the angriest

I miss the blog.

2007-01-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

It's been five months. I miss the blog. LJ just seems less authoritative somehow...

The Angriest blog may die, but the Executive Bunnies shall live.

2006-09-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

This is the new project: still in development, but online and running into action.

Now the dark is rising.

2006-08-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've been posting on this blog since 27 July 2002. That's over four years ago. I've posted to this thing over 1000 times since then. I've had over 40000 hits - which I think pretty much conclusively proves that 40 people read this thing.

In a few days I'm going to wrap it up and shut it down. I won't be deleting it or anything, but I won't be updating it any more. I'm working on something new, that'll hopefully be read by more than 40 people at a time.

Stay tuned.

Paul Cornell has a blog.

2006-08-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Paul Cornell, excellent New Adventures author and still-pretty-good Doctor Who TV writer (okay, I know many people loved "Father's Day", including Huge nominators, just... not me) has a blog. He's on his way to Worldcon, too:

"I get to talk onstage about Galactica.
Last time I did it was just a delighted fannish love rant. A fan of the
old version of the show got up and left with a cry of disgust, slamming
the door on his way out. It was like a sighting of a rare beast, say,
the Yeti, there and gone in a moment. I hope he finds someone else who
prefers the old version, out there somewhere. Then they can breed."

A post of probably little interest to anyone bar me and four year-olds.

2006-08-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

Sesame Street is adding a new Muppet character for Season 37, the fairy Abby Cadabby. Photo here - nice design, in keeping with the rest of the cast while looking distinct. It's nice to have another female Muppet, they're few and far between.

Greg the Bunny

2006-08-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Coming in October: the second season of Greg the Bunny on DVD. I haven't seen any of this - the episodes are much shorter, and it's more of a parody sketch thing that a sitcom, apparently. I don't even know if they managed to keep Seth Green on board.

Disney take over the world.

2006-08-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

The animation world anyway. It looks like they're about to make a move on Robert Zemeckis' Imagemovers, who produced The Polar Express and Monster House. Coupled with the re-opening of their cel animation production house, this gives Disney the ability to release traditional, CGI and motion captured animation around the year.

This makes a lot of sense. As this article notes, Pixar only release one feature every 18 months or so. A second major CGI production house would help fill in the gaps in the schedule, allowing Disney at least two major animated features every year.

RIP Monty Berman

2006-08-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

Just discovered that Monty Berman quietly passed away on 14 June of natural causes. He was 94 years old.

Berman was the producer of a string of hit UK television shows in the 1960s, including The Adventurer, Jason King, Department S, The Champions, The Baron, The Saint and a personal favourite, Randall and Hopkirk [Deceased]. He was instrumental in the shape of British popular culture for about a decade, and for that reason alone I thought his passing deserved a mention.

Square Enix/Taito to expand into hardware?

2006-08-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

Interviewed by Nikkei Business (and quoted in Gamasutra), Square Enix/Taito CEO Yoichi Wada has commented on the runaway success of the Nintendo DS and the Apple iPod and hinted that his company is developing a new hardware project for the future.

It's an interesting idea: Square Enix own both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the two most popular RPG franchises in Japan. Their games routinely sell millions of copies each and have a strong hard-core fan base. Would that fan base support a new hardware format - presumably a handheld one - dedicated to the playing of RPGs? I know I'd certainly have a close look at buying one.

If any Japanese developer was to have a chance of making this a reality, I think Square Enix would be the one.

World Fantasy nominations.

2006-08-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

Nominations for the World Fantasy Awards are out, and I'm intrigued to see both Haruki Murakami and Bret Easton Ellis on the list. Sometimes it's nice to see an awards list that actually acknowledges an entire genre, and not just the books that openly have dragons on their covers.

Live Free or...

2006-08-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Die Hard.

Seriously, that's Fox's title for the fourth Die Hard movie. Live Free or Die Hard. It's amazing that one franchise's titles can just get more and more ridiculous as time goes on. I'm always wondering if the original title was supposed to be in German, meaning "The Hard". And by always I mean once, just then, for the sake of a cheap gag.

