Enough Star Wars to make you puke! Saga-inspired barf-bags at Virgin Airlines

Dad once told me that sooner or later "they're going to put Star Wars on everything" and looks like he was right. You can't make this up folks: from the official Star Wars website

All Too Queasy: Virgin Airlines' Unique Collectibles

June 14, 2005

While some Star Wars fans collect action figures or comics, others are on a quest to find unique items that most of us only notice when a plane ride gets a bit too action-packed. In collaboration with Virgin Airlines and Activision, LucasArts has released limited-edition airsickness bags to promote the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Video Game, available in stores now.

Available on Virgin Atlantic flights, the four designs include: Knowing Your Lightsaber, Lightsaber Etiquette, The Art of Jedi Combat and Seating Jedi and Sith. The backs of the bags all have the same Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Video Game cover art. The collectible bags are limited in number and will be available while supplies last...

Steven Spielberg should have thought of this over twenty years ago: think about how Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom could have cashed in with this kind of licensing deal!

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Sony signs deal with Warners to run The Matrix Online (NOOOOOOO!!!)

Let's put it this way: Sony Online Entertainment did to Star Wars what Joel Schumacher did to Batman.

Ain't too much of a gamer but the concept of massive-multiplayer online role-playing games is utterly fascinating to me. And being a Star Wars die-hard I had to give Star Wars Galaxies a try. I was with it for a little more than a year before it got too boring. Blame SOE: they saturated what could have been a viable component of the Star Wars experience with too much visual material, not nearly enough content and NO idea what Star Wars is supposed to really be about (hint: it ain't thirty thousand Jedis running loose at the height of the Empire). I cancelled and swore that when a new Star Wars MMORPG comes out someday it better not be SOE at the helm or I ain't buying.

But even without Star Wars Galaxies, I had The Matrix Online: prolly the first videogame to use armchair philosophy as part of the action. It has its faults, but overall it's been a pleasurable enough pastime... 'cept today Warner Brothers announced they're going to hand the game over to Sony! Ooh-boy.

From the press release on Yahoo!:

Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Collaborate for Online Projects
Friday June 17, 8:00 am ET
SAN DIEGO and BURBANK, Calif., June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Online Entertainment Inc., and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today announced exclusive long-term licensing agreements allowing SOE to develop a DC Comics massively multiplayer online game for PC and next generation consoles, as well as the acquisition of The Matrix Online game by SOE.

"By working with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment we will fuse the knowledge SOE has in the online space with some of Warner Bros.' phenomenal properties," said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. "SOE will work closely with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics to maintain the authenticity consumers demand from the DC Comics franchises. We will also take steps to continue the same high level of service that subscribers have come to expect from The Matrix Online game."

"Our goal is to deliver quality content and consistently advance our key properties within the online games space," said Jason Hall, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. "We've done just that with The Matrix Online. Because of our compelling work in developing and launching that game we can now move it over to the leaders in the MMO space, SOE. We look forward to working with SOE to enhance our overall services to massively multiplayer online gamers for The Matrix Online and a new DC Comics game..."

I can see it now: players running all over the Matrix looking for the elusive 8-track tape that will tell them which profession tree they have to master while a player-versus-player battle breaks out nearby involving twenty-seven "the One"s. Acquiring kung-fu will require a couch-crafting ability and those playing as spies will have NOTHING to actually spy on whatsoever, forever! SOE is going to take this game and make it like EverQuest just as they tried with Star Wars Galaxies... and in the end the Wachowski Brothers themselves will come out of seclusion brandishing katanas to pull the plug on what is now an abortion of a videogame, daring Sony to stop them.

Or, maybe they CAN make it a better game after all. But that better be a damned big alligator that they pull out of that hat.

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Talk about the pot calling the kettle black... (Bush on Iran elections)

Found this story at the BBC about comments President Bush made about elections in Iran and couldn't help but see this fly off the screen...

Mr Bush criticised Iran for blocking hundreds of reformist candidates from running.

"Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy," he said.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, is the front-runner against three major rivals.

