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Duncan Shea's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | | 7:32 pm |
Gobbling like a turkey hen...
I stopped by a used book place and found a copy of Christopher Bram's Father of Frankenstein in the fiction section... Father of Frankenstein is the novel that became the basis for the film Gods & Monsters, which I like to remind people was executive-produced by Clive Barker and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay... Anyway, I took a look at Father of Frankenstein... it's written in present tense. I think the only real difference between book and film (besides the title change, I guess) is the ethnicity of Whale's housekeeper. In the book she's Latina, while in the movie... as if in some strange nod to the old Frankenstein movies... she's vaguely Eastern European. But even that "The only word I know is bugger, men who bugger each other" line is in the book and made it to the film... And of course, I guess the only other difference is that, the book being a book, we're allowed access to the characters' thoughts... I thought about picking it up, but then I saw an inscription on the front page. It had been a birthday present. When it comes to buying used books, I try to avoid the ones that have gotten personalized, as it were. I mean, sure, if there's a bookmark still in there when I get it, that's okay, but I can't take something that was meant for someone else even if the someone else parted with it. It's like some years ago I found a signed copy of Galilee at another used bookshop, but I didn't pick it up because my name's not Jim. Anyway. I had an idea for a bizarre image... I did a quick sketch of it... and that led to a sentence turning and tumbling around inside my head, and so I wrote it down, and then I wrote down some more sentences until i figured I had a paragraph. For whatever reason, that initial sentence continues to tumble and spin and occasionally carom off the inside of my skull, but at least I wrote it down... right? I'm sorely tempted to say more about it... but I feel like at the same time I shouldn't... So one time I was at Borders and I saw bottles of "TruBlood" or whatever... merchandise for the True Blood series, I guess. And that got me thinking about tie-in merchandise that never got made. I mean... I thought about getting a bottle of the "TruBlood" but didn't. Now I'm playing Bioshock... I was hankering for "Gene Tonic" myself. And how come we never got bars of soap with the words "Fight Club" stamped on them? The original cover art for the novel was of a picture of a bar of soap with the title stamped on it... and another bar of soap appeared in at least one of the trailers... | | Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 5:17 pm |
My "never gonna happen" cast for a Bioshock movie
I remember some website from a while back... it seemed to be one of the links to the long-gone "Coming Attractions" website... anyway, one of the odd little things on this website was compilations of "dream casts" for upcoming movies based on certain books and comics and whatnot... they'd done casts for Good Omens and The Authority among others... and they would explain their choices... some of it was interesting and clever, but there was that sense of fanboy factor in there as well... Anyway... I will attempt to do the same thing with a hypothetical Bioshock movie. Actually, there is apparently a Bioshock movie in the works... It was meant to be directed by Gore Verbinski, but at the moment he seems to be just a producer. And really, I should have actually finished the game before I got it into my head to do this, but still... MY CAST FOR THE HYPOTHETICAL BIOSHOCK MOVIE THAT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN (weak fanfare) Jack - Clive Owen. Just because. I dunno. In the game, I don't think you actually even see Jack's face, and you hardly hear him speak... But I kind of like him... even though he should do a comedy maybe once in a while, but just imagine... it's getting near the end... he's been through all kinds of hell, his clothes tattered and bloody, his hands and face grimy with sweat and blood and smoke and whatever... and then the Big Daddy helmet comes down and locks into place. Andrew Ryan - David Strathairn. He played a sinister sort of character in L.A. Confidential and he even kind of looks the part... just put him in the double-breasted suit, give him the mustache and the golf club, and there you go. Atlas/Frank Fontaine - Daniel Day-Lewis. He drinks your ADAM! He drinks it all up! No, really... Dr. Tennenbaum - I don't know. I have yet to encounter