Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
One of my fav0urite books of the last few years is Max Brooks’ World War Z. It’s an amazing example of both storytelling and world building, and so enjoyable that I’ve read the entire thing four or five times.
The trailer for the movie adaption was released a few days ago… Oh dear…
Running zombies? RUNNING ZOMBIES!? I don’t know what book they’ve been reading, but it ain’t World War Z.
Well, at least that’s one less movie I’ve got to make time to see…
The news broke today the George Lucas has handed over Lucasfilms – and the Star Wars frachise – to Disney, and that Disney intends to start pumping out new Star Wars films, the first to hit the screen in 2015.
Now, in an exclusive* deal with Disney, the Wyrmlog is proud to present the first look at the under development Star Wars Episode VII!
All hail the mouse!
(* By which we mean entirely fictional….)
Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but William Shatner is coming to Perth.
(And a whole bunch of other cool people – including Eddie McClintock, Amanda Tapping, Colin Ferguson, Teryl Rothery, Corin Nemec and Gigi Edgely – but mostly William Shatner)
I know what I’ll be doing in March…
Kusanagi on a crutch! It turns out I did lose a bunch of important data when my hard drive died a while back 🙁
Most of it I can reconstruct – with some hard work. What’s frustrating is that I’m sure there’s some of it that I can’t remember, which means I can’t reconstruct it, which means it’s lost forever. It’s also personally galling that I didn’t back it up in the first place – I was so certain that I’d backed up everything important, so to miss such a big chunk of data is just humiliating.
Well, I guess it’ll encourage me to be more careful with backups in future 🙁
At least last night’s Hamster Wheel cheered me up somewhat…
Stumbled over this recently on the Middle-Earth in Film page on Wikipedia…
…In the 1970s John Boorman was contracted by United Artists to direct an adaptation that would have collapsed [The Lord of the Rings] into a single film. […] In the script by Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg, many new elements have been inserted or modified. Among other things, Gimli is put in a hole and beaten so he can retrieve the password to Moria from his ancestral memory [and] Frodo and Galadriel have sexual intercourse…
My initial reaction was What!? But then I discovered that John Boorman was the guy behind Zardoz, and suddenly it all made sense.
What makes the proposed film even more disturbing is that in the 1970s they wouldn’t have been able to use the digital editing that Peter Jackson used to shrink his actors, and may not have been willing to do an entire film with the complicated trick photography Jackson used when he wasn’t using CGI. So Gimli and the Hobbits would most likely have been played by dwarfs. A movie where little people are thrown into holes and beaten in between sex scenes doesn’t sound like heroic fantasy – it’s more akin to something you’d get under the counter in an ‘adult novelty’ store.
Thank the lord Boorman made Excalibur instead, which (if memory serves) features very little dwarf S&M content.
You know, I was planing to write up what I did in Melbourne this weekend – including why I was there in the first place – but I ran out of time. So instead I’m going to blog about television.
Exactly when did swamp-dwelling hillbillies become a television genre? Swamp People, Swamp Men, Turtleman – what maniac decided these were good ideas for shows, and what maniacs watch them in sufficient numbers to make them viable?
American Digger – I think this show is mis-titled. It should be called American Destroying the Archeological Record for Fun and Profit.
Caught the first episode of Black Mirror last week – the one where the British PM is blackmailed into… well you know if you watched it. They describe the series as black comedy, but I didn’t find anything comedic about it. Which is not a condemnation – I found it a taut and thought provoking thriller. I’d like to watch the others in the series, but they’re on a bit late and I need to work Tuesday mornings. No doubt they’ll be available online.
Apparently that’s all I’ve got to say about television. Hmmm.
Caught Lawless last night with Rebecca. It was actually really good – I’m astonished to relate that Shia LaBeouf can actually act. The Appalachian accents were a bit tough to decipher from time to time, and Guy Pearce’s villain was a bit over the top, but overall a damn good watch. Also, Jessica Chastain – wow (and I was thinking that before she got her kit off thank you :)).
Um, yeah. That’s all I’ve got to say.
Asylum of the Daleks premiered on Australian TV on Saturday night. Not the best season opener ever, but major props to whoever came up with that giant Dalek building on Skaro, and even more major props to whoever slipped a Special Weapons Dalek into one of the shots. Woooo Special Weapons Dalek!
That’s all I’ve got to say.
I’m back. Well, I’ve actually been back since Thursday afternoon, I just haven’t got around to making a post about it. As I kind of suspected, my hard drive was to blame. It was on the verge of complete failure, so I needed to get a new one put in and Windows reinstalled from scratch. Bwah.
On the upside, the machine now seems to be running beautifully. Thanks to semi-regular backups and that Ubuntu disk I mentioned I don’t seem to have lost any serious data – just my iTunes playlists and ratings, which is a pain, but not a major one.
On a completely different subject, I know I’m completely behind the curve on this one, but isn’t the opening sequence of Games of Thrones astonishing?
Back to work tomorrow. Bwah 🙁
Co-Worker: Does the name Robert Hughes ring a bell?
Me: Yeah… isn’t he that guy who died?
Co-Worker: No, the guy from Hey Dad!
Me: Oh, the guy we all hoped would die…
Turned on Star Trek: The Next Generation last night to discover it was an episode featuring Ro Laren. This, I thought, was excellent, as I’m always up for some young Michelle Forbes.
The episode turned out to be Rascals.
Not quite that young thank you…
(Vaguely related, I once had a conversation with Stephanie regarding the merits of Bajoran noses. I happen to think they’re cute. She violently disagreed. Vive la différence!)