So lemme get this straight...

Having two major rivals that block any earnest attempts at reform and rig the system to keep hundreds of potential candidates off the ballot at all is considered "real democracy".

But having three major rivals that do the same thing is said to "suppress freedom".

And before we strut around as an "elected official", why don't we check those Diebold machines out, eh Mr. Bush?

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Just saw Batman Begins

Now THIS is the movie I wish we had gotten in 1989!! Everything about it is just darned perfect. I can't possibly count all the smaller things that are in this movie that are taken directly from the Batman comics. Finally it's a Batman movie that's NOT focused on the villain, but focused on Batman (how the heck did the '89 one get away with billing Jack Nicholson as the Joker over the hero?). How well does Batman Begins work? During the first good part of the movie, well into when Bruce Wayne returns back to Gotham, I found myself having forgotten that this was a Batman movie at all, because first and foremost it's a movie about Bruce Wayne as a character and thenhow he acquires the look, the gimmicks, the car etc. They could have titled this "Bruce Wayne Begins" and I would have been totally happy. One of the most devious bait-and-switch plans I've seen in any recent movies, a believable city they're running around in, a music score that never overwhelms the action, NOTHING... as in not a single element of the plot... feels out-of-place or without a basis in reality. This movie could be based on true events. It could even be happening right now, you'd think. And isn't the ending of this quite the novelty for a Batman movie: it resolved this movie's story, while blowing it all wide open for plenty more to come.

Okay, gotta run, but trust me: Batman Begins is well worth the five bucks for admission (and the fifty dollars you'll spend on outrageously overpriced confectionary).

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Cinematical reviews Forcery!

Well whaddya know... our little movie is getting around! Thanks to Cinematical for the kind words.

(And of COURSE he doesn't look too much like George Lucas: the man just got pulled out of a freezing car wreck, fercryingoutloud!!! :-P)

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Mike Tyson quitting boxing to become a missionary

Iron Mike never seemed to be the missionary type. I always figured him to be Chewish.

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From Dolores Claiborne to Dolores Umbridge?

Today I found myself re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, sorta getting refreshed before the next book in the series comes out in another month. And this past week I finally saw the teaser trailer for the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, out this coming holiday season. It looks promising, but we'll see how well a 734-page book translates into a three-hour movie. Personally, even though it grows with each new viewing I was a bit disappointed when the movie for Prisoner of Azkaban came out last year, 'cuz it left out a LOT of neat items from the book, like who "Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs" really were, and Sirius giving Harry written permission to visit Hogsmeade, which is how the book ended.

My two favorite characters in the series so far have been Sirius Black and Professor "Mad-Eye" Moody. Moody's being played by Brendan Gleeson in Goblet of Fire, and it really does seem like he could look the part, that kind of wise/creepy combo. But as I was reading Order of the Phoenix I found myself wondering: who in the world could possibly play Dolores Umbridge?

For those who haven't had the mispleasure yet, Umbridge has to date been the most LOATHSOME character that J.K. Rowling has created in the Harry Potter books. Even more than Voldemort, you find yourself wanting this *itch ("w" or "b", your choice) to die die die. She's the bureaucrat from the pits of Hades. Imagine Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with a magic wand and gone insane with power. Umbridge is a metaphor for everything that is horribly wrong with modern public education, I'm positively certain. Yes, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a damning indictment against big government in the education business, which should... should mind ya... make some self-professed "religious conservatives" very happy were it not for them being too fixated on burning Harry Potter books. And most of this is all because of the character of Dolores Umbridge.

So who should play her when the movie version of Order of the Phoenix comes out? Call me crazy, and maybe it's only 'cuz I've spent the better part of the past year watching and re-watching Misery as reference material for my own motion picture, but it hit me today that Kathy Bates could probably pull it off beautifully... er, I mean wickedly. She's got that ability to turn on the faux charm and concern for others before trying to make their lives a living Hell. The only real strike against her is that she's not British (I think) and to date all the principles in the Harry Potter movies have been from the United Kingdom. There probably won't be any deviation from that and I couldn't really blame the producers for that, but the more I think about it, the more I'm coming to like the idea of Kathy Bates in what would certainly be the most EVIL role of her career.

