Movie outline.

Following Jeff's ponderings on the beginning of the universe I devised a sort of a plan for a movie explaining how the universe started. Some have said it slightly resembles a movie already in existence directed by that guy who directed that movie where Jack Nicholson goes crazy in a hotel in the middle of winter or something.

Anyway, it starts with scientists in space picking up a signal for help somewhere in the solar system, I don't know, by one of the near planets or something. One of the scientists for some reason has been reading Jeff's blog, and, thinking he's awesome, picks him to man the expedition there for some reason. Jeff, (who plays himself) thinks it's pretty cool he's been picked for a space mission despite the fact he has no training and there are lots of astronauts with lots of training who really wanted the job. Anyway, him and his friend, not sure which friend but we'll choose John for now, board the spacecraft and go into space.

Not sure of the specifics at this point but the scientists have provided stuff to keep them entertained during this time including a NES. Millions of dollars worth of space equipment and they get a NES for some reason. Anyway, as they are nearing their destination, the NES starts to act a little strangely, and conversations with it sentences are often garbled and hard to understand. (Hopefully the audience will just accept the fact that the NES is having conversations with them)

Anyway, something goes wrong with the left propeller or something (What do you mean they don't have propeller's in space ships? Pick something else then, I don't know, a rocket something or other) and John has to go outside to fix it, but the NES, which at this stage has snapped and gone evil, cuts the cable, sending John floating into space. Jeff, decides he has to retrieve his friends body, but fails in doing that, and then the NES locks him out. 'Open the pod bay doors NES' 'I'm sorry I can't do that Jeff' or dialogue like that. Anyway, somehow Jeff gets into the ship anyway, and then pulls apart the NES while it sings the theme tune to 'Super Mario Brothers' it gets slower and slower and slower until the NES finally dies.

After this, Jeff has no choice but to go outside and investigate the source of the distress call. It turns out to be a sort of a wormhole, which sucks him in. He yells out 'Help' and is sucked in. His cry is sent back in time a few months. Jeff on the other hand is sucked further and further back, through lots of special effects that look like those visualisations you get from some media players. Jeff arrives at the dawn of the time and explodes, creating the big bang and beginning the universe. It is subsequently proven that Jeff is the centre of the Universe.

I plan to shoot this on location in space, and I estimate the budget to be a few billion. I'm currently looking for backers.

Let me know what you think. A lot of these ideas were obviously Jeff's which I just elaborated on such as him being centre of the universe, but the others came from other some place entirely. One thing is for sure though, it's not a complete rip off of 2001 : A Space Odyssey.... Y'see.... It has no monkeys.............

SCO files for bankruptcy.

Back when I gave a crap about such things, I was routinely annoyed by a company by the name of SCO that decided Linux was infringing on it's copyright and decided to sue IBM or something, with anyone having half a brain telling these charges being complete and utter nonsense. To cut a long story very very short, and I am sorry I'm so late on this, SCO has recently filed for bankruptcy.

You can read about the whole ordeal here

and read about the the bankruptcy here

Isn't it nice.

Warner Converts to Blu-Ray. HD War all but over. Thank God.

Not that I have any particular love of Blu-Ray or dislike of HD-DVD, I just really wanted this crappy format war to be over. I was actually going to post here about how I refused to support either side until one of them became the victor but now it seems I don't have to. Paramount is still supporting HD-DVD for about 18 months or something but it's all coming down now which is nice.

If you want to read about it click here

Exciting News

As fans of movies, there are always movies we look forward to. I am looking forward to The Dark Knight, I am also looking forward to No Country for Old Men and Sweeney Todd even though everywhere else has already had them for ages. Here's a way to prevent movie piracy, simultaneous movie releases in all countries. Failing that at least make it only a few days apart, a week at most.

Back on topic however, there is a movie you will be thrilled to learn is being remade, a movie that you heard was getting a remake but thought was a joke, one of the few movies you just feel years for a remake, needs a remake, and if that remake should show up the world would be a better place, or at least you would enjoy it a lot for 90 minutes or however long the damn thing is.

