“Kelly Sheckler is blond with a heart-shaped face and a warm smile. Five feet tall on a good day, she’s mother to three children, wife to Tom, employee of the Environmental Protection Agency, keeper of a tidy home in Lawrenceville. But when she crosses a stage at the downtown Sheraton Sunday, she will be something else altogether: KhaZelia VanGough —- warrior, leader and Miss Klingon Empire 2008 hopeful.
Miss Klingon Empire is an annual pageant at DragonCon, the sci-fi/fantasy geek gathering that descends upon Atlanta every year to pay homage to Superman, Storm Troopers and Star Fleet, among others. To win Miss Klingon Empire, a contestant need not have the best costume or the prettiest (ugliest?) face. Simply, she must embody a Klingon, a fictitious alien race famous for its ridged forehead and brutal manner that debuted in the original “Star Trek” TV series and has been a part of the “Trek” franchise ever since.
Contestants don’t catfight —- female sci-fi lovers tend to stick together —- but they don’t play around, either. Thousands of audience members won’t let them. When a past contestant appeared on stage in a Hooters uniform, the audience was at first entertained but quickly dismissed her, judges recalled. Klingon women may be known for ample bosoms, but they’d never show them that way. And once the queen is awarded her crown, trophy, sash and flowers, judges name no first or second runner-up. In the Klingon world, there are only winners and losers.”
“Bill Hicks, the anarchic comedian who shocked enough people in the late 80s and early 90s to be dubbed ‘Goat-boy’, is to be played by Russell Crowe in a new biopic. His tale has enough laughs, drink, drugs and general chaos to be bog-standard comedian biopic material, and the film is likely to raise more laughs than similar material such as the very intense 1975 Lenny Bruce biopic Lenny. I guess we’ll find out if Mr. Hicks was quite as sex-starved as he was always complaining of…”
This is for all you documentary addicts out there:
“At SnagFilms.com, you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we also make it easy for you to take our films with you and put them anywhere on the web. When you embed a widget on your web site, you open a virtual movie theater and become a “Filmanthropist.” Donate your pixels and support independent film! And click on “info” on any widget to learn more about that film and a related charity you can also support.
With a library of 225 documentaries, and rapidly growing — browse by topic or go through the alphabet from A-Z — you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. There is a widget for EVERY film, so any film you like can be snagged. [..] Enjoy your visit, snag a film, and keep checking back because we’re adding great news titles daily.”
“A blind five-year-old pianist from South Korea has stunned the music world after a video of her performance received more than 27million hits. Yoo Ye-eun, who was born blind and adopted in 2002, has never had a formal piano lesson but can play any song after just one listen.
And now her remarkable talent is set to propel her to stardom as clips of her amazing performance have attracted millions of viewers to Korean website Pandora TV. A similar clip on YouTube has so far received two million hits. Her display on ‘Star King’, a Korean talent show, earned the youngster £500 in prize money and moved the studio audience to tears.”
“When “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” hits the big screen on July 11, it won’t just be comic book aficionados salivating over the lush, fantasy-world storyline.
Fans of Celtic mythology, too, will recognize the name of the film’s principle villain, Prince Nuada, a character loosely modeled after an important figure in the ancient folklore of Ireland. The film is peppered with other references to the myths of the Celtic tribes, who lived on the Emerald Isle beginning in 700 B.C.
The story behind Celtic mythology and the whimsical tales themselves would make for several interesting movies in their own right.”
“Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.”
Forget Lost’s Flight 815 and fasten your seat belts for Flight 627.
The pilot episode of upcoming TV show Fringe, directed by Lost executive producer J.J. Abrams, is a twisty-turny tech thriller replete with a doomed airplane, hairless weasels, rooftop chases in the Bourne Identity vein, acid-tripping federal agents and more translucent skin than you can shake a fat-encrusted artery at.
Andy Baio’s gotten a hold of an entire backup of an Infocom shared network drive from 1989, and it includes a look into the history of the aborted sequel, and a peek at what it would have looked like:
MILLIWAYS or RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
Takes up where “Hitchhiker’s” left off. Manufactured planets, Deep Thought, white mice, time travel, 1001 verb tenses, digital watches, the Frogstar, Total Perspective Vortex, the End of History! (Does Douglas really want to work on this at this time? Does it matter?)