her in the game so far. How about Helen Mirren? Dr. Steinman - What I said about Tennenbaum goes pretty much double for Steinman. Say... Jeffrey Combs. (waits for response) Dr. Suchong - Well... at the time of gameplay, he's, um... dead... but... James Hong? Doesn't look anything like that picture of Dr. Suchong, but then again... I didn't think Dr. Suchong looked Chinese. Andrew's Mother (I forget her name) - also dead at the time of gameplay... uh... Cate Blanchett? Sander Cohen - Okay... I figured I could have some fun with this one... the obvious choice (or maybe not) would be, I dare say, Crispin Glover. He doesn't look bad in a tailcoat. Imagine him ranting about bunnies. But then, while watching that Art in the 21st Century show on Hulu, for some odd reason I thought of... Matthew Barney (waits for someone to get the joke. And it's not about him being married to Bjork). And then, I went off in another direction and thought of Lars von Trier. Um, yeah. Think irony...? "AAARRGGGHHH! And THAT'S for making Antichrist!" *takes picture* There are other characters, like Peach Wilkins, and the people Sander sends you after for his art project, but... Now, on to the perhaps iconic roles... Little Sister - She's probably too old to play the part now, but I was thinking Abigail Breslin, simply because she can scream. Really. She screamed a bit in Signs, she sceamed a bit in Little Miss Sunshine. The first Little Sister you see in the game lets out a scream that sends the Big Daddy into action... Big Daddy - there's the Rosies and the Bouncers. The Rosies have rivet guns, the Bouncers are the ones with the drills. I figure that yeah, they'd be special effects, but I'm a little old fashioned in that I like the idea that there's a human performer making the movements. The Bouncer especially is like Godzilla in a deep-sea-diving suit... Build actual suits... or just do motion capture? Thanks to Horrorfind, I've met some people who have some background in portraying creatures, like Derek Mears. He's the new Jason Voorhees, but he was the werewolf in Cursed, and more importantly (to me, anyway) he was a Zorgon in Zathura... And whoever did the Big Daddy voices in the game has to do the Big Daddy voices for the movie. Splicers - among the real monsters of the game (the Big Daddies are the good guys by comparison). Gonna need contortionists, mimes, gymnasts, dancers... people who can move. Sure, they have a zombie-type shuffle... but then some of them run, jump... and then there's those ones that are covered in plaster so that you might mistake them for statues and then they start doing backflips and climbing on the walls and don't get me started on the ones who can teleport... Get someone like Doug Jones to help them go through the motions... And that's about it. | | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 4:37 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | | 11:35 pm |
Mach schnell wit ze art things!
An artist at the Workhouse gave me homework... to watch the series How Art Changed the World. It was interesting enough, but I wish they could have elaborated a little. Gone into more detail. I mean, at some point in history, primitive man did not make art. Then, all of a sudden, blap, man is making art. Hmmm... So now my homework is to watch Art in the 21st Century... which I'm watching right now, thanks to Hulu. Also interesting... I'm finishing up season 1 now... Season 5 came out this year (the series produces episodes every other year).... Apparently they are trying to make a movie out of Bioshock... Someone made a pretty neat fake trailer using footage from The City of Lost Children and Cast Away and suchlike... Had the weird notion of jotting down my "never gonna happen" cast list for a Bioshock film... | | 4:20 pm |
"I WANNA GO BACK IN MY BAG!" | | Monday, November 16th, 2009 | | 10:24 pm |
| | Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | | 4:17 pm |
No kill like overkill, Mr. Bubbles...
You'd think the drill to the midsection would be enough... Of course, the thing about the Big Daddies is that they leave you alone if you don't bother them... like bees... Really big bees with drills and rivet guns... The Splicers are the worst things, even if the Big Daddies are more formidable... Ahem. Anyway... That song I mentioned a few posts ago is called "No Sound but the Wind." Even though I don't think I heard anything about wind in the song. By the Editors... and it's on the soundtrack of the new Twilight movie. *hides face in hands* | | Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | | 11:13 am |
so damn FREAKY! or "Oh, great. I killed a suitcase."
