Ben X

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Posts posted by Ben X

  4. Posted

    I loved series 6, it's one of my favourites! I don't see how Gunmen Of The Apocalypse was where the ideas ran out - it's a fantastic idea! You could say that the use of AR is a repeat of Better Than Life, but you could also point out that it's no more gimmicky than that episode.

    I also re-read the RD novels a while back, and reported on it in this zombie-cow thread. Here's what I said:

    So, I bought IWCD (or 'Red Dwarf' as the inside cover refers to it) for 40p from a charity shop on Sunday, and have read half of it already. It's still great, and stands up as a sci-fi novel without knowledge of the tv show. It's a shame Grant Naylor couldn't have stuck together and kept on writing novels that loosely followed the continuing show past series 2.
    I'm now reading 'Better Than Life'. It's pretty cool, but it's spending a bit too long in the game at the start. I'm looking forward to the bit where Lister makes friends with giant cockroaches.
    Not enjoying the second novel as much - it's starting to feel a bit too much like lazy transcripts of various episodes.
    BTL has got to the cockroaches bit, and it's brilliant - all the trash planet stuff is genius - really clever, exciting, hilarious Adams-esque sci-fi-com that they couldn't have done in telly.
    I've also got the two next novels, 'The Last Human' and 'Backwards', which I can't remember anything about except one of them having some stupid pink anti-grav prison in it.
    I'm reading Backwards now. As usual, the new bits are really good, the transcripts a bit rubbish. The other problem is that it takes too long over each section, doesn't have an overarching plot so it feels aimless, and it's forgotten to do character/comedy stuff as well as plot (perhaps with plot-man Naylor not supporting him, Grant overcompensated). It even has Rimmer being a bit too heroic and likeable quite often.
    Finished all the novels. Backwards and The Last Human are okay, but suffer from similar problems - the episode-transcript thing, just starting to not feel like Red Dwarf anymore - especially as both take the series 6 'chasing RD' route - and not really having a very strong narrative drive. Neither novel seems to be going anywhere - Lister's quest to find Earth/tow it back to our solar system is forgotten, in place of a series of events that take them so far away from the original premise that Backwards resorts to going to an alternate reality where all that stuff in the past couple of novels didn't happen. Also, both get rather too dark - lots of death, sex and sadism.

    They're both good enough writers to keep it interesting, but they do only have one or two literary devices each, which they use repeatedly, and the books just never feel as satisfying as the first (and to an extent the second).

  5. Posted

    Personally I'd like to see a Speedball 2 movie written by the guy who did the 'Blade Runner' and 'Salute of the Jugger' scripts. A 3 hour epic sports film with a hint of 'Any Given Sunday' where it isn't just important what is happening on the pitch (although those scenes would have to be brutal) but the dealings between the owners, the coaches, the advertising companies and the bodies that govern the rules.

    Maybe something less generic would be fun too (I shudder at the thought of Jason Statham getting cast in it).

    I recommend the original Rollerball - not spot-on, but damn close and a brilliant film.

  6. Posted

    The thing is, it was never 'canned' laughter with Red Dwarf - it was either filmed before a live studio audience, or filmed then edited then played before a live studio audience. This one did not dare play itself before a live studio audience, hence the lack of laughter.

    The general fan consensus was that Grant did the funny, Naylor did the sci-fi concepts. It's pretty obvious from series 7 onwards that Grant did everything except the spellchecking.

  8. Posted · Edited by bbX1138

    If you wrote the Half-Life movie, you wouldn't have a say in who would direct, or do the effects, or the score. That's how it works.

    I know that, ffs. I was talking about how I'd adapt the film overall, as if I were, say, a producer.

    And I don't think it's a futile and pointless exercise to discuss how we'd adapt certain games, just because we're not all film producers with the rights to those games. I think it's a fun and interesting exercise. Feel free to preserve your sanity by not joining in.

  10. Posted

    I think video game movies need to push boundaries and be a bit more bizarre, rather than try to crowbar their plot elements into a genre blueprint.

    Can we do a bit of an exercise? Let's suggest a game and how we'd adapt a film of it. I'll do Half-Life, as I've already written about it on the ZC forums :)

    If I wrote a Half-Life movie, I would have Freeman as the lead. He wouldn't speak at all, in the manner of a Sergio Leone anti-hero. The film would just be non-stop action so he wouldn't really have a reason to speak, I'd strip the plot and dialogue right down. It would be live-action, but with lots more CG backgrounds, and a mix of CG and proper Del Toro style creatures by Rob Bottin. Score by Clint Mansell. Directed by Gendy Tarkovsky. And I'd just jig around the timeline/conspiracy details so it could go straight from Black Mesa to City 17 to Xen.

  11. Posted

    I quite enjoyed Monsters Vs Aliens (so I guess my taste is utterly different to bbX1138 :P ).

    I quite enjoyed it too! I didn't really like the character design that much, though, except the Missing Link and perhaps the President. It all felt a bit... Jimmy Neutron. I can't explain it any further than that!

    On the tv front, Charlie Brooker's Newswipe has been really good (ep 3 is on bbc iplayer right now, although it's the least strong so far). Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is dreadful, which is a real shame as his stand-up is normally fantastic. Heroes continues to suck balls.

  12. Posted

    By the end of the film you wonder what the point of these numbers was. The people who were saved could have been saved without them

    I suppose it's because

    the aliens wanted to lead the kids to understanding what was going on and saying goodbye to their parents (whom they also led to realise and understand what was going on) rather than just space-nap them without warning - as Caleb says, 'they could have just taken us'.

