Tintin vs. Predator.
Cracked profiles 5 other-pedias. Conservapedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica are the most interesting if you haven’t encountered them before.
Visualizing randomness.
A 2007 New Yorker story on how criminal profiling is bunkum.
Free album by Del the Funky Homosapien: funk man (the Stimulus Package).
And finally: International Jurassic Park Erotic Fan-Fiction Writer’s Association.
Author:
Alien: The Prequeling
I can’t let this pass without comment.
It’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Alien this year (a couple weeks ago on May 25 to be precise). The anniversary has been marked by word emerging that a new Alien film is in the works.
Wikipedia entry for the “space jockey” alien from the first film: “In the bonus materials of the special edition Alien DVD, director Ridley Scott expresses the opinion that a film exploring the backstory of the Space Jockey would be an interesting direction for the series to take.”
Tom Rothman, co-Chair of Fox, 28 April, answering a question about whether something is going on with Ridley Scott and Alien: “I think he’s toying with the idea and that would be great for us. I mean, it’s always been a matter of, really, if you can get the originator to do it that would be the greatest thing, so I’ve got my fingers crossed, all of them.”
Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother and partner, May 29: “Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company.”
Carl Rinsch is a director of commercials. The one doing the rounds is this: (here are others)
I’ll always have a soft spot for the Alien flicks. I first watched Aliens with a friend on an illegally dubbed copy hired from a friend’s older brother; we watched it in the afternoon and had to turn it off halfway through and do something else for a while because the ride was so intense. It remains to this day my favourite film, and my nomination for the most well-crafted film of all time. The Alan Dean Foster novelization of Alien was the first horror story I read, before I saw either film. I love the first film dearly, am a fierce defender of the third film, and think the first 3/4 of the fourth film has a lot to recommend it. I bought all the comics, which in many ways featured the best development of the source material and incidentally were my gateway into the broader comics scene. I paid actual human money for the Colonial Marine Technical Manual and two different editions of the Walt Simonson adaptation of the first film. I own a children’s book that is a genuine spin-off from the Aliens universe. And, of course, my translation of the Aliens mythos into roleplaying form means I’m still known as the Aliens guy around the NZ RPG scene, almost ten years after my last Aliens game*.
I love these films. And I have to say, I’m not wild about a prequel, Ridley Scott or no Ridley Scott.
There are mysteries to unfold, certainly. What was the nature of that space jockey alien? How did the Company know to send the Nostromo to that planet? Had there been human contact with the aliens before?
Is there a film in those mysteries? I don’t see it, myself. The mysteries around Alien are classic examples of questions that don’t need to be answered. They’re like the questions in the original Star Wars that were answered by the prequel trilogy – the answers served only to diminish the originals by closing down possibilities of meaning. What had felt rich ended up feeling empty. (Besides, Michael Jan Friedman wrote a novel that answered all those mysteries. Incidentally, it also featured the only appearance of New Zealand in the entire Aliens mythos.)
So I’m hoping this film won’t come to pass. In fact, I’m hoping that we do get a remake or a reboot instead of a prequel – the franchise is too lucrative to be abandoned for long, so I’d prefer something that didn’t try to weave itself into the margins of what has come before but instead made a forceful restatement. It would fail, sure; but at least it would only fail itself, rather than failing the original as well.
On the other hand, a 30th anniversary Aliens relaunch that I am excited about: a new comic series from Dark Horse. Rock.
* for those waiting for news of the next one, and I know you’re out there: I wouldn’t be holding your breath…
Freeze for Climate Change
This Friday there’s going to be a Freeze in many centres around NZ. Random people will assemble at 1pm and freeze in place for 5 minutes. Volunteers will hand out little flyers about climate change to people.
It’s for the UN’s World Environment Day, June 5. This year’s host is Mexico City, whereas last year it was good old Wellington, NZ – not that you could tell. Although the Freeze guys did their first run then too:
They expect many more people this time out. The WED theme this year is specifically climate change oriented: ‘Your Planet Needs You – Unite to Combat Climate Change’. There’s a specific focus on the Copenhagan meeting in December, which adds to the messages out of the massive Kyoto Science and Technology Forum in December, which identified Copenhagen as the crucial moment; and the recent talk by Bill McKibben of 350.org pushing for a global day of action in October. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Copenhagen as we get closer to the conference, but the take-home message is that everyone involved in climate change response is looking at this event. This will be where things happen, or don’t happen, that set us on our global course.
