Two fringes enter, one fringe leaves

I’m watching Fringe, J.J Abrams latest attempt to mystify. Like all things, there are patterns if you look hard, or should that be, obsessively enough. My girlfriend got a fringe for her degree show, (shameless plug 1 and 2) I don't know why, but that makes it sound like she contracted a disease.

Now, if you regularly viddy this blog you’ll know Abrams and I don’t get on. We fell out over a fiver he never paid back and also his puny attempts to set up a mystery, within a mystery, within…ad infinitum, like a baffling plot version of a Gooducken. I’ll write a 140 character review via twitter here, just to make it more interesting.

I misjudged you, demon

Paranormal, tentacled terrors from the pit, no, this isn’t a reference to the 70s toilet in my flat but my new love. Boy Hell, I mean, Hellboy. Its unsettling that, apart from inheriting several physical and physiological traits from my dad, I’ve also inherited an uncontrollable tendency for irrational prejudices when it comes to certain franchises.

It happened with Firefly, despite the love that dare not speak its name, (not in public at any rate) for Buffy and Angel. Again, I suffered this affliction when considering Clone Wars despite knowing some Samurai Jack episodes verbatim. And so, it follows, like a chicken burger that has stewed under a heat lamp, follows too much Bombay Safire, that I would feel the same way about Hellboy.

The Hellboy revulsion is easier to dissect. My first real exposure was a giant bust (for the non-geek this amounts to a classical bust but of a popular comic/anime character) of Hellboy on the desk of a tard I did a degrading summer job for. Negative enforcement number one. The second exposure came via the film version, which, despite being directed by Del Toro loses a lot of the elements that future me would come to love about the graphic novels. The references to Lovecraft and blending of folklore were watered down for a heavier emphasis on action…lame.

So, the moral...the moral? Amoral. Toril, that’s a planet apparently. Don’t judge a graphic novel character by the sawn off horns on his head.

Everybody's gotta grow up sometime, bum, bum, bum

I've moved in with my significant udder, got a permanent job and have governance, both physical and spiritual, over the cat. It's all competing for geek out time. I've even started to contemplate some sort of geek schedule.

Fitting in an hour of Battlestar every week shouldn't be too hard. And, lets Cylon it, once that's over I'll have already rounded up all the episodes of Deadwood and tapped every series of The Wire. Maybe I could buy the Cracker DVD box set? After all, I was only a wee one when the series originally aired. The only episode I can remember, with any clarity, starred Robert Carlyle as a Liverpool supporter who moonlighted as an anarchist bomber. I still duck and cover whenever I hear a scouse accent.

Graphic novels: a friend of mine works at Forbidden Planet, so there's a social excuse to fit that in. I've got some time before the next volumes of The Walking Dead, Fables and Ultimates get released. There's no rush to venture into the BO steeped caverns. They really need to give out deodorant to the more 'special' patrons.


Films: I watched Iron Man on das interweb recently. I also made the mistake of going to see the latest Indy film at the picture house. I thought this time, this time it'll be different. No idiots' mobiles going off in the back row, no middle class twits mindlessly twittering away (in the old fashioned sense) about the price of organic Soya beans. But every time, every bloody time. Cash and time I'll never get back. Still, the significant udder has a free pass to the Mezzanine. I'm gonna go all art house on your asses.


That leaves games. Its officially my job to keep up with what's going on in the gaming world, so maybe a new console isn't such an outlandish concept. I dunno, maybe I should wait till winter and then I can justify staying in with the sweet sounds of the console fan, as I shower fiery death on whatever.

Philip Pullman's, John Blake

I was reading the Guardian Weekend magazine, whilst having some fair trade coffee and eating organic Soya beans, writing to Philippe my adopted Peruvian child and listening to Radio 4 (so much middle class smugness it burns)...


....Right, so the magazine contains three pages of Phillip Pullman's new comic strip. Buccaneering-atheist awesomeness, I hear you cry. Yes, indeed. It's a tale about a boy on a ship akin to one of those 'ripping yarns’ of the Alan Quartermain variety, except its called John Blake. It looks pretty good so far, and has all the wit and atmosphere you'd expect from Pullman. Here's hoping they turn it into a graphic novel.

