Dune & Doctor Who

Two interesting projects have come to light today, both on the Bleeding Cool news website. They are both ideas I have talked about several times in the past: “someone should do this,” I have said. Now someone is.

The first is a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted 1970s film adaptation of Dune. I learned about this film through my interest in the making of the 1979 film Alien, which was in many ways born out of the ashes of the failed Dune project. The designs I’ve seen for the film are fascinating, and the weird visionary style of Jodorowsky would have been a fascinating match for Frank Herbert’s dense science fiction epic. The sheer talent involved alone makes this one of the great untold stories of filmmaking, and one I’ve long thought demanded a telling; but now that I’ve seen this first clip, I realize Dune could have been even more of a game changer, perhaps the only real followup to Kubrick’s 2001. This one promises to far exceed my hopes. I’m very excited about this.

The second one has not been confirmed, but strongly hinted: Mark Gatiss is apparently working on a TV drama about the creation of Doctor Who in the early 60s. I am a lot more cautious about this project. While Gatiss is a huge fan of the show and a highly successful TV creative (best known at the moment for Sherlock), he is… not at his strongest working with female characters. (At least, so argues Andrew(Bartok), quite convincingly.)

This matters because the version of this story I have always wanted to see (and have wanted to write, had I the time and airfare budget to research it properly) isn’t about the origins of Doctor Who at all, but instead about the early careers of two remarkable women: Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire. Both of them were pioneers (in television production and electronic music, respectively, although that undersells their impact) and both of them were young women in overwhelmingly male work environments. DW was where their trajectories crossed, and they both had a huge part to play in making the show an icon of British culture. There is plenty of other fascinating incident in the origin of DW, and of course the men involved were all quite singular, but to me the Lambert/Derbyshire parallel story has a potential that the rest doesn’t match.

So I’ll watch for more news of this one with caution.

(The first scene of my version of the Lambert/Derbyshire story pretty much writes itself.)

Rye Whiskey Linky

Linky named in honour of the rye whiskey that broke inside the Alligator’s bags en route to the Hutt Valley. We did not drink you, rye whiskey, but we inhaled your aromas.

Some linky then:

Modernist Journals, complete in PDF. Includes, for example, all three issues of The Blue Review (1913) edited by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Quite, quite wow.

Retronaut has some colour photographs of WWI. (Presumably using the autochrome process?)

The Star Tours ride is gone – but it has been recreated. By a fan. In both 2D and 3D.

Top 10 relationship words not translatable into english

Via Susan H, New Scientist looks at flow – that state when you’re totally in the zone.

The death and return of Superman, as goofy film. Marvellous. I used to describe this storyline as “DC using up all public goodwill in order to give Superman a mullet.”

Mrs Meows discusses the plight of the Disney starlets.

Photos of shrines in teenage bedrooms

Tiny Little Love Stories

And finally, the logical end of all those Sh!t People Say videos

Yknil Linky

The great shift of medium for the comic form, from paper to digital, passed its tipping point sometime in the last few years. Over the same period, the market for “literary” comics-as-books has grown enormously, the economics that supported the popular “pamphlet” comic book format have utterly collapsed, and (with ironic timing) the primary content of those dying pamphlets has become the biggest moneyspinner in the Hollywood arsenal. This makes for some interesting times.

Consider:
Popular webcomic “Order of the Stick” is running a crowdfunding campaign to gather $60K to fund a *reprint* of a print collection of its freely-available online strips. As I write, it has beaten its goal sixfold, and there are almost three weeks still to go.

Wholesome all-American Archie Comics, one of the few pamphlet-style lines that seems to be in decent financial health, has not just introduced a gay character, they put a mixed-race gay military wedding on the cover. And the latest news is that Archie will be covering the Occupy movement. It wasn’t so long ago that the Archie characters were spouting God’s word on-panel, and spun off a whole sub-line of Christian comics where the Archie gang learned about prayer, scripture and the fires of hell.