    I wasn't too annoyed about the bad science. It's only there because the studio think they have to explain and dumb down stuff for the audience, but at least they got it out of the way quickly.

    Then it all turns into yet another apocalyptic disaster movie. With a scifi/religious ambiguity/pick-your-own-meaning so as not to offend anybody.

    I thought it had a pretty specific meaning

    (there is no God, only aliens that show up to give information/help Noah build an ark etc through human history)

    , but maybe that's just me!

  13. Posted · Edited by Ben X

    Knowing - I really enjoyed it. It was exciting and clever and scary, and I genuinely had no idea where it was going next. It's difficult not to associate Nic Cage with shit films these days and subconsciously decide the film is shit just because he's in it, but I managed to fight that urge. Cage is fine, and the film is a good choice on his part as far as goofy thrillers go. It goes completely mad towards the end, which a lot of people will hate. Don't let anyone spoil it for you, and get it on DVD for a fiver (or see it in the cinema for cheap if you can).

    Monsters Vs Aliens 3D - the film is okay, a few good gags but mostly predictable. The 3D tech is really interesting. It works very well these days, and gives a really nice sense of scale and depth. The trade-off is that it works a bit like parallax scrolling, so the actual layers, or fields of vision, are noticeably flat. That is: obviously a cinema screen is flat, but your brain ignores that and sees it as having depth; however, when they start to move different bits of it around seperately, your brain remembers that it's flat. It's still cool, and I can't wait to see what James Cameron, Peter Jackson et al do with it in live-action (I've only seen the horror film Scar 3D so far, and that didn't make use of it at all), but I can't imagine watching In The Bedroom or something in 3D without it being a distraction rather than a subtle enhancement.

    The Boat That Rocked - awful. Simply not funny, quite mean-hearted and with absolutely no plot. Richard Curtis having a wank.

    The Damned United - typical (and typically brilliant) Peter Morgan fare. Very well written and structured, great characterisation and performances. It even managed to make football exciting. But it's not terrifically cinematic despite being well-directed, and, focusing as it does on a short period of time in the characters' lives, it doesn't reach for the epic drama of a full-blown biopic.

  15. Posted

    Hi folks,

    Lemmy and Binky are a coder and artist who have just gone indie. They regularly help out on Zombie Cow games, and are very nice chaps, and they've started up an indie development forum, www.theindiestone.com.

    From their about page:

    theIndieStone.com is a community all about indie game development set up by three indie developers: Lemmy, Binky and MashPotato. Our aim is to ‘have a bit of a laugh’ with other indie developers or indie gamers. Also to share knowledge on the disciplines of art, code and design.

    They're putting up simple photoshop and coding tutorials regularly, and are trying to build a nice little community where everyone helps each other out.

    I wouldn't normally plug a forum on another forum, but this is totally different to what Idle Thumbs does. [Admin, if you take a look and disagree, please blast this thread out of existence.] In fact, I'll mostly be lurking on there and not understanding what the hell anyone's talking about, as my coding and computer art skills are zero.

    So, if there are any indie developers here who have questions or anecdotes or fancy joining in the weekly 'pixel-art in the shape' game, take a look:

    www.theindiestone.com

    Please pass it on to any non-Thumbs indie devs, experienced or fledgling, too! Cheers!

  19. Posted

    I generally try and turn things off at the plug.

    Is there any energy-saving benefit in doing this? Will my toaster be using up a little power simply by being plugged into an 'on' plug socket?

    Are there some items, like tellies or computers (assuming they're not on standby or hibernate, but properly off) that do even if most don't?

    And does it reduce fire-hazard in general?

  20. Posted

    Oh man, The Road. I got about two 3rds of the way through it before I just got bored. Wasn't really my cup of tea (or rather, I loved it at first, but it was just too much of the same).

    Phew! That's two people who have lowered my expectations of this book now - I might enjoy it a bit more than before when all I'd heard was that it's this unfilmable classic.

  22. Posted

    UNORIGINAL POINT ALERT:

    Also: Fuck, is Screenwipe back? I keep forgetting to look out for that sort of thing. Newswipe? Is that a spin-off affair?

    No Screenwipe, but yeah the spin-off Newswipe has just started. You can see the first ep on BBC iplayer, it's really good (although he repeats a fair bit of material from his Guardian column, as usual).

  23. Posted · Edited by bbX1138

    Thanks for the bump and the attention, guys! Glad you enjoyed it, noyb. Check out the zombie-cow site for updates on the sequel... I'm writing dialogue for it right now. Here's what I just wrote for 'talk to pile of straw':

    cBen.Say("I can't talk to it, it's not a straw man.");

    cDan.Say("I disagree, you can talk to things other than straw men.");

    Not sure if the gag comes across...

    gdc, a feature or review would be ace! Let me know if you need anything, and enjoy the game!

    You might spot Tremors and Shaun Of The Dead references, a Day Of The Dead reference, but no The Terminal or Dawn Of The Dead references....

  24. Posted

    Funny how forgiveness and a few politically expedient statements about being saddened raise Shilpa Shetty's profile vastly too.

    To be fair, Shetty was pretty graceful about that whole thing at the time. Besides, what's she going to say when the press aske her about Jade's cancer? 'Good, she was involved in some ambiguously racist conversations about me, I'm glad the bitch is dying'?