The Old Ones and me

It's time for another genre and medium transcending, geek out session. Today's unexpected connections concern the 'Old Ones' (not to be confused with the geriatric legions) as featured in H.P Lovecraft's, weird tales.


The 'Old Ones,' including the famous Cthulu, are God like beings from outer space, another dimension, or wherever, its not really made clear. Suffice to say they're big, malicious and will drive you mad. At some point, way back, they ruled this little globe.

"You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue." - Neil Gaiman, 'What's A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This'

Then for whatever reason they had to go to ground, under ground, deep under the ocean. Most of Lovecraft's stories that mention the Old Ones, are usually about a cult or some other kind of servant(s) attempting to bring them back.


Reminded of the 'Old Ones,' I unconsciously searched for any references in my pop culture library (brain). How I remembered the following is a mystery, and I should probably be worried. Before we get started, an 'Old One,' in the context of this post, needs to be at least a bit slimy or crustacean like, to count. They can't just be err, old. Lets get started:

In the Warcraft universe, there's a pretty straight forward homage to the Old Ones:

"The Old Gods (aka, Old Ones, elder beings, dark elders) were malevolent deities who ruled Azeroth in the ancient past...Soon, the Titans defeated the Old Gods, then chained the raging beings beneath the earth where supposedly, they remain to this day."


The Twilight Cult found in WoW are similar to the Cthulhu Mythos Cults. The Murlocs (genius) are based on Lovecraft's Deep Ones.

In the Myth universe, Ghouls are said to worship 'Dark Gods.' The genesis story for the world of Myth is similar to that of Warcraft: there was chaos, Dark Gods lived it up and then a being of order came and ruined the party, trapping them somewhere.

"It is they alone who remember the names of the dark gods." - Ghoul flavor text, Myth II

B'Y'laggo is also unpronounceable enough to qualify as an 'Old One.'

" ... little is known of the bre'Unor, a fir'Bolg word referring to the various head-cults of The Ermine, aside from their fanatical devotion to the profane elemental spirit, b'Y'laggo..." -bre'Unor Flavor Text, Myth II


Terry Pratchett mocks Lovecraft's 'Old Ones' in the Discworld book, The Colour of Magic:

"The temple [of Bel-Shamharoth] is long since abandoned, worship of the Sender of Eight being a decidedly short term prospect. These days he is mostly remembered in the name of the Young Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God Bel-Shamharoth Association."

In Mike Mignola's, Hellboy series, the Ogdru Jahad bare a close resemblance and alignment to Old Ones:

"...the Ogdru Jahad are serpentine/crustacean entities which once resided on, and presided over, Earth. They are pitiless, chaotic, bent on destruction and subjugation and often so horrific in appearance that the mere sight of one of them sometimes induced madness...Some of the monsters were forced out of their bodies and into the wind, while others were entombed in the earth."


In the fantastic (poo your pants) game, Eternal Darkness, 'The Ancients,' act as antagonists in the plot and are part of the game mechanic too. They are a clear adaptation of the Old Ones:

"...the concept of the "Ancients" is a clear homage to Lovecraft's innumerable cast of monstrous, malign, godlike entities who manipulate humanity in a scheme to eventually enslave the world. Many of the deities and spells have similar sounding names, while Inspector LeGrasse was the name of a character in Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu."


And to finish, Neil Gaiman:

Retrospective, why not?

I was talking to Richard today and we both agreed, people don't spend enough time exploring blog archives. So, I've done it for you:

The Stars My Destination

City 17 vs London

Beowulf, Folklore and Fables

Paul Barnett vs the industry

Wild Gourmets aka idiots

Supreme geekdom

Geek Love

You know you've truly arrived when you're cited in a flame war on a geek forum:

I've gone geek at the knees

I don't think Lego could ever get old:

That was scary

I met a friend today in (achingly trendy, thanks a lot Simon Pegg, you’ve ruined it) Crouch End. We went for tea at Hot Pepper Jelly, one of the last bastions of non-smugness left in the area. Apart from nearly exploding after drinking, what was advertised as a ‘large pot’ of green tea but turned out to be a bladder and half worth’s, we reminisced about stuff we’d watched as mere amoebas.

