Because yesterday I was offline most of the day and the RSS flood backed up again.
– My friend Roz gets her poetry published in The Guardian. Cool stuff!
– My friend Neil gets the first chapter of his Hugo Award winning novel, American Gods, published in The Guardian (which is, of course, all to do with the One Book, One Twitter thing).
– Michael Moorcock has a new non-fiction book coming out, and John Coulthart has done some utterly amazing design work on it.
– The BBC has been to Sci-Fi London and reviews a Swiss science fiction film (though sadly the director is dreadfully ignorant about science fiction in Switzerland — how can he not have heard of Maison d’Ailleurs?).
– And finally, Deep Sea News has a depressing but probably accurate assessment of how BP will get off the hook as regards environmental damage from the Deepwater Horizon spill because the Bush Administration gutted the country’s environmental agencies and fostered a climate of disbelief in science. (Then again, maybe because BP are “foreigners,” the Rethuglicans will support going after them. I’m waiting for Sarah Palin to demand that all foreign oil assets in the US be nationalized.)
Here are a few more things that may be of interest:
– First and foremost, the Hugo Voter Packet has been released. For a mere £25 (currently rather better value that the US$50 price, though it may not be after the election) you can get a massive collection of ebook goodness, including all six nominees for Best Novel. Bargain.
– Talking of Worldcon news, Reno is going to hold a film festival. That’s excellent news as it shows they are working hard on attracting a new and diverse membership.
– Back in Melbourne, scientists claim to have proved that Phar Lap died of arsenic poisoning. Of course this doesn’t prove murder, so they have not yet declared war on the USA…
– And finally, another plug for James Maliszewski’s excellent Grognardia blog. Although it is ostensibly about role-playing, it has many posts about pulp fiction. Here’s James talking about Lovecraft and Conan. His latest post is about the history of role-playing and its connections to the SCA and science fiction fandom. My knowledge is a bit fuzzy, but if one of you would like to point Lee Gold, Diana Paxson etc. at him I’m sure he’d be very grateful.
It is not often that my economics and arts news feeds throw up the same story, but here’s one that definitely crosses the boundaries. As Mike Giberson at Knowledge Problemreports, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved the establishment of a futures market in movie revenue. Derivatives traders will now be able to buy and sell futures based on opening weekend domestic box office receipts.
In Twitter Joe Hill described this as “betting on movie futures”, and to some extent he’s right because all futures trading is betting of a sort. However, the primary purpose of the market is to allow movie companies to hedge the risk of development by allowing them to take out insurance against a flop. They probably do so already, of course, but a futures market is, at least in theory, a better means of providing that insurance than approaching an insurance company, because the futures market is informed by the supposed wisdom of a whole crowd of investors.
What will be the effect of this? If they get it wrong it could be an awful mess, and let’s face it the recent track record of the derivatives industry is not exactly exemplary. If the market works, however, it may make studios more willing to take a punt on an experimental film, rather than always going for a safe bet. Or, of course, it may end up with Hollywood always producing the sort of movies that derivatives traders like. It will be interesting to see how it works, and whether the traders attempt to create ways of tapping Internet wisdom. If it does work, other forms of consumer entertainment could follow suit.
See, I take the morning off to get my hair done and all sorts of interesting stuff turns up. Here are some brief links.
– Neil has tweeted this, so you have probably all seen it, but some archaeologists working in Turkey have found a temple they believe to be 11,500 years old. That’s 6,000 years before Stonehenge was started. It is so old it predates the invention of pottery.
– Meanwhile archaeologists working on Crete have found a stone hand axe they believe to be 130,000 years old. That’s not so old for such an implement, except that Crete is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, which leaves us wondering how the heck early humanoids got there.
– Jennifer Ouellette talks about the science of superheroes, and along the way has some interesting things to say about scientific accuracy in Hollywood.
– One of the things that always delights me is how simple mathematical rules can give rise to amazing complexity. Here’s a lovely story about the shapes of the beaks of finches studied by Darwin. (It also explains why we don’t see any “in between” beak shapes.)
Via Liz Hand I have discovered Logorama, a wonderful animated film set in a version of Los Angeles made entirely of corporate logos. It is an Oscar nominee too, but don’t let that stop you nominating it for a Hugo. For your ballot, the details are:
OK, so we all know that Na’vi are ridiculously anthropomorphic, especially in the context of the rest of their ecosystem. However, that ecosystem is actually very interesting. My guess is that the suits in Hollywood got all bent out of shape about how the audience had to be able to identify with the Na’vi, but couldn’t care less about the animals and plants. So Cameron’s team got to play with real science. Peggy Kolm has a round-up of blog posts about it.
Normally when I write about awards I am talking about awards for literature, but this time the awards in question are for: “excellence in online communication, business practice and technology.” The particular awards in question are the SIME awards and they are awarded to online businesses based in the Nordic Countries (not Scandinavia, please – Finland is not part of Scandinavia). And my Finnish movie pals have found themselves on the short list.
