Friday News Blogging

I've always admired Channel 4 news, a feeling validated by this segment demonstrating the duplicity of the man who will, in all likelihood, be our next prime minister.

David Cameron is keen to present the Conservatives as a changed party, willing to embrace diversity in their mission to change things for the better. But when confronted with the actual voting record of his MEPs on gay rights issues, he initially chokes, and then later flat out lies.

Via The F Word

Hold onto your feathered hats...

Luc Besson's upcoming Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec now has an official site (I recommend turning your volume down for this one), and a full trailer which you can catch at Twitch.

Thursday Comic

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas - Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá et al.

After finally fulfilling their promise to save the world, the disparate adoptees of the Umbrella Academy have gone off the rails somewhat - variously revelling in their newfound fame, rotting in front of the TV, losing at the dog tracks and vindictively pursuing vengeance for betrayal. But it seems their adventures are far from over - a powerful and secretive organisation is trying to kill one of their number, who is apparently involved in a far-ranging conspiracy that includes a talking fish, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and two ultraviolent psychopaths dressed up as cartoon characters...

When it came to the first collected story arc in Gerard Way's extremely imaginative semi-superhero comic, I was impressed by the way it blended a heady cocktail of bizarre ideas into one cohesive whole - but left feeling that the story moved a little too fast to truly develop its cast. In reading the second story arc, Dallas, I was surprised to realise what a strong impression Way's characters had left me with, and pleased to see him continue to focus on their dysfunctional relationships.

Dallas also continues the off-the-wall and yet impossibly consistent world-building. This is a world where seemingly anything can be encountered - often to the great surprise of the reader, if not the people used to living there - and yet it all fits together perfectly, evoking a strange alternate reality with a very definite tone and atmosphere to it. If you're looking for a wildly imaginative story that's nevertheless still grounded in believable characters, then The Umbrella Academy is definitely shaping up into something that you simply must check out.

Binary Romance

Okay, now this is a beautiful little thing: Digital: A Love Story.

A touching adventure(-ish) game about Internet-friendship and hacker conspiracies that's by turns cute, funny, sinister and bittersweet.

Monday Movie: M

Berlin is in a state of panic: a killer stalks its streets, luring children away to be murdered. The authorities respond by checking papers and performing daily raids against the usual suspects - prompting the city's leading criminal organisation to launch a manhunt of its own. They believe that the murderer ruining their reputations and livelihoods may in fact be an otherwise respectable member of society...

Fritz Lang's M, the first ever serial killer film, is tense and visually striking. Deliciously dark at times, it also shows a surprising sense of humour. The depiction of forensic science and of criminals banding together against a child-killer are startlingly modern, while the almost omnipresent crime syndicate lends the story a slightly otherworldly quality.

Lang takes a multi-layered perspective on the grim subject matter. On the surface a quite heavy-handed warning against "stranger danger" for both parents and children, M also covers more nuanced issues, such as the distinction between mere criminality and true evil - or responsibility and insanity.

Friday Fire Eater Blogging

Image Credit: Mamboman1
Some rights reserved

Sanguine Exploration

Step 1: Go here to see an awesome 3D animation made from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HIRISE images. (Hat-tip.)

Step 2: Play Redder.

Monday Movie: The Class

Over the period of one school year, an unruly class of students attend the French lessons of teacher François Marin, taking advantage of his desire to engage with them, and drawing him into arguments. At times François finds the ability to inspire even his most troublesome charges, but when his own nature gets the better of him, it's those students who most need his help that are cast by the wayside.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by lead actor François Bégaudeau, The Class (Entre les Murs or Between the Walls) features a cast of real students and teachers, while director Laurent Cantet's close-up camerawork places the audience right in the classroom. This is not a message movie, or an inspiring true story, but rather an ambiguous slice of life where a teacher's double standards are as troubling as the bad behaviour of any student. If it has any significant fault, it's only in making real life seem too vivid.

Friday No Smoking Blogging

Connected Online

A while back Twitch posted the cool poster art for Danish sci-fi short Connected. Well now the full film is available to view online at the official site. Seven minutes of your time that I think you will find well spent.

Monday Movie: Them!

Things take an eerie turn when a police officer and an FBI agent team up to investigate strange killings in the Californian desert. Their request for help is answered by a bumbling agricultural scientist and his (obliged by the genre to scream once, but otherwise level-headed) daughter. It seems that the atomic tests of the forties may have spawned a new species of giant ant that could very well become the dominant form of life on Earth...

To me, seminal monster movie Them! is at its best when it's being otherworldly and creepy - strange chirpings heard in the middle of a sandstorm, or the claustrophobic tunnels of a subterranean nest. But that doesn't prevent it also pulling off some stonking great action sequences that rise above the primitive creature effects - or some relatively smart, talky science fiction. This is a film that's entirely confident in its ridiculous premise, boldly extrapolating the facts of ant society while never apologising for its flights of fancy.

Just an FYI that I found a couple of hours this weekend to make a little something. You can find it on the other blog here.

This one's probably not for everyone.

Friday Love Letter Blogging

La Lettre d'Amour, Jean-Honor Fragonard

Orbital Skylines

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
More info...

This is one of the images of Enceladus that Cassini took on my birthday last year. This one's cool for featuring Saturn, the icy moon, and the plumes of water ice at its south pole.

Click the image to turn on the bigmatron.

Thursday Comic

Gunnerkrigg Court, Volume 1: Orientation - Tom Siddell

Following the death of her mother, Antimony Carver begins boarding at Gunnerkrigg Court - supposedly a school, even if it more closely resembles a sprawling industrial facility. There are strange secrets hidden in its labyrinthine halls, and that's before we get to the mysterious forest over the river and the bizarre nature of some of the students. Robot birds; a girl with dirty, pitch-black eyes and an attitude to match; a demonically possessed soft toy; suicidal fairies and a ghost who can't frighten anyone... It's a good thing that Antimony seems able to remain utterly unflappable, whatever she faces.