I confirmed I'd watched Dark Crystal by involuntarily shouting ‘Gelfling’ really loudly, in what is a fairly small café. The Storyteller with, (how many fingers am I holding up?) John Hurt and sibling rivalry taken to the extreme with Labyrinth. What have they all got in common? That’s right, nerd herd, twas Jim Henson.


The Dark Crystal is still a pretty scary film even now but Jim Henson’s works are darker than the endless dark that occupies the void under the garden decking. You can discount the Muppets obviously, unless you have an irrational fear of talking animals and who doesn’t, have you ever seen a furry up close?

Anyway, my friend and I both admitted to being scared if not unsettled by watching these puppeteered performances as children. Which lead on to another question. What will I show my own hell spawn? I settled pretty quickly on Miyazaki over Disney. I think Miyazaki has just the right level of poo your pantsness but deals with adult or what are essentially real life themes like, love, death, taking a stand, fighting monsters both metaphorical and physical, in a universal way that both adult and child can understand. After all, none of us really grow up. So, big love to Jim Henson and Miyazaki (his son is a bit rubbish though)

I just discovered that Genndy Tartakovsky is making a sequel to the Dark Crystal. Geek out!

Comparison radar 03

What's this? The Tabula Rasa launch trailer and that ingenious, news-reel style footage from Starship Troopers bare more than a passing resemblance?

Comparison radar 02

Watching the second trailer for the Iron Man film you could be mistaken, if you were of proper geek breeding, that you were in fact watching the teaser trailer for Starcraft 2. The former will of course be utter Red Leicester but if anyone can convincingly portray an arrogant, alcoholic on the big screen, I trust in Robert Downey Jr:

You feeling lucky, cyber/steam/bio/ punk?

With countless youth movements failing to bring down the establishment over the years, it follows that the establishment will remain a prominent force for the present and near future. Its proliferation might well lead us to…

Cyberpunk:

Wrought from the pages of William Gibson, Alfred Bester, Bruce Sterling etc Cyberpunk brings together all the rebellious anti-corporate/government sentiment inspired by the Punk movement of the 70s but places it in a post-industrial dystopia where mega corporations, corruption and a breakdown in the social order are prevalent.


If you’ve seen Blade Runner, the Matrix (because we don’t talk about the other two, in the same way we don’t mention the second Star Wars trilogy) A Scanner Darkly or Ghost in the Shell, then you’ll have a good understanding of a cyberpunk tone and setting. If you imagine Cyberpunk as the daddy, then these sub-genres are its bastard, steamy, gene-spliced, offspring:

Steampunk:

Often set in 19th century England or a world where steam power is still the main source of energy. They tend to be less obviously dark than cyberpunk, encapsulating more of the positive, arrogance of the Victorian era, well, among the Victorians at any rate.


The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, is a ‘what if’ Steampunk story. What if Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer and brought about the computer revolution a hundred years earlier? Suffice to say, Britain and the world become a very different place.

Biopunk:

Is usually set in the present or the future where genetics have advanced to extraordinary and scary new heights. Often propagated by a megalomaniacal visionary. A good example of Biopunk; Bioshock and Gattaca.


There are more sub-genres but these are too niche-core to bother mentioning. Niche, a nicer way of saying lonesome.

The Google Analytics tell me...

That searches for 'Jumper' and 'The Stars My Destination' have been bringing people to 'is alive' but specifically to this. Its no wonder, as Jumper was recently released with Hayden (my wooden acting killed the Star Wars trilogy) Christensen in the lead role. That's one I wouldn’t even think of streaming…maybe a urination stream.

Juno and Wristcutters: A semi-independent world

I always imagined that when you die, that’s it; it’s the oblivion show. This isn’t the case according to the semi-indie film Wristcutters: A Love Story. Like the name suggests, suicide whisks you to a world where, “everything is the same, only worse.” No drifting in the ether or eternal hellfire, instead a stark landscape reminiscent of the more arid parts of California where you still need somewhere to call home and therefore need a Mc-job to pay for it. There’s no smiling either, instead you while away eternity by going to bars and playing the ‘how do you think they offed themselves’ game.


