Non-spoiler character development (and viral marketing for Serenity) for one River Tam. Watch them in the order I posted, which is the order they were “leaked.” (all are .mov files, which require Quicktime.)

Session 416, excerpt 2
Session 1, excerpt 1
Session 22, excerpt 1
Session 165, excerpt 1
Session 416, excerpt 1

And yes, her interviewer is the infamous Joss Whedon, who agreed to act when the short notice didn’t allow them to find an actor. But he’s SO good I wonder why they bothered to look in the first place. Repeat after me you non-believers: Joss is boss.

Wonderland: WoW Plague.

I watch this little video for inspiration. And it always works. TMBG and HSR: acronyms that both really stand for Unforgettable and Cool.

So a guy walks up to an ATM…

BB can find some links, lemme tell ya.

Suicide Grasshoppers Brainwashed by Parasite Worms. Flee!

I’ve recently discovered, through my friend Andy, a couple of “comics” that I would rate among the greatest books in our modern literature. These are not only great stories, but easily contain enough material to fill a masters thesis, if you ask me.

Although the books seem to be looped in with the Sin City series, and while I am impressed with Frank Miller’s ability to create a tale, these two books extend beyond the gritty serial into the deeply affecting. The author is Alan Moore and combined with some stellar artists, he’s created works of which I am simultaneously awestruck and jealous.

Watchmen was the graphic novel Andy suggested and which really got me excited about the author. Right now I’m reading V for Vendetta which is soon to be a film starring Hugo Weaving, John Hurt and Natalie Portman. While I don’t doubt the acting and directing power behind the film, there’s simply no way even a three-hour movie will touch on the subtleties in these books, so I recommend reading V before the film is released.

I had not had a genuine giggle spree in some time. Happily, I cannot make that claim again for a few days.

Matthew in Beirut: Backstroke of the West

Update: CG says this is OFN. Ach, weel.

Second Update: the link appears to have died, so I’ve republished it here. If anyone out there has objections or attribution, just email me at buddha [at] steelbuddha [dot] net.

(more…)

I updated the site for the fencing program that I direct at my high school alma mater. It still may be a little buggy, as it’s my first completed PHP/MySQL project that I coded from scratch. Also, a script resizes your window, which I normally would never do.

Still, feedback much appreciated, particularly in the browser discrepancy area.

Found at the infamously informed Headless Hollow, this robot movie at once titillates and terrifies me. Not surprisingly, the word Daneel appears in the URL.

Robot gets up

Perhaps this has been obvious to everyone except me for the longest time, but after reading a list over at McSweeney’s I had a revelation. Although I’ve never much cared for the original Star Trek series — or any Trek for that matter — I was always aware of its barely clothed subtext regarding racial harmony and peace among the people of Earth.

Something that never clicked in my mind though was the purpose of the Klingons. Now, suddenly, I get it. The Klingons are animalistic and brutal-seeming in their glorification of battle, to the exclusion of most other personality traits. Duh, Chris. They are the id, the bestial nature of humanity’s war-like tendencies personified in a race against whom we constantly struggle. We must fight against our own ferocious natures to progress “where no man has gone before.”

And all this time I thought they were humanoid to save on costuming. I don’t watch enough of any Trek show to see similar man-vs.-himself struggles in the canon, though I do see a sort of opposite struggle going on in the Vulcan attitude toward logic.

I won’t mentally disagree next time I hear someone say that Gene Roddenberry was a genius.

An independent film-maker responds to those heartfelt ads about movie piracy. And I rejoice.

Undergroundfilm.org – Independent Movie Distribution