Putin’s KOMBINAT is to the Soviet Union what the Nazi regime was to Imperial Germany

We don't have an official term yet for Putin's flavour of political regime. William Gibson saw it in 1993. It's the KOMBINAT.

William Gibson has a good record of anticipating the future. Famously he coined the term "cyberpunk"in his first novel in 1984 in which he set the popular perception of the internet. He is famous for that first trilogy of books, but his second trilogy, known as the Bridge trilogy, quickly fell victim to the law of "nothing dates as fast as yesterdays tomorrow".  Published in the early 1990s and set only a decade later, the Bridge books still read pretty cool noir but it's an alternate future with no phones or Web 2.0. Some might prefer this nightmare dystopia /s.

Admittedly he's only a decade away, but some things Gibson gets pretty on the nose. Pandemics, which seemed to begin with HIV, are now a regular occurrence. As per the first trilogy the middle class is shrinking fast and society is dividing into tech driven super rich and crime inflected everyone else. Crime is riddled with Russian money and it has a solid political origin. "Kombinat" is the name given by Gibson to an evolved Communist state which is now explicitly controlled by organised crime. It seems to be sanctioned by all the other states of Gibson's Bridge world so operatives are actively acquiring new technology from locations like San Francisco and Japan. 

You might respond immediately that for all it's issues Putin's Russia is not communist! It is extreme capitalism! Well, give it time, because the more Putin's state walks like the Soviet Union, and quacks like the Soviet Union, the more those weird years in the middle look like a Weimar daydream without the sexy dancers.

Having given the Kombinat a name suddenly it's place in history looks a lot less accidental, a lot more familiar. It is common currency now to compare Putin with Hitler ("Putler") but less so to compare his regime explicitly with the Nazi Party. Compare the timelines however - 1918-1933, and 1987-2000. The fall of the Kaiser's Germany without invasion. The fall of the Soviet Union without a hot war. Economic chaos follows alongside liberalism. Nationalism as a excuse to unify. Idolisation of the past. Hatred of the future. Staged terrorism events to justify crack downs.

Soviet Union like Imperial Germany has a once mighty proud empire lost in a war that barely touches the homeland, creating no sense of real defeat. The undefeated younger generation of the old regime uses gangsterism and brutality to return to power based on militarism nationalism. and unrestrained capitalism.
In its first form this state is highly confident and aggressively expansionist. Though Imperial Germany seemed to coming to its senses late in 1914 and the Soviets barely had the resources to invade a third world state at the end, their expansionist ambitions were baked into the political mindset for the rest of the world to see.

In its second form the Nazi/Kombinat is still expansionist but only as part of a self pitying litany of grievances for past injustices. Where Imperial Germany/Russia has actual plans for the territories it seeks to acquire, the Nazi/Kombinat barely has a plan beyond invade and then “watch the world burn". There is no self justified philosophy of "white man’s burden" here, just looting, rape and destruction that would shame the Mongols.

Though not explicitly anti Semitic in its earlier more intellectual form in Imperial Germany/Soviet Union, the more aggressive populist Nazi/Kombinat is bitter, narrow minded and obsessively anti-Jew.

Some of this analysis falls apart when you consider the chasm between the class background of Imperial Prussians and Soviet leaders, and perhaps there are less actual war vets in Putin’s regime than there were in Hitler's, but the patterns of behaviour and outlook do look remarkably similar to me, and if we are looking for a term for Putin’s flavour of Nazism - KOMBINAT is as good as any I’ve come across.

Notes

Readers of Gibson's most recent trilogy will be aware that 22nd century London is run by The Klept (derived from kleptocray), descendants of the Russian super elite which escaped to London from what I'm now suggesting we call the Kombinat.

Since writing this post I've become aware of a Russian documentary of the same name, reviewed positively here -
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/24/kombinat-review-dark-eerie-doc-on-russias-socialist-city-of-steel
It seems unconnected to the Gibson term.

HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP DEALT WITH THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

 

Lessons in wartime leadership

Now we can look back at the Zombie war as history, it's time to reassess the effectiveness of the last president of the United States

JANUARY

The outbreak as we know it began in Pittsburgh, thought at the time to be a result of returning samples from a NASA probe to Venus. The dead began rising from the graves and began to eat the flesh of the living.

Although briefed in private this was a major threat, in public, he urged US life and business to carry on as normal.