But we'll have a little while yet to see how that turns out. And there'll be some other roles to fill too. I'd be willing to bet good money that Keira Knightly will get considered for the Tonks role. And isn't it hard NOT to imagine Samuel L. Jackson as Kingsley Shacklebolt?

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It was one year ago this past week...

...that Ronald Reagan passed away.

I know that there is - and probably will always be - some debate about his times as President of the United States. The man wasn't perfect by any stretch. Then again, who among us is anyway?

But I always admired Reagan. Part of his charm was that he wasn't afraid to admit having human foibles. He spoke with people, not at them or down to them. And they were people from all walks of life: foreign dignitaries, ecclesiastical authorities, or humble family farmers.

We were in Atlanta, me and Lisa and one of her friends from college, when the news broke that Reagan had died. We were on our way to the Lord of the Rings concert with Howard Shore conducting (I got the tickets about six months earlier, a Christmas present for Lisa). The concert was great, but all night it felt like... like the era of my childhood was finally, at last, finished. You didn't grow up in the Eighties without being in Reagan's shadow somehow: he was that kind of bigger than life. Nancy was bigger than life. Remember when we saw Reagan walking around the White House rose garden with Michael Jackson? Today Reagan is dead and Jacko is awaiting the verdict in his child molestation trial.

What the hell's happened to this country?

That was Saturday when he died. We were leaving back for home Tuesday morning and it was Monday night, while watching the mourners file past his casket at the Reagan Library in California, that I decided I had to go to D.C. and pay my respects to the man. We got back home about 10 that night and 12 hours later I hit the road again. Met up with some friends from the Internet along the procession route on Constitution Avenue and about 6 that evening the caisson bearing his casket filed past where we were standing...

I stayed in D.C. one more day, getting in line late Thursday night to try and get into the Capitol rotunda where his remains lay in state. It was like seven hours' wait from the far end of the Air and Space Museum, through five large "holding pens" on the Mall set up to accommodate the crowd, but just after the beautiful sunrise broke at dawn ("mourning in America", I couldn't help but think) our group got inside and were there for what turned out to be the next-to-last changing of the guard done in the Rotunda. Sure didn't seem like that long a wait though: all through the night I met with some really neat people from all over the place. Domino's and Papa John's were delivering pizzas to folks waiting in line (how they were told which holding pen to come to I've no idea). The Park Service had bottles of water for everyone. It was a little before 8 when we got through the buiding and I took the train back to my waiting car, drove to my hotel and packed up and went home.

I started writing about this a few days ago but got caught up in some things on this end. Wanted to come back and finish up this lil' tribute to the man. Wish this country could have other men of his kind of caliber in high office.

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The Nazis invented the sex doll (saywhuuuu...??)

Started randomly looking at other blogs this evening and found one called Suspect on film and since I'm a World War II freak his most recent post caught my eye. From Blogcritics.org...

The Nazis invented the sex doll

The Nazis invented the worst thing ever: the assembly-line death factory. But they also invented something else, perhaps the only legacy of theirs that endures to this very day. During World War II, Hitler's war machine created the world's first sex doll: Borghild.

The ”field-hygienic project” was an initiative of Himmler, who regarded the doll as a ”counterbalance” for the sexual drive of his stormtroopers. In one of his letters, he mentions the ”unnessessary losses” the Wehrmacht had suffered in France, inflicted by street prostitutes. ”The greatest danger in Paris are the wide-spread and uncontrolled whores, picking up clients in bars, dancehalls and other places. It is our duty to prevent soldiers from risking their health, just for the sake of a quick adventure.” One assumes Himmler also wanted to stop any racial dilution of the great German army.

The project was considered ”Geheime Reichssache”, which meant ”more secret than top secret.” Himmler put Dr. Joachim Mrurgowsky in charge, the highest ranking officer of Berlin's notorious SS Institute.

