Diary Of A Mad Writer #5 - It's the End of the World. Get the Popcorn.

I've a number of projects going on at the moment. I'm teaching myself to create levels for the Source Engine (HL2, Portal, et al.), which is challenging but satisfying, and there is no doubt in my mind based on what I've seen that everything I want to do is entirely doable.

Work on the new website proceeds well, we've outlined the look and layout we're after (a little different from your average website but striking and unique, which will add character to our brand, and also add a local flavour), and the smarter of the team (Hi Ben) has put together a functioning front page mock up based on what we've worked out (only with buttons that go nowhere, in the literal sense rather than the frustrating web design sense).

My writing partner has been a veritable font of creativity of late, coming up with two play ideas and the premise of a short film, all of which I am happy to be assisting on. But the current writing project is one we started last year. I have been given the honour of drafting the opening episode(s), and am currently putting together an opening that will hopefully introduce everything and set the tone for later episodes. It's going well, although as always I'll need to do some editing once it's done, I'm currently up to page 12 of a 20 page script, and I'd estimate a quarter through the story. But hey, means we've got lots to work with.

Not much is happening in real life this week, mainly education and helping out some friends who have a lot on their plate, so after a short delay I present the return of the weekly film review. See next blog.

Clothes maketh the man. My parents probably had something to do with it too, but I try not to think about that.

I've been meaning to do some clothes shopping for a while, last clothes I bought were a couple of jumpers waaaay back in june or so of last year. I've also become increasingly despondant with my 'look' as it were. I'm not a huge fashion person (quite the opposite) but I've always believed in at least being neat and well presented. My wardrobe also has some notable gaps in it, my choices really boil down to jeans and a jumper, or a suit. Some sort of middle option would be helpful in some situations. This, coupled with some outside factors (and the fact that I picked up an AWESOME bowler hat in Camden Town Market on my holiday and have absolutely nothing to wear it with that won't also give me heatstroke) meant that today I went shopping.

I took with me what I felt was a generous amount of funds to put towards updating my wardrobe, and so found it a little disheartening when I stepped into the first store and the first item of clothing I saw cost more than my entire budget. This continued throughout the entire floor, and more worrying still was the fact that the store seemed to follow my wardrobe in it's lack of options. The choices appeared to be to a) Wear jeans and a jumper for an affordable price, b) Wear a suit at an also strangely affordable price, or c) Pay $700 for the privelage of not wearing either jeans, jumpers, or shirts. Blow this for a lark, I said (or words to that affect) and left.

The next shop's menswear section (once I found it, it was cunningly hidden behind the fragrance section, which was in itself cunning designed to look like it had no exits, perhaps in the hope that this, combined with the dizzying nasuea produced by all the various scents, would encourage you to a) never leave and b) buy something) started in the same worrying tone. Again my options appeared to be jeans or suit pants, neither of which was what I was hoping for. I moved further into the store to the disappointment of the 4 overly helpful store clerks who seemed to be following me around (Am I the only one who likes to shop in privacy without people staring at my soon to be pants?) and discovered that the suits are obviously a test to ward off nonbelievers and the unworthy, because tucked neatly towards the back of the shop was exactly what I was looking for.

So I went to town. Have enough clothes to last me through a full week, but even at the affordable prices I still have more I want to buy (mainly on the jumpers, vests and gloves side of things), but that will have to be for another day.

This is the greatest game ever and I can't wait to finish - ooh, shiny thing

I'm a gamer. The very first game I played was King's Quest IV on my dad's computer, unless you count the paint program that was on a computer so old the screen only came in green and black. Those were the days. My first console games were Super Mario Bros and Bart Vs The Space Mutants, which I played on my very own Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) which I got when I was five.

I've been racking my brains to think of how I ever heard of one, and I honestly have no idea. I don't remember seeing an ad, I don't remember reading about it in the paper, all I can remember is wanting one and getting one. Those were the days. Quite possibly it came from my father, he was always rather switched on technologically (I think he was on msn before I was) so it's possible he just decided that we as kids might like one. My dad's awesome that way.

