The Dragonsayer

So. As you all may have noticed, this section of my blogging has been somewhat lax as of late... oh hell, let's be real, I have n't done one of these in months. Those close to me know that I've been going through some various hassle in my life, and that it has fortunately stabilized for the moment, leaving me the occasional opportunity for doing things that I want to do.

Like, for example, spending some time on RSR.

I plan to update no less than once a month; more frequently if I can manage it. Due to a probable move coming up in the future, there may be some downtime in the middle of the year in this regard, but I should still average one a month minimum when this is done.

So. Leverage. Leverage is a series which is in some respects the d20 Spycraft setting set to a script (which should tell you a little more about my personal habits, if you don't already know me). The series follows Nate Ford, an ex-insurance recovery and security investigator, whose son died when the company he had worked for denied him a life-saving procedure because they claimed it was experimental. As a result of his grief, he turned to alcohol and in short order lost both his job and his wife. In the first episode, he is hired by an aeronautics executive to be the coordinator for a group of solo-oriented thieves to steal back a set of plane schematics that had been stolen from his company's database. The group, aside from Ford, consists of Alec Hardison, a hacker and electronics expert; Eliot Spencer, the martial arts and combat expert; and Parker (first name unknown), a gifted (and slightly unstable) cat-burglar, pickpocket, and infiltration expert. There is some evidence of friction between Ford and the others, owing to Ford having investigated all three of them in his former capacity. After retrieving the files, they are backstabbed by their client, and eventually discover that the files were never stolen in the first place, and that they had only taken the data from the rightful owners. Initially, they plan to flee after escaping the authorities, but are soon convinced by Ford to run a con on the exec who betrayed them.

Ford contacts Sophie Deveraux, a horrifically mediocre stage actress, but an extremely talented grifter with a taste for art theft, who Ford also had investigated during his previous career. Since the executive knows everyone else, they hire on Sophie to lure him into a scam. While not spoiling the details of the con (less this time for spoiler reasons than because I could not do the details justice), they manage to retrieve the data, humiliate the executive in front of his company and the public (and by extension humiliate the company itself), and make a shattering amount of money by playing the stocks with their advance knowledge of the coming disaster to the company's image. Following the con, the five initially agree to go thir separate ways, but realize that even though they could each buy and island and retire with the funds they've made from this one job, they can't give up doing what they each do best, and also that they enjoyed doing the right thing (even if it is still wrong), and convince Ford to help them find bad guys to con and victims to help.

The first season, which I have recently viewed in its entirety, is an excellent example of how good writing and character development can turn a good series into a great one. The characters are distinctive, well-written (even the villains-of-the-week), and human, with defined quirks that transform them from what would otherwise be two-dimensional characters into real living people. A good parallel would be the counterparts from a series like The A-Team; no matter how much you may have enjoyed the show, you have to admit that there was very little to distinguish one episode from another. By contrast, Ford's slow descent back into alcoholism, Spencer's culinary talents and dislike of guns, and Parker's extremely erratic and at times downright psychotic social habits (like stabbing a potential mark in the hand with a fork) make for genuine moments of unpredictability and enjoyment.

I enjoyed the series immensely, and am looking forward to a chance to see the second season.

So. Short version of this dream, as I tweeted earlier, was Speed plus Lethal Weapon 3 on a bicycle in a San-Francisco-like setting. Or possibly Speed plus Die Hard With A Vengeance, I dunno, I haven't seen either of the latter pair in years.

The person I was following (not me, I'm not nearly as wiry as he was) was some kind of ex-military who got drawn into this bizarre and convoluted plot spun by a bomber who was using the soldier as a scapegoat for the bombs that he was, in fact, disarming. The 'hero' was getting around this massively hilly city on a bicycle, somehow eluding the cops who were chasing him and keeping up with a mad bomber. Somehow or another, the bomber got a cellphone or radio or something to the hero and was using it to lure him to each of the bombs, threatening to go blow up 'the big one' if he tried to contact the authorities.

