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And we thought it wouldn't be in cinemas again.... the 1966 Modesty Blaise film will be running July 4th and 9th at the BFI Southbank as part of a Joseph Losey series that runs until the end of July. The tribute includes The Assassination of Trotsky, A Doll`s House, Galileo, The Go-Between, King and Country, and The Servant.
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You can download the whole CD from his blog (it's zipped as a .rar file; if you need a rar extractor, a good free one is 7zip.)
Details can be found at Amazon and other booksellers.
You can listen to them on YouTube (and I agree, they do sound rather like U2).
You can view a clip of the interview at the Jazz Baroness site.
Anyway, here are the lyrics, quite good I thought:
Just don't expect anything true to the original... as I mentioned before, I think it's Remington Steele with different character names. But I'd love to hear what you think, if you do watch it!
It looks like the Penguin India reprinting of the entire 'Garth' series (for which Peter O'Donnell wrote from 1953-1966) is being delayed. The original news release on the Penguin India site, in 2008, said:
"The third major reissue in our retro revival series will be the Complete Garth in a collectible 5-volume hardback graphic novel box set. Garth is a character well known to most Indians through newspaper strips and a brief run as comic books from Indrajal comics. Though there have been a couple of annuals and two dedicated volumes, never before has Garth ever been collected. So for the first time ever fans can get all 16,000 strips covering 165 stories in 3,000-plus pages."
However, the micro-website for the Retro Revival series (which recently reprinted the entire Modesty Blaise series, as well as all the Madeleine Brent novels) seems to be down right now, so looks like we have to wait for more news...
You can view a Garth strip here.
So far the artwork for the Retro Revival series has been stunning, so hopefully we can expect the Garth reprints to be just as good!
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Reviews so far are favourable: you can read the Channel 4 one here.
From 'The Songs That People Sing' blog:
"I have just received the copy of CRIKEY, in which you have published my interview. I should congratulate you because the edition is frankly perfect. The quality of these publications, they don't accustom to be at the level of yours. The total content of the same one, will wake up the interest of its followers.
I feel very pleased before the result of the pages that you have been devoted. I celebrate to have collaborated with you, and I wish you a happy future in your future works."
High praise indeed! Details on how to buy Crikey! can be found at the magazine's website.
"This is the latest photo shoot we did for the online mag UCE Magazine. The theme was 'Criminal intent' and we chose to be inspired by the style icon and cult figure Modesty Blaise, and built up a little story
around her. Go to Spectacular Studios and check out the photos in larger versions."
(or you can jump to them here: http://trashbin.bicho.se/uce)
Photographer: David Bicho
Creative Director: Eric North-Blyth
Hair/Makeup: Maria Oldenstedt
Stylist: Catta Molin
Model: Ida S + sweet little Alex
You can see the whole Criminal Intent issue at UCEmag.com. (Go to the 'Contents' link at the top, then 'Dawn: Modesty Blaise')
Good to see that Modesty continues to draw in new fans!
The latest issue of Dangerous Ink magazine has an interview with John Burns, who illustrated the Modesty Blaise strip from 1978 to 1979. You can read a preview of the article on Dangerous Ink's website.I know, more of the same... but I really can't get enough of this story! Rather than continuing to post every few days, here are the main articles so far:
| BBC News | Ex-KGB spy in bid to buy UK paper | 15 January 2009 |
| BBC News | Ex-KGB spy buys UK paper for £1 | 21 January 2009 |
| BBC News | Profile: Alexander Lebedev | 21 January 2009 |
| New York Times | To Fleet Street by Way of the K.G.B. | 24 January 2009 |
| The Telegraph | Alexander Lebedev sets himself three years to raise Evening Standard | 25 January 2009 |
| The Times | Evening Standard ‘has three years to survive’ | 26 January 2009 |
| The Guardian | Evgeny Lebedev reveals plans for London Evening Standard | 27 January 2009 |
| Asia Times Online | Oligarchs turn to (almost) free press | 30 January 2009 |
The Swedish magazine Agent X9 has now finished the complete publishing of Modesty in chronological order with the special episode "The dark angels" in no 2-2009. They will start all over again this summer but first there will be four issues with a lot of never before published drawings of Modesty and with different persons telling their story about Modesty. First out is Romero with the story "My life with Modesty".
Thanks to Mats Jönsson for the update.
You can read the news story here, and the profile of Mr. Lebedev here. (And the video clips are worth watching). No reports yet on whether Mr. Lebedev is a Modesty Blaise fan...
In this wonderful blog piece on "forgotten books," Canadian author Vicki Delany has this to say about Modesty Blaise:
"My forgotten book, isn’t a single book, but a series, a character really: Modesty Blaise, star of the books by Peter O’Donnell, written roughly in the late 1960s and 70s. Like many women who were once girls, I particularly remember being introduced to Nancy Drew, ‘girl detective’. Nancy was a girl just like us. Well, just like us, except that she was wealthy, beautiful, popular, and adventurous. But we all knew that eventually Nancy would grow up, leave school, marry Ned (or some equally suitable boy from her social set), have 2.5 children, and a Golden Retriever, and start popping Valium. But Modesty was nothing at all like us. She was exotic, mysterious, and had a shady criminal past. She was grown up and she STILL had an exciting life. Modesty had once been the leader of a notorious criminal gang called 'The Network', and now, having given up her life of crime, she and her side-kick Willie travelled the world fighting crime. Even when Modesty was a criminal, she was a ‘good’ crook. I read the Modesty Blaise books when I was in my late twenties, settled down with house and children and dog. I think those books were my first realization that adult women could still be strong and fearless and independent. I was living in South Africa at the time: I don’t think the books got much attention in North America. In the crime-writing world today there are plenty of strong women, but Modesty blazed the trail. If there is an earlier adult adventure/crime book in which the female is the main character, and the male the side-kick, I don’t know it. It’s interesting that the books were written by a man. As a crime-writer, and as an independent woman, I owe a lot to Modesty Blaise." |
You can read more about how Modesty influenced Vicki's writing in this exclusive interview piece.
The above is from a fashion blog, although there's no reference to how these creations actually relate to Modesty Blaise! And this reference is brief, but hilarious: a Telegraph book review describes one character as "the unlikely literary love child of Father Brown and Modesty Blaise."
Another mention is in this book review blog, The Drowning Machine, where the author has chosen A Taste for Death as 'the book you most want to read again for the first time'. I love the concept of the book questionnaire - it takes some pondering!
