DEADLIER THAN THE MALE and 24: SEASON 1

The current season of 24 is the first season my wife and I have watched. When the show started, we thought that the premise of a "real time" television action/drama was ingenious. Our lives were very busy, and we had no DVR at the time, so we missed half the first season. We then saw a commercial where Jack's daughter is attacked by a mountain lion and our suspension of disbelief was lost before our viewership began.

Years later, under the continual barrage of recommendations by our friends, we capitulated and started watching the current season.

We like it -- as unrealistic as it is -- very much. We also think they should rename the show to Jack's Very Bad, Horrible, Awful, Day. We also don't like having to wait seven days to see what happens next. We can be thankful for the fact that we haven't seen any of the other season, because now we have some content to view between our weekly updates of Jack's current horrible day.

Naturally, we began our filler viewing with Season One and we're about halfway through the season. I was amazed at how much effort the villains of the first season took just to make sure they could get a shot off at a Presidential Candidate. I thought no one would go through so much effort. But then I saw a post on a blog I regularly read (Lee Goldberg's fine A Writer's Life) entitled "There Have Got to be Easier Ways to Kill a Guy..." which bore surprising similarities to the first episode of 24. Watch the clip and I'll discuss the similarities below.

Now that you've watched the opening to Deadlier than the Male think back to the first episode of 24 -- Day One.

SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN 24 SEASON ONE

We have a woman who seduces a man on an airplane in order to get his special key card. She then leaves the plane using an explosive device on the airplane's exit door (and another explosive on board for good measure), which causes explosive decompression allowing her to escape as her other bomb blows up the plane. Mind you, this was all to get a key card that would allow an assassin, who has had extensive plastic surgery in order to make him look like the now dead journalist, to enter a location where he could eventually shoot a Presidential candidate. This doesn't even get the gun in his hands, a side of the plot that adds several layers of planning to what is already a convoluted assassination attempt.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Apparently, the creators of 24 don't agree with Mr. Goldberg. Apparently, they believe there are far more complicated ways to kill a guy.

The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft Coming to the Big Screen

In what must have been a strong application of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz have inked a movie production deal for a comic that will be released this Wednesday. The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft is a comic that combines the fiction of the famous author with biographical information from the author's life. The narrative is a kind of "What if HP Lovecraft was writing about real things?"

It's an interesting idea, but fans of Lovecraft have yet to receive a big screen adaptation of anything Lovecraftian that comes close to capturing the mood of the author's tales. The best "true" Lovecraftian film is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's "period" silent adaptation of Call of Cthulhu that was released in 2005. The made for Showtime version of Dreams in the Witch House comes pretty close to capturing the feel of the books, but the Society's adaptation far outshines the typical Lovecraftian fare like The Dunwich Horror, Die, Monster, Die!, Dagon, and 2007's Cthulhu. This isn't to say that all of these Lovecraft adaptations are horrible, just that most of them fail to capture the building sense of dread of a Lovecraft tale.

The Society's silent was so good that I eagerly await their adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness.

According to Variety and The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft blog, Universal thinks that the comic's version of Lovecraftian horror is a good fit for their Classic Monster series and might be a good vehicle for Ron Howard. For genre fans who are alarmed that Mr. Howard might be directing a Lovecraft related film, one should remember that Mr. Howard -- in addition to being a very skilled director -- got his start as a director with Roger Corman. Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales are classics in the horror film canon, and Poe was a major influence on Lovecraft. The Corman - Howard - Poe - Lovecraft connection may seem tenuous. After all Grand Theft Auto was a long time ago, nor was it a horror film, but films like The Da Vinci Code and Willow demonstrate that Howard has a deep affection for genre films and the way he directed madness in A Beautiful Mind would translate easily into representation of personal horror.

My opinion regarding whether the comic itself is worth adapting will have to wait until after the next few months. I would say after this Wednesday, but one should never judge a comic book (or television series) by a single installment.

Most Frightening Bread in the World

Take a second and imagine what you would consider to be the most frightening bread in the world.

Is it some yeast Shoggoth oozing slowly toward you as it consumes city after city?

Is is some mold covered lump that looks as if it is about to rupture, thus producing enough spores to suffocate a small town?

Is it filled with maggots or grubs and thus seems unpalatable?

All of those are certainly frightening, but they are far from the most frightening bread in the world. None of those loaves would simultaneously please Slaanesh, Orcus, Khorne, and Lerotra'hh, as the most frightening bread in the world ought to do. The most frightening bread in the world should be something that would make Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft smile, a daunting task in and of itself. It should also make for a good decoy when being chased by ravenous zombies.

