Tabula Rasa lj

Didn't get a single pick in the Hottest 100, for better or worse -- though I did share some of the same artists with that lot.

It has been pointed out there is but one female singer in all the hundred, which seems a bit odd, really.

(Though I had only 1 in my 10, if we're on the subject.)

It's been said before, but Mad Max is a fine little movie, and thirty years later is still being used to describe a genre (even if most people think of the sequel). Lots of lovely, strange detail, and expert shocks. It's not about the death, it's about the injury, as befits George Miller's experience as a paramedic.

The first half is the stronger, but Max's transformation is believable. He really is mad, you know.

We have the US dvd with commentary and trivia track. We gave up on the first, but the trivia had its moments (more so if you care about models of cars, no doubt). My favourite was that experts had tried to decipher Jessie's sign language, and found nothing.

It looks like I'll be in Melbourne mid-August, for Continuum, and hopefully to catch up with some people.

Also, not right now this minute, we saw Let the Right One In. Despite all the hype, I didn't really know what to expect, which is no doubt the best way to see anything (maybe).

For those few out there that were charmed by The Little Vampire (TV version) and Young Dracula, this is... not quite that. But it is a beautiful, solemn and (shhh) shockingly violent look at a young vampire getting by in the world, and a boy trying to work out what that means.

I saw the 'Tarantino cut' of True Romance. In its cheerfully misanthropic way, it is very good.

It's not even that non-linear (this is not Pulp Fiction here); the ending is a more significant change, and it does add gravitas to proceedings. There were various other scenes I didn't recognise, which mostly worked, and it was also fun to see James Gandolfini (in one of his first movie roles), saying he was getting to old for the mob stuff.

The Sydney Morning Herald is telling us to stop reading newspapers.

Wise words, but contrarian that I am, I actually bought the Herald today, for the first (non-Friday) time in many a moon. I still block all the ads from their site though (but of course).

Back in the day, I had a story called 'Autumn Flame' published in Passing Strange. I'm not quite sure why, since it was originally written with Dragon magazine in mind (presumably they were accepting fiction at the time), and contained a little too many D&D assumptions for your average stand alone fantasy. Still, there it was and, like most such stories, it promptly sank without visible trace.

I subsequently made the central character, Nilaqui (who prefers to be called Flame), for a real D&D game. It wasn't the best thing ever (who knew a sorcerer/cleric multi-class wasn't a good idea?) but she had her moments. Also, a familial toad called Fireball.

And then there was the WoW version:

From World of Warcraft

She's lost quite a bit in the translation by this point, including her obsessions with death and her more abrasive characteristics. There's enough potential unpleasantness on-line without generating it artificially. Still, she has earned her title of 'Flame Keeper', which took a bit of work, and is now happy enough.

(It has been pointed out that Nilaqui could be some sort of cod-Latin pun on 'no water'. I don't remember if this was intentional.)

I actually have another WoW character based on an old Star Wars PC, but she is languishing somewhat. The two are variations on a theme, really, along with Sabriel, my signature character for the Demon game. My Mage, Rose Belinda Edwards, is much more balanced -- and too sensible to run around Azeroth, no doubt.

Am waiting to be called upon at work, to give a presentation. In the meantime, I nabbed this:

Online journals are little filters that we each see every one else's lives through, the parts others choose to share with us. That said, we all think we are close, but really we seldom know a lot about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

We went off to see Crime Scenes last night, an anthology of Aussie true crime stories, in part co-written by jack_ryder. It was very good, with a wide variety of subjects and approaches. This review is a bit late, since we saw the last session of its run, but here are my impressions anyway.

Housebound: this is the one co-written by Iain, the most confronting of the four, as it re-enacted some of the crimes of Catherine and David Birnie, serial killers from Perth in the 1980s. I thought it made very good use of the stage and its shifting time lines, not to mention the traumatic events at its centre, but never quite coalesced into full effectiveness.

The Blood on Helmut Lange: this one took a while to win me over, as it covered a lot of ground quickly. It portrayed events leading up to the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last man to be legally executed in Australia, and the various strands (back to the fall of Nazi Germany) did come together well.

Morning Tea at the Carousel Cabaret: this was was the opposite of the above, in that it didn't cover enough ground, and pretty much disintegrated at the end. It was about the murder of Juanita Nielsen in 1975, allegedly on the orders of Abe Saffron to protect his interests in Kings Cross. The cast gave their best to some dubious 70s fashion, and Abe was played in a delightfully self-satisfied manner, but the characters didn't have enough substance to ring true.

Shots: this was a kaleidoscope of modern madness -- I'm not sure any of the depicted crimes were real, and it didn't really end up anywhere, but it was a hell of a trip on the way. It basically came down to the actors pulling you into their world, and they did so brilliantly, with intensity and some deft understatement (perhaps undermined by some strange reactions from the audience). An excellent end to the evening.