The world’s first sexdoll – or ”gynoid” – was built in 1941 by a team of craftsmen from Germany's Hygiene Museum in Dresden. The project was supervised by a famous technician, Franz Tschakert. He was the ”father of the woman of glass,” which happened to be the sensation in the 1930’s International Hygiene Exhibition...

Ohh-kaaaay that's enough for now, don't you think? This is probably the weirdest thing I've EVER heard about World War II. Weirder than the "British aircraft carrier made of ice cubes" or the "Nazis trying to contact the subterranean supermen" bits, even. Squeeze here if you want to read more about them kinky Nazis.

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Check out the new Forcery website!

Awright, our lil' film is starting to get some press coverage so in advance of the good word and for benefit of anyone who might find their way to it, Ed and I have worked on-and-off throughout today to beef-up the official Forcery website. You'll find production photos, cast and crew bios, download links and more! We'll be adding more stuff to it soon as it develops. In the meantime, head over to forcery.kwerkyproductions.com and enjoy!

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Man in suit! Man in suit!

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers was the first place (I think) that had the concept of strength-enhancing mechanized endoskeletons worn by humans. It's since been used in movies like Aliens and The Matrix Revolutions. Now it's become a reality...

From AFP via Yahoo! news:

Japan unveils "robot suit" that enhances human power

Tue Jun 7,10:14 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan has taken a step into the science-fiction world with the release of a "robot suit" that can help workers lift heavy loads or assist people with disabilities climb stairs.

"Humans may be able to mutate into supermen in the near future," said Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University who led the project.

The 15-kilogram (33-pound) battery-powered suit, code-named HAL-5, detects muscle movements through electrical-signal flows on the skin surface and then amplifies them.

It can also move on its own accord, enabling it to help elderly or handicapped people walk, developers said.

The prototype suit will be displayed at the World Exposition that is currently taking place in Aichi prefecture, central Japan...

That's gonna be a pretty cool thing for pro wrestlers to wear.

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This blog's look will be changing soon

I redid its look back in January but the all-black "nighttime" style is really starting to bore me. And that picture of me at the top isn't the best: it looks like I'm smirking or something. The original is a photo taken of me for a newspape I worked at a few years ago and in larger size it looks great. Reduced size, it makes me look too much like a psycho. I'm going to find a better one. I'm going to monkey around with it some during the next few days and see what I can come up with...

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Bush wants to make destruction of Bill of Rights permanent (seeks PATRIOT Act renewal)

A lot of its provisions were intended to "sunset" when it was passed over three years ago. Except Bush wants to keep them around indefinitely. For the duration of the "emergency", you see.

This "emergency" will never end. The "war on terror" is not intended to have a substantive goal. This will never enter into endgame.

Might as well face up to it: Osama Bin Laden won when he sent the planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center going on four years ago. He made sure America would never be the sweet land of liberty ever again. The irony of it is, it wasn't Osama who did the really dirty deed against the American people. He merely instigated it. He hasn't even been adequately punished for it. Instead the President of the United States - who swore an oath to defend this country's Constitution - is too busy taking away basic rights like that of having an attorney and protection against unwarranted searches and seizures and letting our guard down along this country's borders, to do anything meaningful against whatever real terorrists are still out there.

The PATRIOT Act does not defend America. The PATRIOT Act defends politicians from the Americans they continue to steal from and rape of their freedoms. No wonder Bush wants to keep hiding behind it forever.

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The unfilmmable Watchmen claims another one

This time it's Paramount that threw its hands up in despair. Mash here for the full story. This is one story - graphic novel or not - that will never, ever, EVER be made into a movie and it still do justice to the original source material. The only way it could possibly be done is if someone like HBO turned it into a 12-part season-long series of one-hour episodes, one hour given to each chapter of the book. There's no way to cram something so dense like Watchmen into a three-hour long movie.