1. It seems natural to include a scene in the restaurant, Milliways. Could be a bit of fun: strange parties, unctuous compere, self-introducing food. Perhaps there’s an object there that you need to get. (It could be a SPORK, a spoon with sort of forky tines on the end. Or would that be a FOON?) It could be a vehicle from the car park — Marvin has the keys. If you manage to re-enter Milliways at another time (oops! on another occasion), you will not meet yourself, “because of the embarrassment that usually causes.” What about a visit to the Big Bang Burger Bar?
Another one for today. Can’t get much better than this! xo Kudos to agency 72andSunny and creative director Glenn Cole for this inspirational piece of advertising.
Amazing what a power a positive note can have on one’s day. When’s the last time you made a stranger feel this way?
[..] Walt Disney’s King of The Elves, based on the Philip K. Dick story about a gas station attendant who receives a knock on the door one rainy night. It’s a group of elves. Small, maybe a foot tall each. They are all green, with leaves and foliage growing off of them. They beg him for shelter from the storm. Despite his better judgment he allows them to stay and as reward he is made king of the Elves.
Directed by Bob Walker and Aaron Blaise. It’s pretty far out from release, of course, but they showed some art. The elves I described a little above. The art was very painterly and the idea is that these little green buggers live in modern day Mississippi and have been undiscovered based on their appearance. With the leaves growing on their bodies if a human enters their domain they can just ruffle their foliage, duck their heads down and be completely undetectable.”
“A remarkable new discovery by international best selling author, Philip Gardiner, has revealed that Ian Fleming based his fictional character on occult knowledge he had accumulated over the course of his life.
The new book, The Bond Code, reveals how Fleming included special etymological and numerological codes within his Bond novels to re-create ancient sacred tales of deep psychological importance. Drawing upon esoteric knowledge and an understanding of alchemy, Ian Fleming produced a work no different to the tales of the Holy Grail or dragon slaying fairy tales, within which lay the ancient understanding of human wisdom.
The author, Philip Gardiner, is an expert on esoteric philosophy and etymology and realised there was a code at play when watching the film, Live and Let Die. For two years he researched Ian Fleming and read his novels, discovering vast amounts of information previously unrealised.”
I don’t watch much tv, so I missed the ads for this miniseries. It aired its first part on Sunday and the finalé airs this Sunday. If anyone can find the .torrent, let me know. Sometimes it’s a pain finding Canadian media on the interwebs. Interesting premise, though:
Tom McLaughlin (Paul Gross), former Canadian prime minister, watches from the sidelines as a majority of Canadians vote for union with the United States of America. The Canadian flag comes down and the country is redrawn into six states.
In revenge, McLaughlin — secretly backed by three key European nations — runs as an independent for President with his ex-wife, Texas Governor Mary Miller (Martha Burns) as his running mate. An assassination attempt boosts his credibility with voters. Veteran British journalist Helen Madigan (Greta Scacchi) is probing the London shooting of her adopted son –- she too gets targeted for assassination after she uncovers a computer program designed to fix the votes in the next U.S. election. She believes McLaughlin is an honest broker and she looks to him to expose the corruption in President Stanfield’s (Tom Skerritt) current U.S. administration, an administration hell-bent on invading Saudi Arabia to cut off China’s oil supply.
I came across this via Kottke. I’ve seen bits and pieces posted about Outside over the past couple months, but this is a good review of a game everyone should be dying to try:
In terms of the social environment, almost anything goes. Outside has a vast network of guilds, many of its players are active participants in designing the game’s social environment, and almost any player will be able to find company to undertake their desired group quests. On the other hand, gold-buying is rife, the outskirts of virtually every city zone in the game are completely overrun by farmers, and the developers have so far proven themselves reluctant to answer petitions, intervene in inter-player disputes, or nerf broken skills and abilities. Indeed this reviewer will go so far as to say that the developers are absent from the game entirely, and have left it to its own devices. Fortunately, server uptime has been 100% from day 1, despite there being only one server for literally billions of players.
The reviewer gives it a 7/10.