It was at around the point where the hero found out there was a bomb inside his girlfriend's modeling studio (I swear I am not making that up), and tried to plead with the bomber to disable that one since it was too far to go in too little time, that I woke up.

To any intrepid readers, I am going to warn you. I like to think that I am a good and imaginative writer. I like to think there are no bad ideas, no matter how often I end up proving myself wrong (longtime readers will know what I'm talking about). The above, so far as I am able to determine, is not workable into a script or story that will pass inspection. If you are able to do so, godspeed. :P

So, stuff happened, I got busy with it, and I haven't updated this thing in a month. I'm still working on the Random Selects, so if that's what you're here for, there's some more coming up.

Mostly, though, I've been on Twitter. I can't access it from work, but that's no change because I can't access anything else there either. For those there, I'm @retheldirood. Come join the fun.

9 is a short feature film (78 minutes long) based on a short film (11 minutes long), both written by Shane Acker, a name that many will not recognize. In fairness, his only major claim to fame (aside from this film) is working as an animator for Weta Digital during its work on Return of the King, but that is some serious cred to be wielding, all things considered.

This is a difficult movie to review, especially considering my normal policy of limited spoilers. It is made difficult because there is not much of a movie here; not that it's bad, it's actually one of the more inventive looking things I've seen in years. But it's short, and there is very little 'filler' footage... the movie could be described as 'trim' in that respect, but it would be missing the opportunity to use the word 'wiry'. The story is fast-paced and the world is constructed with an amazing attention to little details. The plot for most of the film is intuitive rather than explanatory; the titular character (a canvas-ragdoll-golem-thing the size of a GI Joe figure) awakens to sentience in a ruined world, meets the previous creations that led up to him, and discovers that the machines that turned against the humans of the past are also trying to eliminate them as well. Together, they must find a way to defeat the machines, and throw it into Mount Doom... wait, wrong movie. Their task becomes more critical when it is revealed that the machines' leader and creator can siphon out the soul energy that allows them to live.

The film would have been an interesting TV special, but the production quality is just too good. The voice acting is top-notch, and manages to really capture the emotion of the action onscreen; there's nothing quite so bad as a VO that fails to match the feel of what it's playing with, and this manages to dodge such a pitfall nicely. I could go on about the animation, the story (which is simple enough that you don't notice it, it's just there), or anything else about the movie that you might care to focus on, but I can only think of one way to summarize this film, which is a phrase I'm borrowing from the friend I watched the movie with. He referred to it, in his excellent video game mindset, as 'Fallout meets LittleBigPlanet.' That's better than I could do, so I'm using it. I'll also use 'go see it, what the heck're you sitting around still reading this for?'

Okay, I attended D*C '09 this past Labor Day weekend. It's perhaps inaccurate to say that I am 'reviewing' the con; I imagine that conventions can be good or bad, but it's a very subjective thing, wo individual mileage may vary. Owing to its geographical closeness, the relatively low cost of attending, and the fact that we can save even more on the fact that we can and will cram 6-8 people in one hotel room, this is really the only convention I've ever attended (six years running). Hope to attend others in the future, but that's another post.

Okay, first off, the bad things about DC09. One, the major star attraction panels
(Adam Savage, William Shatner & Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, etc.) were virtually impossible to actually attend, due to the number of people who showed up to those panels. In fairness, especially for the Kirk/Spock panel, there might not have been enough room if the panel had been held inside the Georgia Dome, but that's another story. And two, I now have a light flu. Not much can be done about that, but the super-panels were aired on the convention's special TV network broadcasts, so that works.