“Don’t be afraid of flesh eating ghouls. Don’t let them dominate your lives.”

FEBRUARY

In February, he said: “Zombie apocalypse? It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

He also said in the same month: “A lot of people think that they go away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically they will go away in April. Maybe on holiday, in Florida"

MARCH

As the horde of undead overwhelmed Pennsylvania the President reassured the nation 

“I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump boasted to reporters during a tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where he met with actual doctors and scientists who were feverishly scrambling to contain and combat the plague of flesh eating undead. Citing a “great, super-genius uncle” who taught at MIT, Trump professed that it must run in the family genes.

“People are really surprised I understand this stuff,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Later in March he put aside his scientific credentials and accepted a suggestion he had become a Wartime President.  “I do, I actually do, I'm looking at it that way,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing at the White House when asked whether he considered the U.S. to be on a wartime footing. “I look at it, I view it as, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that's what we're fighting.“

His first, and only, direct action as a Wartime President to combat the zombie apocalypse was to completely restrict travel from Venus.

APRIL

In response to the mass outbreak of cannibalism in New York, President dismissed it as Venus Virus and withheld army and troops for use in states that supported him.

“It’s a two-way street,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “They have to treat us well, also. They can’t say, ‘Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.’”

After the disastrous Battle of Yonkers in which New York's military defenses were overwhelmed by the horde, the President questioned the motivation of the fallen heroes of the battle.

 “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

In late April, Mr Trump went back to his own scientific expertise. Backed by the White House's leading science advisor on the Zombie Virus, United States Marine Corps chiropodist Dr Ali Bongo, Trump wondered if Toilet Duck could be injected into humans to prevent the germs which return people from the dead as cannibals.

He said: “I see the Toilet Duck, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?

MAY

In May, he said: “This, Apocalypse, this is a flu. This is like a flu.

“It’s a little like a regular flu that we have flu shots for, and we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner. Or maybe we'll nuke some cities like I suggested with the hurricanes.”

Mr Trump said: “We think we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this year.”

JUNE

After the Battle of Yonkers Mr Trump said he had found it difficult to socially distance while meeting members of the armed forces who had been exposed to the Army of The Undead.

He told Fox News : “It’s very hard when you’re with soldiers, when you’re with airmen, when you’re with the marines, and with the police officers, I’m with them so much.

“And when they come over to you it’s very hard to say ‘Stay back, stay back’, you know, it’s a tough kind of a situation. They could eat your face off at any minute. it’s a terrible thing.”

He added: “They come over to you and they want to hug you and they want to kiss you, and maybe bite you, because we really have done a good job for them and you get close and things happen.”

JULY

Following an early theory that the virus came from a NASA space probe which landed in Pittsburgh, in July Mr Trump claimed to have seen evidence that the zombie outbreak originated in a Venusian laboratory, and speculated that the virus was released by Venusian authorities.

He said: “It’s a terrible thing that happened.

“Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose. Who knows. They are aliens, and I've heard, from a good person, pedophiles”

AUGUST

The US president speculated on the use of anti-flu drug Lemsip, which Oxford University researchers found to have no clinical benefit in the treatment of post mortem human flesh cravings.

Mr Trump said his doctor did not recommend Lemsip to him but he requested it from the White House physician. “I started taking it, because I think it’s good. I’ve heard a lot of good stories,” Mr Trump said

SEPTEMBER

During a campaign rally in the swing state of Ohio on September 21, Mr Trump played down the scale of the virus.  He told supporters: “Now we know it. It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. Particularly tasty old people. But they have other problems, that’s what it really affects, that’s it.”

He added: “But being a zombie cannibal affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”

"Brain eating is not a problem for young people" he said later

Trump was able to demonstrate it's harmlessness, when at the end of September, he was bitten on his backside and infected with the zombie virus by celebrity carrier Ted Nugent. 24 hours later Walter Reed hospital brought the President back as first undead POTUS.

OCTOBER

White House finally embraced the idea of using Herd Immunuty to tackle the zombie outbreak.

"Current hiding from flesh eating zombie policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” stated a declaration with government backing, adding, “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives - or die and live again - normally, to build up immunity to the zombie virus through natural teeth based infection, while better protecting those who can afford private armies and fortified islands. We call this Focused Protection.”

"ZOMBIES.. ZOMBIES... ZOMBIES... ALL THE CROOKED MEDIA IS OBSESSED WITH" said the president as he gnawed the face off an ecstatic One America News Network reporter.

