In this ad for Citroen, rather revoltingly entitled Ghostbusters Reloaded we are introduced to a trio of pouting, cool sexy people (led by a feisty babe, naturally), in tight, factory fresh uniforms with  black leather details (black leather’s cool, right). They use snazzy looking, iPod inspired proton packs to blast a sort of golem monster made of old car parts, soundtracked by a souped up version of Ray Parker Jr’s theme. Then, without a hair out of place, they drive off,  presumably to a Dazed & Confused photoshoot.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t The Ghostbusters shlubby, middle aged men in dirty boiler suits, who worked out of a fire station that should’ve been condemned, drove a clapped out old hearse, and used equipment that was so unreliable and botched that it not only posed a threat to whatever apparition they were up against, but to the very fabric of the space time continuum? They were not cool. They were not models. None of them, as far as I recall, were sexy girls. They were, not to put to fine a point on it, nerds, which is precisely why we loved that movie.

And why the fuck is the car called a Picasso anyway? If it were truly inspired by ol’ Pablo, the wheels would be on the roof and it would be driven by a minotaur!

God bless Tim Burton. For being utterly predictable. While he has worked in a number of different genres, (heartfelt outsider biopic, gorgeous Hammer pastiche, and terrible terrible remake), most of his die hard fans would prefer to see him making creepy cute fairy tales for goth kids. Not surprisingly seeing as he excels at it. Batman Returns, for example, while being a pretty bad Batman movie, is actually a great Tim Burton movie.

With the appearance of images from his forthcoming Alice in Wonderland, specifically Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter, looking for all the world like Jervis Tetch from a long lost Batman & Robin subplot, it seems like he is back in his comfort zone. For all the talk of how Wonderland has been “Burtonized” it looks to be a fairly traditional adaptation, with a plummy voiced young vixen pouting her way through scenes that borrow liberally from Tenniel and the better known elements of the sequel (although not any of the trequels), whilst running into Very Famous People, semi recognisable under layers of make up/prosthetics/animation/over the top acting.

Of course an entire book can be written on the various interpretations of Alice (and at least one already has), and I’m sure Burton’s will be a visual feast, but I suspect that the quitessential Englishness at the heart of it will be lost. That’s not to say that artists of other nationalities haven’t been able to make good versions (for example, both Disney and Jan Švankmajer have made wildly different adaptations, both of which are terrific), but for me Alice is part of a long strand of English surrealism, along with Edward Lear, Rupert Bear, The Magical Mystery Tour, Nursery Cryme, Syd Barrett and Vivian Stanshall. It’s this feeling that was captured in Jonathan Miller’s 1966 TV version (described by Brian Sibley much more eloquently than I can here), in which the animal masks were ditched and the inhabitants of Wonderland were depicted as aging upper class eccentrics.

Alice doesn’t need darkening or weirdifying. It’s pretty dark and weird to begin with, which is why it’s lasted so long and has lended itself to so many different takes. This new version apparently “has been freshened with a blast of girl power” (urgh. Is it still 1996?) but I don’t recall Alice being a shrinking violet. She  regularly stands up to a bunch of weird unfathomable creatures, doing weird unfathomable shit, and has always, I think, been a pretty strong character. Hopefully they won’t resort to having her doing backflips while firing twin AK47s…

Faith No More are Back Back Back and frankly it’s like they’ve never been gone. Performing at The Download Festival over the weekend, on a stage set that made them look like the house band in The Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, they delivered a storming run through their back catalogue, allaying all fears that their comeback would be nothing more than a cash fuelled disappointment (particularly when you consider how tired and bored they sounded on their last tour, in 1998).

Never a massive commercial success  – Amazingly they are considered to be a 1 hit wonder in the US. Like Sparks, with whom they briefly collaborated, they were much more appreciated in Europe than in their home country, undoubtedly for their similarly wonky sense of humour. Nevertheless they managed to influence a handful of great bands, like Incubus and System of a Down, along with a great many more crappy ones (throw a rock into the air during the late 90s Nu Metal era and you’d hit some half assed rap rocker). When they broke through in 1989 with The Real Thing (and specifically the single Epic) they were described as “Funk Metal” and lumped in with The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but this was never really an adequate description. By the time they released their next album in 1992 , the world was well and truly ruled by grunge, and long haired scruffy bastards were the order of the day, but Angel Dust was not only unlike anything else in the charts, but also such a weird amalgam of musical styles that it was difficult to ascertain any primary influence on the band.