In the meantime, in case you were not aware, you can now buy the original Star Wreck movie from Amazon. I’m also able to report that the studio on the moon where the guys are filming the lunar sequences for Iron Sky survived the recent NASA bombing mission. Will someone please tell Mr. Obama that they are not real Nazis, it is just a film set.
Over at the LA Times Tim Powers talks about having his book, On Stranger Tides, used as the basis for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Along the way Tim says some very sensible things about how writers should deal with Hollywood. I am so happy for him.
It isn’t often that I report hot news from the movie business, but this one has me hopping up and down with delight. Disney has announced that there will be a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie out in 2011. Johnny Depp fans immediately squee with glee. But even better news may be concealed in the subtitle: On Stranger Tides.
Yes people, that is the title of a Tim Powers novel. And right now the movie world is abuzz with the rumor that the movie is going to be based on Tim’s book. (See here for a sample.)
Now of course I am very happy for Tim, who happens to be one of my all time favorite writers. It is about time he got a movie break. But I’m also very happy because in 2011 one of the Guests of Honor at Worldcon is going to be none other than Tim Powers. So if the movie really is based on his book, Hollywood has just handed Patty Wells and her crew a monumentally huge PR boost.
My pals Gabriel Strange and Lydia Wood are doing a film studies course in Cardiff. They are putting together their final year project and the moment, and in film studies such things are serious business requiring fund raising and potentially catapulting the director to stardom. (The Wallace & Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, was Nick Park’s graduation project.) As part of the project Gabe and Lydia are looking for some fiction writers to do some viral marketing for the film. He’s looking for 4-5 people to each write a blog post a week for 4 months. Each blogger will take on the character of one people in the film. There’s no money for this, but if could be fun and if the film does well you get to share in the glory. The catch is that they really want local people who can meet up, but I think I know a few budding fiction writers in Bristol…
Anyone interested should write to Gabe & Lydia at casimirfilm [at] googlemail.com. The film’s web site is here.
I seem to have been quiet for a while. Saturday and Sunday were mainly spent traveling, though I did have a 4-hour conference call to California for a World Fantasy Con committee meeting on Sunday night. Things never slow down. I did get quite a bit of reading done while I was on the move, but unusually I also watched two movies: the in-flight entertainment on the trans-Atlantic flight included the new Star Trek movie and also Galaxy Quest. They proved an interesting combination.
Everyone seems to have been saying really good things about the Star Trek re-boot, and I have to admit that I was rather disappointed. It was cute in places, and amusing in places, and I do like the way that the new versions of the minor characters have so much more personality than the old ones. However, if you strip away all the bits that meant so much to people who have been watching Star Trek for 30 years you are left with a rather poor film with a silly plot that felt horribly artificial in places. (For some reason the scene where the Enterprise crew are loading photon torpedoes as if they were on a WWII submarine particularly annoyed me.) When the new cast get a film of their own it may be a lot better, but this wasn’t a patch on Watchmen or, I suspect though I haven’t seen it yet, on Coraline.
If you don’t believe me, try watching it back-to-back with Galaxy Quest. That’s also a film that means a lot more if you have spent a lot of time watching Star Trek, but I think it also stands on its own. It is much funnier, and being a comedy it can get away with not making a lot of sense at times. Indeed, the whole meta-narrative that it is indulging in cries out for it to do the sorts of silly things that the TV shows it parodies are famous for — for example the bit where Gwen and Jason have to dodge through the moving pillars.
Of course I still expect the new Star Trek to win the Hugo next year. Worldcon members are nothing if not sentimental. But I won’t be voting for it.
Here’s something else I’m just catching up on. Earlier this week the guys from Geek Syndicateinterviewed Duncan Jones about his new film, Moon. Various people online have been enthusing about Moon, and this interview makes it sound even more interesting. I’m now hoping that the film makes it onto next year’s Hugo ballot, because Duncan Jones sounds to me like the sort of person who would know what a Hugo is and want to win one. (Of course he’d be up against Watchmen and Coraline, but hey, you never know.)
The Iron Sky guys are an endless source of amusement. For Finncon they have produced a mock tabloid newspaper called Truth Today. Naturally it leads with the rumor that there are Nazis on the Moon! It also has a bunch of other spoof articles, including “United States Accepts Soccer as Sport”.
Between the two conventions I did a bit of touring around New Zealand. The video from that is now online. It includes visits to the site of next year’s NZ Natcon, to Rivendell, and to the Weta Cave. More importantly, there are three very cute kittens.
Airport security rules continue to confound me. Every other country I have visited has removed common cosmetics such as lipstick and mascara from their “dangerous terrorist weapons” list. Not so Australia. And yet their screening guys do not require you to remove shoes or even coats. Go figure.