The Avengers film is going to launch a new trailer during the Superbowl, the most expensive advertising spot there is. It will do huge numbers at the box office (+ more if it’s any good). Probably 99.5% of viewers will never have read an Avengers comic book, and never will afterwards either. (The real secret of success here: Comics people teaching Hollywood how to do a crossover with film properties. Comic books figured out how this works back in the 30s. Hollywood never did until Aliens vs Predator – which was of course a comics adaptation.) (Although Freddy vs Jason came out first.) (And no, those Abbot & Costello films don’t count.) (True fact: Hollywood has never really understood IP, even while it fights furiously to defend it.)

Comics from around the world, particularly Europe and Asia where the medium is thriving in print as well as digital, are also more available to the English-speaking world than ever before. Two Euro examples:
Billy pointed at this marvellous strip that takes advantage of screen presentation in an absolutely stunning way, and tells a heck of a story as well.
And various comics types have been delightedly sharing this amazing 24-hour comic by Boulet – created from nothing to completion in (just over) 24 hours. Fantastic!

Every single one of these items is just amazing to me. (I won’t talk about Before Watchmen, because after six months of rumours I’d already resigned myself to its existence. And besides, the Alan-Moore-devised role-playing adventures provide all the prequel content I need…)

Maire just found a neat bit of research on what happened to that slave who wrote a letter to his old master. (Here’s that letter – really, really worth a read.)

This one’s been popping up all over, because it’s marvellous: a girl who can say words backwards. I love this video not just for the party trick itself (which is lovely and fascinating) but for the details: the girls in the back seat conferring as they try to come up with the hardest words they can, the guy looking around for inspiration and naming everything he can see which tells you a lot about where they are, the fact they are in a car in the first place, and best of all the way the video ends. (Oh crappers.) It’s all so damn genuine.

What’s wrong with “First Word Problems” (Via Ms Scarlet)

ALIEN linky now: Jones the cat’s view of Alien (Via qarl) and the wonderful ALIEN AGE 11, which is a comic adaptation of Alien made by an 11-year-old who had only read the novelisation and never seen the film (via dritchie).

Shakespeare in the original pronunciation transforms the work & reveals previously-hidden puns. Great! (via Sonal)

Lance Reddick from Fringe and The Wire reveals a new side of himself.

Classical concert performer interrupted by ringtone, and handles it very well indeed

Your wow photos for the day: Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival

And finally, via Mike Sands: cats 4 gold

How Wrongness Happens

The BBC:

Photos uncovered by the National Archives show how the police spied on the suffragettes. These covert images – perhaps the UK’s first spy pictures – have gone on display to mark the centenary of the votes-for-women movement.

Ninety years ago, a Scotland Yard detective submitted an unusual equipment request.

It was passed up the chain, scrutinised, reviewed and finally rubber-stamped in Whitehall itself. Scotland Yard duly became the proud owner of a Ross Telecentric camera lens. And at a cost to the taxpayer of £7, 6s and 11d, secret police photographic surveillance (in the shape of an 11-inch long lens) was born.

Within weeks, the police were using it against what the government then regarded as the biggest threat to the British Empire: the suffragettes.

Documents uncovered at the National Archives reveal that the votes-for-women movement probably became the first “terrorist” organisation subjected to secret surveillance photography in the UK, if not the world.

The BBC photo caption, written by a subeditor:

In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera to covertly photograph the suffragettes.

Nope. Scotland Yard had cameras in use by 1888, as anyone who is brave enough to google “Mary Kelly” will discover. A quarter-century later they finally began to use cameras for surveillance.

But, everywhere else:

In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera, to covertly photograph suffragettes. – The BBC

That subeditor’s error in the photo caption wasn’t accidental. The idea that an entire new technology was first brought to bear as a means of suppressing dissent and protest? That’s our current moment affecting their assumptions about what has happened in the past. Stories corrupt across multiple tellings in predictable ways; most obviously they change in order to fit with our expectations and beliefs. Even an instance as small as this is not entirely harmless – right now there’s someone out there forming the belief that law enforcement’s eternal priority is to crush dissent on behalf of the state. (And heck, they might be right, but they ought to be forming that belief based on some actual evidence, not misinformation.)

[edit: fixed that link to google search results. took about four attempts. finicky!]