So: Friday. Standing still in a street. If you click the videos in my Friday Linkys you’ll know I’m a sucker for that kind of street theatre-intervention. Will it save the world? Of course not. Will it help? A bit. And every little bit helps. Check out the website and head along. If you’re not in NZ, figure out what your area is doing to mark the day – there’ll be something happening. Keep your eyes open and if you can have some fun along the way, great.
Oxfam NZ has a petition on this same subject.
Another reason to care about Copenhagen: it is the stomping ground of REPTILICUS.
Sidebar Update
Helen pointed out that I’ve turned up in one of the NZ blog ranking lists at #51. How odd.
This news prompted me to do an update of the sidebar for the first time in about two years… lots of changes there, some blogs on hiatus have been pulled down, a bunch of new ones added, a new section for people I know doing business on the net (hmm, there’s more I can add there too but another day), and… um… yeah. It is long overdue. I had planned to add alt text to all the links so on mouseover they’d pop up a short description of the blog but didn’t make time for that. I am however pleased that I am finally giving some linky back to some of my regular blogreads.
That said, very few people seem to use the sidebar, judging by my blog stats – and now that I run everything through Bloglines and RSS, I don’t much use it myself. Is the blogroll a thing of the past, a dead feature in todays blog interface? Answers on back of postcard plzkthx.
#51, eh? I understand Teh Publishorz give automatic book deals to everyone in the top 25, so that’s something to work towards.
Review: I Love You, Man (2009)
You want to know one of the worst feelings in the world? Walking out of the cinema after sitting through the credits gags for Paul Rudd-starrer I Love You, Man and seeing your wife on the floor surrounded by worried people. Yeah, that’s down pretty low in the emotional state rankings.
ILYM is a bromantic (zing!) comedy that carefully hits all the beats of the standard rom-com, but sets them between two guys who may or may not end up being friends (SPOILER: they end up being friends). The cinema was pretty hot, and Cal said she wasn’t feeling well and was going to head for the toilets, so I went to join our other moviegoing buddy, Pearce. He’d had to bail on sitting with us because on his other side was one of those guys you really don’t want to sit next to during a comedy. He laughed a lot at the comedy beats that weren’t really laugh-out-loud funny, and made I-don’t-know-what noises at the comedy beats that were actual LOLers. I don’t blame Pearce for bailing, because this movie was setting the guy off regularly. ILYM delivers some good gags, some real pearlers, but really that’s not the main appeal here. The charm of the movie is, in fact, its charm. Paul Rudd is great, all the more so for wrapping his everyday-guy persona around markers that would normally be signals of deviance in a Hollywood movie – he gets on way better with women than men, he’s not into drinking too much alcohol, and he liked Chocolat. Jason Segel as The Friend is even better, working his trademark overlong bro-hugs and expressive shoulders into a character who is just plain likeable, even when he’s being annoying. (And to its credit, the film knows exactly when he’s being annoying.) So we stayed through the extended gags in the credits, good fun but inessential, and went out of the cinema and I was hoping that Cal would be all right, and then I saw her on the floor, sitting in a bit of a daze, surrounded by people. I tell you what, that’s not a feeling you want. And I still sort of feel that I should have walked her out of the cinema to the toilet when she said she wasn’t feeling well, even though I know that really there was no call to do that, and it wasn’t neglectful of me to sit down and watch the credits and laugh a bit more at Jon Favreau’s minor role as the mean guy, and Andy Samberg as the cool gay younger brother, and to consider how the perfect RomCom ending itself served to highlight the hidden complexities of male friendship.