Okay, now that's out of the way, on to the good stuff. Some of this is difficult to properly explain, because some of them are in-jokes or 'you had to be there' moments. An example of inexplicable awesome that I can offer is that, last year, George Takei (Hikaru Sulu from the original Star Trek series/movies, for those who don't know) was heading for a panel he was the guest of, and was coming off the elevator in the... Sheraton, I think it was. And, because the con has the effect of making its attendees a little worn out, I didn't quite notice him until we were about to collide. Now, I'm a big guy, nearly six feet, ~300 pounds, reasonably fit despite the weight, and I can throw my weight around when I need to. And Takei, who is more than a head shorter than I am and at best a little over half my size, would have run me over, if I hadn't suddenly come to my senses and gotten the heck out of the way. That was actually pretty damn cool.

I myself didn't have as many milestone memories this year as previous ones, at least not directly con-related ones. We did attend the Georgia Aquarium the day before con, and that was serious geek-level awesome. The relationship between Shatner and Nimoy from the DCTV broadcast put me in mind of an old married couple, or possibly two aging brothers who still engage in friendly one-up-manship contests. My friend and roommate put together an excellent costume for the con of a Sigmarite Witch Hunter from the Warhammer Fantasy games, and got compliments on it from Bruce Boxleitner (Tron, Babylon 5), Ben Browder (Farscape, Stargate SG1), and Alan Ruck (Twister, Spin City). Another friend, who did a Seventh Doctor costume (Sylvester McCoy, Doctor Who), was actually mistaken for the actor by a few people, testament to the detail he put into it and the skill with which he is able to imitate his mannerisms and speech. At the Tolkien track's major concert and costume contest, most of my group were recognized by the concert's band (Emerald Rose), since the Evening at Bree concert is now something of tradition for us, and because we are friendly and outgoing towards the band members. The convention held a Guinness World Record attempt for the Largest Number of People to Perform 'Thriller' In One Place; final submitted tally was 903 dancers, a number which I understand was limited down from the more than two thousand con-goers who showed up to the event, because the room it was held in could only hold one thousand and the fire marshal was understandably concerned about safety. So far as I know, Guinness has not revealed an official tally, but I will update this as soon as I know.

This is only a small inkling of the things that can happen at a con, and specifically at DC. I encourage readers to attend this coming year. Details for Dragon*Con (including past guest lists) can be found at www.dragoncon.org. The con is held on Labor Day weekend each year in Atlanta, GA. I expect to see you all there.

When I was twelve, I saw a report of an escaped convict from a nearby prison on TV. I was scared, so I decided to make a home security system.

I disassembled an old R/C car, unwound the copper wiring from its electromagnet in the motor, wove the wire into a kind of a net at just below knee height through a lot of my bedroom, and then tied off the ends to the prongs of the power adapter for the car's battery charger, and plugged it into the wall.

This caused a high-pitched whine to come from the wall, so I immediately unplugged it. Then I waited about twenty minutes to hopefully let the charge in the wire dissipate. Apparently, it wasn't enough. Because of the thinness of the wire and the charge it still had in it, the wire ended up demonstrating the properties of a high frequency blade, and when I touched it with my fingertip, my finger actually started to pass straight through it, because it was cutting through the skin. Thankfully, it was also hot enough to instantly cauterize the wound when I pulled my finger away.

Proof that you need to be really smart to be able to do something intensely, incredibly stupid.

In the comedic vein of Jonathan Coulton's re: Your Brains, Cruel Cruel Moon is about what happens to a couple in love when one of them turns into a werewolf. Video done using machinima of World of Warcraft.

It occurs to me that I haven't reviewed anything particularly bad on RSR yet. Well, you're all in for a treat, ain't'cha? Insaneo Royale represents the work of at least nine writers (if the IMDb trivia is to be believed, it may have been more than twenty) and six directors. Having seen the film, I could believe without qualification that each individual line of dialogue was written by a different person, with no knowledge of the circumstances in which it might be delivered, with each camera cut being handled by an entirely new film crew. It is that incoherent, that bizarre, disjointed, unappealing, and absolutely nuts. Unfortunately for the film, were that true, it would have made for an interesting movie (if only as a study on how not to do it), and Casino Royale with Cheese is anything but that; truth is that it manages somehow to incorporate everything but a prolonged interest, unless you count its train-wreck-fascination and the amount of debate a team of archaeologists might have discussing what in gods' name happened to this film. The movie is like what would happen if someone put Benny Hill in charge of a major studio project, and didn't check up on him. I can't describe the things I saw in this movie, because anything I choose to describe might sound worth watching on its own, and the last thing I want you to think is that you should go and see for yourself. My advice is to run. Run far and long and way away from this thing. That is, if you actually find the thing.

