Warren Spector, of Deus Ex and System Shock fame, whom was one of my idols back when (ehm… a couple of years ago that is), has just started blogging.
Monthly Archive for July, 2007
Sugarshock is a quirty little webcomic by Joss Whedon (via Nerd World and Dark Horse Presents).
Courtesy of the largely intolerable Ain’t It Cool News, comes footage from the upcoming Blade Runner release. I can’t wait; I’m going to hole myself up in the apartment and just watch the whole stinkin’ mess from one end to the other. It’ll be epic. I don’t really want the big suitcase, because where to put it? But man, do I ever want that suitcase…
Update: Cinematical scored a rather lengthy interview with Ridley Scott.
“By installing Java, you will be able to experience the power of Java…”
Really? And without installing Java, I wouldn’t be able to experience the power of Java?… Who thinks up these things?
A great article on Ian Watson’s collaboration with Kubrick on A.I., which has many great bits, including this one:
One day Emilio (red: Kubrick’s chauffeur) was driving me down the M1 motorway in the charcoal-coloured Mercedes en route to the manor house. “Ian,†he said, “Stanley phoned me on Sunday afternoon, even though he promised I could have Sunday afternoon to myself. ‘I need some string, Emilio,’ he told me. Stanley likes to tie things up with string. Ah but Ian,†continued Emilio, “I know about these things by now. So I said, ‘Stanley, where are you?’ ‘I’m in the computer room.’ ‘All right, Stanley, do you see the wall with the shelves? On the middle shelf in the middle there is a ball of string.’ ‘I can see it!’ ‘Wait! Go directly to the shelf, and come back here with the string, and tell me you have it!’ ‘Ian,’ said Emilio triumphantly, ‘I have string in every room for situations like this. And I also have extra balls of string hidden in each room as well!†#
And of course this one, which goes out to Martin and Poulsen:
I had written a novel entitled Inquisitor set in the wacky far-future world of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000; he wanted a pre-publication printout right away. “Who knows, Ian?†he mused. “Maybe this is my next movie?†I arranged for Games Workshop to send him samples of their games and artwork and obtained for him from fantasy artist Ian Miller a portfolio of drawings of monsters. Anything could be grist to the mill, now or at some future date.
Incidentally, I like inquiring fresh minds what they thought of A.I… What did you think of A.I.?
Let it be known that I am very unimpressed with the Beowulf trailer. Even if Gaiman feels its 2D presentation doesn’t do it justice, that hardly makes up for the dodgy facial animation, PS2-quality ocean and weird stilted horses.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very very well done, even the ‘dodgy animation’, but it is instantly recognizable as sub-reality, and thus lands itself square in uncanny valley.
I just don’t believe we have the technology to do this properly. Not yet.
And while I have a lot of faith in Zemeckis, he is one of my favorite directors in fact, this stab at the new 3D cinema that’s on the rise (thanks to Cameron, Lucas and Jackson I suppose), is so far not getting much hype in the Heilemann/Andersen household.
PS: Not to mention the horrible compression on, at least, the 720p trailer!
PPS: My opinion is more important than yours, since Beowulf takes place partly in Denmark, so there!
PPPS: I would love to see the Beowulf opera Elliot Goldenthal composed the music for; alas I only have a horrible bootleg of just the music, and I doubt it will be touring to Denmark any time soon; and if it does, I doubt I’ll be able to get tickets. Oh voe.
PPPPS: Crispin Glover being in this must mean the Back to the Future II rift has mellowed over the years… Glover is an odd fish…
Various things, but amongst them:
It’s deserted. It seems like functionally it has to be deserted. If it’s not deserted it crashes. So there’s all this empty, empty architecture. There’s whole cities where there’s only one other person and they don’t even want to get close to you. And when you do succeed in finding a group of other avatars, people aren’t very nice. #
Very much looking forward to Spook Country, and really should go back and re-read Pattern Recognition, just for the hell of it.