Even now their songs have a baffling quality to them, which I always equated to Progressive Rock, but they always combined a sense of humour – not to mention real melodies – with their experimental impulses. Their best stuff has a wide eyed drama to it. Ashes To Ashes and Just a Man are the sort of songs that you can imagine The Silver Surfer listening to as he rides the cosmic winds, while Land of Sunshine and A Small Victory sound even weirder 17 years on. Now that I have heard more music I realise how bizarre they really were.

So are they still relevant? I’m not even sure what that means but as they were always so individual they never fit into any particular scene or genre so they don’t sound dated. And We Care A Lot specifically parodies plenty of late 80s trash culture – so with Michael Bay’s pretentiously named Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots fest in cinemas, even “ver kids” will get the reference to Transformers, although the shout out to The Garbage Pail Kids may prove a little more obtuse.

And now some blatant self promotion – sorta. A buddy of mine told me about this competition over at Design By Humans, to create a T Shirt for that most iconic of American rock bands KISS. So here’s something I threw together. If you could pop on over to the site and vote for me (or for one of the many other fine T shirt designs, but make sure you do mine first, otherwise you’re an enemy of democracy) that would be just great. And if I win because of your votes I will pledge to, uh, I dunno, do something crowd pleasing, like run up and down Leeds City Centre in a long black wig and “Clown White” singing Strutter. Or something (all requests will be given equal consideration).

Just to reassure my devoted readers (all three of you) that the series hasn’t completely dried up, here’s the cover for Hope for the Future issue 12. Rest assured this is not as much of a spoiler as you might think. And there’s a chance that by the time I finish drawing the thing I might change my mind and do a new cover (and also, by issue 12, there will be enough material for a third collected edition, so this issue may not actually be available as a seperate comic book). But for now, check out this exclusive image.

You know those irritating Orange ads that play in the cinema, in which idiot studio execs attempt to muck about with actors’ “worthy” film projects? There was one a while back in which they pitched a sequel to Lord of The Rings to Sean Astin. The fourth part of the trilogy, featuring Orange phones product placement. Yes yes yes, studio execs are soulless money hungry boneheads. We get it. Very funny.

Of course, Lord of the Rings has a ready made sequel, or prequel, in the form of the more light hearted (and shorter) The Hobbit. Bearing in mind the massive success of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations it was only a matter of time before this went into production, although some of the early reports of this were a little confusing to fans of Tolkien’s books. The word was that there would be two more Middle Earth movies, the first an adaptation of The Hobbit, and the second which would be a new story. This would “bridge the gap” between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, as if that were a gap that ever needed bridging. It was commonly thought that this would use a lot of the information that Tolkien wrote for the LOTR appendices, basically all the backstory of The White Council pissing around in Dol Guldur (yes, I know my Tolkien trivia).

However the official line has now changed. There will still be two movies, but they will be two parts of a single adaptation of The Hobbit. Now, even though I was initially uncomfortable with the idea of a movie of what is essentially Middle Earth fanfaction, I can’t help thinking that they should be able to get that story done comfortably in the space of one movie. I mean how long does it need to be?

I have no doubt that any project overseen by fanboy godhead Jackson, with Pan’s Labyrinth creator Guillermo Del Toro (officially the best human ever) in the director’s chair will be nothing short of great, I have to question what is clearly an executive decision to extend the story further than it necessarily needs to go. So with that in mind I am suggesting that they don’t stop there, but go for a series of Hobbit movies. I’m talking franchise, baby!

• The Hobbit: Reloaded – A “darker, edgier” story, in which leather trenchcoated halflings gun down passers by with semi automatic weaponry to a nu metal soundtrack for no good reason. For 2 hours 45 minutes.
• The Hobbit: High Voltage – The same as the above but with more strippers.
• The Hobbit: Requiem of The Fallen – The same violent mayhem but with a pretentious title to hopefully draw in the arthouse crowd.
• The Hobbit: Curse of The Black Pearl - Post modern pirate based fun. Probably featuring Keira Knightley as a feisty 18th century noblewoman.
• The Hobbit: Full Throttle – You know what the Middle Earth franchise has been missing? Street racing.
• The Hobbit: Tokyo Drift - Sequel to the above with none of the original cast.
• The Hobbit: Electric Boogaloo – Go for some of that High School Musical money. But with orcs.
• Hobbit! – Long titles probably confuse cinemagoers, so this concept strips it down and returns Middle Earth to its roots, by getting rid of all the gay elf stuff and bringing back Vin Diesel

Either that or reboot Lord of the Rings for a modern (ie. stupid) audience. It’s all about the reboots now! It’s been six years, what’s taking them so long?