ADDITIONALLY, just reading this on the Telegraph website, which goes to show just how peculiar IRL and Outside can really be depending on what tribe you end up playing:
Six Masai warriors, who are so fierce they kill male lions with their bare hands, have been warned that surviving the perils of the African bush will be child’s play compared to what they can expect on their first trip to England. […]
"Even though some may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people — many of them just work in offices, jobs they don’t enjoy, and so they do not smile as much as they should."
The Masai men — who become warriors after tracking, running down and killing a male lion — may struggle with Greenforce’s interpretation of how English law operates.
"For example, if someone was to see a thief and chase after him and, when they catch him they hurt him, then the person who hurt the thief would go to prison as well as the thief."
“As men age, their brain editors start to disappear and they blurt out whatever pops into their mind. They don’t care if they insult someone in the process. Nowhere is that phenomenon more evident than with enfant terrible (or is it grand-père terrible?) Harlan Ellison. The problem is I don’t think he ever had much of a brain editor.
A documentary about the man’s life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, was screened at the SXSW festival and it’s been garnering some attention, although the reviews have been tepid. The bottom line seems to be if you like Ellison, you’ll find the movie interesting. If you don’t know who he is or don’t care about him, it’s not going to change your mind about the guy.
Here’s a typical Ellison rant that appears in the film. My favourite quote from it is “everybody else may be an asshole, but I’m not.”
I’m drunk, but Joe Rogan makes me giddy with glee.
I can’t find a embeddable video, and I am too lazy at this point to keep looking. But here is a gooder. Joe Rogan talking to the Holy Spirit. Worth a watch.
Goal: Everyone out there with a webcam or video camera or whatever, start recording some shit, interviews, ideas, and just post it. Once I get my shit together, I’ll get some stuff together. I think Klint’s been kicking around the idea, too.
Jane McGonigal, the creator of alternate reality games I Love Bees and World Without Oil, has just launched a new global ARG for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The plot of the game, called The Lost Ring, revolves around a fictional Olympic sport that vanished 2,000 years and five athletes who have reappeared in the present. via Boing Boing
“As Zack Snyder states on the official blog - here we are, one year from the theatrical release of Watchmen on March 6th, 2009. To ease the pain of waiting another 12 months to finally see the film, Snyder has released complete costumed photos of five of the main characters: The Comedian, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre. These may be the most downright incredible photos I’ve seen in the last six months from any comic book movie. It’s time to begin the 12 month process of showing you how amazing Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is actually going to be!”
“It lasted a mere 100 minutes but launched an industry that continues to endure after almost 25 years. The Wicker Man film inspired an American remake, several books, an academic conference, and now a West End musical.
The dark tale of paganism, loose morals and murder in the Highlands is set to take on spectaculars such as The Phantom Of The Opera and Les Miserables. Workshop sessions – the step before full rehearsals – start on the new version in London tomorrow and will, in an unusual twist, include award-winning Scottish actress Lesley Mackie, who played a schoolgirl in the original film. It was her very first role.
Discussions have already taken place with Scottish theatres to preview the musical early next year ahead of a West End opening. “Although it’s a brilliant film, it is inherently theatrical,” said Andrew Steggall, who at 28 has been hailed as one of Britain’s most promising young theatre directors and producers. “The key ingredients are music, played by people who are in the story, and a sense of ritual. The Wicker Man would be a rich piece of theatre.”
“Hundreds of Moroccan heavy metal fans met on Saturday for their biggest festival in the north African country since a group of hard rock enthusiasts was jailed five years ago for “Satanism”. Braving the opprobrium of Islamists and heavy rain, young men in black jeans and jackets, goatee beards and dreadlocks trudged to a cavernous concert hall in Sidi Kacem, a market town in a farming region of northern Morocco.
As the first group Hammerhead began tuning up, a small Fiat drew up outside the hall and two police officers stepped out. “It’s OK,” said organizer Yassine Ould Abbou, 22. “They’re just here to check the security arrangements.” A clang of grinding guitar feedback signaled the start of the concert and prompted startled glances from veiled women and men on mopeds passing by. “Most people in this town have never seen an electric guitar,” said Yassine. “We had 500 people at our last concert in 2005 and this time we’re expecting about 1,000.”