Our protagonist, Zia, has his hope for something better rekindled when he learns that the ex-girlfriend, who he killed himself for, has, in turn, offed herself. He embarks on a journey of reunion accompanied by his alcoholic, Russian musician friend, Eugene. Eugene has a black hole under the passenger seat of his car by the way. This and many other small anomalies make up the washed out world of Wristcutters.

In that same evening, which in hindsight can only be described as Indiethon ’08 I also viddied Juno. No bizarre after life planes of existence here but instead the equally strange Suburbia Americana. Juno (the name of Zeus’ only wife, apparently) is a sixteen-year-old girl who through an act of boredom/charity/and genuine affection for a long time best friend becomes pregnant.


Juno is exactly the kind of friend you’d want in real life, full of quick-witted barbs and pop culture references. She determines early on, that the best course of action for her unborn ‘sea monkey’ is adoption and the film progresses around this eventuality. It’s great when a film isn’t predictable and as a viewer you can retract your jaded, media saturated, gland for the duration.

Juno and Wristcutters: youngish casts, unusual stories and semi-Indies. I’ll just summarise like that next time…

Why the love for J.J Abrams?

I was catching up with my TED viewing yesterday when I chanced across a lecture given by J.J Abrams, writer, producer, director and spectacle wearer. The lecture was interesting enough, much talk of character development over special effects, a mystery box that he keeps in his office to remind him about, well, the importance of mystery presumeably.


Despite the passable lecture I didn’t understand why the assembled audience made up of scientists, designers, artists etc laughed harder than was necessary at so, so jokes and gave a standing ovation once he’d finally stopped.

I’ve seen many a TED lecture and although it is a rare occurrence, some can be quite dull but usually this is down to the specific orator rather than the subject of discussion. J.J Abrams ‘owned the stage’ which essentially meant he walked up and down it and made sure to make eye contact with as much of the audience as possible.


So far so unremarkable but it must have been the enthusiasm he brought to the TED hall that caused the TEDites to temporarily lose their senses because the other conclusion is far more chilling. It could well be that these learned, innovative and ‘free thinkers’ actually like and elevate J.J Abrams’ works with their own.

A friend of mine once wrote about coming up with clever ideas in advertising as, “lets not take ourselves too seriously we’re not curing cancer.” Or something to that effect but that’s just what the assembled mass at that TED lecture did. It’s like grouping the invention of the big Mac to that of the electronic microscope. Different league, no, galaxy.


Which leads on nicely to one of Mr. Abrams crimes against, everything, yep that’s not overstating it in the slightest. Now it’s important to mention that for the purposes of this spleen clearance I’m discussing Abrams written works:

Armageddon: so painful is the memory of seeing this in the cinema my mind, as a self defence mechanism, only allows me to remember the scene where the triumphant (only U.S) astronauts return and do the slow motion walk thing with the stars and stripes flapping in the background. Then someone says (I think it’s Billy Bob Thornton) to Bruce Willis’ daughter, “Permission to shake the hand of the bravest man on earth.” Or something equally anti-genius.

Regarding Henry: meh

Forever Young - with Mel (Jews are no friends of mine) Gibson: Fell asleep

Gone Fishin’: utter tripe

Alias: I missed most of Alias but did catch up by about series five and I admit the dialogue is pretty snappy despite the overall and overused spy cliché storyline.

Lost: Like many I was taken in by Lost and as I’m not a complete ‘playa hater’ I can congratulate Mr Abrams on a well deserved Emmy for Outstanding Directing for A Drama Series for the first series of Lost, which I assume, was actually won on the strength of the opening episode. Who doesn’t like jets engines on a beach. However, Lost soon became Lost in it’s own pseudo- well everything.

Mission Impossible 3: spew

Cloverfield: the trailer looks interesting but how many times has that been misleading

Star Trek 11: really? Why?

In light of all this Abrams bashing, take heart for if ‘award winning’ writing can be distilled from: emotion, character development and mystery, you should all get writing right now and you too can have a gold statue.

