pixenomorphy #4

Tonight's gonna hurt.

Just Zeroes and Ones

Before taking a look at my dark and overly dramatic future vision, let's just say that I was a real jerk today.

You see, I'm one of those guys who couldn't live for 5 minutes without music in their ears. We listen to our players at every chance we've got: walking on the street, standing on the bus, at the library, during work, during classes, during breaks, before tests, before physical tests, before, after, and when it's allowed, during a major surgery of... whatever.

Long story short, this addiction of mine (really just like smoking, except I'm killing my ears instead of lungs) uses up probably 2 or 3 earphones every year. My recent little silver Sony friend died today, its right side gently slipping into eternal sleep while we were listening to the soothing voice of Academy Award winner Trent Reznor (screaming "Big time, hard line, bad luck, fist fuck!"). I happened to be at the library at the moment, so turning my two minutes of frustration into a twenty second eBay search, I found a pretty good deal on a pair of new earphones, reasonable price, one bid not too high, about 50 minutes till the auction ends.

I was sitting there like a patient, cold blooded predator waiting for the moment of strike. When the counter reached its final minute mark, only then did I place my own bid - only a few pennies higher than the original -, so the other person had no chance of taking the winning position back. Within a minute, I had the earphones and an amount of amazement at how huge of a jerk I was, and how easy it was to do this to that other user. Only because he didn't feel like another human being, complete with emotions and desires, like I am. He was just a few characters long information on my screen, seemingly nothing to do with real life. Snatching an eBay item didn't feel like a move against someone.

Since this realization I started to fear a possible future of ours; when the Internet gets a much bigger role in our world than simple add-on for business and entertainment. Think about bio-mechanics and other cyberpunk clichés, you know what I'm getting at. The days when our existence, or at least our well-being in the most physical sense will depend solely on a chunk of online information, turning us into an easy cyber-target. To people who have all the means and the bad intentions. To whom we won't be anything more than faceless users, silent characters on their screen, hopelessly bidding for a fair and long life.

No, this is most certainly not a symbolic interpretation of Facebook. Not its present form, anyway.

iseewhatyoudidthere.png

How much will the game cost?

We haven’t finalised pricing details just yet, however, we can confirm that the game will cost less than $20.

What if I told you that Slender: The Arrival, the upcoming sequel to The Eight Pages won't be a free game, but will provide decent gameplay time with an actual story? An actual story that has been co-written by Troy "Jay" Wagner, Joseph "Alex" DeLage and Tim "Bruce Campbell with sideburns" Sutton, the guys behind Marble Hornets.

Things are coming full circle it seems, if only they could get some input from Victor Surge... this is a neat move anyway. Mark me interested.

Here's everything you want to know about the project, embedded below is a cool little short flick, inspired by the original game. Ta-ta.

Briefing: Pacific Rim

The Good

A year before the big guy arrives, we'll get to see Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, Legendary Pictures' other attempt on Americanizing all Japan-o-philes' and Godzilla fans' favorite giant monster sci-fi extravaganza genre, the kaiju eiga. ("Kaiju" means "monster" in Japanese, sometimes written as "daikaiju" for "giant monster", while "eiga" simply means "movie".) A viral video hit the web today, showing deleted scenes from Cloverfield a news report on a creature destroying the Golden Gate bridge (let's mourn it with The Room theme), narrated by a voice eerily similar to the "Would you like to know more?" guy's from Starship Troopers.

The Bad 

While the premise of kaijus attacking different parts of the world around the Pacific Ring of Fire (hence the title) sounds great to me, the plot will mostly focus on the Jaegers (from "jäger", the German word for "hunter"), these huge fighting machines built by mankind to battle the kaijus. Yup, giant robots vs. giant monsters will be our main attraction  Does it sound like a silly Transformers cash-in? Absolutely. But hey, it's a del Toro flick, let's give it a chance.

And the Ugly

According to the viral site Pan Pacific Defense Force, the American Jaeger is called Gipsy Danger, a name that may sound awesomely cool and romantic on the other side of the Atlantic, but will undoubtedly cause awkwardness in some Central-European countries. I don't envy the translators and distributors back home.

Pacific Rim is out on July 12, 2013. Visit here for in-game updates.

Keep On Calling Me

And just like that, I'm back in the UK, for Ian knows how long.