The trip back to the UK was not nearly as convenient as the one going out, sleep-wise. After a domestic transfer from Melbourne we left Sydney at 5:00pm. That’s too early for sleep. We arrived in Bangkok at 2:00am, Sydney time, by which time I had got a few hours of sleep, and then had to be woken up to get off the plane. Sleeping on take-off was so easy I actually missed the food service (which was a Thai fish curry), but somewhere over Pakistan it became morning in Sydney and I was wide awake, even though it was midnight in London. That was BAD. Thankfully I have managed to sleep a bit more on the rest of the journey.
Bangkok is a weird experience. They encourage you to get off the plane while it is cleaned, but also encourage you to leave all of your cabin baggage behind due to delays at security. I guess if any of the cleaners tried to open one of the overhead bins it would be very obvious to the cabin crew. Anyway, all of my stuff was still there when I got back.
And now I am in London. There is a Tube strike on today, but thankfully I don’t need that service. I booked a midday train from Paddington, giving myself plenty of time for the flight to be late, but now have several hours to kill. As the toilets are Paddington are not accessible to people with luggage I’m staying at Heathrow. Starbucks has its uses.
QANTAS had Watchmen showing on their (very excellent) on demand movie service. Given what I have heard about movies cut for aircraft, I was rather surprised to see that most of the sex and graphic violence had been left in. Unfortunately the screen is much to small to allow you to look for interesting things in the background. That will have to wait for the DVD.
I also re-watched the music documentary, “The Roxy Music Story”. This reminds me that that the new album, which the boys were working on back in 2006/7, is still not out. Anyone know what has happened to this? Also has anyone else noticed that Eno is now the best-looking of the lot of them? Funny how age works, isn’t it.
Many thanks to Kelly & Daniel for looking after me in Wellington. I have seen lots of things. I have been to the Weta Cave; I have been to the Cake Tin (Go ‘Canes!); I have been to Rivendell; and I have been to Te Papa where I have see the Colossal Squid. Surprisingly, despite all of the dire warnings I received from various people in Auckland, I did not freeze to death. The weather was actually rather good. I gather that I may have been lucky to see three consecutive days with no wind, but I did none the less.
Some compare and contrast is doubtless in order. Auckland is a large (huge by NZ standards) city that you probably need a car to get around. Wellington, in contrast, is small and compact and walkable. I did a lot of walking. You need a car (or bus) to get out to Miramar, where there Weta offices are, but there is a whole lot you can do around the city and, being the national capital, Wellington boasts some fabulous museums.
Both cities have absolutely amazing natural scenery within an easy drive of the town center. I have lots of photos and video that I shall get on with processing as soon as I can. New Zealand is an extraordinarily beautiful place. I wish I’d had more time for just touring around (or indeed for just sitting on beaches watching the waves).
While there are a lot of Middle Earth sites that you can visit, most of them have been cleaned up, and a huge amount of the film scenery was CGI anyway, so there isn’t necessarily a lot to see. There are no elf houses at Rivendell, and no elves either, or at least if there were they were being very secretive. Also no one makes a great fuss of the sites. It wasn’t until we were inside the appropriate national park that we saw small signs saying “Rivendell”. You had to know where to go in order to get there.
The national museum, Te Papa, is a fabulous building and has all sorts of wonderful things ranging from moa bones (that was one big bird) to Maori cultural artifacts. The Colossal Squid is a bit sad these days, but the museum is very proud of it and as a result I now have my very own pet squid.
One thing you can’t do is tour Weta’s studios. There is way too much sensitive work going on in them, and they can’t have people traipsing around peering at things that Hollywood doesn’t want peered at. However, there are a few things that they do want us to see. Here’s a trailer that Norm showed at the convention. Look out for the marvelous steampunk spaceship.
There’s a rather nice video interview with Neil Gaiman in today’s Times. What with that and his appearance on Blue Peter (apparently due to air on Tuesday), I’m wondering if the movie PR people are beginning to regret having left his name off the Coraline posters.
Despite the headline, the interview is almost entirely about Coraline. Having said that, however, I entirely agree. Of all of the Marvel characters on offer, I would love to write Dr. Strange as well. But Neil doing it will be a whole lot better, so I hope he gets his wish.
Ever wondered what the Doctor Who & Torchwood crew get up to in Cardiff when not doing stuff for the BBC? Well some of them make movies. About drag queens.
Thanks to Gabriel Strange, who is Location Manager for the project, I have discovered A Very British Cover-Up, a movie about royalty, murder and drag queens. It looks like a lot of fun. For rugby fans, Colin Charvis is going to be in it. And for Torchwood fans, Gareth David-Lloyd will be in it, and John Barrowman is donating goodies to help raise money for the production.
I’d think about attending the launch party next month, except there’s no way I could out-glam those boys.
It takes a lot for me to sit up and take notice of a movie controversy. I mean, the chances of my actually going to see the thing are practically nil. And if it is an old movie we are talking about, well I probably haven’t seen it. But there are one or two I have seen, and even one or two I am fond of. Which is why my jaw hit the ground when Kameron Hurley blogged about plans for a remake of Barbarella.
Of course now I want to know who they are going to get to play Pygar…
