’s Ego: Another reveal is this dapper Zeus! No, that’s not Zeus, it’s only Ego the Living Planet in the dashing form of Kurt Russell — who no spoiler warning can ignore is… Star Lord’s Dad?
Iron Fist warms up: Danny Rand is the next hero to explode onto the small screen as part of Marvel’s Netflix assault. Beards are very much in, but this one has the steep comparison with DC’s Arrow to shake off…
Who stalks the Predator? It’s always great to see Shane Black, especially when he’s on such an important mission. Retreating from the Marvel universe after his excellent Iron Man 3, and putting the scintillating prospect of another comic property, Doc Savage, on the back-burner he now has one objective. make Predator great again! Anyone else getting a mild Aliens vibe from this… http://ew.com/movies/2017/02/20/predator-cast-first-look-shane-black/
Super Console Plans: The Switch launched. The SWITCH launched! And there’s much comfort to be found in the first day stories (minimal, minimal) of a some nonsense hardware issues… yes, it really is a console. And right now, Gamestop are reporting a very strong launch, no doubt bouyed by those staggeringly promising Zelda: Breath of the Wind reviews…
Trial by vinyl: Well worth a plug — Enjoy the Ride’s announced the first digital release of Trevor Jone’s seminal soundtrack for The Dark Crystal. Still remembering our 2016 retrospective, it’s an ideal time for a trip back to the soundscape of Thra…
Adding spark to the DC line-up: CW’s are fearlessly pursuing over-saturation of DC properties — or would be, if their current weekly onslaught of Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow wasn’t a storming success. And joining the fold soon — another Silver Age super Black Lightning…
Return of the Poppins: Few images capture Jokerside’s imagination like an army of Poppinses swooping in from the horizon like Valkyries, rising to Albion’s aid at he time of need, presumably at King Arthur’s command. Unfortunately, until the existence of legion Poppinses is proven, we’ll just have to make-do with first on-set snap of Emily Blunt seizing the Mantle of Mary. That and watching Series 3 of Arrested Development on a loop.
Ditching the Wolverine greys: Logan looks like it might be doing something mildly unexpected — ending Hugh Jackman’s 18 year feral run as Wolverine in fine style. Director James Mangold kicked off promotion for the film with some stunning monochrome photographs, conjuring a look and feel that’s only grown as the film’s neared release… No surprise this late, ambiguous, bonus trailer snuck out last week , and that a full-feature chrome cut may be imminent…
And finally in the snippets, a Gotham spoiler..?
Ra-Ra-Ra’s a’coming: Alright, is it a spoiler? If you’re a fan of the show, or even if you’re not, it’s hard to escape the news that the ever-brilliant Alexander Siddig has been cast as big batman bad Ra’s al Ghul in Fox’s Gotham. As ever, jokerside thinks it’s less the presence of the character than what they do with him that counts. And as we dug into a couple of year’s ago… few of the Gotham rogues pique the imagination quite so much…
Been Reading
Winding up Wolverine: Readying for Logan — this week we’ve been battling through the post-apocalyptic event that is Millar and McNiven’s Old Man Logan. It deserves a steady read — as most of Mark Millar’s tent-pole Marvel series do. Millar’s Wolverine: Enemy of the State remains one of Jokerside’s all time Marvel favourites — and in the horror of a potential future. There’s nonsense and cheap laughs as well as moments of stand-out splendour and gripping, sparse dialogue that all come together to make this one of Millar’s greats. It’s a personal piece, never moving far from Wolverine’s state of mind and — reasons for which fall back to an incredible set-piece slice of storytelling that stays with you. No matter how much of it make it into Logan, and a great deal couldn’t possibly,it’s easy to see why the third and final part of Jackman’s solo trilogy couldn’t resist tking a look into one of Marvel’s greatest and unredemptive widescreen dystopias.
