A OUT OF THE BLUE PHONE CALL

A very close dear friend of mine phoned up today (who I’ve not spoken to in over five years now) and I was really quite shakey / shaken for a while / really hyped up after the phone conversation...it really did shake me to the core, and I’m still right now, right this minute, very restless and cant stop thinking...was very nervous on the phone which means I go very quiet...

NOTE: It reminds me instantly of radio, if somebody stops talking the silences are very, very long...allthough I did notice it in a Charlie Kaufman podcast interview and it didn;t bother me there, but I think that was down to the fact that there was background sound of the cafe they were in...but also because you knew they were actually sitting at a table talking to each other face to face.

...I think there was a lot of confusion on the telephone, although it's impossible to say for sure...I tend to fall apart on the phone, but wish I wouldn't in retrospect, because it is one of the most wonderful inventions ever made to man. I wish I could make it work for me though, and I think if done more often I would get better at it perhaps...everything gets back round to confidence.

NOTE: I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way...I loved the phone conversation and how it really hit me like a ton of bricks...because it opens up my problems...I become aware of them again (I know the problems...but, I forget about them...and they have a way of getting worse without me knowing about it...but better after things like this) when people make me think and remind me of my problems I have nothing but respect for them...and feel very lucky to be part of knowing such great people.

The conversation reminded me of my past, of how independent I was in my flat...and made me aware of my current situation (living at home with parents) and how your independence isn’t too good in this situation, but you get use to it, you get completely use to it, because people being the amazing things that they are, adapt.

Also, I don’t go outside into the world very often...I use to, but you get use to not doing it...it's interesting, but you get a shock when somebody who’s enjoyed life and who's made a huge impression on you all your life appears again, because you suddenly realise in a shock moment that you’ve been wasting yours.

There's much more to life than just making animations / documentaries...

...I know this because I've expierienced little bits and pieces of the good stuff that is out there...the pivotal moments in your life where you discover who you are...these are with you forever and are so powerful a memory that they can be triggered off in conversations you wouldn't usually go into because you have kinda somehow got into a very reclusive lifestyle.

It makes matters all the more frustrating that you’ve experienced small amounts of amazing things...by that I mean two weeks of intence joy...because you now know how special that stuff is...you have some context?...and you now also have somthing to relate to when seeing / hearing other things...these experiences however are very precious to me and would not trade them for anything in the world. At least I experienced something...or, at least I tried...but it's the not trying again for so long that can get to me. It’s the fact that you've experienced these great things that it's possible for you to be so tortured in the present.

The grass is always greener though, isn’t it?

There seems to be hardly any time in a entire persons life...it shoots by at a incredible speed...and I believe that there are too many things to do and not enough time.

But I’m one of these people who loses myself in something, I'm susceptible to getting addicted to things and losing track of time completely for years...and then usually I get shaken up like this from time to time inside the decade by friends who have a way of being honest and incredibly direct into your core.

Some people are so incredibly amazing and really poke around in your core, in a matter of minutes they have raised a number of very powerful poignant points that leave you having to go on a huge verbal diarrhoea session with whoever's in your closest proximity. In this case, my mother got the gibbering...or was I talking intelligibly?...and I actually felt drunk too, with no alcohol.

The thing is I use to have a house, yes quite a big flat with no mortgage on it at all, I lived there on my own for two years, got into a real mess, and then went back home. You see home for all its faults has one major advantage, and that is your around people, it's something that I think is vitally important in life, that your around people... to simply balance things out a bit. Our house is quite large and my parents are both very complicated people and I dont really want to go into too much here too fast, it's hard to explain without writing some sort of book on it...and maybe hard for other people to understand who've not got parents like mine.