WANTED

As someone who has read WANTED, and who enjoyed it immensely, I can’t help but feel violated for the nth time as Hollywood is releasing a motion picture based on the cult comic. The comic written by citizen pen, Mark Millar, is about a down trodden, youngish man, who is spat at by the local yoot, emasculated by his boss and cheated on by his girlfriend. He is Edward Norton in Fight Club. Our protagonist has however, the decidedly more advantageous luck of being the heir to the world’s greatest assassin’s fortune and skills. This deux ex machina is communicated to him by a femme fatale (played by Angelina Jolie in the film.) Cue the montage of training and awakening of said devastating killing efficiency.


What made the comic a more interesting proposition than the weak and clichéd synopsis might thus far entail, is that all this assassination business takes place in a world where super villains have taken over the world, the catch, no one realises. The world was divided between five arch-super villains in a mafia family type structure, after every super hero on the planet was done away with and the populace was made to forget that superheroes ever existed outside of fiction. This idea of humanity being lorded over by sinister forces that they themselves don’t realise exist sounds very similar to the plot of the Matrix Trilogy and so it’s no wonder that the wakowski brothers are directing. Lets hope it’s more Matrix than Matrix Relamented and Matrix Revulsions.

After watching the trailer for WANTED, I can make an assertion that the film will probably make the ‘Fraternity’ (the name describing the alliance of super badies) appear as a necessary evil a bit like the CIA and not as the insidious crime organization it’s made out to be in the comic. Expecting a Hollywood blockbuster to be green lit when the premise involves an ‘average jo’ who upon learning that he has both vast wealth and power (the American dream) becomes increasingly amoral with no redemption in sight might have been a bit iffy.

Child Prodigies

Usually just mouthing the words, ‘Robin’ and ‘Williams’ is enough to trigger a biological meltdown, causing neurons to simply shut down rather than deal with the memory of any of his prior films. However, in Toys, I distinctly remember a scene where an army of children are raining down virtual death upon unsuspecting digitmits all under the guise of gaming.



When I was an amoeba I used to play Crystal Quest on my Macintosh II (before they got all shiny) and I think it’d be fair to say I was pretty ‘bad ass’ at it. Even so, I don’t think my skills reached the ‘hardcore/nerdcore’ levels of these gaming prodigies:

The Stars My Destination and Jumper

Jumper is about a group of people with the ability to ‘jump’ to any location on the planet. Useless geek knowledge: It’s a similar ability that both Nightcrawler and Blink have in the X-Men universe. More than anything, it reminds me of, Alfred Bester’s, ‘The Stars My Destination.’


The Stars My Destination is like the drunk grandfather of what would become the cyberpunk genre. It’s one of the earliest science fiction novels I’ve read that deals with a dystopian future that includes: biological and technological enhancement, mega corporations and tribal sub-societies.

In Star’s, the jumping ability is known as jaunting. Since every person on the planet has the ability to go anywhere it raises some interesting socio-political issues. There is no longer a permanent work force; therefore projects tend not to make their deadline unless employees are part of an industrial family, imagine the Murdoch or Trump dynasty reaching far into the future; it’s the same depressing concept.


Living spaces no longer need to be centralised. One of the characters lives in a high-rise building in the middle of a forest. Tramps, drug addicts and vagrants can now bust-a-move, no longer restricted to street corners; large tribal migrations are common.

Jaunting is only one ingenious facet of a truly remarkable story. Despite being written in the 50s, The Stars My Destination can jaunt in, slap around any contemporary narrative and jaunt out again before the author can look up another word for 'ouch' in the thesaurus. Go read it now, look there’s even a link!

Story driven: MMOs versus single player

I like conclusion. Finality. That’s not to say a story has to have a definitive ending but if something happens, I take it to have happened forever. That notion extends to films, TV, books, games etc once I’ve watched, read, played it, it’s happened. Defeating the enemy, the death of a character, whatever, once it’s been fused into my grey matter it becomes as permanent as the stain near the cat litter box.

Every single player game I’ve ever played has been resolved. I can talk to others and they can confirm these virtual events, like two mental patients finding something tangible in a world of shadows. Most of the time, when you’ve killed the evil aliens, monster, king and the game gives you the option to carry on playing, it’s sometimes to comply to the OCD completists amongst us, other times it’s included for those with low self esteem, who can be congratulated over and over again by mindless non-player characters, singing their praises for saving them and the virtual world they reside in.