The movie in question is Death to a Businessman. It's a story of many things, revenge, more revenge, some killing, exploding sequences, um, well it's an action movie. It has what may be construed as a love story at the very start but the writer/director insists there isn't one so we'll go with his vision. Basically a guy is hanging out with his girlfriend when she is killed in a hit and run by a businessman who pays the guy off. The guy then becomes an assassin, obsessed with killing businessman everywhere, with the businessman who killed her being the main one he is after. Why he goes after the other's I'm not sure but I'm sure there is a reason in there somewhere. The main character's name is Death Jimmy and he has some sort of gang consisting of some fairly weird characters. The Businessman for some reason also has a gang, and the assassin is intent on killing them all, if they don't kill each other first. The body count is bigger than Commando, some of the acting is good, especially from the corrupt cop, some of the acting, especially from the burglers and The aforementioned businessman is awful, and some of it is merely so/so. It's filmed all over christchurch from the gondola to the city centre, to the mountains to other places.

The remake however is said to be even more epic. Varied locations, not just in Christchurch but all over the city, new and better actors. A businessman who doesn't suck immensely, a larger budget, and more of a plan. It's said to follow the original plot pretty closely. Expect to see it in Cinemas around 2009/2010... maybe...

It'd be nice to film it in Alberta though.

American McGee's Alice

This is a game I finally got around to playing what seven years after it came out, but I've done far far worse in years past, and let me tell you, it's the most consistently fun video game I've played for a long time. I've been put off video games recently and sort of stopped playing them much because a lot of them just grated on me and felt more like work than actual fun. I had a lot of fun with Kingdom Hearts II, but parts of it grated on me. (Though not nearly as bad as it's predecessor, which consisted of way too much crap before the good stuff occured)

I decided to hunt down Alice after a recent obsession with the works of Lewis Carroll, and similarities to other things I was interested in and the fact I'd been meaning to play it for a long time and it sure was worth it. The storyline is interesting, compels you to follow it, the gameplay isn't too easy but it's certainly not hard enough to make you give up, and the level design really is a joy to behold.

Basically, if you don't know, it follows Alice, from 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the looking glass'. Her parents are killed in a housefire, but Alice escapes. (Possibly because she is warned by her friends from Wonderland.) She slumps into despair and winds up in an asylum. Eventually, around ten years later, after her sanity slips so far, she is called back into Wonderland. Wonderland however is, and always was in her mind however, but with the current state of her mind wonderland is warped beyond belief. The Cheshire Cat for instance, Alice's guide in Wonderland, is a sort of a scrawny gothic thing with an earing, The Duchess has cracked from hiding from the Queen of Hearts, the pepper has finally gotten to her. She's trying to make soup of the mock turtle. Humpty Dumpty is broken and smoking a pipe. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee are running an asylum with horribly deformed children. My favourite character is certainly the Mad Hatter. He's really gone mad now and he's become obsessed with time and perfection. He's turned the march hair and the doormouse into deformed cyborgs and keeping their tea from them, he's turned himself into a robot as well, he seems to control the asylum, and he's repaired the Jabberwock from the damage down with the Vorpal Sword.Yes The Jackerwock is partly robotic now, the Queen's guardian.

Other interesting points are that instead of losing life Alice loses sanity, when she loses it all the game ends as her mind is completly gone. I didn't actually realise this on my first playthrough though so it makes no difference whatsoever. Her weapons, with the possible exception of the vorpal blade, are all toys, the deck of cards, the ice wand, and the croquet mallet. (As the Cheshire cat says, 'Here's a riddle for you, when is a croquet mallet like a billy club? Whenever you want it to be'.

All in all I highly recommend this game for anyone after an enjoyable and slightly different game. Also the voice acting is pretty awesome which is certainly a plus. It's available for Windows and Mac OS. They recently released a universal binary patch for it so you can play it with Intel Macs which is pretty cool.

Apparently there is a movie coming out this year. Currently Sarah Michelle Gellar is down for Alice, which is, I'm sorry to say, a horrible choice for the role. Oh well, could've been worse.

DVD Aspect Ratios.

Something is rotten in the state of demark. Actually this topic has nothing to do with the state of denmark whatsoever but I always wanted to use that quote in an article an this is the closest I have yet come to putting it in.

DVDs have a resolution of 720x576(PAL) or 720x480(NTSC). As you can work out if we used square pixels both images would be a mess. PAL would be 1.25:1 and NTSC would be 1.5:1. That's why we PAL uses slightly wider than square pixels and NTSC uses slightly taller than square pixels for 4:3 video.