In his last statement Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said "We've given up handling the zombie outbreak", just before the boarded up windows of the Oval office caved in. Outside, the Trump supporters and the selfish, brain dead cold blooded creatures who only care about filling their stomach were now indistinguishable from each other.

Inspired by Keith Olberman

And remember, this weekend, spare a thought for the true spirit of the Samhain, and George Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, Brian De Palma and John Landis

The Comey Rule Review : The only Republicans featured are the FBI

THE COMEY RULE is a 4 part showtime adaptation of Jim Comey's book A Higher Loyalty, which seeks to explain the decisions he made in opening up an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton 8 days before the 2016 election. 

It stars Jeff Daniels as James Comey, Holly Hunter as Attorney General Sally Yates, Scoot McNairy as Rod Rosenstein, Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Brendan Gleeson as President Donald Trump.

The US critics have not been kind  - is it worth watching?

Yes

But

If you enjoy watching Shakespearean historical disaster stories covering recent history, such as PEOPLE VS OJ SIMPSON or CHERNOBYL, you might enjoy this, though like them, it may leave you sick to the stomach.

It is a familiar story of naive politicos living in a fantasy WEST WING dreamland of dreams, rainbows and civic duty. They fuss earnestly about hard political rules and morals which turn out to be only held in place by polite behavior and wishful thinking. Their attempts to contain cynical win-at-all-costs political partisans, apparently from an adjacent Joaquin Pheonix's JOKER type reality, provide most of the humour/tragedy depending on your political persuasion.

see also

RECOUNT

TOO BIG TO FAIL

COALITION

BREXIT

and others

I guess it's the story of our time

THE COMEY RULE is competently done, and gripping in places though it does seem to lean on NEWSROOM level earnestness (full disclosure, I mainly I loved that show). Jeff Daniel's take on Comey is trying to be earnest and dutiful, but comes across as hapless and naive.

Scoot McNairy as Rosenstien is better, playing Judas to Comey's fumbling Burea-Christ. 

Brendan Gleeson's Trump is excellent, perhaps the best serious onscreen portrayal so far. There must be a temptation to play Trump as a clown (based only on a mountain of real evidence in our own current reality) Gleeson steps back from the joke and get's all of Trump's power of personality and his predatory charisma.

The most effective sequence is the end of Ep2, in the run up to election night Nov 2016. The creeping sense of dread will be familiar to anyone invested in politics at the time, even foreign rubberneckers foolishly hoping to see a replay of 2012. It is not just the inevitability which is sickening, it is also the idiot complacency of the establishment which is so sure of the result. 

So sure of the result Supreme Court decisions are delayed until Hillary is president. So sure of the result that the integrity of the FBI is more important to Comey than stopping a Russian asset running for president. When historians teach the history of Cold War II, I'm sure the professional credibility of Comey's team will balance nicely against Russia's 21st century geopolitical triumph over the former world super power. The soft focus Authurian treament given to the round table used by Comey's team maybe the only amusement you'll get in these four hours.

Omissions from THE COMEY RULE are interesting. It can't escape the anti-Republican slant of the movies listed about but fails to mention that virtually all of the real the FBI people depicted where in fact Republican voters themselves, just trying to do their duty.

It doesn't touch on Russian interference in the earlier Brexit vote which should have been a red flag for the FBI. It doesn't explain the importance awarded to Hillary's private server when previously Colin Powell in the Bush Administration made the same lapses. It doesn't explain why Comey chose to re-open the Clinton investigation (which is shown as an inescapable decision) but not to publicise the Russian interference before the election, which was known at the time and blocked by... wait for it... Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.

One useful thing it does remind us of is the Russian hack into the Republican Party campaign server. The Russian influence on the 2016 election is usually described as the attack on the Democratic Party campaign server, with the results later published by wikileaks. Wikileak's exact timing of the release of private Democratic emails drew attention away from Trump's "Grab em by the pussy!" bus video which hit the news a few hours before.

The hidden story is the other successful Russian hack on the Republican campaign server, from which no details have ever been leaked, publicly at least. The Russian investigation story which follows after the Comey Rule is the similarly constrained and compromised Robert Mueller probe, which actually did lead all the way to the successful impeachment of Trump. The only thing that prevented Trump's removal from office in Mueller's Russia investigation was the narrow vote in the *Republican* controlled Senate. On Russia, Trump has enjoyed rock solid support from Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al, all of whom became Trump supporters subsequent to the Russian hacks on the Republican server.

