I've said something along these lines before, but after hearing news tonight about the Venom movie moving forward a little more, I'm refinining my Spider-man movie theories. Which I shall now post here to check back against because that'll be easier than tracking down an old Tweet.

Spider-man 4: J. Jonah Jameson hires Alistair Smythe to develop the Spider-Slayers program and involves Mac Gargan (Bruce Campbell) as Scorpion. By the end of the movie, Mac is defeated, unScorpioned and has a run-in with the symbiote a la modern Spider-man comics. This parlays into the Venom spin-off with Mac Gargan in the title role to make up for the fact that Eddie Brock, the other best-known Venom, was already killed off in Spider-man 3. This also gives the added benefit of Bruce Campbell starring in the Venom flick, which therefore will be fun no matter how hard it does or doesn't suck. Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are currently penning the Venom flick, and judging by the trailers for Zland, they're frenetic and inane enough to be a good match for Campbell's style.

And while on the subject, I still say Black Mask and Penguin for Nolan-Batman 3.

Back home. Trying to decide if I want to bother writing about it. Probably won't.

Back when the ConnectiCon program initially dropped, there was an advertisement that, for obvious reasons, caught my attention. It was two books, Lovecraft's works retold as parodies of classic children's stories: Where The Deep Ones Are and The Antarctic Express. To my chagrin, no one at the con actually carried these books. I was narrowly able to pick up Deep Ones from a booth that was able to go back to home base and pick their last copy up for me by the end of the weekend (thanks, Modern Myths!*). Turns out, I'm learning tonight, Antarctic Express probably wasn't even out by the time the con took place, all sites say its coming out in August 2009 still without a specific date. Hopefully be picking that up soon but we'll see.

Now, a shocking admission: I've never read Where The Wild Things Are. I got the gist of it, and got all the Innsmouth jokes, but the format was based entire on WTWTA and I just didn't connect with it. Eventually snagged Where The Wild Things Are, and am currently rereading Innsmouth for the hell of it. As such, it's a cute, little, fairly-insubstantial collector's item Lovecraft fans can get a chuckle out of. And as a side-note, I'm happy to see they're getting actual children's books authors and illustrators to handle these instead of someone just trying to mimic the style. Here's one of Christina Rodriguez's blog posts on the Antarctic Express: http://christinaerodriguez.blogspot.com/2009/03/illustration-friday-legendary.html

But reading Innsmouth again, I'm struck by thoughts I had the first time reading it. Lovecraft, as a rule, is pretty impossible to translate to film properly. The stories are filled with impossible geometry and indescribable horrors, which obviously do not translate properly to a visual medium and maintain the same atmosphere the writing creates when fueled by your own imagination. Shadow Over Innsmouth is the exception to the rule. The horrors in here are, admittedly, fairly describable. Spoiler alert: There are fish-people in various stage of mutation, ranging from ugly people with big eyes to the full-on Deep Ones. Out of all the stories I've read, Innsmouth is the most easily translated to film, and is one of the better stories to boot. Which makes all the more tragic the fact that it has been translated to film twice. First as Dagon, which I have seen and can safely say it deserves to be shown on Syfy at 2 AM if it has to be shown at all. It gets the point across, but it has so many unnecessary, goofy and disrespectful changes and just straight-up isn't very good. Second as Cthulhu, which I have not seen and was not even particularly aware of, but by the sound of it is no better off.
I know Guillermo del Toro has had his sights set on At The Mountains of Madness for a long time, but I would love to see someone with his sense of style and directing take on Innsmouth. Really I'd just love to see an adaptation of Lovecraft's stuff hit the mainstream for once and not be some cult B-movie like Re-animator (as much as I do love that film**) or some shitty low-budget realization like everything else. Seriously, look at all that. How much of it have you actually heard of, let alone seen?

While on the subject of Lovecraft, an aside: The current story arc of Atomic Robo is focusing entirely on a Lovecraftian horror from beyond the fold of our comprehension of space and time, and the first issues features a lovely cameo from the ranting, racist man himself. Highly recommended.

*Odd realization, I've stopped by that booth at every CTCon I've attended, and never knew what it was called before.

**Wasn't aware of it til just now, but Stuart Gordon, Re-animator/From Beyond director also did Dagon. Kind of disappointing, since I enjoyed all his previous attempts.

Wanted to put down my thoughts on District 9 but there was a lot more of them than I could squeeze into 140 characters, so looks like I'm posting on LJ twice in one day after nearly a month of disuse.