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Woman sues Stephen King after claiming she's real-life "Annie Wilkes"

Ooh-boy, this is just too rich. Ever notice how sometimes things just seem a little TOO coincidental? Today TheForce.net posted on their fan films section about Forcery and turns out it comes hot on the heels of this item from the Celebrity Justice website. A woman is suing Stephen King because she claims she was the basis of the Annie Wilkes character from Misery and that King never credited her. She's sued him before, saying that King has ripped-off a lot of stuff from her over the years. Sounds like a pretty scary lady.

Then again, anyone claiming to be the REAL-LIFE Annie Wilkes is gonna be someone you want to keep away from sledgehammers and firearms.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic watched Forcery... and he liked it!!

The entire cast and crew was really thrilled to hear that "Weird Al" Yankovic - the crown prince of parody himself - wrote in after watching Forcery. Yup, our first-ever movie was seen by the one-and-only Weird Al (which is only fair 'cuz over the years between me and Ed we've amassed quite a lot of Al's CDs and merchandise and t-shirts and we can recite line-for-line all the dialogue from UHF and are patiently awaiting the arrival of "The Weird Al Show" on DVD... we've watched HIM and now he's watched US!). Here's some of what Al had to say:

"...Nice job! Wow, how'd you ever get Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg to be in it? What a coup!"

It wasn't easy, let's just put it that way Al :-)

It was one of those things that you overlook when you're doing something like this, but the updated "Definitive Edition" we just made available this evening has some additions to the end credits: for all the inspiration that they provided us over the years, the cast and crew of Forcery thanks not only Weird Al, but Mel Brooks and the guys who made the Airplane! movies. We really strived to make Forcery resonate with the same tone of comedy that they're the masters of. Ed and Chad and I grew up with their music and movies, and we often talked on the set about how our own was a sort of homage to them and that period of our lives. Hope we did them an honor with it :-)

And so it begins: the start of my filmmaking career that will one day find me directing Weird Al and Leslie Nielsen in Spy Hard 2: Spy Another Day. In the meantime I must bide my time and climb the ladder...

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Forcery - the Definitive Edition - download now available!

Am using Ourmedia.org to host this on for the moment. We may get other hosting soon. One offer to mirror it has come up.

Folks, I'd like to ask something of you, but only if you really, truly enjoyed watching our little movie here. If you laughed and thought it wasn't a waste of your time and were genuinely entertained by it, I for one would REALLY appreciate it if you could spread the word on Forcery wherever you can. Point people to this blog and the links we have to it. There's a reason I'm asking this and I'm still collecting some thoughts on that. Right now, it means more to me than you can imagine if this film - which had a LOT of good people working on, and sacrificing for so that it could be made - could get a little (actually a LOT) more exposure. Some really good e-mails and comments have come in already, and I'm wanting to see this fly a little higher and keep on flying.

Consider this to be Version 1.1 of Forcery. In all respects the same as the initial release but we managed to fix a few things. The audio, for one: sounds MUCH better! A few of the special effects were recomposited/refined. The final scene was rebuilt completely from scratch (you'll definitely notice it when you see Frannie's lightsaber and the changed dialogue of the Mel's Drive-In waitress). Quite a few scenes were "tightened-up" to make it flow leaner and meaner. You probably won't notice these things if at all, but to me they came to stick out like a sore thumb. Right now, there's not much more that I know we could do, with what we had to make this with already. I'm more proud of it than ever :-)

As before, there are four versions of Forcery for you to download:

480 x 270 Extra Large - 508 Megabytes: the biggest/most robust version outside of the DVD.

448 x 252 Large - 355 Megabytes: the "regular large" version.

384 x 216 Medium - 192 Megabytes: medium-sized version.

256 x 144 Micro - 96 Megabytes: the "micro-sized" version. Still my favorite because it fits neatly onto a 128 MB USB flash drive (along with Quicktime installer) so I can take my entire motion picture around with me in my pocket. Or around my neck on its lanyard. Like the dead albatross from Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

By the way, if the download doesn't work for some reason at first, try again one or two more times: you will get through to it. Ourmedia's servers are a bit quirky sometimes but I've yet to see them totally fail to deliver the goods.

Anyway, enjoy the show! And please spread the word about Forcery! :-)

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