The almost rabid need for the Trump Republicans to stay in power whatever the cost to their party, their country and their planet takes some explaining. The Comey Rule dodges that completely, to concentrate once again on diabolical Hillary and HER EMAILS. The story of Russian hack on the Republican Party server has not yet been dramatised, because we don't know the end, because we are still living through it. 

THE COMEY RULE is available now on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Showtime in the US

Hot desks killed the office - not COVID

London based media and government is telling us we should all give up the new quality of life benefits we’ve discovered this year. We should return to mass commuting to London just to keep their favourite local shops open. They’ve got some nerve haven’t they?

Their argument is that COVID is a once in a century disaster and we shouldn't let it destroy the highly successful office culture that was working so well. I would disagree - selfish egotistical management from business and government had been killing the office for a long time.

We all know the vital need for every important business in the western world to have impressive offices in central London.

But what are managers to do when the business has shiny impressive offices but not enough desk space for the workers? Hot Desks! This is when you have no desk, and you have to work at a spare desk, assuming you can find one. Lousy for your concentration, lousy for your sense of belonging, and lousy for your professional confidence. It made co-workers compete for space as soon as they walked through the door in the morning and exposed the power dynamics in every office on a day to day basis.

Hot desks took away the home from home you had at the cosy place of work and just gave you a seat that may as well have been in a cafe. It instantly undermined the whole point of the office, because without face to face interaction within teams the office is just a cafe full of strangers. and once decent internet is everywhere, in every public space, the hot desk office is a joke. 

Hot desks not only took away the home you had at work, but they replaced it with a disruptive competitive experience which insensitivised “flexible working”, which we came to know as the 5am start which destroyed any life you might have had outside the office mid week. 

Hot desks started as a workable if irritating idea about a decade ago  -but as office space got more and more tight in central London the more the working conditions seemed to resemble that of battery chickens. At one job I shared a cubical for one with three others. 

Hot desks had for me one final farcial phase in the summer of 2019. After a high profile office move to the square mile we were told to;

• Commute into the office through the London's Venusian atmosphere for hours costing a fortune five days a week in a suit.
• If you find a spare  desk take it. If there are no spare desks to sit at you are allowed to travel back and work from home and work from there. 

After a month of early starts this changed to - 

• If a member of <any>  team needs the desk that you managed to find at 7am  you are allowed to travel back and work from home.

There are HR people and management staff everywhere moaning about the impossibility of allowing the average office person to work from home. The reality is home working has been an option for office workers for decades - but just for the managerial class. This is another factor which has eroded the office working environment, seeing essential management functions disappear because decision makers elevate themselves into a position senior enough to allow them to ‘work’ (aka babysit) from the Cotswolds. 

In the IT industry we frequently sat in offices packed like sardines. These were usually filled with expensive coders that spent all day on headphones craving solitude and begging for peace to allow them to concentrate. Meanwhile the day to day mangers who should have been running the office had checked themselves out to stay home and “keep an eye on Little Timmys cold”. 

If you are a shareholder in a company being told that it needs expensive London offices and just can’t implement working from home measures for the whole workforce - tell them to just roll out the same working from home procedure they’ve provided for senior management, for every company, since the advent of email.

If you are an office worker being pressured into returning to the office by esteemed guardians of your welfare like Boris Johnson, The Sun or your Office Manager console yourself with the following:

"Offices" as they are now, will only last as long as the current rental lease on the building. The decisions on your working location won't be made by office managers whose hours have been 10-4pm 3 days a week for years, they will be made based on the cost of extremely expensive real estate decisions which have now been revealed as a redundant corporate ego trip. Most office leases are about two years - so expect decisions to be made long before those leases are up.

And London? Does the world administrative centre of tax havens and dirty money need sympathy for losing footfall in the effects of COVID? 

Don’t make me laugh. I love you London but you’ve made millions of people trudge like rats through filthy dangerous tube stations and roads for decades at their own expense, while we had to compete for space with millions of tourists (have you ever tried working near Oxford Circus?). 

Meanwhile, the London based media has promoted the place as the centre of all things for so long that the rest of England looks like a dried up husk.

Worry about the future of working in London? 

