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Category: Culture

Shooting pool

Poolhall Junkies is top of the line fare, as Christopher Walken B-movies go. We’re talking The Prophecy quality here, albeit in a completely different kind of flick.

The star of the movie is a guy named Mars Callahan, who also wrote and directed the thing. His sister is America Martin, which is completely irrelevant but I thought it was cool. Anyhow, he overdirects about half the time — it’s way too stylized in places, and some of the jokes are dead corny — but when you get right down to it what you’ve got is a hustler movie with some good dialogue and an excuse for Walken and Chazz Palminteri to swagger around and do that macho cool thing they both do so well.

Also, Rick Schroder is stand-out good in this and he should get more roles. Trust me on this one. Or don’t, since it’s out on DVD as of last week.

Vampires in law

Yeah, I thought the first rush of news in the White Wolf v. Sony case was done too — but I was wrong. Sadly, I’ve missed the first court session. White Wolf wanted a restraining order to prevent Sony from releasing Underworld, but they got an expedited discovery period and a preliminary injunction hearing in a month.

My favorite bit of the press release is the bit where the judge denies White Wolf the restraining order because they can’t post a big enough bond to protect Sony from potential damages.

Vote for pictures

Today’s item of interest: the Comic Book Idol competition. I wish I’d stumbled on this earlier, but it’s still fun at this late stage. A bunch of would-be comic book pros are lined up a la American Idol to produce their best work for a panel of celebrity judges, and we get to vote on who gets kicked off the island.

Martin Redmond and Jonathan Hickman are doing tres nifty work, in my book. I have no idea who keeps voting for Flores, though.

Roses blossom

Things I know to be true: Kip Manley can write, and City of Roses looks like it might be a really good textual equivalent of the webcomic form. Which is to say we’re getting back to serial literature, a la Dickens, except that Kip’s madly promised to post an installement every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so it’ll be a tad more frequent than Dickens. No standing on the docks waiting for the next installment for us.

Starting in September. Stay tuned.

Mixtape heaven

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned EMusic before. It’s the best and coolest deal in music downloads; you pay around 10 bucks a month and you can download all the MP3s you want. While you won’t get the latest releases, you will get a huge indie catalog and a pretty significant chunk of major label backlist. I’ve really enjoyed having a subscription.

This site is going to make me enjoy it even more. It’s mix tapes made up of songs you can get on EMusic. Since I can just download the songs, and they include links to make that simple, it’s an easy and convenient way to share mix tapes. Cool.

And the papers say

I’ve gotten my hands on the complaint in the White Wolf vs. Sony case. (Link to complaint back, since they redirected it to another server.) Be warned that there are big fat spoilers for Underworld in the complaint. Some notes, thusly.

The key White Wolf titles are Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Guide to the Camarilla, Guide to the Sabbat, The Book of Nod, Caine’s Chosen: The Black Hand, Under A Blood Red Moon, Children of the Night, Time of Thin Blood, and Transylvania Chronicles One: Dark Tides Rising. And, of course, Nancy Collins’ The Love of Monsters, which is apparently set in the World of Darkness.

There’s an extensive list of similarities between Underworld and various White Wolf titles. I have no doubt the similarities exist, but I think they’re on the same level as the similarities between L.A. Story and When Sally Met Harry. “Hey, the protagonists fell in love! And they live in major American cities!”

Some examples:

56. In the World of Darkness, some vampires are capable of amazing speed. In Underworld, some vampires move with amazing speed.

57. In the World of Darkness, vampires “have the strength of ten men.” In Underworld, vampires “have the strength of ten men.”

71. In the World of Darkness, the history of the vampires is written in an ancient text. In Underworld, the history of the vampires is written in ancient texts.

Cause, you know, histories of ancient secretive races are usually written in modern texts.

There are more specific correspondences, but nothing that doesn’t exist in prior art. White Wolf just doesn’t have the copyright on “tall and lithe” vampire assassins. Even female ones with “a dusky, classical tone to her skin and black hair.”