Looking at the first three chapters of the fourteen contained in this volume, I can kind of see why Siddell had to start out posting his series on the web (here) instead of being snatched up by a publisher right away. The art, at first - especially and crucially when it comes to Antimony herself - is a bit ropey. But by chapter 4 Siddell starts to get into his stride, and shortly the story is being told in exactly the kind of rich, sumptuous, beautifully coloured artwork that I was so keen to own on glossy, high-quality paper. Antimony, her friends, the imaginative settings and creatures are all rendered in a simply gorgeous style.

But it isn't just the imagery that's gorgeous. Gunnerkrigg Court has a heart, a sense of humour and a vibrant, unstoppable imagination. Always understated and reserved - like its heroine - this is a story that blindsides you with its sudden but carefully constructed moments of bittersweet emotion. This is absolutely one of my favourite comics - the perfect combination of art and character to appeal to me - so it's a no-brainer that I think Siddell deserves to get paid for his work. But given that it's also available on the web for free, you've got no excuse not to at least try it on for size.

Old Time Spacescape

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source

There's always an interesting arrangement of light, shadow and pastel colours to find around Saturn, and I rather like this Cassini image of Mimas against the rings, with smaller Epimetheus in the background.

Cassini made its all time closest approach to Mimas some time last week.

Times Saved Galaxy: 2

Holy moly, the final mission in Mass Effect 2 is pretty intense. Hats off to the people behind this: they made the game revolve around building a loyal team of nicely fleshed out characters, and then they made the final do-or-die mission one where, depending on your choices and performance mouseover for mild spoiler.

I've said before that I think linear plot and gameplay are perfectly capable of serving one another (although that doesn't mean I don't think we should explore the world of other possibilities) and I think this is the perfect demonstration of that. I wanted to do well at this mission, because I gave a damn about the characters in my team.

I'm also liking the way you get to keep playing after the credits roll, and each team member has a couple of lines about how things turned out and the choices you made. I'm always amazed at epic, far-ranging games that can't be bothered to throw in a little epilogue.


In other news, before embarking on this last mission, I found I didn't have enough cash left to buy any guns or armour, so I decided to stock up on pets instead. At the very least all these different coloured fish should look quite pretty when they're all floating belly-up. Kind of disappointed in my space hamster, though.


And last, but far from least, it figures that it's only just before the last mission that I suddenly stumble on the commander's en suite. To think I've been peeing next to the rank and file all this time.

Buzzing Hornets Nest

My Googlemail account is basically my Internet-facing email, so I'm not too concerned about my own privacy, but if I was, for example, a therapist using my account to email my patients, a journalist emailing whistle-blowers, or just an ordinary person who emails both nice people you know in person and crazy internet trolls - then I would be pretty angry at Google right now.

The thing is, when I see people complaining about this, I also see those usual knee-jerk commenters who don't bother to actually read the posts and regurgitate the same bogus information. At the moment you need to remember this:

• If you selected 'Nah, just take me to my inbox' when you were first notified about Buzz, you still have Buzz.
• If you click 'Turn off Buzz' at the bottom of your gmail page, you still have Buzz, you've just hidden it from yourself.
• If you have a public Google profile, you should probably take a look at it and make sure you aren't broadcasting any email contacts ('followers') you don't want to.

Of course, I say at the moment, because, after their initial, predictable "No, you do like it!" response, Google have promised to change things... over the next few days.

For those of us who've been using Blogger and other Google services, this reluctance and then slow reaction are pretty much what we expect, but it shows up Google's hubris that they seem to think they can still do this here. An hour is an age in Facebook-time. People go crazy if they can't access Twitter for fifteen minutes. If Google want to break into this market, they need to realise that a service built on small, frequent communications needs a response time of minutes (although the users would prefer seconds).

But probably the most surprising thing of all is that this happened in the first place. Obviously, Google wanted to give birth to its social network whole-formed from its Gmail contact lists, which isn't all that surprising given that their business model is basically making money from our information (see also: the targeted ads you get in your Gmail inbox). But if they had just peeked out of their own little world for a moment or two, they would have seen that nothing is kicking up Internet shitstorms lately as much as privacy concerns over social networking.

It's like Google just walked into an airport and started joking loudly about exploding underpants. Where have they been all this time?

Friday Hoff Blogging

Thursday Comic

Birds of Prey: Dead of Winter - Gail Simone, Nicola Scott et al.

"At one time I ran this operation like a finely tuned espionage machine," Oracle muses at one point in this last collection of Gail Simone's issues for Birds of Prey, "now the cast is much bigger, and a lot harder to control." Which kind of says it all.

Although the series has once again found stability in its artwork with the fine pencils of Nicola Scott, what was once a tightly focused story about a handful of second-tier Gotham superheroes (as well as not-quite heroes Creote and Savant) has expanded into the kind of Galaxy-sized, obscurely grounded and ridiculously framed story that is what so many people (including me) dislike about superhero comics.

I can kind of see why Simone took the chance to move to another series at this point, but for her Birds of Prey swansong she makes sure to try bring back a couple of her best characters, including (yay!) Creote, and her skill at characterisation and dialogue makes sure I'm never really bothered by the fact I don't know what's going on half the time.

Still, reading these books has helped me to feel like less of a complete philistine when it comes to what is obviously a very important part of western comics culture, and I'll probably make a half-arsed effort to read the further adventures of Oracle, Huntress and the rest when I can.