I just got back from watching the new Wolverine movie. I was going to review it, but I realised that there’s really not much point. You’ll either see it or you won’t, and your life will be neither better or worse either way. There are explosions, Liev Schreiber is quite good as Sabretooth, and Hugh Jackman has enormous arms. No, really, they’re huge. It can have a 3 out of 5, because it was so perfectly balanced on the point of exactly what I expected that it’s really neither good nor bad. I’m sure I’ll have forgotten it in a week.

Something I won’t have forgotten in a week is another comic-related film I watched earlier in the day, on DVD, while tinkering with my girlfriend’s computer. In fact, it was so interesting that I’ll probably watch it again next week. The Mindscape of Alan Moore is exactly what it says on the box: a documentary documenting the extraordinary thoughts of the famed comic-book writer (author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta). I ordered it from the internet immediately after listening to an interview with Moore and film creator Dez Vylenz on disinformation (which you can listen to here; iTunes required, from the looks of it).

Hunched under the weight of his enormous mane, his fingers encased in rings that look like medieval armour, Moore looks like an aging goblin king (about four thousand years after the David Bowie phase). Over psychedelic imagery and scenes from his comics, Moore summarises select moments of his life, including his beginnings as a writer.

His most interesting ideas, however, are on the subject of magic and how it relates to art. According to Moore, both are pretty much the same thing. They each involve the manipulation of words or images to influence people and the world. Artists are magicians, harnessing the power of their conscious and subconscious minds to change the world. Unfortunately, according to Moore, this power has in recent times been co-opted as the basis for the dark art of advertising, which makes us desire things we don’t need and states of being we can never achieve. Fascinating stuff.

There’s lots more mind-bending stuff in the doco, as well as plenty of extras, which include interviews with many of Moore’s comic-book collaborators. You can order the DVD from the producer’s site at www.shadowsnake.com.

4/5