Eh, star-cult too much? Just an in-joke with no harm meant toward Good Ol' Life, Fate, God Or Whatever. I've been listening to a lot of Joy Division lately.

Update, two days later: just found out that Ian and Deborah Curtis actually lived in Chadderton for a few years, only two blocks away from my place. According to Debbie's book, they found it too depressing here. Heh.

After I saw Control (that goddamn powerful biopic on Ian) this summer, I did some reading, and became aware of the Joy Division/New Order story as a whole, but not its details, like this one. Or that they actually recorded some of their stuff (including the An Ideal for Living EP and two tracks from the famous Love Will Tear Us Apart single) up there in Oldham.

Back home I've been an avid listener of their discography all summer long. Coming back here to find out all of these information is the strangest, eeriest kind of culture shock I've ever experienced. I think it's safe to call me a fan.

pixenomorphy #3

Sharkcep Finception! - courtesy of G.I. Bernard/Oxford Scientific Films 

Da Funky Bunkah

Here's something I miss from UK cinemas, the latest "please turn off your phone" spot from Orange, featuring half of the Expendables 2 cast, and James Buckley (one of the actors from the long-running British TV show The Inbetweeners, kind of a celebrity over there), playing their awkward new recruit, "Orange Communications officer" Robert Crumper.

Lionsgate has been really busy taking the video down from every sharing site, so I'm not sure how long this copy will remain watchable. You can try find it on this link, too.

orange spot expendables 2 from Daniel on Vimeo.

All the jokes, especially the movie references with the subtlety of an average Michael Bay action scene - "Call Trench [the name of Arnie's character], we're evacuating! We'll be back for you, Crumpy" - fall magnificently flat. Still, there's something really fun and likable about that geeky kid. Probably just because I'm an egoist and he reminds me of myself and my webdwelling ge-generation. Also, that orange/grey military clothing actually looks kinda cool, unlike the try-hard com/ma/cho/ndo outfits worn by Sly and the others.

They should do a movie about Crumper. In the right hands he could be the John McClane of my generation, with some heavy, but actually entertaining camp value. Get Buckley for the role, and who knows, they might won't even need that boring blue/grey filter from every post-2007 action flick to make him appear young.

Gawd, now I told them real good, didn't I?

Just for the record, I still found The Expendables to be somewhat enjoyable, and you can bet your ass arse I'll be watching the sequel. Can't wait to see ol' Chuck single-handedly cameo-ing everyone out of existence. Or something like that.

Fiend Without a Face

It would make me a hipster to say it's a shame that Slender Man became so mainstream (yup, I hate that phrase too) thanks to that game from a few months ago. Saying that it doesn't bother me at all would make me a liar.

My problem isn't that the thing lost its underground appeal - with an online fakelore myth you can't seriously say that it had anything underground in it anyway. It does feel strange to hear and see people constantly talk about Slendy and using pictures of him as Facebook avatars without being aware of Victor Surge and Something Awful, having seen any of the video serials, ever mentioning Masky, the Operator Symbol or HABIT help us, mutha-wifin' Ron Browz's infamous 20 Dollaz epic, but eventually a growing fanbase isn't a bad thing. Unless you're that kind of sore hipster that I've just turned out to be.

Remember this tagline? He only exists because you think of him. Try not to think of him. Thing is... Slender Man was an awesome and awesomely inspiring phenomenon, inception of things both frightening and/or funny, a lot of video series and ARGs, thousands of in-game and factual blogs, millions of fan art pieces, theories, thoughts, a real modern urban legend of epic proportions. And most people won't know about any of that.

They won't, because he crept his way into spotlight as the 2scary48mins antagonist of a game. That's right, "Slender", as nowadays every other user calls him, has become, and always will be remembered as a simple video game character. And I can't help to feel some kind of loss, or a missed opportunity here. Once a truly frightening, but also insanely fun character of our collective fears, he's now sitting innocently among other conquered monsters of our pop-culture. Nothing new in that. The Cthulhu plush, the vampire Teddy, the facehugger pillow. Slendy never had a chance.

Still, I would never say anything bad about the game. It's clearly a work of an inspired fan, and it is really well-done, a great, totally  free of charge chance to experience about eight minutes of Marble Hornets-style paranoia and jump scares. Give it a try, crap your pants, then muster your courage and give it a few more tries.