As is certainly no secret to my friends, and may have been intimated by those who read this, I like Daft Punk. I like electronica and techno in general, with a few artists standing out as favorites to me (DJ GT, Paul Van Dyk, iio, Gabriel & Dresden, to name but a few), and DP is among them. That said, I'm not yet entirely sure how I feel about this thing that I just stumbled upon.

Da Chip is an album's worth of remixed Daft Punk tracks, using chiptunes-based instruments. For the uninitiated, chiptunes are the instruments used in playing the music you'd hear coming out of, say, an 8-bit NES, SNES, or Sega Genesis. This is weird to me, because I'm usually listening to old 8-bit era music rearranged to sound like modern high-quality music, electronica or no. This is the exact opposite, modern music remixed to sound like it was made in the 80s for Final Fantasy 1 or Mega Man. And that's kinda messing with my perceptions a bit.

My personal odd (and minor) discomfort aside, it's creative, and it's good. Taken in the possible context of being the soundtrack for some undiscovered NES game, it's the kind of thing that you might find yourself wondering about what kind of game it is or where each song fit in. Outside of that context, though, it's a remix of Daft Punk, and while that's precisely what I ended up asking for in the comments section of my last DP review, I certainly wasn't expecting this.

I'm just still in a kind of shock about the idea of deliberately making music sound like it came out of one of those old grey NES cartridges. Anyway, the album can be found here. Thanks go to docrailgun for pointing this out.

Just found this site. Create a virtual paper snowflake. Very pretty and relaxing.

OMG THE INSANITY THE HORROR THE okay I'm done now.

Zardoz is a film that cannot be viewed; it inflicts itself on unwary passers-by. It is beyond criticism; it would be like telling the weather what you think of it. I normally abhor spoilers, but I feel that I would be doing you, the reader, a tremendous public service by removing any reason (aside from possibly gaining some understanding of the level of insanity a cultist of Cthulhu might experience) you might have to see it. Seeing as these two are somewhat at odds, I'll compromise with myself and tell you: Do not, under any circumstances, watch this film alone. You will want with you as many friends that you trust to make fun of a movie that deserves it as you can.

The film opens with exposition. A film that begins by explaining events that have not yet happened usually means that, even with the explanation, you aren't going to understand a thing that happens, and this is no exception. We then see a giant flying stone head that looks like it belongs in Wes Craven's Attack of the Moai or something, which lands, proclaims that the penis is evil, and then vomits guns and ammo. I swear, I am not making this up. Sean Connery climbs in and kills the pilot for no adequately explained reason, and somehow manages to safely land the flying head, despite having no prior granite-airplane-flying experience. At this point, we learn several things.
1) John Boorman's entire personal drug refinery was used as an extended on-location set, and possibly as payment to the actors while they were present.
2) Nobody, not the actors, the writer, nor the audience, has a clue what's going on here.
3) My popcorn is getting cold.

The inhabitants of the stone-head-landing facility are all immortal, and have grown corrupt and bored. They study Connery and interrogate him and attempt to sexually arouse him by forcing him to watch porn. Then they accuse him of being evil, try to kill him, and then allow him to try to bring death back to them. He succeeds, they die, and he and the immortal he fell in love with go off and live the rest of their lives sitting in place in a cave after they have a kid. The End.

