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Author: Bryant

Strangling conversation

July 31, 2004
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Hillside Strangler was pretty much blah. If you’re in the market for fictional Hillside Strangler stories with semi-pro acting and over-used looping camera work, you’re good; otherwise it’s worth missing. In short, Samantha Stone is a psychologist who uncovers the truth behind Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi’s killings by finding out what Kenneth is hiding. It’s ploddingly predictable.

Also, the subplot — Samantha breaking up with her drug dealer husband Jack — is pointless other than as an excuse for a lot of breasts. It doesn’t go anywhere and it doesn’t particularly reflect the main plot. Chris Fisher’s movies aren’t going to pass as an art film as long as there’s so much pointless exploitation riding shotgun.

Next movie: One Missed Call, by Takashi Miike. I am looking forward to this one a lot.

Going mobile

July 31, 2004
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I’m in Montreal! This is written post-first movie, of which more anon; there’s a coffee shop with wireless across from the theater but I don’t want to lose my place in line. I’ll upload entries as I find time.

The trip up was pretty painless. The high point was the New York Italian-themed restaurant at a highway exit in the middle of Quebec farmland. Our hotel is small but charming, and it’s an easy walk to Concordia University, where the festival takes place. It was a little disturbing seeing a “For Sale” sign on the hotel facade, but it hasn’t been sold as of this weekend, thankfully.

The area reeks of college, in a fairly cool way. Lots of coffee shops and two comic book stores between hotel and University. There’s a sushi buffet across the way from one of the venues, which I am sure I will not find time to visit. Alas.

Looks like lines will be varied in size; so far I’ve seen one short one and one long one. I hear Red vs. Blue is sold out, but nothing else seems to be. The audiences are exactly the sort of cinema fanatic/genre geek crossover you’d expect from a genre-oriented film festival. I like it.

If I were doing this again, I’d e-ticket the whole thing. The poor ticket desk had to print out our 26 tickets one at a time, which did not exactly endear us to the people behind us in line. There’s a DVD retailer with a big booth across from the ticket booth, selling mostly anime videos, which I will check out later. Other than that merchandising is light. I will get pictures of the immense MegaBlock statues — think Legos, but not.

My back is killing me, so that’s it for now. More anon.

Toxic!

July 29, 2004
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What I’m doing during the interminable classic rock segments is cranking up Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and pretending that’s the DNC soundtrack. It works particularly well when CSPAN goes to a flag waving shot: the combination of flags and dance music has that edgy mechanical appeal that Madeline L’Engle ascribes to IT on Camazotz. The people dancing are a little out of sync with the music, but you can ascribe that to a failure of the controlling intelligence.

Eyes wide open

July 28, 2004
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Tomorrow I begin the trek up to Montreal for FantAsia. I am so much looking forward to this I can’t even begin to explain. Sadly, I won’t make Porco Rosso, but Cutie Honey is an acceptable replacement.

To do:

  • Pack (clothing, toiletries)
  • Update iPod, get rid of 9/11 speeches (good but they take up room), add Germany 70s electronica
  • Charge camera battery
  • Detach USB cell phone charger from keyboard, tuck into laptop bag
  • Detach Firewire iPod charger from home Mac, tuck into laptop bag
  • Print maps

Cut a check

July 28, 2004
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Glenn Reynolds is curious about Atrios. More precisely, since Atrios has unveiled as Duncan Black, who works for a group that’s partially funded by George Soros, Glenn Reynolds wants to know why nobody’s making a fuss about it. The money quote: “… if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody — like, say, Duncan Black — would be making something of it.”

As it happens, Glenn Reynolds has a paying gig with Tech Central Station, which is funded by the DCI Group, which is a top-notch Republican lobbying organization. So I guess Glenn actually is working for Republican money-men after all. Funny how that works out.

Superhero artist

July 27, 2004
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I think I need an artist to do a cover (b&w) destined for a 6” x 9” book, plus three or four half-page interior illos, also b&w. The subject matter is, unsurprisingly, superheroes. I’m not too picky about the era, although I’d want heroes rather than anti-heroes. I can’t pay real artist rates; I’m thinking more towards the low end of RPG artist rates — $125 for the cover, $25 for each interior art piece. I may be slightly off on those prices. I just want publication rights; I don’t want to own the piece.

I figure I’ll start poking around on the Forge and maybe on Elfwood soon, but I figured I’d put out the call here first.

Flying fingers

July 25, 2004
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I just completed my 24 Hour RPG. Phew. Started: 1 PM, 7/24/04; finished: 1 PM, 7/25/04.

Above The Earth is a superhero game designed around resource management mechanics. It’s flexible enough to handle street-level superheroes and cosmic powers, all in the same fight. “You have a hundred six sided dice; when you run out, you run out.”

I started this one with the example of play, which made writing the rest of the game almost painless. I wish I’d had another hour to review it and in particular double-check the math in the example of play; I looked at it a few times but I’m convinced I missed something. C’est la vie.

I also forgot to add the section on using HeroClix figures and maps, which was intended for people who really like tactical maps. I wanted to point out that rules-light systems could still support that kind of thing. Perhaps there’ll be a Extended Remix Edition at some point.

If there is, I will definitely have better art and formatting. I really wanted to make it easy to print this out and fold it into a booklet, which meant 5×8 pages printed two-up, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the PDF right using just Microsoft Word, so I punted to a columnar layout. Which works, but I couldn’t do page numbers properly, which is why there aren’t any of those.

Not that a twenty-four page book needs those, but still… hey! I hit 24 (small) pages exactly. Keen. The final word count is 6,300 words.

I also wanted art. I spent an hour looking for public domain superhero art on the Web. No luck. So the look is pretty boring. But functional.

I didn’t lose any sleep writing this; in fact, I even took time out to go see The Bourne Supremacy which actually revitalized my energies nicely. And I thought about the game design during the previews, so it wasn’t totally lost time.

As a whole, I’m pretty happy with the project and the result.

Chop socky

July 24, 2004
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If you live in the Bay Area, you may wish to help save the 4 Star. Or not — it’s not as if people down on the Peninsula get up to San Francisco that often. But believe me, it’s a great theater. I used to go there all the time and it’d be a shame if they had to close.

Also, it’s the business I want to run someday.

And then

July 24, 2004
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It’s followup time!

a) The White House found those missing Bush military records, which contain no useful information.

b) Sandy Berger resigned. Thomas Kean, the Republican who chairs the 9/11 Commission, says they got copies of all the documents Berger removed anyhow.

c) The air marshals on board Northwest Airlines flight #327 were worried that Annie Jacobsen was in danger of panicking and creating a dangerous situation. Quoting at length, cause it’s too good to miss: “The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.” Nice. In related news, the myth that you can’t question more than two Arabs per flight? It’s a myth.