Cry me a river

HBO's options for Watchmen Season 2+ (minor spoilers)

'The left hook that floored Captain Axis' publicity still from Watchmen (2009)

How does HBO follow up a hit show that wraps up so well after 1 season that even the creators are unsure if it should continue?










If you've seen Damon Lindelof's Watchmen you'll know it's a dense and brilliant piece of storytelling, comparable with Moore's original graphic novel. Lindelof himself has said HBO's tv version may be a one-off, in that he really doesn't have the material to extend what is a well contained storyline that compliments the source material so well.

One-off series? That's probably not what HBO wants to hear.
After decades of producing classic grown up tv, making Home Box Office such a successful brand we could almost call it Disney for Grown Ups, the increasingly mass market HBO needs a long running follow up to Game of Thrones. That should have been Jonathan Nolan's Westworld, but after an incredible first season, the follow up second season of Westworld looked to be seriously running out of steam.
HBO's Watchmen has been a critical and ratings smash hit. Can they extend that? What are their options?

Lindelof's Watchmen Season 2+ options

As mentioned above, Damon Lindelof and team are unsure they have enough material to do a 2nd Season, which makes a 3rd quite unlikely. They pointedly haven't touched on Nite Owl and the other members of the Minutemen in the 1940s seemed suspiciously blurred out in their appearance so perhaps that is a direction they could go and I would hope they do - but their doubt's suggest that for them this is a short term gig they are taking very seriously.

Based on Lindelof's teams enthusiasm for including representing minorities, The Silhouette, aka Ursula Zandt is a character who could easily be expanded upon. Her story is featured prominently in the opening credits of the Snyder movie without further elaboration.

Perhaps they could concentrate on the 'villains' faced by the Minutemen of the 1940's 50s and the Watchmen of the 1960s-70s? Villains is an odd concept in Moore's world as the 'heroes' pretty much fill that role as well, but we hear from Captain Metropolis in the HBO show that the Minutemen are being formed to face threats such as Mobster/King Mob(?), Captain Axis and of course Moloch The Mystic. Moloch's sad fate is briefly covered in Moore's original and slightly fleshed out in the Before Watchmen prequel comics (see below) but the other two are unseen outside a flashback in the extended cut of Zack Snyder's much maligned 2009 movie.

'Captain Axis' is an intriguing one, especially as background newspaper headlines in the HBO shows flashbacks to 1940s Tulsa show Prime Minister Chamberlain doing a deal with Hitler over Poland, suggesting a very different Second War War. What is the 'Axis' when there is no WW2?
Interestingly Pennyworth, set in post war DC universe Britain, also seems to be a world were Britain declined to go to war over Poland. Is Appeasement Britain now a standard alternate history template for DC?

Adapt DC's Before Watchmen

DC's first attempt to expand beyond Moore's world was a series of limited edition prequel comics. Though some are excellent, I particularly like Silk Spectre thread by by Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, with a teenage Laurie on the run in hippy era  Haight Ashbury San Francisco, Beyond Watchmen is patchy at best and HBO's series has covered some of
this ground already.

Adapt DC's Doomsday Clock

Though wholly owned by DC comics (unfortunately) Watchmen of course is entirely separate from the main DC universe of Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman/The Flash.
Or it was.
Doomsday Clock, DC's formal sequel to Watchmen, links both, implicating Dr Manhattan in a DC universe reboot and crossing over characters from both realities.
When Doomsday Clock was announced there was a collective grown from 90% of comic fans, knowing that this would further alienate Moore and further dilute the original material.
With one issue still left to publish in the Doomsday Clock series it says alot about the execution of Doomsday Clock that there is a little disappointment that the new characters created for the Watchmen reality, particularly The Mime and the Marionette, are not featuring in the HBO series. When Doomsday Clock is good it's approaching Lindelof HBO level in terms of Watchmen content and on a DC character level as good as anything I've read or seen.
Warner Brothers owns HBO and DC and Watchmen. With the mass market success of Lindelof's show expect this to happen in some form some day.
Yes it might be painful seeing Batman and Rorschach in the same scene. Pray it's as good as the
comic.

Adapt another Moore property

Arguably Moore's real classic, Swamp Thing, has been done to death.

If HBO is looking for another Game of Thrones, with epic scope, Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would seem to be the next obvious choice. It has a million characters, some already very well known  along with a story that spans centuries but (as of 2013) this is still an ongoing project as a tv series at FOX. We have to assume with Lindelof's success this, along with many other Moore properties, is about get into a higher gear. Please god HBO buy this up and stop it happening before FOX screws it up again.