PURE SCIENCE FICTION, AS IN, THE LARGE SPACE SHIPS GOING TO OTHER PLANETS AND RAY GUNS SORT OF VARITY

Was is it about this form of science fiction that has me so totally hooked?...well I reckon its that, it’s optimism at its very, very finest...or, it’s that if you weren’t happy on planet earth you could go somewhere else, although in Gene Roddenberry's vision, planet earth seems to be ok to live on too...the idea that they have sorted things out and space travel exists to somebody like me is unavoidably overwhelmingly appealing to watch on your TV screen.

I’m making a really big space ship at the moment in Cinema 4D and I couldn’t help but think what Star Trek means to me, and the optimism of Gene Roddenberry is something I keep going back to in my head.

SECOND EPISODE OF SURVIVORS REMAKE

Well...I’m finding all of this quite hard to review because I know the original inside out. This second episode of the remake is a odd thing because its merged together two stories from the original...I cant help but feel this episode was a bit speedy. It needed to take it's time a bit more I think...but as I say, I’m very fond of the original and seeing what you allready know being done in a really speedy fashion is very frustrating, and also theres a less seriousness to it I feel...but, perhaps the seriousness of the situation will come later...or perhaps its meant to be mordern people reacting differently to it here in 2008...we do get Anya though who in the pilot seemed to know the seriousness of the situation and had that hysteria outburst in the walk in cupboard...I keep reading this is based on Terry Nations Book of Survivors which is different to the original.

...the editing on this episode was way too quick for me. I’m a huge fan of long takes, and that interfered with my enjoyment on it too...that’s something that I shouldn’t let bother me but it does.

All this aside, I still think it's good entertainment (and putting out a lot of extremely interesting topics which Survivors always does...that’s one of the things I love about it)

Very nicely shot too, the compositions are really good, some wonderful wide shots in here, surprisingly good.

Am still really keen to see more, and that’s always a good sign... one of the things about it is that its really short, and its sad that its first series is only stretching out to six parts. Hopefully series two will be longer, or hopefully they haven’t gone too far into it by the time we get to the end of series one.

SUPPLEMENTAL: There does seem to be a blue tint on quite a few of these shots in this new series.

NICE POST APOCALYPTIC POSTERS OF TEN FAMOUS CITIES

THIS was a really cool find, I've still not seen the film and didn't know they had a publicity poster campaign like this.

It's ten famous cities all apocalypsed up, really nice work.

IT SEEMS THAT THEY'RE FILMING A SECOND SERIES OF SURVIVORS ALREADY

That was fantastic to hear, and I get to see the second episode tonight of series one...I’ll probably write about that too.

SUPPLEMENTAL: I wonder if I'm writing about this too much. It is one of my favourite-ist things though.

AND HERE’S HOW I FEEL ABOUT THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE NEW REMAKE OF SURVIVORS, OR IS THAT A REBOOT?

Can watch it [here]

And, incredibly...absolutely incredibly, it DIDN’T SUCK...ok, well bits of it did. But this was a surprisingly good effort. I’m so shocked and so happy that it was actually pretty good!

It’s definitely a bit of both...both remake and reboot...which was surprising...it definitely had some problems about it at times, but I seemed to forgive some of those...I think unfortunetly it got speeded up a bit at the end though, which I didn’t really forgive...suddenly they all met up really fast and was a bit miffed about that...but some interesting situations to be seen here. I find Survivors or just post-apocalyptic stories in general to be a fascinating situation to throw people into. And the fact that its a TV series, well I dont know of any other TV series that have taken on that story.

The positive here was that, the dead bodies and peoples reactions to that...the acting was really pretty good on that stuff, but, bare in mind I thought it this would be horrendously bad...so maybe there’s just a sort of “oh” thing going on over here about it all. But the thing was, this was pretty entertaining TV.

PROS:

-Its entertaining television and I feel has a piece of the spirit of the original.

-a good cast.

-It's very nicely shot, the colours are there, unlike many a modern film or TV series which has been made blue tinted...or yellow tinted.

-Some of it was pretty dark stuff.