This movie was the last in a trio of inexplicably bizarre movies I watched in a row, which included Hudson Hawk and Speed Racer. I feel fortunate that the relative insanity of Hudson Hawk and the acid trip of special effects that is Speed Racer managed to cushion my brain from this film. If I hadn't watched them first, well... I might not be alive to tell you about it.

So, this officially marks the absolute most recent thing I've done, since this movie released in the US less than fourteen hours ago. That actually makes this RSR just a little less random than usual, but I'll try to add some extra to make up for it.

Warning, this will contain spoilers, inasmuch as a review movie based on a book released four or five years ago that's probably been read by everyone and their homework-eating dogs can contain a spoiler, but I mention it anyway on the off chance that I'm somehow popping up on Google and someone who has been living under a rock searched for info of HP for the first time and my review pops up in front of people like Ebert or the Times or whatever. If you are that person, then gods bless you. So, if you've read the book, but not seen the movie, and don't want spoilers, go watch the movie. If you haven't read the book and haven't seen the movie, and don't want spoilers, get out of here and go read the book, and contact your realtor for options outside of the underside-of-rocks neighborhoods, it'll do you good. If you've seen the movie, or don't care about spoilers, ( then read on... )

Croissants.

Oh, and Eddie Izzard. He's British, I know, but by his own admission he's also French by descent.

Via remus_shepherd, via MetaFilter.

It turns out that a Russian spy satellite has found evidence that Michael Jackson was killed by an EMP-weapon, fired by another satellite operated by the CIA, which is capable of causing heart attacks in individuals, but only when it is not in use as a country-wide mind control beam. The reason for this assassination was so that Jackson would not be able to use his upcoming world tour as a soapbox to tell people the truth; that is, that there is an engineered pandemic in the soon-to-be-released swine flu vaccine, that the swine flu is actually a weaponized variant of the 1918 Spanish pandemic flu, and that the engineered pandemic's goal is to reduce the global population by more than half.


Aaaaaand I used up all of my tinfoil just to type this. Talk to you all later.

*gets zapped*

( Cut for embedded YT video... )

The Last Dragon is a fun little farce, a martial arts movie set in New York City. It is an extremely eighties' movie, as can be told from the Venetian sunglasses, the clothing, the music, and, oh yeah, the female lead hosting a music revue/disco/TV show (think Soul Train, but not very good). The main character, Leroy Green (sometimes called 'Bruce Leroy' by others) is a martial artist who is trying to reach 'The Final Level', and achieve 'the Glow', a technique so powerful that the user's body actually glows. Along the way, he'll have to deal with the fact that he pretty much embodies a Bruce Lee character, but he's in 1980's New York instead of, you know, actually being on film. This includes facing an evil (we know he's evil, because he's not the main character, and because he acts evil) martial artist/gang leader named "Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem", which should tell you everything you need to know about this movie. Sho'nuff wants Leroy to fight him, but Leroy (being wise and spiritual and stuff) does not wish to fight anyone. No points by guessing what comes of this portion of the plot. There's also a thing where a self-styled media mogul tries repeatedly to kidnap the female lead and force her to air music (and videos) made by his fiancee (who can neither sing nor dance very well) so that he can... I dunno, take over the world, I guess.

I could talk about the plot, but it's a martial arts movie, styled after pretty much every Bruce Lee film ever made. At first glance, it looks like it's trying to be too many movies at once, but the various plot threads resolve themselves into one reasonably-well-put-together string of events late into the film. There is no reason I can give you to watch this movie if you are looking for a deep, enriching experience, but if you're looking for a laugh and some action, I have a reason for you to watch this, and that is that this movie has a character named 'Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem'. If you can't get a giggle out of imagining a concept like that, then I can't help you.

The main reason I chose this as my review this week, though, is not the movie itself, but the fact that it is being remade (it is in early development as I write this). They do not appear to have much set in stone yet, but the following two tidbits were of interest: The remake will be directed by rapper RZA (of Wu-Tang and Kill Bill fame), and Samuel L. Jackson has been pegged as the role of Sho'Nuff. I offer you the following video, and try to, for a moment, imagine Jackson delivering these lines...