PS: Wired also has a small snippet-interview up.
Unfortunately there was a power failure at this show and the PA went down … the computers recording the shows were fried and did not get back up and running until the second half of the show. We’re really sorry that the full show is not available, but please download the songs that are on us. #
Great, the majority of the Danish Ã…rhus concert, for free :D
The German Protestant Church compared the Hollywood film star Tom Cruise to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels yesterday and claimed the actor was using his celebrity status to publicise the controversial Church of Scientology, of which he is a prominent member. #
The fantasy section of the bookstores getting crowded? You want a monopoly on neural vira religion?
Not that I want to turn this into a movie-oriented blog (too late!), but there’s a great interview with the writers of Transformers over on Creative Screenwriting Magazine’s podcast.
I don’t know where that sun is supposed to be, but it ain’t outside my window, that’s for sure.
So far nearly three times average precipitation for the summer period, with a ‘stay inside, cuz it’s gonna get real wet out there ya’ll’-warning for this afternoon… Lovely.
All of Europe shares the same podcasting section in the iTunes Store. I don’t know about you, but my Spanish, Italian, French and German is a little rusty, and so most of the podcast listings are basically useless to me. So to productively browse for podcasts, I have to switch to the US store… Grrr; that makes Hulk mad.
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot. The full 17-minute video is available on the Complete Dossier of Apocalypse Now, this version, for better and worse, has the musical bits cut out.
Rikke was paradropped deep inside Harry Potter-land since last night, and so I’m left with a lot of time on my hands. The paradox being of course, that today of all days I have no inspiration… Dang.
Well, for the time being I’m kicking back watching Bowfinger again (I love that movie!).
Yesterday I finished the first hardback of Powers (collecting ‘Who Killed Retro Girl?’ and ‘Roleplay’) and loved every minute of it; amazing dialog! So I hopped on down the street to Fantask, our local comics store, hoping to pick up the 3rd trade, but guess what? Yep, out of print. It looks like a new hardback collecting trades 3 and 4 is coming out some time soon, but nonetheless.
So instead I picked up the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen trade. Luckyyyy! Now if only they’d get their ass in gear and do a new run.
Well, that’s what I’m up to so far today.
Whatchu doin’?
Joel says:
When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words. #
That is true, in so far as bloggers are incapable of handling their readers. The fallacy being that if you’re friendly with everyone, they’ll be friendly with you. Or that your comment section is some sort of digital speaker’s corner.
Also, the key of the theme heard at the beginning of every Matrix film ascends by one semitone with each movie. In The Matrix, the music starts in the key of E, The Matrix Reloaded in F and The Matrix Revolutions in the key of F-sharp. #
I am, despite their flaws, still enamored with the Matrix franchise.
Guardian Unlimited has a great, though perhaps slightly cynical breakdown of what elements have to come together to create a blockbuster in Hollywood today.
Luckily the computer games industry is so far not quite as soulless and ‘star’based as Hollywood–a tendency broken early on by John Romero and the ineptitude epic that was Ion Storm Dallas’ tumultuous life — though currently we are perhaps more hindered by our lackluster distribution model.
Oh well, can’t have your cake…
Staring wide-eyed at shelves teeming with fantasy and science fiction epics as far as the eye can see, I cannot, despite knowing better, stop myself from wanting to pick up the thickest books, in the vein hopes of it living up to its sheer size.
But, sitting here, feeling defeated — being absolutely unable to fight my way through Peter F. Hamilton’s 1144 page opus, Pandora’s Star — I think I’ve learned my lesson.
So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it’s experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can’t explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends. #
Indeed; it took me a while before I finally wound up appreciating Twitter’s appeal. Unfortunately for me, most of my real life friends are so internet lethargic that they’ll finally ‘get’ Twitter by the time the rest of us have moved on to… well to something that’s much much cooler and future-like! So there.
Now, if only Pownce wasn’t causing a schism in the quiposphere.