Been Watching
Retelling Roots: Just completed viewing History’s eight hour retelling of Roots, and an impressive production it proved to be. A $50 million adaptation, the four-parts seemed to jump with abandon, but with a contemporary perspective not taken from the 1977 series, flew by with powerful intensity. Turns out watching the original miniseries at school wasn’t the norm… But everybody should watch this.
Doctor Who — A Time for Heroes: Series 10 is almost upon us and after the horrid damp squib of marketing that’s greeted the last few series of Doctor Who has fallen into (“let’s keep Davros secret… until at least five minutes into Series 9!”) how great to see a bespoke, specially filmed trailer. And all the better that it focuses on new companion Bill. Not had that kind of emphasis since Amy Pond, way back in 2010…
Been Visiting
Paul Nash: Caught the final day of the impressive Paul Nash exhibition at Tate Britain on Sunday — and it was well worth it. One of the best poised art exhibitions we’ve seen for a long time, as Nash’s artistic journey is brilliantly balanced with the discreet evolution of his works in contained rooms.
Starting in the hills of southern England, it’s immensely satisfying to watch the artist develop early interests and themes through organic events and unavoidable conflict. On the way having surrealism “found him,” playing a key role in his work, informing, albeit not utterly satisfyingly, his role as an influencer but also crucially setting an essential balance with similarly minded artists. Those are particularly members of Unit One in whose company the exhibition resolutely lets him sit. That reciprocal relationship was the exhibition’s selling pint, but what’s so marvellous is the segmented flow that really pulls out the cycles, development and journey of Nash’s work.
Of course, the two wars sat at key points in his career. He vividly depicted WWI trench warfare in a horrific stillness, just a few years on from when he found in the hills of southern England a “strange enchantment… a beautiful legendary country haunted by gods long forgotten”. As part of a lareger series, his WWI work crafts a long-form exploration the modification of a world, even if its a one that nature quickly reclaims.
There’s a terrible balance with the outbreak of WWII near the final years of his career, by which point the concept of found objects that was a central tenet of his surrealism, had morphed into the giant monsters of broken trees in valleys and river banks. Atavistic monsters as much as fossilised architecture, they recalled his mid-career experimentation with the geometry of man-made structures in natural settings, but are all the more chilling when sat next to the works of crashed German planes in the British countryside that came in the early -years of the war.
Should you have missed it, the entire exhibition will now hit the road, finding a home in The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich from April to August and then the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle from September to the end of January 2018). It’s easy to see why the Telegraph was so enthused…
Been Listening
Keeping it Eno - Discreet Music: Somehow, quite without planning, but more than welcome, 2017’s so far morphed into the year of Eno. All over the schedule over Christmas, we spent a month bumping into him on everything from 6Music frolics to Bowie documentaries to MGMT’s Congratulations track bearing his hallowed name. It was almost inevitable that his solo fourth album, the first credited to his full name, and downright ambient music classic Discreet Music would end up in the Jokerside archive at some point. And, what an album it is. All power to ‘furniture music’ — and due credit to the wonderfully awkward, painful and rather English set of events that brought it into being…
Doctor Bye: “Thank you Jo, it’s been a pleasure”. Finally heard the full interview, the one that was soon bottled down into snippets, headlines and soundbites and will forever more be remembered as the time: Peter Capaldi handed in the TARDIS keys.
Running a gamut from excellent first song choice of The Only Ones’ Another Girl, Another Planet — through to the emotional break when he ambiguously thanks the BBC, his wife looking in. Resigning publicly to a friend, what a wonderful ending. But most pointed was the advice from Matt Smith: “Just do what you want to do, which is a very Matt thing to say... Enigmatically, but I know what he means, and that’s between Matt and I”. Capaldi laughs… We can only hope the Twelfth Doctor gets the send off he deserves… And while you’re waiting for a month, remember that Series 9 found us tackling a long-read a story… Find the full ‘series of essays’ here:
That’s been our rolling week… Fill the gap until your next fix with just about 200 long-reads, cartoons and features running the gamut of Pop-Culture at Jokerside.com.