The film, starring Bruce Willis (naturally) and directed by Len "Underworld" Wiseman (uh oh) opens in cinemas June 29 2007, pretty much at exactly the same time as Paramount's Transformers and Pixar's Ratatouille. And if that won't kill John McClane's box office, I don't know what will.

The Frog Princess

2006-08-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

As new head of animation at Disney, John Lasseter has re-hired directors Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet) to write and direct The Frog Princess, a traditional cel animated feature adapted from the "Frog Prince" fairytale. Alan Menken is also returning to compose the score. The film is due between late 2008 and 2010.

This happens all the time with Walt Disney Pictures. Their traditionally animated features go like gangbusters for a few years, and then start to fail. They stop making them for a few years, and then some bright executive revives them with a "princess" movie. The last time they did this was with The Little Mermaid, so it's little surprise that Lasseter is bringing that production team back.

The Strange Case of Superboy

2006-08-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

This one's for all you Smallville fans out there. There's a good FAQ on this here, but I thought I'd precis a little.

Way back in the early days of Superman, co-creator Jerry Siegel submitted a proposal to DC for a comic based on a teenage Clark Kent titled Superboy. DC rejected the pitch, but while Siegel was away serving in the armed forces, they quietly released their own Superboy comic anyway. Siegel sued and won in 1947, and the New York state court determined him to be the owner of all copyright on the character of Superboy. Siegel subsequently sold those copyrights to DC anyway - after all, they owned the trademarks of the Superman franchise, so any Superboy comic done without them would be allowed to use the title and wouldn't have the legendary "S" shield.

In 1976, changes to copyright law extended the duration of copyright from 28 to 47 years. Because this might disenfranchise those who sold off their copyright in the past (thinking it would only last 28 years anyway), it became legal to terminate those copyright transfers with two years' notice. Siegel's estate did exactly that in 2002, so that from November 2004 all copyright to the Superboy character returned to the family.

So DC (and therefore Time Warner) doesn't own the copyright to Superboy any more. What does this mean for them? It turns out a few things:

* Firstly, you may have read a recent DC comic miniseries titled Infinite Crisis, in which one Superboy died and another transformed into a villain. So there's no longer a Superboy in the DC universe.
* Secondly, the upcoming cartoon Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes magically changed its title to Superman and the Legion of Superheroes. The character looks the same, but they're very emphatic that it's just the young Superman leading the team.
* Thirdly, there's that highly successful Warner Bros television series titled Smallville. The Siegels are suing over it at this very moment. If they win (and that currently seems fairly likely, given that the show's about as close to Superboy as you can get without putting on the costume) it means that Warner Bros may not own the copyright over their own show any more. They'll most likely make a settlement, but combined with the rising cast and producer costs, that may ultimately make Smallville unviable. I'm not a gambling kind of a guy, but even I'd bet that the current season of Smallville may wind up being its last.

I can't say I'm going to miss Superboy if DC and the Siegel's don't reach a settlement. He's not exactly the world's most exciting character, after all. I can't say I'm going to miss Smallville either. But it intrigues me, and I do want to find out how the legalities all work out in the end.

Odds'n'Sods

2006-08-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

Nicole Kidman has joined the cast of The Golden Compass as Mrs Coulter. Shameful as it is, I still haven't read His Dark Materials, so I can't say whether it's good casting or not. The film's due for release in November 2007.
Rumours are still going around for both Ryan Phillippe as Harvey Dent and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Oswald Cobblepot in The Dark Knight. I'm unsure about the former but love the latter casting.
With all of the current "Mel Gibson revealed as anti-semite" news circulating through the tabloids, one has to wonder what the hell Disney and Icon are planning to do with Apocalypto, Mel's upcoming Mayan epic due for release this Christmas. They already had a hell of a job ahead of them: foreign language film, extinct culture, no masses of evangelical Christians to prop up its box office. Now they've got "the director appears to be a crazy bigot" to add to their marketing woes.
Melissa George and Josh Hartnett are the stars of 30 Days of Night, which is promptly starting shooting in New Zealand. This could be quite a cool film. If they don't hire Ben Templesmith to design their publicity materials they're insane.
Warner Bros' failed Aquaman pilot, Mercy Reef I think was the planned title, has been a hugely successful download on iTunes. There are now rumours of an Aquaman movie in the works, maybe even an actual run for the series itself. I'm more interested in the breakout success of a download-only episode of television. Surely someone at Warner Bros is quietly noting the potential?