Playing Bioshock... a little bit at a time... I'm in the restaurant with that song by The Ink Spots playing. I got the revolver and all of two dollars and, um, checked out the restrooms and I figure there's that hole in the wall in the men's room to crawl through or summat... but I wonder if there's more stuff downstairs... Those two splicers were man and wife, weren't they? And... um. The lady just had one bullet left in her gun. I've been using the "one-two" punch of electricity and the wrench... It reminds me of The Shining... New Year's Eve party gone horribly wrong. Considering that the last first-person shooter I played and finished was the original Doom (I played a couple of the Quake games and some others)... Somehow I think all the stuff I've seen on YouTube is not going to prepare me for this... compilations of "scary moments" and whatnot... Like if and when I get to Sander Cohen's territory I'll just start shooting the statues before they can move*... And you pick up one thing, turn around and BLAM there's a crazy doctor in bloody scrubs. Or the lights going out the moment you pick up the shotgun... In Doom, all you really had to worry about was those Hell Barons... they were the only ones who could just come out of nowhere going "RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH! !!" Of course, what with progress and all, almost ANYTHING in a first-person shooter these days can come out of nowhere. Apparently you can play "Look for the dead cat" in Bioshock... I haven't tried... And in other news... good lord, these things are REAL?!? *"Don't... BLINK!" Did the creepy living statues in Bioshock precede the angels from that one episode of Doctor Who? | | Friday, November 13th, 2009 | | 7:15 pm |
I don't have anything witty to say in this here header thing
I know it's Friday the 13th and all, but still... my mind had some kind of hiccup when I was taking a look at Neil Gaiman's blog this morning and he referred to his wife Mary as his "former wife, and for the past five years a friend and neighbour" or something like that. *hiccup* So after that I went to Wikipedia to read the entry on Mr Gaiman and it said he was divorced with three children... and was currently dating... Amanda Palmer...? Actually, I might have read or heard about this before and just didn't remember it, but I don't think that's likely. I mean, if I'd heard about it before, I would remember something like that. I don't know. And I should not care. Not my business. Maybe that's why I didn't find out about this until... today... um. I don't know why... but it's like I take it as some kind of personal affront when a relationship fails... possibly because I don't have all that many relationships myself? Just a couple weeks ago I get the phone call to help a friend with the annual Halloween party my church* has. Up to now, the party was run mainly by this couple about my age. Don't know how long they been married, but they have two small daughters. Anyway, the person calling me (not either member of the pair) lets it be known by me that the couple... are no longer a couple. Well, they're separated for the moment. Anyway, I say I'm going to help (all the better to try out this freaky recipe for a fruit punch that turns black when you mix it), and I show up to help, and it's just the female half of the separated couple... and this is a Halloween party, so she's dressed for it... I guess... in the Little Black Dress of all Little Black Dresses. Well, a black skirt, black stockings, clunky heels, and this corset thingie... and um. I always thought she was kinda cute, but she was married, and she's a mom, and so... uh... where was she hiding THAT? Anyway, I help out with the party and the cleaning-up afterwards, and that's that. Another Halloween party done and over. Never mind that we have it the week before Halloween... A week later, I'm talking to her after the service and she casually mentions that the Halloween party she went to the night before (on Halloween) was a nudist Halloween party. Um. But over the past couple years, becoming aware of these marriages ending... One friend of mine I hardly ever see these days because he and his wife separated... and now he's got a whole other family going. So this info about Neil Gaiman... well... I... I shouldn't care, but... I mean, I think I read somewhere that Bruce Campbell and his first wife are still good friends... And in the meantime, somehow my parents are still married to each other. Except I remember one time last year Mom just let it be known that years ago she almost left Dad and took me and my sister with her... I mean, huh? Anyway. Time to change the subject. "Good people drink good beer." --Dr. Hunter S. Thompson I'm not really a drinking man, and I wasn't thinking too hard about starting, but... I remember same time last year or thereabouts I was writing about trying to find the wine that's made by Dave Matthews and his brother... their winery is in Charlottesville, not terribly far from here... but haven't been able to find the wine in question. But for whatever reason, this year I'm... thinking about beer. But none of the big brassy brand names that you see on TV (not even Samuel Adams). Was perusing the friends list and read about the Dogfish Head brand, which I've seen at Wegmans and maybe Harris Teeter. Dogfish Head brewery is based in Delaware, methinks... Rehoboth, if memory serves... but besides the assorted pale ales, they also like to recreate old recipes... as in ancient. Like thousands of years old. So when I was at Wegmans today I scanned the shelves for Dogfish Head and was not disappointed. Well... maybe a little. Because I found four-packs of "King Midas" which was recreated from a 2700-year old recipe found in Turkey... but a four pack of it goes for thirteen bucks. And of course there was also the Flying Dog brand which, if nothing else, has artwork by Ralph Steadman on the packaging and the above quote from Dr. Thompson... Thing about me and alcohol is I can't get past the bitter taste. Of course you don't drink it for the taste. At least... I don't think you drink it for the taste... *I'm not particularly religious, but I'm a member of a Unitarian Universalist church. Just saying, is all. | | 5:42 pm |
my lover stands on golden sands and watches the ships...
First, there was "La Mer" and then there was... And there's also the eerie instrumental take of "La Mer" by Django Reinhardt and Stefane Grapelli... And something tells me I should see Kevin Spacey's film... But of course, since Bioshock, I can never hear any of these songs the same way ever again... | | Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | | 6:38 pm |
Help you carry the fire? What? Why?