The world can be thankful that Diana Eid is letting the world know that Kittiwat Unarrom has designed a bread that pleases the dark gods and serves as a perfect distraction for those ravenous zombies. Only in this case, the brains they eat will be made of "dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate." Not exactly zombie fare...and even with those great ingredients I'm too afraid of the bread to even think of eating it.


Image Credit -- Diana Eid

End of Gaming as We Know It Announced at GDC: Hello Kitty MMORPG to Be Released in the US

Every so often there is a paradigm shifting event that occurs within the media. Sometimes it is something like Poe's invention of the detective mystery or the Lucas/Spielberg invention of the blockbuster. In the 1980s, one huge paradigm shift in afternoon animation was the shift to cartoons that were blatant advertisements for lines of toys. When the toys being advertised through cartoon stories were things like GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS, children had much reason to rejoice. But when the next shift came, the STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE and MY LITTLE PONY shift, teenage boys throughout America wept as they watched their favorite shows replaced by talking ponies.

This week at the Game Developers Convention in San Francisco, a paradigm shift of monumental proportions was announced. Sanrio, the makers of those cute HELLO KITTY artifacts we find at malls across America, are going to be launching a HELLO KITTY MMORPG in the United States. Just when beautiful women like Felicia Day were giving fathers everywhere hope that their daughters could share the joys of crushing Horde Guilds in PvP Raids, Sanrio dashes all those hopes aside by creating this game. Now the young girls of the world will be able to:



"Just soak up the super-cute atmosphere?!" We're doomed. No instanced dungeons slaying the minions of a diabolical lich. No riding giant tigers and Gryphons. No mining for ore to manufacture our sweet rifles so that we can shoot our Orcish enemies. Nope. We can spend money at malls...interact with Sanrio characters...and cultivate our own farm. This gives new meaning to "farming" in an MMO.

What is the father of twin daughters to do?

Oh well...maybe I can customize my character to be like Pochacco. He's cute as can be after all.

Listen to the Geekerati Inteview with David Gaider

Last night, Eric and I had the pleasure of talking with BioWare's David Gaider about his new book Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne and the upcoming video game Dragon Age: Origins. The discussion provided some great insight regarding what we can expect from the next rpg from BioWare.

Given BioWare's excellent record when it comes to quality PC and console rpgs, David and his crew have a lot to live up to and it sounds like they are likely to exceed expectations. Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne takes place thirty years before the event that transpire in the game and makes a natural jumping in point for those who can't wait until the second half of the year for the video game experience.

In the past, many of BioWare's successful rpgs have been based on licensed products. But with recent games like the action-rpg Jade Empire and the deep play of Mass Effect, BioWare has shown an ability to develop immersive settings with compelling narratives.

David Gaider lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and is a Senior Writer at BioWare's Edmonton studio, where he has worked since 1999. He is currently the Lead Writer on Dragon Age: Origins, responsible for story and setting design, and prior to that worked on such titles as Baldur's Gate™ 2, Baldur's Gate™ 2: Throne of Bhaal, Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, Neverwinter Nights™ and its expansions.

I don't care how cool Apple iPhone ads are, they cannot top this!

How many phones have viral ad campaigns featuring Formula 1 drivers using their phone to drive their F1 vehicle?

The Blackberry Storm does.

Watch the last minute of this viral video to see Lewis Hamilton use a Blackberry Storm to steer his F1 car.



Now, if only I can figure out which frequency Hamilton was on...then I can guarantee an F1 victory for Kimi next year!

P.S.: I know the remote thing is camera magic. It's still bitchin'

Fox Demonstrates the Madness of the Film Industry as They Plan a "Relaunch" of the Fantastic Four

There are times when studios completely drop the ball and need to remake movies, or reboot franchises. Sometimes the source material underperformed because the initial attempt to tell a story fell short of the mark, either financially or creatively. A perfect example is the 1980s film version of Captain America. The 80s film version of everyone's favorite All-American Hero is arguably the worst superhero film ever made. It was a failure both financially and critically.

Typically, film studios could care less about whether a film fails critically, as long as it succeeds financially. As long as the film brings in money, they'll be satisfied. Likely, they'll make sequels. That seems to be changing. Now the studios seem to be becoming obsessed with making "re-envisionings" of moderately to very successful franchises. First, Marvel decided to remake the Hulk. They argued that the Ang Lee version lacked the quintessential "Hulk Smash" qualities they and fans were looking for, and that the film underperformed financially. Therefore, it was "necessary" to have a remake in the theaters a mere 5 years after the last version of the film.

This was, naturally, a load of crap. Sure, the Ang Lee film wasn't what comic book fans wanted or expected (that includes the good folks here at Cinerati). It wasn't really a Hulk film. As comic book fans, we don't know what it was. But that doesn't matter. There are only 200,000 or so of us comic book fans, and that only comes to $2-million of any superhero movie's box office. For a superhero movie to succeed, it has to appeal to non-comic book fans and put rears in the seats. Did Ang Lee's film, universally panned by critic and fan alike, succeed? Yes. The film made $132-million domestically, and had a world-wide gross of almost $242-million. Enough money that any DVD sales were all gravy.