And after all is said and done, do more one thing for me, an old-timer pathetic, suit-wearing mythsucker hipster: whether it was in the game or not, remember the very first time Ol' Slendah scared you. This is the least of what we, the fans owe to this legend and the creative minds behind it.

He only exists because you think of him. Think of, and never, ever forget him.

Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki

Dear James,

thanks for tragically ruining the lives of at least a dozen families, while giving movies and somewhat shy, almost anti-social nerds a bad name again. 

Congratulations on your shockingly original gimmicks, declaring yourself to be the Joker is certainly the most creative thing one could have done post-2008, and that subtle "Gingers have no soul!" reference with your dyed hair, whoah, hands down bro, it's a real shame you didn't try your luck in Hollywood.

I'm looking forward to reading your books though, written while spending your lifelong sentence, feeding on your one month legacy, brought to everyone by Warner Brothers, with special thanks to Bob Kane and Christopher Nolan.

Have fun! 

Your pal,

The Bloggler

(or something clever like that)

- -

And without wasting any serious words on this, I'll just put The Joker Blogs' tribute here. It expresses everything that I'd like to say, way better and memorable than I'd ever be capable of.

Capital G

Say hello to the latest incarnation of the one and only Godzilla, brought to you by Legendary Pictures and director Gareth Edwards. He's expected to stomp his way into the theaters in 2014, precisely ten years after Final Wars, his latest Japanese flick, in the year that marks the franchise's 60th birthday.

This reboot is going to be the second G-flick produced, shot (and probably set) in the United States, but it won't have much to do with Roland Emmerich's universally and somewhat unfairly penned incarnation from 1998. Director Gareth Edwards promises an ultra-realistic, pretty dark (knight) approach.

The pic above is a photo of the concept teaser Legendary showed to the audience at Comic-Con this year. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, but if any further footage has been shot, it has yet to surface. Here's a report, while we're waiting:

The teaser (which was shown twice) is fairly brief, with the camera slowly moving through an utterly devastated urban landscape. There’s even a building that looks like a monster walked right through it, and we see the suggestion of a six-armed beast lying dead in rubble. Then the money shot: Godzilla, seen from behind, turning his head to the camera in profile before emitting the monster’s signature screech. 

The vision of Godzilla was more a suggestion than a detailed reveal, but the guy is HUGE, with a tail and spines up his back that are very clearly meant to evoke the classic creature design. The head is a bit more elongated than the first couple iterations of the beast, but not to the degree of the version seen in the Emmerich remake.
While director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) did come out on stage, where he proclaimed that he’s making a realistic film rather than a sci-fi picture, we don’t know how this teaser represents the film he plans to make. If any footage has been shot for the film (I don’t know that we’ve even had confirmation before this that it is greenlit) it has done so in total secrecy, so what we saw today might be more proof of concept than anything else. ~ slashfilm.com

I'm incredibly hyped about this project. While Godzilla is an icon of camp, cheesy special effects, and nonsense sci-fi stories, he could and has been much more than that. Way before the rubber suit wrestling and kid friendly crapfests from the 1960's and -70's, Ishiro Honda's original Gojira, harbinger of the whole kaiju eiga genre, offered something entirely different. In a surprisingly sad, brooding tale about the horror of the H-bomb and mankind's responsibility over destructive weapons, the monster itself was nothing more then an easy gimmick, politically correct sci-fi exploitation of a troubled nation's memories just a decade after Hiroshima. Sixty years old suit-motion effects or not, that flick got one hell of a mood, and If Gareth can summon something from that feel in today's setting, we're in for a treat.

So far what I really like is that although we're going to get a CGI Godzilla - judging from the pic, at least - they will stick to the classic idea of the creature's design, a bulky, fatass sarurian badass, walking erect and angry, but always taking his time. It may seem dated (especially compared to the Dean Devlin designed, Jurassic Park-influenced 1998 Zilla), but trust me, among today's collective modern idea of those pathetic anorexic dinosaurs, often depicted with feathers, an old-school lizard like the Japanese big guy will be a refreshing sight.

It's time to make the word prehistoric equal cool again. Wishing the best of luck to Mr. Edwards.