Noted: The Zombie Marathon (original), at the Somerville Theate. Movies include Shaun of the Dead, Fido, I Walked With A Zombie, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Zombie, and Dead Alive. I suspect that’s the full list, since it’s a 12 hour marathon and that’s 7 movies. No Romero? Shocking, but perhaps Diary of the Dead will sneak onto the program or something. Second, the Brattle Theater’s (original) Boston Fantastic Film Festival is coming soon, like weekend after next. Announced movies: Trapped Ashes ( review (original)), The District ( review (original)), The Signal ( review (original)), Murder Party ( review (original)), The Devil Dared Me To ( review (original), read down a bit), and yay Zebraman ( review (original)). ...

Cheap (free) and easy solution: Formulate. It’s nearly perfect for filling in PDF character sheets, since you can save a filled-in sheet as a Formulate document and then use nifty built-in OS X features to print to PDF. For extra geek points, use handwriting fonts: there are a bunch here (original), amid the popups and blinking ads; Chank has you covered (original) if you want to shell out for somewhat higher quality; or go grab the ECF handwriting fonts (original), which I like a lot.

This is the first PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where people like to punch each other in the face. Really. Go back and watch the first season; there’s an awful lot of face-punching going on. Therefore, it makes sense to do a weekly recap of who deserves to get punched in the face the most. At least, in our world it does. Face-punch count: 3, or 2 if you don’t count the face slap. Susan does not. PITF Index after the cut.

Amazon now has a Print on Demand service. The pricing is a bit more complex than the competition (namely, Lulu), but everything gets an ISBN and you can publish into Amazon. Which is pretty huge. I don’t think this is a Lulu killer, but it’ll definitely be competition, which hopefully will spur both companies to improve.

There are enough theories about the Broken Maiden to busy a university of scholars for semesters on end, so we will begin with what is known. Once, the Maiden dwelt in the heavens. At times, during the month, she looked down upon the world with one eye. Other times, all you could see was her white smile curving through the sky. She blessed magicians with her wisdom, and was known to be the patron goddess of jesters. ...

Initial fragments -- place names, etc. Vain’s Rest -- home base of the game. Banegard Tower Drunken Magistrate -- an inn in Vain’s Rest. Secrets -- magic and religion in Tarnished Brass.

DKM’s Emerald Eyes is up for download (original). Picoreview: worth reading, a youthful book, author who’s in love with his characters.

Oh, yay, the Weinsteins are investing money in Asian film… “Titles slated for the fund include… a remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950’s epic The Seven Samurai.” What the hell?

The TIFF Midnight Madness film list is out. It’s always interesting comparing their movies to Fantasia; you don’t generally see movies at both, because (as I understand it) there’s a mild rivalry. As is generally the case, Toronto got the big names – Romero and Gordon this year. Naturally, Fantasia has more depth in the fantastic film category, given that they screen rather more fantastic films. And, of course, Toronto has a lot of other movies to offer. In my ideal life of the idle rich world, I go to both.

There’s a thread over at rpg.net called “Lost Victoriana,” which is actually about the RPG Victoriana, but it got me thinking about a sort of lost history of the Victorian era – a history of technology that dwarves our own, a world of crystal skyships and sophisticated colonies on the surface of Jupiter. The Queen’s Patrol jousts with philosophical criminals who will toast the Queen despite their anarchic ways. Not a steampunk world at all. ...