The long awaited (by me) Hope for the Future Issue 11 is now available from our pals at IndyPlanet. The latest episode in the series finds Lee deciding to pay Hannah a visit in the middle of the night, mostly because he’s drunk as a skunk and fancies the arse off her. So what exactly have a 16th century Dutch sorceror, an artifact of unimaginable mystical power, and four intergalactic strutting rock goddesses got to do with anything?

Find out (kinda) in Hope for the Future 11: The Bottle.

We have a forum! Rejoice! Why not pop on over there and tell us what you think, and chat to other HFTF readers, comics fans, and spambots.

A long time ago… ah screw it, everyone’s probably done that one. Today’s the tenth anniversary of the release of The Phantom Menace. Happy birthday Duel of The Fates, Watto and  The Boonta Eve Classic. Although for us in the UK we still had another excruciating two months to wait while everyone else in the world was talking about  it.

Like many people who can’t let it lie, I have felt the need to defend the damn movie over the last ten years. Dunno why, it’s neither my fault, nor my problem if someone else doesn’t like it.  But I do find myself wondering why so many people have taken against it, especially seeing as every single film looks like that now (Even the Sex and the City movie had that completely incongruous scene where two vast armies of CGI it girls fought on a CGI battlefield, using CGI Louis Vuitton handbags). Let’s look at the reasons;

• Enormously clunky plot contrivances. So they need a hyperdrive generator and the only person that has one is immune to the jedi mind trick and also owns a slave who has latent jedi abilities and races pods and has just happened to be secretly building a podracer for a tournament that just  happens to be tomorrow… phew!
• Midichlorians. Let’s be honest, while it doesn’t invalidate the mysticism of the previous movies, we hardly needed an empirical system of measuring someone’s connection to The Force.
• Jar Jar. The Star Wars movies were always aimed at a young audience, but never before was a character included specifically for the preschoolers. However, people never complain about “that really bad special effect”, or even “that really bad character”. They actually talk about Jar Jar as if he’s a real person. So really he can be said to be a success… from a certain point – ah screw it everyone will have used that one too.
• Too many special effects. Seriously, complaining about this in a Star Wars movie is like stopping taking drugs because they make you feel weird.
• Sixteen (or twenty, depending on how much of a nerd you were) years of anticipation. After that amount of time we could have got the best film ever made and people would have still complained. Not that I’m suggesting it is the best film ever made, you understand.
• Darth Vader built C-3PO. Actually, I can explain this, no problem.

This piece, written by Using the Force author Will Brooker,  pretty much sums up my experience. It wasn’t my own expectations, any of the (admittedly many) flaws in the film, or even Ben Quadrinaros that ruined it for me. It was knowing everything about it, including how I was expected to feel.

Having said that, I still love The Phantom Menace. As Todd Hanson says in A Galaxy Not So Far Away, it’s just a big dumb movie about space wizards. What’s not to like?

I have recently been playing Guitar Hero a lot. No, stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this. The game, if you are unaware, involves tapping buttons on a toy guitar, in time with renditions of popular rock tracks. That makes it sound boring, pointless and, frankly, ludicrous, but it’s actually great fun and after a while you really feel like you are, uh, rocking out, no matter how stupid you look.

The fact that the Guitar Hero franchise is on it’s fourth release is proof of it’s success. Everybody loves it, even musicians (the original game featured mostly copycat cover versions of its songs, the recent iterations feature mostly original recordings). However, I suspect that if the same game had been released fifteen years ago (not impossible, as it is based on an extremely simple gameplay system) it would not have been half as successful, at least not in this country. This is because, at that time, Britain was in the vice like grip of a cancer, a vile, fetid abomination known as Britpop. And it was not OK to rock under Britpop.