Anywho DVD can support two aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9, both at the same resolution (Both use even wider still pixels to get this aspect ratio but we're sick of the wideness of pixels so will try not to mention it again) When movies have an aspect ratio equal to or great than 16:9 they should be shown in anamorphic widescreen rather than letterbox as this gives a higher quality picture on widescreen TVs while looking the same on 4:3 TVs. To learn more about Anamorphic DVDs go here.

The problem is this only works out properly if the DVD player AND the TV is set up properly, which half the time aren't because consumers have no idea what the hell they're doing, which is a shame as images really look better when they aren't squished or stretched. There are three problems that can show up.

4:3 TV set to widescreen.

This is when the DVD player isn't set up to properly change the image for the TV so the image looks stretched on the TV when anamorphic DVDs are played. Usually people don't know any better but doesn't it annoy anyone else. Occasionally done on purpose to reduce the dreaded “Black Bars”

16:9 TV set for everything.

Just as irritating are those people that insist on watching everything in Widescreen. Not everything is widescreen, why in the hell would you want to watch everything in widescreen? It just looks stretched. Trying to avoid the black bars again? Once more of course there are those consumers who simply don't know any better

And the worst one

16:9 TV set set for everything with DVD player set to 4:3

I've seen it happen. Everything looks stretched, even the widescreen stuff. It's screwed whichever way you go. I know someone with a setup like this.

Now supposedly in these rants I'm supposed to suggest possible solutions. I don't like this part and have no idea on these solutions. Better educate the public I guess but they're not very good at it. My vote is down to Make DVD players that interact with TVs, and, like computer monitors, simply know what aspect ratio they are. Not that that's likely to happen anytime in the future.

This is the good thing about watching movies on a computer. Some people can't abide it but at least the aspect ratio is pretty much always right. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and make sure 'American Werewolf in London' is being shown in the correct aspect ratio.

Actually I'm not going to do that and that would be way to convenient, but wouldn't that have made a cool ending... damnit.

Done and Done

So I'm finally done for the year and figured I should write some stuff up about things. The movie itself I'm fairly happy with, even if it is disjointed, makes no sense whatsoever, and has parts which are totally nonsensical unless you know the back story. It does have some pretty cool gore effects, and they are always nice. Mostly actual fake blood but a couple CG gunshots created by someone with the time, ability, and inclination to do it for me which was pretty cool. As expected Jack completly stole the show, whether he actually had much to do with the plot or not, but all the cast played their parts well enough, I even believe some of them understood their characters better than I did and I actually learned about their characters from them. So yeah, movies are a team effort, treat your cast and crew well, they are what makes the movie.

The night itself wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad. Photographer didn't show up so I have no photos. We actually had to start clapping to remind the audience they should clap. It's just something you should know to do y'know, but in a way, it's every single person's fault. Only one person needs to start.

The day of the screening was actually pretty insane as well just before the screening. I was finished the actual movie but I was still trying to do a thousand things at once before I finally broke down and went insane. That'll teach me to trust no-one else to do the compilation tape and insist on fixing all the weird technical problems myself.


Incidentally I finally decided to create that damn myspace account I've been putting off doing. The reason I've been putting off doing it is because everything I've experienced of myspace leads me to believe it's a poorly coded piece of crap of a website that consists mostly of large amounts of bloat, in fact pieces of bloat trying to outbloat each other. Actually signing up for an account has led me to realise that it's not that bad, it's actually much much worse. The interface is crap, the friends system is buggy, the extended network makes no sense, it's nigh on impossible to hide certain pieces of information, the search system is impossible to use, the date of birth system is screwed to hell, the music is a bloody nuiscance to turn on and off, and most of the themes, including the deafault one, are utter crap, especially when mixed in with all the adds. It also allows users to customise stuff and add their own html, and most of them don't know what they are doing and make the site into an even bigger mess. I also believe it may be a security risk but I don't know much about that so I'll let it off on that count. In short it's one of the the most poorly designed websites I have ever had the mispleasure of visiting, but people insist on using it so I guess I'm going back. Bebo is one hell of a lot better, and I could never really be bothered with that either. I forsee much pain in my future.