The next 15 years were spent, after giving us the NES, of trying to take it away from us. That's not true in the slightest, but our parents, realising that we were spending an awful lot of time on it, wanted us to focus on other ventures as well. On the whole that didn't work out so well, but eventually we all grew up and reached the stage where we liked games, we wanted to play games, but we were also smart enough to focus on, you know, school and work and those sort of things.

I remember that my older brother Ben was by far the best player of the three. And Josh and I would frequently give our turns to him so we could finish a game that you normally couldn't finish in two. (We each were alotted two hours of play time a day, but were allowed to watch the others while they played) I'm not sure what Ben thought about this, but I certainly don't remember him complaining.

Now that I'm an adult gamer (by which I mean an adult that plays games, not that I play adult video games, which generally mean copious amounts of sex and violence with no justifiable point. For the record. in case anybody was wondering, anything with the words "Sexy" and "Poker" in the title does not count as a game), I finance and manage my own gaming habits. I do play a couple of hours a night in most cases, but I also ensure I'm in bed in time for work, and spend time on my other hobbies and side projects, so I argue it's had no detrimental effect whatsoever.

But I do have a large amount of games I haven't finished, and this has started to bother me. It's largely a side effect of my larger salary last year, where I had too much money for my own good, so most of it went on games and dvds. As a result, I frequently purchased games faster than I could finish them, would spend a little bit of time on all of them, and ultimately never see any of the endings. So I started ploughing through them one by one instead, and have actually increased the satisfaction I receive from them. Finishing a game feels great. It takes 10+ hours of your time, and you feel like you've achieved something once it's done, and it can go back on the shelf in the completed pile, which is getting ego swellingly larger.

In short, I am a gamer.

Those were the days.

Movie Review Smorgasbord Round-up Extravaganza - The Complete Collection Part 2: Up.

I am a self confessed pixar fan. I don't mean I'm a computer generated electrical appliance, I mean I'm an absolute Pixar nut. I don't mean I'm a digitally animated seed found in some plants, I mean I'm a total Pixar aficionado.

I don't mean I'm a rendered... forget it. I love Pixar films.

Avoiding them for many a year because of a self conceived notion that they were kiddy films (I was 15), I eventually saw the first Toy Story when on holidays with the Steps in Perth. And you know what? It was a kiddy film.

And it was awesome.

Pixar films hold a certain quality that I hold in very high regard, the kind of thing my parents say is in Play School (excep they're wrong. Play School sucks), but more appropriately you might find in the early series of the Simpsons. A product that for outward appearances appears to be aimed towards children, but carries a weight and depth that I as an adult find very appealing. Above all Pixar is about telling a good story, and what really else is there for a film to do? (Shut up Arthouse cinema.)

Their latest film to be released was Up, released in May around the world except for Australia where for some unfathomable reason (*cough*schoolholidays*cough*) we down in the land of kangaroos had to wait until September for our Pixary goodness. Ahem.

Up is a little different from most recent Pixar films because instead of being about Fish, or Monsters, or Cars, or Superheroes, Up is placed firmly in reality, assuming in your reality you allow for a fairly relaxed grasp of phsyics and the properties of helium.

It's also the most adult Pixar film yet, while still remaining oddly childish. I don't mean adult in the sex and violence way, although the film actually does deal indirectly with both. More that it covers some very heavy topics in a refreshingly mature and gentle way.

The opening of the film covers about 60 years in a very short space of time. I don't do plot spoilers, but I will say I'm a grown man and it makes me cry everytime I see it. It is an exceptionally well done opening, even if it does put you in far too a serious frame of mind for the relatively light hearted remainder of the movie.

The film's characters are an eclectic lot, ranging from the extremely silly to the quite thoughtful. In particuliar the boy scout Russel has a rather heavy back story that is all the more moving for the fact that it doesn't beat you over the head with it, and Carl is a walking embodiment of regret for most of the film.

