Tabula Rasa lj

I always loved the anecdote about Carrie and Star Wars having shared auditions. Think of the possibilities. William Katt, John Travolta and Sissy Spacek as Luke, Han and Leia. Piper Laurie as Grand Moff Tarkin? Not to mention Carrie Fisher covered in pig's blood.

Anyway, yes. Star Wars is a good movie. It still manages to look authentic and audacious, and after the prequels, some humanity is very welcome.

(The anecdote about elephants in Death Valley, which I only discovered this evening, is also a good one.)

We've just seen Primer. Freaky, man.

But I'm suspicious. It is the tenth anniversary of google being registered (more or less). A couple of guys in a garage take over the world... Did they really use a search engine?

Also, I read the chapter on time travel in The Science of Stephen King today. Mere coincidence, of course. But in any sane world, would I have wandered into a video shop this week to see Steve's wacky time travel romp, The Langoliers, being played?

I think not.

If nothing else, somebody should go back in time and tell the editor to make it half the length, and perhaps make a decent movie. (The Langoliers. I don't think cutting Primer in half would help.)

The Science of Stephen King isn't much good, alas. It manages to improve after the first disastrous chapter (on ESP), but still doesn't provide a particular coherent look at either science or Steve's work. A shame because, now I think about it, there could be potential in such an odd idea.

It did manage to equate two branes colliding with a certain Buick, which was a good trick. Made me regret yet again I couldn't get any brane-eaters in All Tomorrow's Zombies.

Also, my review of Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, by Rocky Wood and Justin Brooks, is now up. It's good.

Let it not be said we ignore recommendations -- it just might take a while to get to them. So we just watched the first two eps of The Lost Room, and it is indeed very good.

The director also did Kingdom Hospital which we liked -- and no-one else did, apparently, so quick, a meme...

Haiku2 for ashamel
very sneaky and managed to pronounce both fetish correctly
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Black Sheep (the movie): not too bad.

Bill Congreve has the best answer to Q5 of of the Snapshot, so far. He provides some sensible commentary as well.

I've just seen a Sopranos spoiler. Bugger. And the DVDs aren't out till October...

Stephen King is rocking around Alice Springs.

I didn't remember Randle McMurphy wearing Moby Dick underwear... This is quite possibly because I haven't previously read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest after all, and only studied sections in High School.

I don't post much about what I've been reading, but here's some quick highlights from the last fortnight:

They Hunger, by Scott Nicholson: For those wondering about the use of MySpace, I bought this novel solely because the author turned up in my friend's list, and it looked fun. It was too; I'm not entirely sure it arrived anywhere, but it was fairly trippy on the way, with lots of texture and some distinctly weird vampires.

Blaze, by Richard Bachman: This novel had its faults, and Stephen King more or less lists them in his foreword. It doesn't break a lot of new ground, but I enjoyed it a lot.

(In related news, I hear they're considering filming The Long Walk. The result should be terrifying -- even if not, this is the best of the Bachman books, for anyone wanting to give them a go.)

Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill: This had a lot of excellent stuff in it, and I can see why it has caused a stir. I do think the characterisation gets a bit sloppy at times, which is a bit sad because the detail upon which it builds is great.

(I'm not sure I blogged it at the time, but there was an article about Joe in the NY Times a while ago. The description of Stephen King's kids playing the Call of Cthulhu RPG was heart-warming. "Joe was always dungeon master. You had sanity points, and it was like, if you encountered Yog-Sothoth one too many times, you were crazy. You could only have so many adventures, and then you had to have a new character, and I thought that was brilliant.")

Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand, by Denise Mina: Denise's run on Hellblazer was a strange one. Interesting things are happening, but working out precisely what is often tricky. It gets clearer towards the end, but remains arrhythmical and odd. (DC's decision to release the trade collections out of order -- over-lapping this story with the end of Carey's run -- really didn't help.)

Crossing Midnight, by Mike Carey: I seem to be reading a lot of Carey recently, and he can juggle both street level and high-magic mythos adeptly. This comic, in which he tackles Japanese spirits, seems a bit slow to me, but has definite highlights. I'd be more tempted to buy his novels if they weren't about yet another bloody supernatural detective. Speaking of which:

Storm Front, by Jim Butcher: 100 pages in, and it hasn't really grabbed me as yet. But there are funny bits (for better or worse), and it makes an interesting comparison with the show. The actual magic is interesting, and if he can pull a coherent background out of all these unsubtle elements, he'll be doing well.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling: Yeah, I already talked about this one. On reflection, my feeling that she passed over too much stuff, in her determined drive to the final battle, has only strengthened. Hermione's big moment and the consequences of all those unforgivable curses flying about, for two.

