- Music
- 01 Jun 12
This forthnight: a comic strip from an unlikely source, Sasha Baron Cohen channels his inner tin-pot and Nikki Sixx keeps its together on radio.
Hot Fuzz and Shallow Grave man Edgar Wright – he was also the lucky bastard who got to squire Charlotte Hatherley for a few years – takes his penchant for comic books one step further with The Random Adventures Of Brendan Generator, an interactive animated story that looks like a cross between Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman’s recent works.
Also pitching in are Lucasfilm (as in Star Wars) illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards; Julian Barratt from The Mighty Boosh who narrates and David Holmes whose new Unloved outfit provide the soundtrack.
“Our hero Brandon is having severe writer’s block, and one dark night of too much coffee has a blackout and wakes to discover prose, sketches and ideas on his Dictaphone that he did not remember leaving,” Wright explains. “And you get to provide one or all of those elements. I’d never written a comic before and the idea of collaborating with Tommy appealed to me. And so, I came up with an interactive idea where you, the public, can help inspire or interfere with our main character by literally putting ideas in his head.”
Check out the first four episodes at brandongenerator.com.
Sasha Baron Cohen’s chucklesome The Dictator has spawned its own republicofwadiya.com website, which explores the best of what North Africa’s most anti-Semitic nation has to offer.
“Many dozens of endangered species can be found caged at the Wadiyan National Zoo, including pandas, white tigers, and Amnesty International officials,” reads the tourism section. “You may even be lucky enough to see the Supreme Leader himself drop by to shoot an elephant. Also home to the world’s largest collection of deadly sharks, at feeding time you can throw them fish, seal meat, and foreign journalists.”
The content’s not a whole lot different to what you’ll find on korea-dpr.com, a gloriously deluded site which makes the Democratic People’s Republic look like an Oriental take on the Garden of Eden. We couldn’t resist bagging ourselves one of the North Korea Trucker Hats, which is yours for a knockdown $16.49.
Sticking with the despot theme and dictatortunes.co.uk/home reveals that Muammar Gadaffi was a huge Lionel Richie fan, while Slobodan Miloševic liked nothing more than a bit of Celine Dion after a hard day’s ethnic cleansing.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to sixxsense.com (Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx gets his own surprisingly together radio show); vimeo.com/42106181 (Father and son remake ‘Sabotage’ video); bit.ly/n2ejDp (Our favourite new stoner rock band); youtube.com/watch?v=ay8BK_tg-eI (IRA nostalgia comedy, anyone?); marshallfridge.com (Coming soon, the Marshall stack beer fridge!) and i.imgur.com/mu6s7.jpg (in the immortal words of James T. Kirk, somebody should make it so).