CONS:

-Music is a bit over the top at times, its too much. I don’t want to dare tell another person how to be creative though, when the music was working it was really nice...but it got a tad too much at times for me.

-One of the action scenes was very badly edited.

-Not enough dark stuff, would have liked it to be a bit bolder and a bit more realistic.

-There should have been the occasional abandoned vehicle on the roads on the arial photography stuff.

-It looks like its been contrasted up in post production, which is somthing I'm not too keen on.

SOMTHING I NOTICED...

...quite funny...this and this

THREE AND A HALF HOURS TO GO…

...until we get the Survivors reboot - hour and half - first instalment. I have to say I'm uspet with how this has been handled by the BBC though...there seems to be only one trailer, ONE trailer...and it's not a very good trailer...and unfortunately people being the sheep they are, may judge it on this one trailer, they should have had at least three completely different trailers on rotation and online so that the thick people could excited about it too...they've not made a good job on this... oh well...

I TUNED IN TO EINSTEIN AND EDDINGTON

Can be viewed here...(though only in britain?) flippen heck!...they actually made something decent, I'm always very, very worried about brittish productions prior to watching them, but they pulled off a great one here. Andy Serkis and David Tenant are really very likeable actors and both did a wonderful job. I liked it a lot.

Now here comes the stuff I’m not happy about, about it. And I honestly have a problem typing this stuff out too, I don’t like to be negative, but try to be constructive, I hope.

suffers from a few problems, too much score, would have liked less music...or would have liked more music that was relevant to the times of that period...it’s a tricky thing though...there is one bit however where we got to see some sort of quartet or quintet (not entirely sure) which was nice (this is really what I’m talking about)...suffers from too much hand held wobbliness.

Don’t let this put you off though, please, please, it’s a really good story and I love the performances...and when it's shot well, it's really shot well.

DUG OUT ANOTHER ONE, I'M OFFICIALLY ADDICTED

Continuing my digging out of episodes I found a whole stash more orriginal trek, I’ll definitely be watching it all I think, so I continued to view them, it was very late at night now so I only managed to fit one more in.

Balance of Terror

Written by Paul Schneider and directed by Vincent McEveety. Really liked some of the stuff in here too, the view screen conversation with the federation outpost I loved, I don’t know but that’s always been one of my favourite things about Star Trek...when they get the distress call and then we see the damage at the other end.

This episode is slightly like The Wrath of Khan at times too, but Mark Lenard is very much the opposite of Ricardo Montalbán, hes a fairly calm commander (or at least I think he was, maybe need to watch this again) and Khan was of course somebody who got angry very quickly.

It is like a submarine film and I'm just reading now about a film called The Enemy Below which they seem to reckon is very simalar to this.

NOT LONG NOW...

...till we see how the hour and half first part of this thing has been made...another screen grab by me...I’m just really, really very excited about this whole thing...it was inevitable for me I think...uncontrollable, and while it lasts great...the anticipation and excitement before seeing it is probably going to be the best part...but I live in hope, I mean, it may be great?

THE MINIATURE I MADE

Looking at those shots of the Alien Lego miniatures got me thinking about my own miniature creations, which I’ve only ever done twice (and very sadly had to disassemble each one...they were never very big either but were a lot of fun to make)...the first time, well both times were just soil with rocks placed down, but the second time I started to use water. I sprayed water on it and boy was that a hell of a lot of fun. It’s a really relaxing thing to do and very rewarding to see your miniature start to look cool, I really don’t know why I don’t do more of it, I spose its because there’s not much room in the house and because I really would like to do a huge one.

I don’t have any photos of the first one but here’s the second one I did.

A SUDDEN URGE TO WATCH SOME ORIGINAL TREK

Went on a bit of a mini original star trek marathon, cause I had a sudden urge to see some, it had been a awful long time. So I dug out what we had recorded off the TV, which was in this order...