With plenty of slapstick thrown in for good measure.

The ending of the film is extremely light hearted. Some would argue TOO light hearted but I for one enjoyed it. It was an adventure film in the style we no longer see, think the serials of the 30s and 40s, comparisons with Indiana Jones are not out of place, just replace Indiana Jones with a crochety old man (But better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skill), the Nazis with talking dogs, and the ark of the covenant with a bright colourful bird that likes chocolate.

No, really!

Rating 4 out of 5. Another film review coming Thursday.

Better with his hands

I am the last person you would describe as a handyman.

Ok, Stephen Hawking.

I am the 2nd last person you would describe as a handyman.

I wouldn't really know where to begin with building a wardrobe. Or a door. I couldn't tell you the best type of wood to use to create a lightweight but sturdy shelf. When presented with hammer and nails, I would most likely recite a series of puns about hammers and nails, but at the risk of sounding like a tool I will refrain. I most likely would hit my own thumb in the process of hammering, and then if I was especially angry, probably someone else's thumb. Actually that's not true, I would rather hit myself than anyone else, and given that sounds worryingly masochistic I think we should just move right along.

Totally nailed that introduction.

I mention all this because I am in the process of putting together some Ikea furniture. For my birthday my parents offered to buy me a new desk. I would like to point out that my birthday's in January, but we've all been busy. But in what I am now dubbing the year of change, as I have changed jobs, long term goals, and budgets, I am also redesigning my room a little. So! I've a new desk, a new set of drawers, and two cable boxes to organise the leads from the myriad of electronic devices I have surrounded myself with to assist with the early onset of radiation induced evolution and thereby bring about a new plane of existence for all humanity, or possibly just brain cancer.

A cable box for the record is a generic plastic box with a few holes pocked in that the instructions tell you to put your cables in. They could have painted it red and written "Cable Box" on it to drive the point home further but they're actually pretty useful. They don't in any way actually make your cables easier to sort but they do hide the ungodly mess from beyond the veil that your cables become, and with the application of a few rubber bands they're behaving themselves pretty well.

The desk isn't getting delivered till tomorrow as it was too big to fit in the car, but I did start assembling the drawers (as in typical Ikea style they come in pieces - for your convenience) before bedtime and the need to get this blog in on schedule necessitated a break in their construction. The last time I assembled anything was when I put my tv stand together (which was also a birthday present from my parents a few years back. They're good that way). That time I ran into a few problems.

The instructions were easy enough to understand. Put screw A into slot A. What an easy to understand system! Much better than those convoluted instructions you sometimes see.

Only problem was there was no slot A.

After a frantic search I eventually discovered a slot 1, and further investigation helpfully showed that while the instruction writers had decided to use an easy to understand letter system, the carpenters responsible for cutting and labelling the pieces had decided to use an easy to understand number system. On the whole I think a couple of emails, perhaps a morning tea with scones to meet the two different departments, a work social outing, maybe a movie, or just something to indicate that the other department EXISTED and maybe they should be talking to each other might have helped things considerably.

Construction continued without otherwise presenting an issue, until the final step when I was required to add a small piece of wood to the back of the unit to cover up those unsightly cable holes. The wood was of nice quality, durable, had a nice silver lacquer and just plain didn't fit where it was supposed to go. I spent about a half an hour playing with it, taking measurements, trying to gently force it into place, trying to roughly force it into place and then finally whistling nonchalantly before leaping on it and trying to take it by surprise. Nothing worked.

Eventually - after realising that by covering up those unsightly cable holes it would become immensely difficult to actually thread cables through them - I simply threw the nice quality durable silver lacquered piece of wood in the bin and haven't had another problem since.

As such I was surprised and alarmed to discover that Ikea's directions were simple, efficient and above all actually bore relevance to what you had to do to assemble the unit. So while they're not quite done I have no worries with assuming that it will be easy to finish tomorrow and will be able to have my new desk in place shortly after.