Faces Everywhere Linky

Hey, that plug socket looks like a face! Yes – but does face recognition technology also think so? Machine pareidolia

Ten 100-year predictions that came true

U.S. right wing as demented cult – a disillusioned insider speaks. And David Frum writes about the same thing. As I’ve said before, this is the logical consequence of Karl Rove.

Hello: (via many people!)

Dogs bark the Imperial March. Yes. It’s a commercial for VW, try not to be influenced to buy a VW.

Dangerous Minds has been finding full movies on YouTube –
The Hobbit (1977)

Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (1965)

Also, that 1966 Hobbit movie in full, with the full weird story behind its creation. (The film itself has been all over the place but the original story hasn’t been shared nearly as much.)

Bartok found The Restart Page – reboot your computer the old-fashioned way!

China’s deserted fake Disneyland, and New York’s unused secret subway station.

And finally, Cliff Richard Dying Inside

The Muppets (2011)

Cal & I were lucky enough to get a few hours to ourselves, and decided to check out a film. Our options gave us a pretty stark choice, and we opted for The Muppets over Lars von Trier’s (supposedly fantastic but probably a wee bit depressing) Melancholia.

This was a good call.

It’s a great film. Sure, not perfect. The pacing felt a little bit *too* rushed at the start, like you were waiting for it to catch up with itself. But all the bits were fantastic. It was classic Muppets action. Lew Zealand got one of the best lines in the film, and you know something’s going right (or terribly terribly wrong) when that happens. Heck, the film trusted its felt talent enough to hand over the screen to its chicken cast, who of course (unlike the other Muppets) cannot speak, only cluck. Everything stopped for a big chicken-only musical number which was performed in its entirety. And it worked.

And I even teared up a bit as the Muppets recreated their classic TV opening.

I only had one complaint about this film, one moment where it kicked me out of the zone. The Muppets are performing probably their most famous song, and it cuts to the audience in the theatre, who are all smiling and swaying along with the music. And I thought, NO! That’s not right. They should be SINGING ALONG!

Anyway. This card-carrying member of the Victoria University Muppet Club loved it.

Bonus: Yesterday I listened to this Q&A podcast with the writers of The Muppets – revelatory and laugh-out-loud funny. Obviously, filled with spoilers, but if you’ve seen the film I highly recommend it.

Also: Chris Cooper’s song in the film is a SHOWSTOPPER.

Sromance Linky

Bond. (Warning: many of the swearing words may be heard in this clip.)

Karen Healey muses on bromances and the relative lack of sistery equivalents. Includes due appreciation of Josie and the Pussycats which all right-thinking people acknowledge as a BRILLIANT FILM but apparently there are a lot of wrong-thinkers out there because, 5.1 on IMDB? 53% on Rotten Tomatoes? WTF?!

Alan Moore visits Occupy London and meets people in the V mask

There’s a petition to bring back breastfeeding on Sesame Street.

If famous writers had written Twilight. The comments go on forever, covering everyone from Cormac McCarthy to Jose Saramago.

Wall-Etheus:

My Guantanamo nightmare. If you haven’t read this yet, do so.

Jem & the Holograms – fashion redesigns. Eric Raymond would be furious.

Oh, man. Those little digital handheld games – play ’em online. I remember this one really clearly.

Absolutely engrossing article about, um, car parking. No, really.

TV journalist talks about how, exactly, journalism is broken.

And finally, you WISH you could party like this

Space Jockey Linky

So anyone who’s hung out on film geek websites will know that my worst fears about Prometheus, as lengthily burbled in previous post, were fulfilled in the trailer released the very next day. Oh well.

MIT’s infinite corridor

That Pingu-meets-The Thing video that’s racing around the web is indeed genius. I first saw it at Dangerous Minds, which has a few other relevant links.
Related: stop-motion recreation of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Nice edit of Chaplin’s Great Dictator speech:

How scientific findings about sex differences get used to reinforce stereotypes [this has gone behind a paywall – email me or comment if you want the full text]

What it feels like to have an advanced understanding of mathematics

Tumblr really has taken this “Ryan Gosling is the thinking woman’s crumpet” idea and run with it, huh? Ryan likes Occupy, NPR, crafting, libraries, and no doubt many more

Tumblr also has X-Men with Googly Eyes (thanks David R).

And finally, via Cat… German Industrial Dance Polka