Unsettled Places, by George Morgan. OK, this is mainly for completion, as you're probably not too interested in Aboriginal urbanisation. But I did like this quote: "While most of their male colleagues were off conducting hairy-chested feats of ethnography in remote areas, women broke the new ground of urban anthropology".

Otherwise, I can report The Fly commentary is very good thus far, and we've decided Dead Zone S4 is our next slab-o'-tv to get through.

For those interested in the end of the world, there is a very interesting article in this month's The Monthly (surely the most generic magazine title ever) about Nevil Shute and On the Beach.

In other news, I won a book, bought a book (for reasons that many be obvious) and we finished Heroes (tiring of our weekly ration). Did the world end? That would be telling.

I think I've managed to forget how watching TV on (commercial) TV sucks the life out of it. Still Heroes has its moments.

In the meantime I'm reading Stephen King's new novella, 'The Gingerbread Girl'. Our heroine wears a 'Save the Cheerleader' t-shirt, to wrap all this up neatly.

ETA: The story is good.

If I told you about the review I wrote today, for Rocky Wood's Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, would that be meta-meta-meta-non-fiction?

It's been a more or less productive weekend: more than usual, less than actually productive. Our Ravenloft game was scuttled by a combination of a medieval fair and food poisoning -- not experienced by the same person -- so we played Vampire: Prince of the City. Kyla's winning streak is becoming lengthy.

I've been updating the website for the new book (we have hit Copper status on rpgdrivethru, putting us in the top 7.5% of products, which seems good for a coupla days), and various comics, including the funky CAB: Collaborative Auto-Biography. My date for wrestling with myspace draws ever closer. First I might have to wrestle for the right not to be subjected to Nova FM at the office.

ETA: cashews! I have eaten my first nuts in 15 years. So far so good...

A Stephen King cartoon, from non_sequitur_:

( cut )

I liked the Nightmares and Dreamscapes TV series. Particularly the variety of it, from surreal whimsy (with a hard edge) to straight drama, plus the inevitable supernatural shocks. I'm not sure any one episode was a perfect story unto itself, and there was a fair bit of stretching and tweaking into the allotted time, but my favourites were Battleground, Umney's Last Case, The Road Virus Heads North and The Fifth Quarter. The rest of them all have something to recommend them, usually the characters (I thought the central pair of Crouch End did particularly well at just wandering around seeing odd things, for example). Autopsy Room Four gets points for almost pulling off a very difficult trick.

The production generally looked great too, though I must admit to being constantly aware of the Melbourne location, if only because it was put to such varied use. Their casting was also very good. I didn't recognise that many local actors, sad to say (Jacqueline McKenzie, Bruce Spence and Kym Gyngell, thus failing to recognise, for example, Sigrid Thornton).

Whilst attempting not to give the impression we watch too much bloody TV, a quick note about this week's Heroes (#8: Seven Minutes to Midnight, for those losing track). Kyla reckons the ending was very Kubrick's The Shining. Not necessarily intentional, and probably not important, but interesting.

The King boys grew up riffing on each other's fantasies; in what they called the Writing Game, a literary version of tag, one brother would write for a few minutes and pass the story to the other. "We used to play Call of Cthulhu," Owen told me, referring to the role-playing game based on the H. P. Lovecraft story. "Joe was always dungeon master. You had sanity points, and it was like, if you encountered Yog-Sothoth one too many times, you were crazy. You could only have so many adventures, and then you had to have a new character, and I thought that was brilliant."
—Prince of Darkness (rego probably reqd)

That is an article in the NY Times about Joe Hill, and growing up with Stephen King. Nice.

It reminds me I have a pre-order for Heart-Shaped Box, which has mysteriously disappeared.

It also reminds me I had another Ravenloft session on the weekend, and probably owe you a session report. Would 'Barely adequate' suffice?

More Ravenloft last night.

( A few of the gory details, and filmic inspiration )

We started off by going over to jack_ryder and murasaki_1966's for Friday dinner, and playing some Inkognito and Dungeon Twister. I think in both cases they can be counted as introductory games to get us used to what is going on, but it was a good evening.