The Dark Knight

2006-07-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

Warner Bros have confirmed that the next Batman film will indeed co-star Heath Ledger as the Joker, and will be titled The Dark Knight. Christian Bale, Gary Oldman and Michael Caine are all definitely returning (they signed three-film deals), and apparently both Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes are expected to be back as well. I really hope Holmes will - there were rumours she was getting dropped, and I really liked her character and performance.

Well I really like their title, and I think Ledger as the Joker has a lot of potential. I'm sure people are going to criticise it, but I think we're going to see a very, very different version of the character to the Jack Nicholson one.

Tales from Earthsea

2006-07-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

First English-language review from the Japanesepress screenings is here. I'm very intrigued to see how Ghibli pulled this off: the debut of a new director and produced in half the time it took his dad to complete a feature.

Ulysses 31

2006-07-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

One of my personal all-time favourite cartoons, Ulysses 31, is coming to DVD in Australia this November - thanks to a complete series box set from Madman Entertainment. Score!

RIP Mako

2006-07-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Asian American actor (and one-time Oscar nominee) Mako has died, aged 72. It has just been announced that he was to play the role of Splinter in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. I have no idea if he managed to record his dialogue or not - hopefully he did, as it's a role I think he would have played well.

My two favourite movies starring Mako remain Conan the Barbarian and its sequel Conan the Destroyer. Mako also appeared in The Sand Pebbles (which earned him an Oscar nomination), The Great Bank Robbery, The Killer Elite, Battle Creek Brawl, The Bushido Blade, Conan the Destroyer, Tucker: A Man and his Dream, Pacific Heights, Robocop 3, Highlander III: The Sorcerer, Crying Freeman, Seven Years in Tibet, Rugrats in Paris, Pearl Harbor, Bulletproof Monk and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Mako appeared in episodes of Burke's Law, Gidget, I Spy, The Green Hornet, I Dream of Jeannie, McHale's Navy, F Troop, The Time Tunnel, The Streets of San Francisco, Kung Fu, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, Colombo, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, MASH, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, Quincy ME, Magnum PI, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Spenser: For Hire, Tour of Duty, The Equaliser, Lovejoy, Frasier, Dexter's Laboratory, JAG, Martial Law, 7th Heaven, Walker Texas Ranger, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Diagnosis Murder, Samurai Jack, Charmed, Monk, Duck Dodgers, The West Wing and Avatar: The Last Airbender. In recent years, he had even started performing voices for computer games, including True Crime: Streets of LA, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

The film and television industry always loses something when one of their members passes away, but here I think the industry lost someone very special indeed - and very underrated.

RIP David Maloney

2006-07-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

Director David Maloney passed away on 18 July. He joined the production team of Doctor Who in 1965 as a production assistant, and later directed numerous classic serials for the series: "The Mind Robber", "The Krotons", "The War Games", "Planet of the Daleks", "Genesis of the Daleks", "Planet of Evil", "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang".

Maloney went on to produce both The Day of the Triffids and Blake's 7 - both for the BBC. Maloney left Blake's 7 after season 3, with Vere Lorrimer taking over for one final - and most people agree deeply substandard - season.

Edge 165

2006-07-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of my favourite magazine in the whole world is out, and it looks like it's going to be a damned good one. Interviews with David Cage (Fahrenheit, The Nomad Soul) and David Braben (Elite, Theme Park World). A follow-up on Core Design post-Tomb Raider. Reviews of Half Life Episode 1 and Loco Roco. And retrospectives on Alpha Centauri and the BBC Micro's Twin Kingdom Valley.