• V for Vendetta has similar brand recognition to Watchmen but might look too similar to Handmaids Tale today and it's claustrophobic noir is hardly epic
• From Hell has also been done to death in Ripper Street, Whitechapel and any number of similar Victorian set serial killer tales.

which leaves previously un-adapted Moore properties, of which the following seem to me most appropriate as a Moore fan and avid HBO watcher

• MiracleMan/MarvelMan was Moore's first deconstruction of superheroes before Watchmen, and if looking for a fresh perspective, is arguably the definitively British take on the genre
• Halo Jones, a space opera for girls, was pretty unique in the 1980s and seem's pretty fresh for tv now
• Brought to Light could be a short shock horror history documentary series along the lines of The Untold History of the United States
• Top 10 is police procedural and superheroes, It's odd that American tv hasn't got to that already
• If the hugely anticipated Wonder Woman sequel continues that characters upward trajectory, expect Moore's occult take on that character, Promethea, to get some attention

Final thought
Disney/Marvel is sitting on a pile of Moore written material in his Captain Britain comics, which are referenced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe every time you hear or see mention of 'Earth 616'.
Earth-616, the primary reality/universe of Marvel's heroes was created by Moore when writing Captain Britain for Marvel UK. If Marvel's next phase of movies runs a little flat, just as HBO wins a zillian Emmy's for Watchmen how long are stories like Jasper's Warp going to sit on Kevin Feige's shelf?

Final Final thought

Really pining for Watchmen S2? 

See Lindelof's previous storytelling box of marvels - The Leftovers, it's as good as they say. 

The 186-minute director's cut of the  movie is. for me, a big improvement.

GHOSTRIDER (2007) - wild at heart and weird on top

With every safe successive dull cookie cutter Marvel film, the zany Nick Cage mis fire from 2007 looks better and better.
Two years before the birth of the MCU in Iron Man (2008) this attempt to reboot the Blade franchise fizzled at the box office. Now it looks mood wise less a 4th sequel to Blade, more a precursor to Taika's Thor Ragnorak.
Steven Norrington, director of Blade was was tapped to direct this but it went to Mark Steven Johnson, who has previously dropped the ball on the Ben Afleck Daredevil (the extended version is better but it's still bad).

Big stars and set pieces just about overcome uninspired direction and tired plot

This is very much a Nicholas Cage movie and if you can embrace the crazy of something like Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans you should enjoy this. Ghost Rider had been a passion project of his for years, and 2007 was a time when the star was more important than the authenticity of the comic character- NC makes his Elvis pointing pose from Wild at Heart an integral part of the Riders judgement of the innocent and it pretty much works. In 2006 the relentless Nick Cage Elvisness of this movie was a bit tiresome - after a decade of dull superhero films since, a Las Vegas obsessed spirit of vengeance is quite refreshing.

Speaking of disappointing Marvel films, Peter Fonda is an infinitely better representation of evil than the awful version of Dormammu in Dr Strange. Marvel could do worse than adopt Fonda's likeness for Mephistopheles going forward. Best part of the movie by far is the star of Easy Rider looking at the Carnival devil and commenting is deeply evil overtones
"FAR OUT"

For motorcycle and cult horror movie enthusiasts Fonda co-wrote Easy Rider while filming an Edgar Allen Poe horror movie with his sister.
Eva Mendez makes the absolute most of a typically limited Marvel female part. Both the leads are too old for their parts but are at least age appropriate for each other abs have great chemistry. Mendez's Magic 8 ball at the date, which looks like onset improv, gets funnier with repeated watches.

First movie appearance of Rebel Wilson playing a confused Goth, and she makes the most of a brief cameo. Donal Logue, of Blade (inevitably) and Gotham also appears as Cage's mechanic

Plot has issues

First 20 mins doesn’t even have Nicholas Cage in it (you might see that as a positive). Young NC (Matt Long) is better at playing Johnny than real NC is, and perhaps a modern MCU version might have kept him.

