Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

02-17-06

Phil Hale is an artist whose name comic readers might not recognise but I'm pretty certain that they've seen his work. He's done painted covers for a number of Vertigo's now-defunct anthologies like Weird War Tales and Flinch and he's appeared in Ashley Wood's Swallow magazine for IDW. He is a brilliant painter, an ex-pat American who came over here in the early eighties and never went back. He has not one but two new books out, which I bought recently, although they're only available (as far as I know) together: mockingbirds and relaxeder, published by Donald Grant. Two 64 page hardcovers, mockingbirds presents his paintings in a series of illustrations (confusingly all called mockingbirds) while relaxeder shows us a series of his figure studies and some images of found objects. Hale is a superb artist and, ironically, he imbues his grotesqueries with likeable qualities. Both books are indispensable art books and the only thing missing here is something like an interview with Hale in one of the volumes to put the pieces into a little more of a context. But that's not a major criticism as it's evident that Hale would rather the work speaks for itself which it does very eloquently.

I was also sent The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, by Tony Reeves, from Titan Books, which is a very enjoyable book that you can dip into at your leisure if you want to find out which defunct London power station Terry Gilliam's Brazil was filmed in or where in Los Angeles Robert Altman chose to shoot The Long Goodbye in 1973. It's an odd book in terms of its omissions: apparently the first version came out in 2001 and it was updated twice (in 2003 and this year) but it has strange films absent. Three of the four Batman films are listed here as is Batman Begins but Batman & Robin, which admittedly was excreble, is missing as are a few TV movies like Steptoe and Son and Porridge. But these are small quibbles: The Worldwide Guide To Movie Locations is the perfect toilet book where you can dip into its pages at your leisure and where you can amaze (or bore) your friends with fun film trivia.

I'll be at the New York Comic Con for the next week so expect my next entry to be sent from Manhattan. Hopefully it'll be less snowy than it was this past week.

Mockingbirds/Relaxeder
Phil Hale

The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations
Tony Reeves