Retroactive magic is either the most cutting edge arena of modern magical practice or the most self-delusional (or both). According to Edward Wilson: “Retroactivity is the idea that actions taken in the present or the future can affect the past and therefore the affect can proceed the cause… It creates of causation an Ouroborus or Mobius strip.” In other words an occulist can alter the past as well as the future.
“20th Century Fox has initiated a legal battle against Warner Bros. over the rights to develop, produce and distribute a film based on the graphic novel “Watchmen.” On Friday, the studio sued Warners, claiming it holds the exclusive copyrights and contract rights to “Watchmen.” Warners plans to release next year a big-screen version of the popular comic book written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. The cast includes Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman. It is the studio’s policy to not comment on pending litigation.
But Fox seeks to enjoin Warners from going forward with the project, saying in the lawsuit that it seeks to “restrain (Warner Bros. Pictures) from taking actions that violate Fox’s copyrights and which stand to forever impair Fox’s rights to control the distribution and development of this unique work.” Fox claims that between 1986 and 1990, it acquired all movie rights to the 12-issue DC Comics series and screenplays by Charles McKeown and Sam Hamm. In 1991, Fox assigned some rights via a quitclaim to Largo International with the understanding that the studio held exclusive rights to distribute the first motion picture based on “Watchmen,” according to the lawsuit.”
s the lead singer from Iron Maiden the new Rob Zombie? Bruce Dickinson, the old school hard rock band’s lead singer, penned the screenplay for Chemical Wedding, an occult thriller which, according to Variety, “stars Simon Callow as the reincarnated Aleister Crowley, an occult scholar who was once labeled as the most evil man in Britain.” Crowley wasn’t just “an occult scholar.” His very existence struck fear into the hearts of the U.K. residents throughout his lifetime.
“The Last American Freakshow” is a movie (still in progress), that follows a traveling freakshow. Disabled film-maker Richard Butchins says in his own words: “I filmed the elephant man, the dwarf, a giant, a pair of lobster people, the half woman, a clown and a jumble of jug band musicians. On tour in a 20 year old school bus, travelling 2500 miles across America, the ‘freaks’ worked their way through the wild west. Laughing, crying and drinking – a carnival of the damned – searching for a home…”
Originally the British Academy of Film and Television Arts was going to show the film at their awards ceremony. After deciding that the film wasn’t “politically correct”, they backed out of the agreement, and chose to show “Lars and The Real Girl” instead. According to Butchins’ blog: “the kicker is this: BAFTA offered to show “Lars and the real girl” as an alternative to my film. For those of you that don’t know “Lars and the real girl” is a Hollywood comedy about an able bodied man who has a life sized doll as a girl friend. It’s a good film but hardly a film that prompts debate or challenges the societal view of disability, let alone highlighting the problems of being a disabled film-maker - talk about insensitive….So, they are trying to use their PR company to stop them looking like the prejudiced tyrants that they are. I really don’t know why they have taken against my film in this way, it sort of defies understanding. I suspect, though, that right now they are more concerned about not wanting to be portrayed in the National Press as anti-minority, than with my film.”
In another post he states: […] “Freak carries, in some peoples minds, a pejorative meaning it means something bad. But is it? To be out of the mainstream isn’t necessarily a bad thing and meanings change over time. At one point in history having a black skin made you a freak and we think of that as ridiculous now. These performers are trying to bring an awareness of their ‘normality’ to peoples attention through entertainment (it is, after all a ’show’) and that’s a valid and worthwhile, if sometimes, challenging thing to watch. They deserve support not denigration for what they are doing. This film documents this and as a result is funny, entertaining and sometimes difficult, it makes you feel uncomfortable on occasion and encourages you to examine your preconceptions about disability and that’s the point. These characters are young and put themselves in your face - mostly people get it - but some figures in the media establishment can’t take it. Do the ‘freaks’ have to be quiet little cripples and conform to stereotypical ideas of disabilty to be accepted. It would appear they do, that’s prejudice and prejudice always has a victim…”
They enjoy what they’re doing, and are paying their bills in the process. This should be celebrated. But, I suppose that those in the mainstream and the “politically correct” prefer them bagging our groceries and collecting carts. Or maybe they just expect them to stay out of sight all together. What a load of crap…
