There's Potential There

A number of creative types I enjoy the work of are behind this experiment. It looks like it'll be worth checking out.

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Writing time: 1 minute
Time since last post: half a day or so
Current media: None

Scraping the Barrel (of Monkeys)

I have for some time now been lamenting the lack of quality original work in the cinematic arts. Nearly every movie that has been made, and most of those I've seen in the last few years has been a derivative of some other work (for example the Harry Potter movies, Serenity, Transformers, Stardust, Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Ocean's 11-13, 300, Die Hard 4.0, Sweeney Todd, Doom, Sin City the list goes on and on). Long have I waited for an original work, not derived from a book, comic, tv show, another movie, or history.

Unfortunately it looks like I shall have to wait a while longer. For Hollywood has found another mine from which to dig up derivative works. Board games. Universal pictures has signed a deal with Hasbro to make movies based on board games. On the list are Monopoly, Battleship, Candyland and Ouija.

Just how useful is a board game as a base idea for a movie. I mean really, Battleships? Fine, a nautical action/battle movie. That would be fine. Will there be giant red cylinders falling out of the sky taking out ships? Will aircraft carriers unrealistically take 5 hits in different parts of the hull before sinking? Will ships stay in place while barraging each other with gunfire? Will the action take place on a square ocean? I think (and hope) the answer to all of these will be no. So why try and link it to a board game. Let's just make a naval action movie.

Same with Monopoly. There have been a number of finance, wheeler dealer type movies, and there are more to come. A hotel mogul is definitely an idea for a story, but does he really need to be building his hotels on the Boardwalk and the Strand to keep the vibrancy of the idea?

I guess this is just one more case of life imitating art.

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Writing time: 38 minutes (it took a while to find a working link to the right Robot Chicken episode)
Time since last post: an hour or so
Current media: Pleasantville

More Good News

I actually just wanted to post some thought on the new Good News Week. Some are neutral and some are negative.

First, Paul's rendition of the theme song just doesn't seem the same. Bring back the old version.

Next, good god has Mikey Robbins gone grey. He has lost a fair bit of weight though, which is good.

Where is Julie McCrossin? It looks like she's too busy to come back to the fold. I hope she can make a guest appearance some time. I have yet to warm up to her replacement, Clare Hooper.

Also, I'm dubious about the amount of cross promotion that they're doing. It's cheap, tacky, obvious and cheapens the whole thing. And they should at least cross promote things the audience is going to be interested in. I may have been out of Australia for a while, but I really don't think that the people who watch GNW are likely to want to watch The Bold and the Beautiful. At least last week with Supernatural there was likely to be some sort of interest, although I went "who's he?" when they introduced the guy.

Other than that, they haven't changed the formula that much, and I hope to see some of the old regulars such as Adam Spencer, Natasha Stot Despoya, Rod Quantoc and others soon.

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Writing time: 20 minutes
Time since last post: 32 minutes
Current media: Good News Week

The sin of self righteousness

Yesterday morning I watched the movie Death Note. It's based on a manga series and was one of the most popular Japanese movies released last year.

The story is another illustration of how power and the belief in the rightness of ones cause can lead one into the path of evil. The story starts with a university student finding a notebook that when you write someone's name in it they will soon die. The student starts using it to kill criminals who appear to have evaded justice.

Now I can't say I don't enjoy vigilantism. I'm a big fan of Batman, who is nothing if not a vigilante. In fact, most comic book heroes are vigilantes. However, the student takes things a step further. The police notice the pattern in the killing and start investigating the person behind the deaths.

The start of this investigation involved a press conference in which a spokesman announces to the world that the police are hunter the killer. Angered by the idea that the police are hunting them, the student uses the book to kill the spokesman. As it turns out, the spokesman was a criminal sentenced to death, but that does not change the intention of the students actions.

This is just the start of the students self serving actions to get away from the investigators and follow his own plans. His schemes to thwart the investigators includes killing numerous investigators, and at the end of the movie in a scheme to infiltrate the investigation he sets up an elaborate situation that ends with the killing of his girlfriend.

While you can have a certain amount of respect for the student for his cunning and clever schemes, but his actions are nothing but reprehensible. And the justification for his actions is that he has a plan to make the world a better place that has no crime. This sort of self justification is dangerous as it allows the believer to justify nearly any action, no matter how despicable. No matter what the situation, no matter what the cause, there are some actions that cannot be justified, and no ends that justifies the means.

I'm not sure if I'll watch the second movie that concludes the story, I probably will, but mostly because I hope that the student gets caught and dealt with in an appropriate means.

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Writing time: 23 minutes
Time since last post: 5 days
Current media: Absolute Power 2x05