Freyburg

Witness this disaster:

Apparently, not only is Obama just a flash in the pan, but the voting public are stupid and easily swayed by celebrity. Which may very well be true, but McCain isn’t going to get any votes by rubbing that fact in their faces. All this ad does is reinforce how out of touch, old, and unconnected to regular everyday society McCain is. The guy doesn’t even know how to use a computer, for crissakes!

…and pretty much spent. This was my first time at the San Diego Comic Con, and I have to say it was something of an experience. Over 100,000 people, most of them in costume, hit the San Diego Convention Center every year, and both Hollywood and the comics and games industries show off their latest wares at what has become possibly the most important entertainment event of the year.

I spent most of my time lugging a tripod (I have the bruises on my arms to prove it), coordinating our three crews, and conducting interviews. Amongst the people I got to interview were Dave Gibbons, the artist responsible for the Watchmen, Walking Dead writer Robert Kirkman, the people behind the Spectacular Spider Man cartoon, Dana Snyder (the guy who plays Master Shake on ATHF), the cast of Eureka, and Tori Amos. I also coordinated us interviewing the cast of BSG, which was pretty cool.

Myself and my buddy Rich (cameraman for our unit) only had 20 minutes in the whole con to hit the floor and buy anything for ourselves, but I managed to snag a bunch of graphic novels, a “Con exclusive” Domo-Kun for Mel, another “Con exclusive” (say it with a nerdy sniff in your voice) action figure pack of the 10th and 5th Doctors, and this sweet-ass shirt:

All in all, a fine four days.

Despite the madness of Comic-con and Warren’s current geographical position in San Diego, Radio Free Skaro continues with the second part of our “Talons of Weng Chiang” commentary. Wit, abandon, and politically correct tut-tutting of Chinese stereotypes await!

Yes, you read that right, my latest article at Mac | Life is all about the Apple products the Dark Knight needs to strap to his belt in order to better fight crime. And speaking of comics-related matters, San Diego Comic Con is a huge, crazy festival of nerdosity the likes I’ve never seen. And I’ve seen a lot of nerdosity in my time.  

The three jaunty fellows were pleased as punch to commentate on one of the high points of Tom Baker’s career, “The Talons of Weng Chiang,” a fantastic set of episodes by the late, great Robert Holmes (though unfortunately marred by the casual racism of the period.) Since Talons is longer than a trip on a Victorian steamer to the colonies, we decided to split the commentary into two parts. Warren will be at San Diego Comic-Con next Sunday, but he’ll do his best to get Part 2 off his hard drive and onto the Internet in a timely fashion.

I walked into Dark Knight expecting a decent Batman film, but I walked out amazed. All through the film I was asking myself “is a superhero movie this good? Really?” Let’s start with the best thing about the movie, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Ledger’s villain is all menace, venom and insanity, and he owns the role in a way that makes you look at Jack Nicholson’s take on the Joker and wince. That’s not to say Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman don’t all step up to the plate, because there isn’t a bad performance in this movie. And they’re all helped by an amazing script, that takes the usual superhero good vs. evil tropes and turn them on their head. It’s the writing, the acting and the staging that make this movie a masterpiece of the genre and easily the best film of the year. Highly recommended.

Check it out before it gets pulled. I like everything about it except for the Smashing Pumpkins tune and the “300” style dark color correction…but it looks remarkably faithful to the book and thus is deemed geekgasmic.

UPDATE: Here’s the trailer, and for a glorious HD version, head to Quicktime….

One of the worst things about Youtube is the sheer volume of “tribute” videos and other such poorly edited codswallop that gets in the way of searching for a clip of, say, Doctor Who. But amongst the junk there are a few gems, including this mashup of the interminable flight sequences from “Time Flight” with James Bond and the Death Star (amongst other wackiness):

Then there’s this bit of remixery which makes a complete hash of the Five Doctors in brilliant fashion:

Part 1:

and Part 2:

Just lovely.

The great thing about Web video is that with the tumbling cost of hardware, software and distribution, anyone can make a video. But practically no-one is making a buck at it, if this story in the San Francisco Chronicle is to be believed. In fact, many web video creators are using their work as a calling card to get into the TV and film industry, where there are still paychecks to be had. Makes sense, and that’s why I work in mainstream media and do web stuff on the side….I try to do the web stuff for fun and my own education, and if it helps further my career in one direction or another, so much the better.

The dark times begin as we enter a solid half year with no new Who, but the august crew at Radio Free Skaro have ably responded to this gulf in quality televisual spectacle with a new series of Classic series commentaries, beginning (sort of) with Black Orchid, a Davison two-parter done on the cheap and set in the 1920s. Sarcasm and japes, anyone?