JUICE III preview...

BOOKS: Bats vs Supes: Decoding the Mythos - what's it about?

Crack photojournalist Nick van der Leek has brought out a second book [available Friday 8 April] in his Kindling For Film Fare series.  In Bats vs Supes: Decoding the Mythos the author tries to understand the problems bedevilling the DC comic universe.  What are DC getting wrong that Marvel consistently get right?

A movie featuring Batman alone should be a juggernaut in this brave new comic era. But a flick featuring Bats, Supes and Wonder Woman ought to be a contender for biggest blockbuster ever. And yet Batman v Superman is not going to make the magical $1 billion milestone. Why?

After a strong record breaking opening, the worst fears of the comic’s core fan base were realised. Snyder had messed with the comic mythos. “There’s darker and there’s fucking with source code,” as the author puts it.

For a film that’s about finding your authentic self, whether it’s Bats, Supes, Wonder Woman, a schizophrenic Lex or being born a monster, this film shouldn’t be fighting its own source code. Right out of the starting blocks and at every turn it is. Has Snyder killed the DC cinematic universe? Are [spoiler alert] Jimmy Olsen’s early assassination and the coffin at the movies conclusion portentous signs of a systemic failure at DC? Is the issue too little creativity or too much?

In True Crime writer Nick van der Leek’s inimitable style he interrogates the archetypal mythos to discover the epic origins buried in the comic canon. The author analyses in detail where Snyder nails it, and where he goes off track.

 Using extensive research the author investigates whether DC and Snyder deserve credit or criticism, and how DC stand apart from more successful celluloid rivals, Marvel. At the same time the narrative is a treatise about the world we live in – both real and imagined.

 One of van der Leek’s more frightening revelations is this: has an entire cinematic universe been simply undermined, or has it been destroyed to cater to society’s dark heart? And where is our dark collective heart taking us…is it a place even superheroes fear to tread? Decoding the Mythos provides sanity and reference to a world – factual and fictitious - spinning out of control.

 Available NOW!!!

My latest 6 page article on superb landscape artist Hugo Naude [Published in April 2016 COUNTRY LIFE]

Extract from "JUICE" #ThePeoplevsOJSimpson

Hertz
“Go, O.J., Go!”— Hertz’s well-known slogan

Prior to Cochran redecorating O.J.’s Rockingham home for the jury walkthrough, the walls were covered in photographs of O.J. and his white golf buddies.  In one of O.J.’s alibis, Cochran claimed O.J. was playing golf at the time of the murders, and in his book “If I Did It” O.J claims between 22:00 and 23:00 on June 24^th he was “chipping balls into his neighbor’s yard.”

Golf was a big deal for O.J., in fact it was integral to his lifestyle. On the night of the murders, at 23:45 the Juice flew to Chicago for yet another golf outing with Hertz execs. O.J. had enjoyed a long relationship with Hertz; and there had been more than a little water under the bridge over the years between the brand and their beloved black ambassador.  Did Hertz know about previous incidents of abuse between O.J. and Nicole?  You bet they did!  Did they care?  Well, they cared about preserving a lucrative relationship with O.J., and so did O.J.

From thewashingtonpost.com:

Soon after O.J. Simpson was charged in January 1989 with assaulting his wife, Nicole, he placed a telephone call to a man in New York who had helped make him a household name. Simpson told Hertz Corp. Chairman Frank Olson that the wife-beating charges were overblown, a Hertz source recalls. The former football hero said he and his wife had too much to drink at a New Year's Eve party and had gotten into a fight, and that the police had been called.

Nicole Brown Simpson then telephoned the Hertz chairman herself and repeated much the same story. “She told him the same thing O.J. had said, she belittled it and said it was not a big deal and there was nothing to it,” recalled Brian Kennedy, Hertz’s executive vice president of marketing and sales.

Olson was relieved. Simpson, at that point, had been Hertz's corporate spokesman for more than a decade. In the public’s mind, O.J. was Hertz. Moreover, Simpson was just then in the middle of contract negotiations to...

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Birding [PHOTOGRAPHY]

Wedding Photography by Nick van der Leek

B&W Photography [Wild Coast]