The City on the Edge of Forever

Directed by Joseph Pevney and written by ?...I’ve actually not seen this as much times I thought I had, I’ve maybe only seen this about two or three times as a adult. It’s really a very lovely thing...I don’t like to use the word cute...but, well...this episode is very charming, amusing and clever. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much explanation as to what’s going on though...but you just go with it and enjoy yourself. Really loved McCoy in this, and Kirk turns in a big softy here, and the faithful Mr Spock reminded me of a full on geek who’s happy to spend hours / days / weeks on his own building a contraption. You cant help but get swept away also by Joan Collins shes like some sort of calm angel of guidance.

Also spotted here a bit that's identical, or nearly identical to the crossing the road scene in Star Trek: The Voyage Home...they cross a road, a car has to do a emergency stop and then some shouting happens.


The Doomsday Machine

Written by Norman Spinrad, and directed by Marc Daniels. Really loved this one, great, great music throughout...loved the music on the approach to the wrecked hulk of the USS Constellation. The scene where they discover the very frightened / shell shocked / unstable Commodore Matthew Decker is wonderful, every scene with this guy is great, and I love the fight scenes they do in classic trek.

Mirror, Mirror

Written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Marc Daniels. This ones really interesting too, very enjoyable and had a fun time here. Its really funny when Kirk isn’t getting in the transported and Scotty's getting impatient about it. You can see the characters so well in these three episodes and how they are exactly the same in the six films, which, is a real joy to see.

ALIEN LEGO SETS

Made another lego discovery today. This is awesome. Created by mryoder and inspired by the Alien films. Theres somthing special about it that I cant quite pinpoint, I think its that its somthing you love dearly but done in a different style, but its recognisable that it’s the thing that you love.

THE BACK HUG / HOLD THINGY

I was going...well I use google image search a lot, but also I use it as a spell checker cause it seems to be better at times that my Microsoft publisher spell checker, I wanted to know if I was spelling Chekov the right way (which it turned out I was) and I started looking at the images there and found a really nice one of the whole hug / hold thingy.

Now, it reminded me of a conversation, (well it reminded me of several things actually) I’d had with Mark A. Perez and Jamie Lee. Mark A. Perez mentioned what a beautiful thing it is, and it really is a beautiful thing...and captured here extremely well, I really love this photo.

I unfortunately don’t know the ladies name, but this is of course Walter Koenig.

SUPPLEMENTAL: I actually dont know whats going on in this scene, and unfortunately / embarrassingly...I don’t know the sixties Star Trek very well at all...other than there’s some extremely good episodes like The City on the Edge of Forever which I've seen quite a lot of because we have it recorded off the TV.

It's entirely possible that Chekov at this point has gone evil or is not himself, cause things like that happened a lot on Star Trek. But I still think its a interesting photo.

A NOSTALGIC FIND

My dad was going through the underneath of the house again trying to sort things out and came across a big polythene bag of mine, huge, with a whole load of stuff in it. One of which was a really nice Supplement thingy...only twenty four pages long and done on quite big paper, beautifully done, the graphic design combined with the choice to have some huge photos from the films inside is great and it has a lovely feeling paper)... loved this to pieces, always went back to look at it you know?...I think I was always really taken with the Metropolis poster the most...but this little book is a great nostalgic find for me.

Not sure when Empire did this, but it focuses on ten films with a sidey column going into all the important sci-fi that’s been made since the very start of cinema.

SHORT SUBJECT CINEMA NOW HAS FOUR SHORTS ON IT

.:Short Subject Cinema:. (my other blog) focusing on short films I love, finally has some stuff on it.

NOTE: Sci-Fi nuts please go there and see Lost Cargo if you've not seen it before, its a 15 minute stop motion film that would make Nick Park proud I reckon.

THE CULT OF SURVIVORS

A good documentary on the original seventies series.