So whenever I've been at Borders for the past couple weeks, every once in a while I hear this song which is not necessarily catchy, but it sounds nice. Kind of mellow, with mainly a piano, and a male singer with a not bad voice, and I was wondering who it was so last night I asked one of the Borders employees what the song was... And perhaps not surprisingly it's from the soundtrack of the new Twilight movie... :\ Song by The Editors... or maybe they're just Editors. "Sound of the Wind" or something like that though the lyrics make no reference to wind... just a lot about helping so-and-so carry the fire. So... I found out. And maybe I didn't want to. And maybe meh. It's either that or... I keep singing bits of "Beyond the Sea" for some odd, but not too mysterious reason... and resisting the urge to punctuate the tune with "AAAAAAARRRRROOOOOOOOOORRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!! " *explosions* "Kill him, Mr. Bubbles!" "AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!" Well, I only know that first bit of "Somewhere, beyond the sea, someone's waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands and watches the ships that go sailing..." that's all I know. I am familiar with the Robbie Williams cover, but I have to go with the Bobby Darin. Or I could go all the way back to the inspiration for the song in the first place, "La Mer." Django Reinhardt on guitar... A friend of mine asked me to do up illustrations for a couple children's books she's written. One's an ABC book, the other one's some kind of story about rival fairies. She emailed me the manuscripts, and I took a look at them. I'll need to take a closer look at them, but they seem doable for the most part. The ABC book is kind of... busy for an ABC book, but... anyway, took the manuscripts to Writer's Group the other night, to show them to the guy who runs the group. He's written and illustrated children's books himself, so... Anyway... he looked at my friend's manuscripts and said that it would be a waste of my time to illustrate them. ... I don't know what I'm going to say to my friend about this. It's not like there's a whole lot of wind in my sails to begin with. And it's a dead horse I'm flogging, but yeah, maybe some time off from the group could help. I am not contributing. All I do when I'm there is bristle and kvetch. So what am I good for? Bristling and kvetching? It's all I can do to not just stand up and scream "ENOUGH! You may be able to expound and lecture and psychoanalyze, but YOU CAN'T WRITE AAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!" Same people every week. Same awkward shifting of tables and chairs (back in the day, the bookshop employees actually had some tables set aside for us. We even had a sign saying "These tables reserved for the Writer's Group" and free coffee). Same having to censor yourself because you're in a public place. Would you kindly continue to IGNORE ME!!! | | 5:52 pm |
War never changes, Mr. Bubbles...
Went and got Fallout 3 and Bioshock. In spite of the fact that I have yet to finish the Bioshock demo. Yeah. Um. And what's this Borderlands I've just heard tell about? Anyway... | | Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | | 9:31 am |
| | 1:33 am |
...meeble...
Would you kindly believe that I downloaded the demo for Bioshock and... got as far as getting out of the bathysphere before I freaked out? Kept thinking something was going to jump out of one of those suitcases (one of them was MOVING). And that Splicer lady singing "If I Didn't Care" to herself and you don't know where she is and you're sure she's gonna come outta nowhere and HOOK you to death like she does to that guy at the beginning just so you KNOW how DEEP in the kimchee you are... Helpful hint is to find a wrench to help you open some door. Yeah. Er... I was just "No way. No. Just no." and exited. It's like House on Haunted Hill (the remake) cranked up to... twenty-one. And actually scary. This is a GAME, for corn's sake! I hear tell that a Bioshock movie is in the works. I have no idea how they'd pull that off. All that decayed Art Deco and neon and just freaky stuff. Next on Celebrity Deathmatch: Pyramid Head vs. Big Daddy! | | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 7:09 pm |
| | 4:56 pm |
Would you kindly read this post...?