I'm going to try and keep this spoiler-free as best as possible. I'd been avoiding information on this film as best as possible, and as such I went in completely blind to what it was. I got the general idea of it, aliens in slums, parable for apartheid and all that, but, after seeing it, really had no idea what it was about. This kind of helped, because in a geek-world of spoilers and script reviews, there are no secrets anymore and going into a movie with the barest knowledge of it is a refreshing, wonderful thing. In this case, though, it also kind of hurt it as the assumptions I did have were way off.

As for the movie itself, it wasn't some grand vision, nothing revolutionary, nothing particularly new at all. Honestly, we've seen this kind of thing all before, albeit rarely so polished and beautiful and that's where the movie wins. The bulk of the movie is truly a sci-fi action movie. Not like the term usually denotes like GI Joe or an effects-driven Michael Bay piece, but not an epic thing like Lord of the Rings (it's 4 AM and I can't think of a proper sci-fi equivalent, dangit). It was character-driven without a huge amount of depth, the action was fast and fun without being some huge, glossy set piece. Again, there was nothing particularly that stands out from it, but I really have nothing bad to say about it either. It was simple and uncluttered, and benefited from it entirely.

Alternatively, the first 20 minutes or so were the documentary-style scenes you mostly see in the promotional materials for the film. Tonally, this turned out to be completely different from the rest of the movie, but I can't think the rest would have worked without this introduction to the District. These scenes were frank, dark and above all immersive; grounding the fantastical elements and making the situation almost seem plausible. Yes, there are aliens and gravity guns, but they're just in the background. These scenes focus on the bureaucracy and the corporations and the horrible people at the heart of the District, and they as real as anything. There was one scene where an egg clutch is burned, while the people stand around and make jokes, and I sat there horrified for a few seconds before it clicked back on me that what I was seeing wasn't real. These scenes were slowly phased out as it cut between the shaky-cam docudrama and more traditional film scenes. However, it switched back and forth for a bit, making the transition jagged and a bit rough to follow. I think this was the only major complaint I had with the film, as the two parts of the movie seemed so tonally different jammed next to each other this way.

Design-wise, the "prawns" and their tech was beautiful. The creatures really felt integrated into the environment. I'm unsure if it was all CGI or if some shots were practical but it all worked regardless. The weapons were very reminiscent of Halo and Half-Life/Portal and other FPS standards, and looked great in action.

And I think I'm done. Probably should have gotten some sleep before attempting that. Oh well.

After Hipster Girl and Art School Girl came up on my iTunes playlist, I decided to see what all songs I had that followed the _____ Girl(s) formula. Compiled the list and didn't really accomplish much except made a new playlist and got that thing where if you stare at the same word over and over again it starts to look weird, but figured I'd post it here because I haven't done anything else on here lately.

( Cutty cut cut )

Just something I wrote up for review and critiquing, ignore if you don't want to read it. Short story idea I had while driving today, just threw together a hyper-rough-draft tonight. The parenthesis'd passages I'm going to go back over and expand on and just generally clean the whole thing up but here's what I have so far:

( short story idea #4187 )

Admission: Before anyone says anything, I know, very derivative of: Lovecraft, Supernatural, FMA and any number of other sources you can throw at me. Hopefully I can fix that too.

With Deadpool becoming more and more popular in mainstream Marvel comics, I've been looking at the character lately and considering his place in the Marvel Universe. With the similar powers and MO, one might be tempted to say he is most like Wolverine. He is utterly deadly with nearly any weapon, as far as we've seen pretty much indestructible (if he has a limit we have not witnessed it yet) and completely insane. He is at the very least a minor threat to every living being and at worst an unstoppable killing machine if he put his mind to it. However, it is that last point, his very instability, that lowers him from threat to annoyance to most of the players concerned.
He is vain, narcissistic and completely self-absorbed. As such, he takes that great power he wields and only uses it as it amuses or pleases him. To his favor, he fancies himself a hero, and is wont to stradle the line between neutral and good more often than not, swinging whichever way will make him look the best. The fact that death and destruction follow in his wake only speaks to his methodology and not his intentions. These aspects combined, he is less hero or villain and his blowing into town is more akin to a force of nature, a hurricane sweeping through or Galactus wandering through the cosmos. Granted, you'll probably have an easier time reasoning with the hurricane.
The ability to break the fourth wall and more recently the inner dialogue going on between voices in his head suggest an almost omnipotent presence in the comic-verse, or at least a higher awareness, on a meta level, though not a particularly useful one within the scope of the comic itself. This, coupled with the immense power and penchant for acting on a whim, leave Deadpool in the position to be a better example of a Trickster God than Loki has ever been used.

