With the second anniversary of the big Christchurch quake about to arrive, I decided to do something a bit more organised than last year’s “check your prep kits everyone” messages.
I’ve started a Facebook page (that feeds on to Twitter): Get Prepared 22 February. It makes Feb 22, the earthquake anniversary day, the day we all check and refresh our emergency preparedness kits.
The idea is to use social media and a relevant anniversary to help people follow through on their good intentions. This is, of course, another development of the social psychology I did for my Masters research, like the small group action stuff.
It’d be great if this picked up some momentum, but it should work fine with the number of people it already has. Still, if you’re on FB or Twitter, please consider signing up & sharing with your own contacts.
Still a week to go before this famous carnival, but our local version is on today. As carnivals go it’s pretty semiotically thin, but I think it counts, particularly because it has increasingly taken specific cues from big carnivals like the N’Orleans mardi gras (kissing beads, huh?). I love that there’s a big event in Wellington’s calendar that’s all about dressing up in silly costumes. I only wish it wasn’t so very, very white middle class heterosexual. Maybe its too corporate an event to ever really get its freak on, but as it gets bigger and bigger, surely other more socially anarchistic networks could take steps to subvert it and use it as a platform to upend the social order? I live in hope.
Also of Wellington, this short moonrise clip that went viral in the last couple days. It took me ages to actually bother to watch it, because, it’s a moonrise, how good can it be? Answer: really very very good.
Hey, Comics Alliance is reviewing Barb Wire, that crazy B movie that retells Casablanca with Pamela Anderson in the Bogart role and Temuera Morrison as Ingrid Bergman. I have a real soft spot for that dumb film.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, who you should just read regularly because he’s great, delightfully describes the conceptual breakthrough that allowed him to make sense of the niceties of grammar in the French language – superhero comic parallel universes
Kyle Baker is a phenomenally talented and very funny comic creator. He has put all his creator-owned work online, free for you to read. You can stop working now, you’re done for the day, you have to spend the rest of it reading all these amazing books. (Start with Cowboy Wally or Why I Hate Saturn.)
Fascinating approach to doing a motion comic – it’s kind of like a flipbook, but way more engaging than that sounds: Malaria.
Tweenchronic Skip Rope. It came out around New Years when you were distracted. If you haven’t seen it, you gotta. It’s special. (And yes, it is by the same group that made Rebecca Black’s “Friday”.)
Thou greybeard, old Wisdom! may boast of thy treasures;
Give me with young Folly to live;
I grant thee thy calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,
But Folly has raptures to give.
The girl who played Veruca Salt in the classic Willy Wonka film wrote a book about it that is (a) free to download [EDIT: nope, not any more, it’s now US$10!], and (b) apparently really great. (via Gino)
Seen on Peter Jackson’s pet Embassy screen, with all mod cons: high frame rate, 3D, super surround sound speakers, etc.
It was groovy. Slower than it needed to be, but not so much as I’d feared. After the first half hour, it felt to me *very* similar in pacing to the LotR films. I’d give it 3.5 or 4 stars, against the 4.5 or 5 I’d throw down for the Lord of the Rings flicks.
It felt less like a coherent whole than any of the Rings films – the digressions (basically anything with no dwarves or hobbitses) really felt like digressions. This didn’t bother me in the least, though.
The big setpiece action sequence, dwarves vs goblins through mad tunnels and across wooden bridges, was too cartoony to feel of a piece with the more grittily choreographed LotR films – as if Legolas riding the shield was the default tone and not an unusual moment – but it was a fun romp and fully enjoyable to watch. (It also directly echoed, and far exceeded, the similar chase sequence in Tintin which was that film’s only memorable sequence.)
I liked it. What ya gonna do.