But they made a re-envisioned remake anyway. Did The Incredible Hulk do scads better than the Ang Lee's Hulk? Critically? Yes. The new version is closer to what people expected in a Hulk film. The film has its problems, not the least of which is the abandonment of the Hulk as metaphor for Nuclear Arms for the more topical Hulk as metaphor for performance enhancing baseball players. That and the conversion of the Hulk's cold-war anti-thesis into a British special forces guy who doesn't like the fact that he is aging. So...it's not the comic book Hulk, but who cares. As I wrote earlier, there are only 200,000 of us comic book fans anyway. Did The Incredible Hulk do better financially? No. It cost $150-million, which given that dollars decrease in value with time means the films cost similar amounts. $132-million in 2003 is approximately $150-million in 2008. But The Incredible Hulk made $254-million in world wide box office, which is also similar to the $242-million that Ang Lee's version made.

While it might have been silly from a certain point of view for Marvel to give us a remade Hulk, it was profitable and it gave us a Hulk film where the first hour was actually fun and where we didn't have to watch killer poodles, so it didn't seem ridiculous for the studio to make the move. If only we had known what was coming down the pipe.

What was coming down the pipe was a re-envisioning of The Punisher in last year's Punisher: War Zone. Never mind that Thomas Jane was compelling as Frank Castle. The film only managed $34-million in domestic box office and had little appeal overseas. Add to that the fact that some fans panned the film as not at all like the comic book. A claim that is patently false. Excepting the lame and over-the-top performance by John Travolta many of the scenes were cut straight from the Marvel Max series. No one understands why anyone hires John Travolta to play villains, he can't pull it off. Cast him as a nice guy and it's often a real treat, but as a villain he's like nails on chalkboard.

The Thomas Jane Punisher was the Punisher of the couple Garth Ennis series and not of the older Steven Grant or Mike Baron issues. So that explains some of the fan backlash. Older fans, who no longer buy comic books, didn't get what they expected. Newer fans got the Punisher of the books, but sadly they also got a villain who was out of the old Batman television series. So...with critical and financial "failure" Lionsgate decided a remake was in order and made Punisher: War Zone. .

If they wanted to make a better Punisher movie... they failed. If they wanted to make more money... they failed. The new Punisher film cost Lionsgate $22-million and made a whopping $8-million. There were some fun elements to the new film, but the box office demonstrated that the character only had so much appeal to him beyond the comic fan base.

That's really the crux of the issue. Some characters have a limit to how broad an appeal they have. The Hulk? He's worth around $250-million. The Punisher? $30-million if you're lucky.

The same is likely true of the latest re-envisioning coming down the pipe. Fox plans to make a whole new Fantastic Four movie with a new cast and a new vision -- less "bubble gum". I guess $329-million and $280-million aren't profitable enough for Fox. They have to dive in with a re-envisioning to make the title less "bubble gum." Because, you know, the Fantastic Four is known for its super grim story lines.

[sarcasm]Super grim stories are so easy to write when one of your characters' superpower is elasticity. Yeah, comics are filled with grim stretchy guys like Plastic Man and Elongated Man. Those guys make Rorschach look like Jerry Lewis. [/sarcasm]

It just doesn't seem to make sense, even given lukewarm critical and fan acceptance of the current Fantastic Four -- especially given how perfect Chris Evans is as the Human Torch. It doesn't make sense...unless you're a Hollywood studio who might have to turn the rights over if you don't make a film using the intellectual property and you think that a sequel might not play as well marketing wise as a re-invention.

The marketing shift for a reboot makes sense when thinking about a studio desperately clinging to IP rights. This quote from ICv2 might help to put a little light on the subject, "with Marvel eager to reclaim its properties for its Marvel Studios moviemaking arm, Fox is in a situation of “use it or lose it” with the FF and Daredevil. Since the Fantastic Four films were far more successful that the ill-fated Fox Daredevil, it makes sense for the studio to concentrate its efforts on the FF first."

You see Marvel wants those rights back and Fox has a limited window to keep that $300-million a film franchise in its stable. They have to make something and make it fast or rights return to Marvel. So instead of negotiating with the cast of the prior two films, who are more expensive now and might have scheduling conflicts, you sell the public on the re-envision angle. You kill three birds with one stone. You potentially make the movie cheaper, you talk the people who were critical of the first two into giving you another chance, and you retain the rights for another sequel if this one makes another $300-million. Win-win for Fox.

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the Roger Corman version of the Fantastic Four. You see...he made that one on a tight schedule just so someone could keep the option.