On the whole I've found it quite satisfying. Maybe there is something to this handyman stuff after all. Of course, since I'm in the top 10 list of people who'd be the last you'd call a handyman, my general lack of technical skill probably gets in the way.

But who cares. I have a new desk.

Movie Review Smorgasbord Round-up Extravaganza - The Complete Collection Part 1: Watchmen.

So I saw some films last year that I never got around to commenting on (apart from the ones I saw on planes, see the travel blog for more), and some of them were quite good. Some of them were also downright terrible. I'll let you guess which.

Watchmen - Based on the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel of the same name. Some would say the most famous Graphic Novel ever, which just goes to show the graphic novel medium is a sadly closed off industry, as I only heard about it when they announced the movie. This is a shame, because the comic is pretty damn good, and should be read by anyone interested in the comic medium. (But read some other ones first. Magnum Opuses are generally downright terrible introductions to a medium)

The film is an astonishingly faithful to the original work, at times a shot for shot, word for word translation, which from a design and a technical point of view is probably to be commended. Unfortunately, being entirely faithful is not necessarily a good thing.

If a film is to be a film, it should be designed as a film. (I'm just going to keep using the word film excessively in this film discussion. Film.) If I wanted a 100% accurate version of Watchmen, get this, I would read Watchmen. Funny that.

The film is not bad by any means, but it is about 40 minutes too long, drags in a few places, and is too violent by half. (Dear Zack Synder. Stop being violent. You're missing the point of these comics. You did it in 300 too. Amazing tragic story of the death of the Spartans, and you turned it into a random gorefest. Just stop it.) Certainly it looks fantastic, and showed off the imax screen we saw it on in fine style. But the reason a gritty violent comic can be more gruesome than a film is that it is a visual static medium. It's one frame, and then you can get on with the story, suitably affected. In a film you have movement, you have sound effects, and because this is Zack Synder, you also have awful, unnecessary slow motion. Thank you Zack, I needed to see someone's cheek being bitten off in slow motion. I understand the story so much better now.

One thing the movie does get right is the ending. Rightly realising that the ending of the graphic novel wouldn't quite fly with a 2000 modern audience who are cool and cynical, they changed one small but key point in the ending, which actually enhances things significantly. Kudos, scriptwriter (whichever one was responsible, there were several. One of them wrote X-men. Is that a good thing?)

I was getting a little excited about Watchmen before it's release (thanks to buying and reading the Graphic Novel) and even though I didn't like the film all that much, I did discover several new properties which I did. Zack Synder's previous film 300 is bad in all the same areas as Watchmen (Directorial vision isn't intrinsically good), but Frank Miller's comic that it is based on is one of the best I've ever read. Alan Moore also wrote the Graphic Novel V For Vendetta which is very good, and which was turned into a film by the Wachowski Brothers (as script writers and producers) which actually manages to be better.

From there I went to Speed Racer, and that's when things started to fall down a little.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5. Another film review coming on Sunday.

Diary of a Mad Writer #4 - Oh, so they have the internet on computers these days?

Lots has happened since last update.

The play has been and gone, and if I do say so, been and gone quite well indeed. After a first week of empty theatres and slightly nervous performances, our second week was a great success, with large audiences, solid performances, and many a laugh. (From the audience, not from us, that would be weird) Although we were unable to break even, we did come mighty close, and I take that as a win. Compliments were received for both the writing and the performance, which certainly gives me hope for the future.

We've begun talks for our next production (which is likely to be the following year), and I have eagerly leapt into my next project, of which I will remain quiet for the moment as we are only in the early stages and announcing before we're ready is never a good idea, suffice to say it is a combination of several different smaller projects. Watch your computer monitors.

Currently I'm teaching myself a lot of new skills, as there are areas I want to move into that I have little to no practicaly knowledge about, so with the help of some text books and a few dvds, I'm slowly increasing my skillset, which will help with the projects in question, but also provide some long term open doors. It's a shame the software is so expensive, but ah well, can't be helped.