The HFR was *cool*. I really, really liked it. I can see why people don’t, of course, it’s definitely a different way of reading the screen, but it totally worked for me (and the 3D didn’t make my eyes tired, too, so I think it helped with that). I certainly don’t think it’s right for every film, there’s an effect of the “distance” of the traditional lower frame rate, but I can see myself looking forward to more films using HFR. I reckon Prometheus would’ve been more fun for me in HFR, for example.
Vanity Fair has published an extensive feature on Freaks & Geeks, my pick for second-greatest TV show of all time (after The Wire). There’s an oral history, new behind the scenes pics, and an amazing reunion photoshoot that brought back all the main cast, most of the secondary cast, and plenty of bit players. LOVE IT.
A eulogy for Occupy: fantastic first-hand journey through Occupy’s successes and failures. Includes plenty of details I’d never heard before, including a brutal analysis of the failure of the General Assembly process that was at the heart of Occupy, and some great insights into what Occupy created that wasn’t easily visible from the outside.
This one time, Yoko Ono and Jim Henson hung out online with Ayn Rand. No, it really happened [No it didn’t – see below], and the transcript is fascinating. (via Allen Varney) [It is fictional! My factchecking on this was pretty limited. D’oh! Thanks David R esq. for the save.]
Toy laptop for boys vs. toy laptop for girls. Can you guess how they are different? Well, one of them looks like a laptop, and the other is bright pink. But that ain’t even the worst thing. (via Theremina)
Kiwi dark crime webcomic Moth City – really good! (supported by Creative NZ no less) – sequential art peeps will want to see how it layers and changes elements.
My city is going bananas today. There’s a frenzy of excitement around the premiere of the first Hobbit movie, with the red carpet TV coverage due to begin in an hour or so. There’s also a frenzy of grump as long-simmering negativity finally boils up around such issues as the cultural worth of the movie, the government’s priorities, our tourism branding and sense of identity, and Peter Jackson’s reputation as a nice guy.
There’s also a lot of people who aren’t fussed either way, but you don’t hear much from them.
Me, I’m happy to sit with the positives. I have time for many of the grumpy-type issues (apparently there’s gonna be a book on the Hobbit labour dispute? would be good to read that and try and figure out if I had it right or if I was a victim of an effective spin machine) – but when I think about the Hobbit, mostly I think about the people I know who worked on it. There’s a lot of them. It’s a rare Wellingtonian who doesn’t know any, in fact, and that’s exactly the point. This is a creative cultural product that’s come out of our local film setup, drawing on the expertise of many friends and countless friends-of-friends. I like it when my friends and my community do cool stuff.
So bring it on. I’ll have the telly on for the coverage. I’ll be particularly looking forward to Sylvester McCoy’s jaunt down the red carpet, and Barry Humphries. And I’ll raise a glass in respect to my friends who’ve put love and labour into this project. Nice work, folks. I look forward to seeing the result.
Ryan North, who I mostly know through links from Kate Beaton but has been linkied here before for his in-depth analysis of the Back to the Future novelisation, has a kickstarter up for a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure version of Hamlet, illustrated by Ms Beaton and many others. Sounds groooovy, and actually quite interesting too. Blew through its target in the first few hours of day one – 29 days to go!
Speaking of Kickstarter and Hamlet – here’s one for a project to adapt Hamlet into a six-episode series. Also sounds very interesting. I really need to get more familiar with this play.
Here’s a comic that mashes up the Muppets and the recent Thor movie. (Drawn to roughly follow Roger Langridge’s character redesigns.) It’s worth a look – way more than you might think.
In comments last week, Stephanie reminded me about the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which I linked back in July & promptly forgot about. This video-diary adaptation of Pride & Prejudice has racked up 65ish episodes of their core storyline plus loads of other bits and pieces by other characters. Check it out!
Mashup oddity: Nine Inch Nails with, er, the sound effects from Super Mario Bros.
Why the world loves soccer and America doesn’t (via Gareth Michael Skarka) – I just don’t feel the deep love in my heart for the beautiful game, but this is a good short account of where the appeal lies.