"Somewhere... beyond the seaaAAAAAARRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!" Now I have a 360, in theory I could play Bioshock. It was a game that intrigued me... the concepts and suchlike. At the same time, however... I'm not exactly a great shakes at first person shooters... I'm too interested in exploring and looking around at the interesting stuff, and that's not necessarily a good survival trait in almost any video game. "Hey, that's interest--" *is gored by local fauna what came out of nowhere* Not to mention some of the stuff that comes to light as you explore... I REALLY don't want to listen to the bit with the puppy... I KNOW it's not real, but I don't want to have to hear that. Hearing what ultimately happens to Dr. Suchong, though... um... Bioshock is a game about choices... and there's not a few games like that... where the choices you make determine the outcome. But there's the big choice looming over all others... what do you do with the Little Sisters? Do you callously "harvest" them and leave them to die... or do you "save" them? On the one hand, "harvesting" gives you more Adam. On the other, "saving" ultimately leads to more Adam. The makers of the game created multiple endings depending on how you deal with the Little Sisters... And as far as I know, you get the "good" ending if you "harvest" NONE. "Harvest" more than, say, two... you get the "bad" ending. There might also be a "bittersweet" sort of ending which is basically a milder form of the "bad" ending. I guess. But there's one thing I wish the game makers could have considered... Before you can even deal with a Little Sister... you have to get past her Big Daddy... this... well, I figure they were once men... but now they're encased in huge diving suits. And they defend their Little Sisters to the death. Otherwise, they'll leave you alone. More or less. The Big Daddies and Little Sisters have a symbiotic relationship which is also decidedly familial... and when a Big Daddy goes down, his Little Sister is inconsolable. That's kind of what... bothered me. I know... It's a game... it's NOT REAL... and this is one of those games where enemies respawn, so it's not like a Little Sister is without a Big Daddy for very long, but... I think there should have been a way to "harvest" or "save" a Little Sister without having to kill a Big Daddy. At most, maybe incapacitate him. A stealth mode way of doing things... I have heard tell that there's a point in the game where you must impersonate a Big Daddy and protect a Little Sister... And apparently in Bioshock II, you are a Big Daddy... And the Little Sisters have a Big Sister... | | Monday, November 9th, 2009 | | 6:06 pm |
Early Man created Art because try as he might, he couldn't spend all of his free time eating and having sex. | | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 6:41 pm |
You cannot kill the metal!
So on the Brutal Legend front, I've found all the landmarks and finished all the hunting challenges. Found all but... two, three Buried Metal artifacts, and there's still a few Bound Serpents out there... I thought the Drowning Doom land would be a little more fun to explore... or easier to explore, maybe, now that the game's over, but it's not... those Grim Reapers are still running around... So along with the stealth casting of Kyle Gass and Brian Posehn... they got David Cross in there somehow. He's the voice of (wait for it) a Tainted Coil unit called the Screamwagon. He actually does the voice of this little pink demon spread-eagled on top of the vehicle... with the cauldron of boiling oil right behind his head... So... you get to hear David Cross scream and gargle... I like how Eddie says "Oh no! The Metal Gods still use hydrogen!" after playing the "Bring It on Home" riff. In other news... I dunno. Go to Borders with a "buy one, get 50% off the second item" coupon but can't find anything I really want...? Strange... There's a HUGE book out about Sesame Street, out just in time for the show's 40th anniversary... hmmm... It's getting around that time where I'm going to need calendars... but which ones? There's a calendar for old horror movies that comes with a DVD...? Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Calendar? There's like... three or four of them. A really big one, one not so big... a desk diary type, and one of those one-a-day ones... I guess for those who need their "wet sand on boobs" cravings met daily... A Maxim calendar, a couple Playboy calendars... um. Um. Some years ago I got an H.R. Giger calendar... I haven't seen one in a while, though. I don't know. Whenever I'm at my writer's groups... either of them... I get all brittle and contrary... Looking at my books of Neil Gaiman's short stories... he makes it look so simple... effortless... Maybe I need to read something badly written then, so as to feel better and inspired even... | | Friday, November 6th, 2009 | | 11:07 pm |
done that, what next?
So while I have finished the single-player campaign on Brutal Legend, I'm still playing it. Doing the odd litle side missions, like beating the Hunter's record, riding the Rack of Death, and so on. Looked at all the landmarks. Still finding Bound Serpents here and there, but no Buried Metal though I'm certain I haven't found them all... And playing the occasional Stage Battle against the AI... there's a couple new arenas to download... But what then. Funny thing, I've got some games, but have yet to finish them. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Ghostbusters. But then I see some commercial about pre-ordering such-and-such game from GameStop and getting an exclusive weapon... Darksiders, I think the game is called. It seems to be about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and angels and demons with GINORMOUS swords. I'm wondering if this is the Dante's Inferno-inspired game I read about some time ago, or whether it's something else... because I seem to remember reading about a game inspired by Dante's Inferno... And Splatterhouse doesn't come out until next summer... UPDATE: Along with Darksiders, there is a Dante's Inferno game coming out. You are Dante, and you go into Hell to save the soul of your beloved Beatrice... bosses include Cleopatra, Cerberus, and of course the Devil Himself... | | 6:33 pm |
 Another instance of "Someone brings puppy to work, hilarity ensues." |
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