The Cult of Survivors (Part 1 of 3)



The Cult of Survivors (Part 2 of 3)



The Cult of Survivors (Part 3 of 3)

SURVIVORS HAS BEEN REDONE

Ok ok, this ones a biggy (wouldn’t be writing about it if it wasn’t)...Survivors - TV series 1975-1977 created by Terry Nation is one of the my favouritetist things ever. And here I find that it’s been remade...re-imagined?, ok lets just say rebooted. Its been rebooted and will be first broadcast on Sunday 23rd November 2008...this left me somewhat speechless and now I’m in a odd place of being tremendously excited but also immensely worried at the same time. The 1975-1977 show is INCREDIBLE and it is so good, that when you see it for the first time, it literally signs itself into a bedroom in your head, and sets up as a permanent resident in there. This resident is going to stay there until the hotel body dies.

It makes you THINK. I found myself having a couple of nightmares because of this TV series, its concept is simple and yet so relevant to today. It’s a very powerful series and shakes you to the core.

Now in 2008 we’re seeing a new version about to arrive, I wont...well, I wont write anything much about that until I see the full thing, but the trailer for it was a bit naff, however, I saw a nine minute making of thing that seemed to be ok. I just don’t have much faith though that this will be as beautifully made as the original (but by all means prove me wrong and surprise me on Sunday 23rd...yes please!!) the original is stunning with nice long takes, fantastic editing and a real atmosphere to it that is hard to explain.

The question is, have the new filmmakers poured beef soup into the engine?

CAPTAINS CHAIR

This is a odd one, I cant help but notice that the captains chair seems to be on a ramp?...is that a ramp?...and it seems to be oddly isolated in the middle of the ramp.

Loving the chair though, it's actually very similar to the old sixties chair, and looks extremely comfortable to sit in...I’ll take two.

STAR TREK TRAILER

Ok well, I’m a sci-fi nut, and so had been really excited about this movie. Of course, its not intelligent to base some sort of final opinion on the film based on this very frantic, quickly edited trailer or any trailer for any film, but here’s some thoughts.


PROS:

-Horizontal lens flare happening in a LOT of this, nearly every shot seems to have it. I absolutely love this kind of thing, it makes me think of films like Die Hard and Raider of the Lost Ark.

-This is one good looking and good feeling trailer. It's full on big budget pure (space ships / ray guns) feature length sci-fi.

-It looks like its gonna have a lot of humour in it I reckon. This to me is the most wonderful news, I love sci-fi that is well made but also funny.

-Loving what I'm seeing of Karl Urban's McCoy.


CONS:

-When child Kirk jumps from the car he seems to get pulled back along the ground, this is totally ridiculous, why is he being pulled?...

-The bridge looks...well, far too much odd looking / crude white molded plastic for my liking there, I'm sorry.

-Why is the bridge got spot lights everywhere in it….ok, well I can tell you that one, its because you get really cool horizontal camera flares happening. But from a practical standpoint, everybody would get blinded by the lights I think.

YOUTUBE

It struck me the other day, what a truly wonderful thing youtube is. A friend of mine informed me about this video (7,884,155 views) of a kid at Christmas opening up his Nintendo 64 and going through the roof with hysteria. It’s a incredible video and I bet the people at Nintendo love it. It goes into slow motion at times and repeats the moment, so I’m guessing that’s not the original video. But I’m guessing it's one of these really famous videos that has spawned lots of people doing remix and so on...that in itself is a fascinating thing.



The search bar at top of Youtube is extremely efficient / well programmed thing...and the sheer amount of stuff people have uploaded is simply staggering. I always seem to be able to get hold of the thing I’m thinking of.

Another wonderful part to all this, is peoples favourites page(s). This is like looking through somebody's DVD collection...so you've found somebody who likes the same kind of stuff you like, and then off you go diving into their collection to see what they have. On doing this I discovered another stupendous video (5,010,893 Views) of this american show about this couple who discovered this stray kitten going around with a crow. The crow was being a mother to the kitten and the video is incredible.



Youtube IS a incredible thing and I’m very grateful for its existence.