So Michael Kupperman spent most of the day on Twitter giving out various pieces of advice and trivia on ventriloquism and ventriloquist dummies. For fun and boredom's sake, I have compiled the insanity... here:

( Insanity )

Blah blah blah suicide blah blah blah full of rage blah blah blah I don't even feel like whining anymore. Just sick of the monotony.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

So I spent the night pretending to be an audience member. I guess? Any way you look at it I'm going to be on TV.

Basically Michael and Michael Have Issues was doing a scene where Michael and Michael were doing stand-up in a college, and they brought a bunch of Stella fans in. So basically we were a NYC audience mass-acting as a college audience and they did a little stand up and the requisite acting for the scene and filmed our reactions. It was kind of a weird experience, to be honest, since I really didn't know what we were going into. In particular, one part was just Michael Showalter reading random punchlines for what will eventually be a montage, but just hearing them all fired off at once was pretty trippy.

Also seeing this done got me pumped again because I would love to write something like this. Ooh, I just need an idea. And a budget. And industry-insider friends. And a SOLID GOLD THRONE, from which I may issue my decrees. And... getting a little ahead of myself.

Now if you'll excuse me, Reilly is fighting a paper cup so I'm gonna go watch that.

This is important (read: bitchin') enough to cross-post. Nathan Fillion is... Hal Jordan:



via Nerdist

I've picked out most of the movies this was made from, but that makes the editing no less impressive. Appealing to my fandoms aside, the ability to create something like that out of mostly-pre-existing footage is staggering.



I feel extra geeky since I was already in my GL tee. >_>

This cold war with the Fisher Cats has gone on long enough. It's time to bring the fight to them!

I may be slightly crazy right now.

So I actually saw Twilight last night (Rifftrax'd, of course). To be honest, I have managed to pull my not-in-the-game thing and the extent of my exposure to this "phenomenon" has been the haters ON THIS VERY SITE. Never actually met, heard from or read anything of a fantard. So aside from some bare knowledge I went into this thing blind. The one thing that struck me was, despite the shortening attention span of American youth, this movie was very anti-ADD. Plot-points, if I can use the term, were stretched out unbearably long and aside from a fairly cool baseball game (I would totally watch a cross between Twilight and the Bad News Bears) I'm reasonably sure nothing actually happened. A lot of exposition leading up to nothing, the inherent problem with most origin stories but to an extreme, excruciating point. The difference between Twilight and a good movie, I think, is that a good movie could cover all the critical events of Twilight before their opening credits rolled with nothing lost in the compression. If the powers that be weren't interested in stretching this out to make the maximum amount of tween-money, I honestly think they could crank out at least 2 books per movie, and save us all a lot of time. And they'd probably be better. Getting back to the attention span point, all the books are out, right? Do they really think anyone but TEH HARDKORR fans will care about these movies 4 years down the line? Harry Potter Mania has been dying down since Hallows released and they still have 3 movies to go. I don't think the fickle-by-nature Twilight crowd will have half the fanatical following HP even now by the time Whatever It's Called The Last One comes out.

Oh, and the sparkling? Could have been the biggest let-down ever, except it fell from so low to begin with. That said, the Rifftrax was actually pretty funny. Still want to know how they won that Golden Onion.

PEE ESS As predicted, I ended the day in good company, a bit tipsy and watching a terrible vampire love story. As such, I had started my day alone, sober and watching a very good one. Let The Right One In (free on Netflix Instant if you have the service) was almost analogous to Twilight in terms of plot, except, again, it was done well. An oddly endearing film, contrasting itself with a stark, almost genuinely terrifying at times, depiction of a vampire (although not as gory as some reviews led me to believe). There are actually a lot of similarities to be drawn between Vampire Cedric Diggory (forgot the character's name) and Right One's Eli, in terms of powers and character, but just goes to show how an idea can be beautiful in one person's hands and idiotic in another's.

I've never actually seen the commercial in question, but I think I'm getting the gist of it.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage Commercial

I think FoD's was the best, but I still crack up whenever I hear "the homo-storm got me".

Edit: Heh, right after posting this, there was a thunder-rumble. :3 I think there's a storm gathering.