I’m being overly dramatic of course (it’s fun, you should try it). Obviously there is good music as well as bad in every era, and genre. But Britpop brought with it, or at least walked hand in hand with a deeply unpleasant attitude. The movement grew out of indie (as useless a description of a musical genre as “prog”, but you all know what I mean), which was characterised by introspection, a modicum of pretentiousness, and generally low expectations, particularly with regards to commercial success. But indie bands started to sell records in great numbers and became the musical mainstream, and there was an attendant arrogance, and this coincided with the rise of “lad culture”, typified by Chris Evans’ TFI Friday and Loaded magazine. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but the problem with ironic sexism, ironic racism, and ironic loutishness is that they are virtually indistinguishable from actual sexism, actual racism and actual loutishness.

The beginnings of the movement were clearly an attempt to reject the overwhelming cultural stranglehold that “Grunge” had in the early nineties. Hosting a one off TV special featuring British bands at the time, Blur’s Damon Albarn bemoaned the band’s lack of success in their earlier years: “Unless you were Nirvana, or a diet Nirvana, you were nothing”. Presumably, now it was de rigeur to be a bargain Beatles, a cut-price Kinks or a second rate Small Faces. 

I remember a particularly stupid NME review of sarcastic US rockers Ugly Kid Joe’s album Motel California (what wags eh?) in which the writer pronounced that it was useless because “we don’t even have motels in Britain”. Of course, it is only natural that after the hegemony of American music was over, British musicians, writers and commentators would be slightly full of themselves but it annoyed me no end (at the time I remember being late for a night out because I was at home watching Alice in Chains Unplugged on MTV. My indie kid pals were not amused).

The era’s most memorable, and idiotic moment, was the (largely media created) competition between Oasis’ Roll With It and Blur’s Country House. It didn’t really help that these were both fairly awful, self parodic records (although, it could’ve been worse, it could’ve been Stereotypes), and the “conflict” escalated from being merely about record sales and (supposedly) divided the nation into North versus South, Working Class versus Middle Class, Stupid versus Clever. Blur won the battle, but Oasis won the war by selling more albums. Blur had the last laugh by retreating and changing their sound (ironically, to more resemble the American alt rock that they had earlier affected to despise), while Noel Gallagher bought himself a very big house in the country (true).

For an entertaining overview of the period, check out John Harris’ The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock. Although I can summarise it here: Suede and Blur hated eachother, Elastica took loads of heroin, and Pulp wrote all the best songs. Less comprehensive, but just as enjoyable is Alex James’ autobiography Bit of a Blur, which is full of floppy fringed charm (sample line: “Famous people are just the same as normal people, except a bit more famous”) -and he even remembers to mention Me Me Me.

However, Britpop eventually faded away (I blame Northern Uproar and Cast), and we were faced with the atrocities of Nu Metal. Now, Limp Bizkit are all very well if you’re drunk and Rollin’ is playing at ribcage shattering volume in your local dirty rock club, but it’s hardly music for the ages is it? I think the idea was to ransack the work of Rage Against the Machine and that Judgement Night album, which is as good a goal as any I suppose, but the trouble is you got stuff like Crazy Town (Chili Peppers aping oafs), Linkin Park (anime obsessed whiny rap metallers with “I hate you mum & dad” songs) and Papa Roach (someone shouting over the top of old Iron Maiden riffs).

However, at this point every successful band was keen to point out how brilliant and what a big influence Black Sabbath were. Sabbath were The Beatles of the late nineties. Weirdly enough, up until that point, throughout a thirty odd year career, Sabbath had always been severely underrated. To all intents and purposes, they invented metal, and I suppose critics never forgave them. Now they were being praised left right and centre, and covered by everyone from Elbow to Mercury Rev, and sort of went from being underrated to overrated. And rock gradually became acceptable for mainstream audiences once again. I think The Darkness and Tenacious D are also partly responsible – although ostensibly parodic, both were deeply rooted in a love of classic rock. We even now have bands like The Answer and Wolfmother who appear to be completely without irony. Of course, for a lot of people this meant just wearing ironic rock t-shirts, but rock, proper rock, seemed to be a lot more popular. And continues to be, if all the hoo ha about Zeppelin’s recent reunion is anything to go by.