This is 2007 however and the villain Blackheart is obviously a second rate version of Stephen Dorf's Deacon Frost from Blade, a real call back to to what this movie really is trying to be - an easy remake of that movie. Mark Steven Johnson's plot is at least heavily inspired by David S. Goyer's Daywalker plot. Blackheart and Deacon Frost are both new Generation villains sweeping away the old world, and the Blood God of Blade and the Contract of San Braganza are almost interchangeable.
Blackheart even claims "I’m the only one who can walk in both worlds" and it's difficult to imagine a more obvious call back to Wesley Snipe's Daywalker.

Norrington was reportedly tipped to direct this but sadly retired from the business after clashing with Sean Connery on the set of League of Extraordinary Gentleman. (Easy on those curses Alan).
Accentuating the positive, I'm not sure Steven Norrington's pre Matrix cool would suit this Ghost Rider anyway. Ghost Rider is more Carny and corny than Matrix and you have to accept it for that. Though it has the trappings of a Marvel movie Mark Steven Johnson is really directing a vehicle for Nicholas Cage, and this movie vehicle is wild and often on fire.

The Jail sequence is definitely the highlight but Blaze's flames highlights the lack of budget elsewhere.

Some nice moments

• "Is the bike ok?" - we've all been there for that
• Great to see Brit Demon classic Night of the Demon on tv
• RAGE neon a rip off of similar scene from mood similar Shoot Em Up, let's say it's a homage

The Bikes

Blaze's custom is a Panhead Chopper was custom built for the movie
Stunt bikes are Buell X-1's as detailed here

Most haunting aspect to Ghost Rider (2007)

You have to wonder, after the reception granted to Venom, if Ghost Rider (2007) would be considered such a failure if released now. Would Blaze's obsession with Carpenters, chimp video, and candy cocktails be given more of a pass after Tom Hardy's bonkers turn in that highly successful Sony movie?
This movie couldn't catch a break at the time but deserves one because there is one area where this Marvel movie stands out - Cage makes Ghost Rider an obviously blue collar superhero.
"I went to college , got a great job, but you - haven’t changed"

says Mendes's reporter to grown up Johnny Blaze.

Ten years before 2016 made this split in society horribly obvious, Cage makes Blaze an explicitly working class boy left behind by his peers. Blaze has risen from poverty to be a success only because of the indestructibility of his curse, making him a very distinctive Evel Knievel character refreshingly unlike the Tony Stark clones many many Marvel movies since. Johnny is no Silicon Valley middle class doctor lawyer techno genius, he's just a truly doomed kid from a poor one parent family that lived in a trailer on the road.
If they are really embracing diversity in the MCU these days - and I'm all for it, WAKANDA FOREVER! - there is some here.

This content is cross posted to two blogs

World In a Bottle

http://corben-dallas.blogspot.com/ 

DURANGO95

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Norman Fucking Rockwell! and commuting midwinter

Lana Del Rey is a all powerful carnivorous orchid who will eventually consume all space and time

Grauniad reckons that Lana Del Rey's masterful

Norman Fucking Rockwell!

is the album of the year

The best albums of 2019, No 1: Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!

.. I'm tool old and out of touch to know anymore if it's the best album of 2019. These days the guys at the end of The Irishman are probably more in touch with pop culture than I am.
But speaking as LDR fan anyway, from the exact moment I saw the first few seconds of Video Games in 2011
Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an awesome achievement

I particularly like the way LDR is introducing me to influences of my era that I've previously ignored, such as Carole King, and my god she is lyrically razor sharp.

 "“LA is in flames, it’s getting hot / Kanye West is blond and gone / Life on Mars ain’t just a song.”

I would agree with the Grauniad in that this is an improvement on previous albums but it's not a sharp uptake. She is still crooning about the Bad Boys but she's making it clear It Was Not Satisfactory (Marcia Williams, 1974).

The song 'Venice Bitch' being particularly haunting, illustrative I think that LDR's shtick is evolving, on the Lynch Scale, from Twin Peaks level romantic doomed to  Blue Velvet level romantic doomed. LDR's musical persona seems less and less like a victim and more like a carnivorous orchid which will play the victim initially, only to finally emit a smile and consume the real victim slowly in her lyrics over a period of eons.

Context might be making a difference in my case. News is generally so bad I'm avoiding podcasts but personal life is so much better I can listen to music again, and I have to because my commute so much longer.

If there are better visuals to accompany this album (in the UK, in December) than slowly trundling around a neon half built airport in a blue-lit bus beneath the obsidian void of mid winter,.. well.. there isn't one. And you know what?
This commute is so atmospherically doomed it makes all LDR's previous albums awesome as well