I'm not locked in here with you.
You're locked in here with me.

noui consilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,
'pone seram, cohibe'. sed quis custodiet ipsos
custodes, qui nunc lasciuae furta puellae
hac mercede silent? crimen commune tacetur.
prospicit hoc prudens et a illis incipit uxor.

"I am aware of whatever councils you old friends warn, i.e. "throw the bolt and lock her in.” But who is going to guard the
guards themselves, who now keep silent the lapses of the loose girl - paid off in the same coin? The common crime keeps its silence. A prudent wife looks ahead and starts (her infidelities) with them."

It has been a long time coming but, someone eventually pulled the Watchmen movie from production hell: Way back in 1992 I read the original graphic novel for the very first time and it became emblematic of the period in much the same way as the movie Aliens was a marker for the 80's. I was bored one week and I decided that it would be nice to have something on the back of my leather jacket that made a slightly bigger (if more enigmatic) statement than "Looking for a Japanese girlfriend" So I painted the Watchmen Smiley from the inside page. Almost no one at the time had ever heard of the book but most of my friends drew a rather strange and comforting sense of reassurrance from me turning up in the pub with my jacket and Shemag - this was a time when almost no-one apart from Gulf War vets, Bikers and Keanu Reeves in "My Own Private Idaho" (observed by my friend Dee Conroy who I have mentioned here anon) wore one.
Well it seemed only appropriate that I should wear it to the Monday night showing of the movie. It wasn't exactly an Imax event, being screened in the smallest of the Xinedomes theatre (German Cinemas don't give Theatre Eins to violent 18 certificates - prefering some tripe about a bird and a dog). I thought the movie was great - even in German(!) and I must admit to being filled with even greater unrelenting glee whenever Roscharch said anything. It was inevitable even in 2 hours 16 minutes that some of the great back stories would go - the pirates, the psychiatrist and most especially those funny cigarettes, to name but three, but everything else in it was absolutely rock and roll. A proper movie with everything you could ever need, sex, violence, radioactive dudes, vigilantes, urban dystopia, rain, nihilism, conspiracy, gadgets, costume heroes and a plot (note to directors of Iron Man, any Batman Movie, subsequent Alien(and or) Predator franchise sausage machine extrusions - you need one of those).
I guess I shall now wait to buy the extended-directors-cut-152-additional-minutes-of-mostly-turgid-crap-plus-the- making- of DVD, which I shall then attempt to watch as many times as I have watched the movie Aliens.

Watchmen: Best Graphic Novel of a generation.
Watchmen: Best Movie adaptation of a generation.

I guess that means I liked it.