I didn't see enough of the Sydney Film Festival to pass any final judgement -- but that was in part because the films we did want to see were scattered so awkwardly about that we didn't have much incentive to do so. I probably aren't the intended audience, but I think I am fairly in tune with some of their goals -- seeing as they did indeed run Wake in Fright and two zombie flicks, for a start.

Given the badly organised queues we were in yesterday (people were arguing about which half of the stairway they were supposed to be in), and a couple of other things, the problems may have been more systemic.

Anyway: the films.

I'm wasn't sure Wake in Fright could live up to its twenty-year status as a lost classic, but it did a fine job trying. It was very nice to see some solid, uncompromising film-making. A proper TR review will hopefully follow. Have a beer to tide you over.

Having never lived in the outback, Cold Souls tale of artistic ennui may have actually cut closer to home. It was about trading in souls, as the main character tries to relieve himself of his burdens, and perhaps try a little Russian Poet on for size. Some interesting ideas and funny moments, but in the end it just didn't do enough with its central idea or its characters to work. It played with the short We Who Stayed Behind which was a fairly nice apocalyptic mood piece.

Probably the clearest indication of the ambitions of Dead Snow is that one of the characters wears a Braindead t-shirt. It was ultra-gory slapstick with Nazi zombies; nothing deep, but it certainly got the crowd reacting to its excesses.

Catherine Scholz was on Triple J this morning, talking about the NatCon in Adelaide this weekend. My reaction was: who? (Although I'm a little less alarmed by this, after having read her biography.) Still, she did a good job.

Meanwhile, the morning presenters are trying to rickroll the current Hottest 100. In light of such shenanigans, Kyla's plan to get the Carmina Burana listed is a ray of sanity.

Good news, we might yet see an extended cut of Nightbreed. That's been a long time coming, and may yet be delayed indefinitely without sufficient support. But the screening this month of Wake in Fright seems a good omen for more.

This news via Sean Collins, though his lj feed is broken.

With heavy heart I must say that Lesbian Vampire Killers isn't a good movie. But underneath the multitude of flaws (which includes a soggy plot, flat direction and mostly uninspired writing) it definitely has funny bits. And, well, lesbian vampires. (Or Paul McGann with his great cock sword, in a different vein.)

I've been going through the Sydney Film Festival calendar. There are some good movies, but I cannot imagine a less useful schedule to see them. At least Wake in Fright should be (finally) doable.

In the meantime, I am on Dreamwidth, for reasons ill-ly defined. Do you know that thing when you want to change everything, but aren't really sure what to?

We saw Angels and Demons. It was pretty good, but to extol my own brand of heresy, I thought The Da Vinci Code was better. More fun, more charming, and ultimately more interesting, at least by its own flimsy logic.

I haven't checked out rpg.net in a while, so I completely failed to notice their review of All Tomorrow's Zombies. It makes some interesting points, for and against, and I think it conveys the breadth and weirdness that Jason and I were trying to capture.

I saw Gamerz again last night. I enjoyed it more the second time around (see my initial review here), and the various flaws such as the rather flat ending seemed less important. This is often the way on my (infrequent) second viewings, as I worry less about structure and groove along with the characters more. It makes me wonder about the whole process of reviewing. When can you give a fair assessment of something?

This is entirely unrelated to the fact that I had to decline to do some reviews for someone yesterday, despite being very nicely asked.

Meanwhile, I was asked about 4e in that link above. The supposed start of my game hasn't lead anywhere yet, but it may do. At this point my main problem is with NPCs, I guess. The character classes are pretty complicated, which is fine for the players, but bringing in a quick human (who doesn't match the ones in the MM) for or against the party is another matter. Maybe I'm missing something.

For all you crossword fans out there, don't miss today's DA. There seems to be a sad message hidden among the tangled skein.

For all you non-crossword fans, um, hi. I guess I should write some TV reviews or something.

ETA: speaking of crosswords, I was playing around with my Tea and Sympathy this week, a neat little package (used to create this for example, which is very much influenced by DA hisself). I guess that's what happens when you are in Neutral Bay for 3 days without a web-accessible computer.

I discovered Little Red's Jackie Cooper yesterday, a song which shares the name and somewhat of the philosophy of my protagonist from Prismatic.

If I can get that on Rock Band, it would be fun, since I've already set up Jackie and the rest of her gang on all the instruments.

Yes, this is my geekiest post ever (in a narcissistic sort of way).

ETA: It just got geekier.

The latest Studies in Australian Weird Fiction is out, with a great deal of stuff in it. That includes a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion between myself, Rob Hood and Lee Battersby on Australian horror movies. There's also various articles, from colonial writers to And the Ass Saw the Angel, and interviews with people like Kim Wilkins, Cat Sparks and Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

(Not an interview with me, it might be noted -- but not for want of trying by the editors.)