If you're into computer games and are an intelligent adult, you really owe it to yourself to read Edge: it's well written, engaging, honest, smart, ever-so-occasionally controversial and possibly the most beautifully designed games magazine ever.

Anybody else still read magazines? Which ones?

The future of gaming.

2006-07-18T19:01:00.001-07:00

This is just me thinking things out aloud, really. By the way, this is - I just discovered this - post 1001 on this blog. Goodness.

The highest-selling computer games system in the world today is the Nintendo DS. It's nearest competitor is the Sony PSP. Handheld gaming, which used to be a healthy niche market filled entirely by Nintendo's Gameboy (still the highest-selling games console of all time, by the way), has now broken wildly into the mainstream.

The DS is doing particularly well because it's breaking into new markets in much the same way that Sony's PSX did back in the 1990s. People who would never have purchased a games console in the past are now picking up the DS in droves for non-traditional titles like Nintendogs and Brain Training.

Now there are two possibilities, as I see it, for the current overwhelming rise in the popularity of portable gaming. The first is simply that we're between hardware cycles for home consoles. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all but ceased distributing new games for the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, and the industry is by-and-large sitting idle until Christmas when the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 can go head-to-head for the next generation market. People wanting to buy quality A-list games have to go to the handhelds if they want to purchase anything worth playing. So what we might be witnessing here is a temporary spike in popularity that's going to settle down as soon as the new machines come out.

The second possibility is much more interesting to me. Is it possible that our increasingly mobile, transitory culture is abandoning the living room for a new "play anywhere" handheld game culture? After all, we all seem to use mobile telephones now - many people are abandoning landlines completely and only owning mobiles. Similarly, the laptop computer is selling better and better these days.

I can only really speak for myself, but I know that when I owned a Gameboy and then a Gameboy Advance, I played them on public transport and pretty much nowhere else. My DS I play everywhere. I play it on the couch at home not two metres away from a big television and an Xbox. I think there's something about the DS - possibly the tactile appeal of the touchscreen - that's making us abandon the old systems in favour of something we can play anywhere. It's an interesting thought, and it's going to make the next generation of games consoles much more interesting to observe. Everyone's predicting the winner between the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. Maybe they're all going to lose.

Big Wii Rumour

2006-07-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

And I mean big as in "genuinely possible to shift the balance of power in the Japanese market from Sony right the way back to Nintendo".

Square Enix have already signed to produce two Dragon Quest spin-offs for the Wii. The big rumour on the grapevine, however, is that if they sell well enough Dragon Quest 9 may be released exclusively for the Wii. This is huge news. While never making a big impact in the English-speaking world, in Japan the Dragon Quest games often out-sell Final Fantasy. In terms of popularity, the closest equivalent I can think of for the Australian/American market would be if Take Two announced GTA4 was a Wii exclusive.

Square Enix may be developing an online RPG based around the Mana franchise as well, which would be nice.

The Prestige

2006-07-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the trailer to The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's new movie. A dark fantasy by the director of Batman Begins and Memento, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlet Johannsen, David Bowie and Michael Caine, and based on a novel by Christopher Priest. No idea of the Australian release date though - I'd hazard a guess of between November and January.

Feeling rich?

2006-07-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

For a mere US$99.99, you could purchase the entire Grant Morrison run on New X-Men in one near-1000 pages hardcover comic book. I suspect I'll be too poor to justify purchasing this - especially as I have all the issues in separate comic books already - but if you're richer than I am and like Morrison as much as I do, put your order in at Amazon now!

Pirates! Wahey!

2006-07-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert complains here that Disney have plagiarised his computer game to make the Pirates of the Carribbean movies.

The thing is, I've read the issue of Edge magazine where he admits his primary inspiration for the game in the first place was Disney's theme park ride Pirates of the Carribbean.