The idea of people/players experiencing narratives together is demonstrated strongest in MMOs. In games such as Battlefield or Quake Wars the story acts simply as a motivation, beyond the base human need for competition and destruction. A game like World of Warcraft or Tabula Rasa rely more heavily on the narrative to move the gaming world forward, that and people’s need to get the best ‘loot’ for ‘bragging rights’ purposes.

What’s jarring to my irrational need for conclusion, is the idea of ‘respawning.’ It’s an essential game mechanic in MMOs that allows all players to attempt to kill the same end of dungeon boss or pick up object a) and take it to place b) but because of this very mechanic there can never be a sense of completion.


I’m all for replayability but only in the full knowledge that I know what happens at the conclusion of that game. I enjoyed playing Myth II over and over but I was always aware of what was going to happen next and how ultimately the villain was going to go down. It seems odd that a game like WoW can bring out new expansion packs with impressive trailers, that have villain x taunting, now it’s my turn, blah, blah, blah, when you and anyone else can retrace your steps and every bastard you wasted so many hours, gathering the right equipment for, mastering your skills etc can still be there smirking a pixalated smile. You can’t talk about a dynamically changing virtual world when so many aspects are so blatantly static.

Beowulf, Folklore and Fables

“Don’t look at me, I ain’t gonna tell ya.” Is the parting shot from Ray Winstone about whether to eat some generic cereal, as it contains more fortified vitamins than another brand. If he uttered the same sentence as Beowulf, when asked how to take care of the Grendel problem, it probably would have gone down just as well.

The story, or should I say epic poem, of Beowulf (I only know this thanks to my comprehensive school education) is about a warrior from the Geats tribe (Germans) who goes to Denmark to stop the people of Heorot from getting repeatedly done over by a monster called Grendel.

He kills him, there’s something about nailing his arm to a door (they were hardcore back then) which antagonises Grendel’s mum to no end. She comes to settle the score but Beowulf, the original action hero, dispatches her too.

He becomes king with a throne very much like that of Conan the Barbarian’s. Years later a dragon comes along, Beowulf a little bit passed it, like Steven Segal is now, decides to give it a go. He manages to take out said dragon but is mortally wounded in the process. Phew.

The film version is co-written by Neil Gaiman, who did the heavily folklore influenced Sandman series. He’s also got another film out, Stardust which again is big on the monsters, pirates, princesses, magic etc shtick.

All this leads conveniently to the recently, magiked into existence game, Folklore. As the name implies, it’s about Folklore or rather, just ‘Folks.’ You play either as Ellen whose issues over her mother’s death lead her to the seaside town of Doolin, or as Keats (not the poet) who is a paranormal journalist (I want that on my CV).

The ‘Folks’ are spirits that can either be captured by Ellen for use against other folks or simply absorbed by Keats to modify his journo brawling style that I’m sure many on Fleet Street will be familiar with.

The last verse in this folk song is Fables, a long running comic strip by Bill Willingham. It follows the lives of famous folk story characters such the Big Bad Wolf, Prince Charming, Snow White etc living in a residential building in present day Manhattan after being exiled from ‘The Homelands’ by Gepeto (Pinnocchio’s dad) posing as the totalitarian Adversary.

What’s interesting about Fables is how all the characters are the polar opposites of what you’d expect; The Big Bad Wolf now goes by Biggy and is the resident sheriff, a kind of film noir detective character, that constantly has to smoke to keep all the modern day scents at bay. Prince Charming is a complete cad and constantly tries to seduce someone new, so he has a place to sleep for the night and Goldie Locks has matured into a gun toting, animal rights revolutionary with more than just a platonic relationship with youngest of the Three Bears.

I couldn’t leave without mentioning ‘The Storyteller.’ Everyone likes John Hurt and what better vehicle for him, than to tell old folk stories with the help of Jim Henson’s unique puppets. Here’s a link to one of the many interesting tales. Beats the Hogwarts out of Harry Pothead any day. So, with all this folk about, it’s probably a good idea to get yourself a fire place