Saturday was the second session of my new Ravenloft game, using Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. As is entirely usual I am somewhat disappointed with my presentation of events, but I'm certainly not ready to abandon things either. Thus far our party of doughty (or at least pretty) adventurers have been attacked by a giant animated midden, received a desperate request for aid from Borovia (bearer of said message being displayed as a carnival freak by his brother — said brother dying soon afterwards), been attacked by an animated toll-bridge and ambushed by a psychotic dwarf. They have also spent an evening in Borovia, a rustic set of ruins in a mountain valley which was all very pleasant. (chainofsuns includes a journal of the adventure from one player.)

On Sunday we went to see The Fountain and Pan's Labyrinth, a somewhat thematic pair of movies. We were then considering Hannibal Rising for some light relief.

(Instead we came home and saw the Nikita episode where she is asked to kill Operations — her boss. One side claims he killed her father, the other that he is her father. As is the nature of things, both were lying.)

I also read the first of the Dark Tower comics. It was pretty good. Nothing new (with the exception of some information at the end of the story at the back), and the art didn't blow me away, but it all worked well enough.

Meanwhile it turns out I will indeed be in Melbourne on Wednesday, but it is there and back on the day, so there's no time to catch up with people.

I wonder if having both Dark Tower and Dork Tower in my standing order at Kings Comics will cause much confusion. Perhaps it already has, since it turns out to be a good thing I just rung to double-check the inclusion of the former.

I've been reading the motivational posters thread on RPG.net. This is not really a good sign, and if you can imagine me laughing away at all the wit and wonder therein, you probably don't know me very well.

One of the piccies is this:

( Saving the universe )

Which puts me in mind back to this one in a different thread:

( The Dark Tower RPG )

It takes me back. I have long considered Dark Tower to be a natural setting, and so when it was announced the final books were going to be written, it time to act. I submitted a proposal to Eden, and thence to Stephen King himself.

It didn't work out, alas.

I still think it'd make a great RPG. It has many options for play, including New Canaan before and during its final days, following the path of the beam (and there are more beams than that of the Bear that Roland follows), in modern day Earth, the Territories or post-Captain Tripps (or all of the above). You could be Roland and his ka-tet, your own group of gunslingers, or employees of the Tet Corporation, fighting the agents of the Crimson King.

(You could possibly be Stephen King, but I'm not sure such things should be encouraged...)

The ending of the series leaves things wide open as well, but I won't go into that here.

And Unisystem would be a great match (though there would be many arguments on whether or not to use the Cinematic version, I'm sure). Buffy already covers characters of different strengths (such as Roland and the rest of the group), and the combat rules would work. Magic would be interesting, since it is subtle and dangerous, and mostly involves summoning demons. Whether it would work for player characters would need to be investigated further. (Drawbacks are good.) There are plenty of antagonists and monsters in the books, and scope for a lot more if needed.

Things like art and maps would also need to be considered. There's much beautiful art for the setting, but I can't say whether it would have been available to us or not (and RPGs need a lot). Meanwhile, the comic is going to have a map of New Canaan, which is nice to see).

I wasn't able to talk about it at the time, so this is just my way of showing you some of the things I was considering a year or three ago, and that might have been.

Marvel have produced a trailer for the upcoming Dark Tower comic. I'm not completely convinced by it, but there is some pretty cool stuff therein. Young Roland with the gun strikes me in particular. I am somewhat taken aback by the (apparent) depiction of his father, but it could work.

I'm still a bit confused by what this comic is about. The word is that it is exploring Roland's past in more detail, but pretty much all I've seen of it comes straight out of Wizard and Glass, and other flashbacks. A more important question will be if it catches the feeling of the disintegrating world, and the man who travels through it with such patient tenacity.

Cujo is an excellent novel, and Lewis Teague made a damn good adaptation of it. It's a bit frayed around the edges, as all the interesting detail peeks out and then disappears again, but the central story of Donna v dog is very effective. Dee Wallace — who has been in vast amounts of stuff — does very well as Donna (though Kyla thought the character somewhat enigmatic) and Danny Pintauro as the kid is consistently and scarily plausible through multiple stages of trauma.

It was also greatly amusing to see Sheriff Bannerman get his. This is the same George Bannerman who continues as a major character in The Dead Zone TV show — presumably Cujo will strike sometime before the looming apocalypse.

People who want to see the movie should note that the local version is widescreen and anamorphic, a great improvement over the American disc which is pan and scan, and without commentary.