Across The Universe

At last, a break from the relentless routine of work and drudgery: tomorrow I depart for Rome for eight days.

Dear God, I need this holiday. The stresses of life and, above all, work have been accreting these last few months to the point where I could all too easily find myself on the front pages of the tabloids as the psycho geek who ran amok with an axe in his office, slaughtering 40 more-or-less (but in some cases definitely less) innocent people in a ghastly orgy of blood and dismemberment. I think I'm getting away just in time; but if I'm making headlines in a couple of weeks I guess I'll have been wrong about that...

Probably I've already discussed it in person with the only WT readers who could care less, but I liked the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta a great deal; infinitely more than I expected. Admittedly I was in a slightly weakened state (read: hungover) when I saw it, but it had me on the verge of tears several times. Certainly the movie has plenty of faults, not least in its attempts -- not exactly unsuccessful but nevertheless rather desperate -- to achieve some kind of contemporary resonance, but the comic's hardly perfect itself. The film is, in many respects, quite staggeringly faithful to its really quite difficult source material, and for that -- for making it work -- I salute it.

There are some heartbreaking narrative moments, but the saddest of all comes early in the end titles, where it says:

I appreciate that Alan Moore had his reasons for taking his name off the credits, but I still think he was wrong. This V is more his -- more a product of the single most important comic book writer of the last half century -- than any movie could ever reasonably be expected to be, and that really deserves -- demands -- acknowledgement.

The one real downside is that this all makes the awful prospect of a Watchmen movie that much more likely. Heaven help us...

What else?

You should all immediately go here (as Joel might say) and vote for my contest entry. No, I'm not telling you which one, but I don't think you'll have any trouble identifying it if you know me at all. If I'm wrong, just vote for whichever you like. You have five days...

This comes courtesy of Robin; a little reminder of Park, as one or two of you may recall. And this comes courtesy of Anne-Marie and Warrick. It's a two-somersault routine, for all that a goes a bit haywire towards the end; that's gotta be something to be happy about.

Now I must go and pack. Sleep well, boys and girls.
Posted by matt at April 12, 2006 10:40 PM