Cal’s okay – of course she is or this would be a very different blog post – it was just the heat, we figure, she fainted and was still woozy for a while. A nurse and her boyfriend who were also in the cinema had taken charge and called an ambulance so we all waited around until they came, and the officers ran a whole battery of tests and gave her the thumbs up. So that was good. She’s okay. The nurse and her boyfriend, it turned out, were sitting right behind Pearce and the Weird Laughing Guy and when Pearce got up to move they figured he just hated the movie. So did Cal, actually, because he leaned over and said to her “I have to get out of here” or something like that, but he just went and sat up the front. He enjoyed the movie. So did I. It will not rock your world, it isn’t a stunningly clever comedy of manners, but it is some good laughs and good times and it delivers with sincerity, the guy friendship felt genuine and even more surprising the romance between Rudd’s character and his fiancee felt lovely and honest too. It was just a nice film to watch. I recommend it. But if as the credits roll your wife says she isn’t feeling well, go out into the lobby with her, just to make sure she’s okay. The closing gags are good fun but seriously, you don’t want to laugh away and then walk out and realize your wife has been down on the floor without you there to help. That’s a pretty uncool way to end your night watching this three-stars-out-of-five, maybe-three-and-half-stars movie.
Post-Frustration Linky
Because nothing soothes the throat like linky.
Archive of gay-themed paperback covers. I love the cover copy on the eponymous book: “Back when men were men… more or less.”
Did I ever post this? The Bourne Identity was a TV series in the 60s called Coronet Blue. Well, near enough. See also Wikipedia entry for the series. That’s the kind of classic oddity I’d like to see on DVD.
Awkward Family Photos!
Sexist advertisements from when those womenfolk knew their place
From svend via talula: Things you should have seen on the net. Which means I have finally seen this agonizing clip:Boom goes the dynamite. Oh, man.
And finally… the BoHe-Man Rhapsody
Frustration Post (2)
I am pleased to report that after many hours of restarts, installs, uninstalls, variant drivers, permissions settings, IT addresses and cable connections, I have successfully restored my computer to the functionality it had before I tried to make the scanner work.
Hurrah! Who really needs a scanner anyway!
(No I haven’t given up on the scanner. I have given up on the manufacturer’s standard driver software, which seems to be clashing with some other setting somewhere. Pondering next step.)
Man, I’m really blogging like it’s hot this week. Ooh yeah.
Frustration Post
8pm: “Hmm. That’s interesting. The scanner gives me an error message and doesn’t operate. I wonder why?”
10pm: “What do you mean my printer/scanner model number doesn’t exist? I’m reading it right off the plastic casing!”
1am: “What do you mean you can’t see the printer any more? It’s right there in the other window!”
3am: “What do you mean you can’t shut down? How can a computer forget how to shut down?”
*deep breaths*
Battle will be resumed this evening.
Man on Wire (2008)
This post is to encourage you: do not hesitate. When the chance arises, watch this film.
This film is about a dude who walked on a high wire between the Twin Towers in NYC back in the 70s. It’s one a lot of people have been talking about, and it has been universally praised. I’m joining in that chorus of good words. And I say this knowing that the overwhelming thumbs-up completely failed to motivate me to watch this film. It was Cal who brought it home to watch when she wasn’t feeling well, and only then did I realize how true the positive word had been.
I was talking about it afterwards (the thing about this film is that you have to talk about it afterwards, it’s hard not to) and the person I was talking too wondered how such a thing could be done; how you could move from the roof of the tallest building in the world, to shift your weight on to a wire above empty space. How could you possibly take that first step?
The first step is talked about vividly in the film – the wire-walker remembers it very clearly. But the bigger question of how he could take that step, he doesn’t address, in fact none of those involved do, not outright. But this question animates the film. Everything you see and hear contributes to a comprehensive answer. By the end, you understand exactly how he could take that step; in fact, you realize that there’s no way he could not.
So: seek this fillum out and give it a good, solid watch. It’s hilarious and hair-raising and it will hook you. It’s great. And afterwards you’ll want to talk about it.
Writing Update – April into May
Plan to write twelve short stories this year is, predictably, falling behind the curve, but not fatally so.
Two stories completed to a point I can send them places without significant shame.
One completed to a point that I think it is unsalvageable and probably need to pretend it never happened.
One completed to a good draft stage, need to type it up and fire it out to helpful volunteer readers.
One in progress.
Comic meetings are still happening. That is taking a very long time though.
(In fact, major writing project at present = thank-you cards…)
[Last writing update]