You're welcome.

( Background info for my characters... )
EDIT: Added info for Shiftweave clothing for all five outfits.

While piecing together my characters for our gaming group's upcoming 4e Eberron campaign, the following random musings occurred to me.

My changeling rogue is probably going to own more clothes than I do, and have more alts than an average AOL chat-troll.

Do changelings ever suffer from MPD or schizophrenia, or do they get a racial bonus to sanity checks?

Could a shifter, or another race with a strong sense of smell, detect a changeling in disguise by scent?

With the way Eberron makes magic commonplace, I'm wondering how the spell 'feather fall' might be adapted to fire rescue. Sustain a field of Feather fall, people jump from a burning building, and are nonlethally decelerated before they hit the ground. Also good to apply to a bar's front window in Sharn, in case of accidental defenestration near a sudden drop.

I can't remember if 3.5 Eberron covered this or not, but the dragonmarks and the powers they represent seem only to cover arcane magic, and therefore arcane magic is largely commonplace. However, there is no mention (that I am immediately aware of) of divine magic coming to the forefront in the same manner.

Outlaw Star is an interesting anime series, in the space-western genre that also includes series like Cowboy Bebop and Firefly, though in the opposite direction; where the latter are character-driven dramatic stories with some action thrown in for good measure, Outlaw Star is a fast-paced, action-driven story with some drama tossed in to liven things up. This is not to say that it's bad; it's very enjoyable, in fact, but don't expect the same thought-provoking character development that you may have seen elsewhere. The series really takes the genre to heart in its layout, though... ships have arms which hold guns and knives and shoot/stab them at other ships (or just punch the otheer ship in its face), the characters are suitably over-the-top actiony personas with suitably-over-the-top names, and the villains are made even more so due to their access of physics-altering magical abilities that make them more than a match for the average individual. The series follows Gene Starwind, a self-proclaimed Outlaw (someone who follows his own motivations) and a motley crew of allies seeking the Galactic Leyline, an unlimited cosmic energy source that supposedly can grant the wishes of thosw who find it, and also keeping it out of the hands of the Kei Pirates, who serve as the series villains.

As I mentioned, the series is more action-oriented than dramatic, but that's not to say it doesn't grapple with some interesting concepts. One of the main characters, Melfina, frequently struggles with the fact that she is an engineered lifeform specifically created for the task of navigating a ship to the Leyline, and how to live her own life with her own choices away from that. Gene, arguably the lead role, struggles with space sickness in early episodes, brought on by memories of his childhood in which his father was killed by pirates during Gene's first trip into space. Aisha, a member of an alien pseudo-lycanthropic felinoid species (supplying the series' catgirl quotient) has to deal with the problems arising from being dismissed dishonorably from her first military posting, and as punishment tasked with remaining on a space station-asteroid in the middle of frozen nowhere in space, and er attempts to redeem herself. On the surface, the series looks like it's just going to be the anime equivalent of a shoot-em-up movie, but has surprising depth.

Adding to this depth is the presence of three groups of individuals divided by their motivations, magic-using space pirates and guns that fire spell-infused shells, assassins who kill with wooden swords, a pair of Outlaw brothers who seem to have their own agenda (epecially Harry, he seriously creeps me out), and a recurring support character who is gay and appears to be into both of the main male characters. This last part is a bit surprising to me because a) this series got on Cartoon Network with that present, and b) one of the two main male characters is eleven. I could comment on that in many ways, but any comment I could make pales in comparison to restating the fact that he's eleven!

Anyway, good series.

I've been trying to collect the complete Japanese run of Iron Chef for some time, and while I'm still well short of my goal (about 160 episodes out of a total of 300-and-change), I've got enough now that I can begin to appreciate again just how varied and fascinating a show it really is.
For those unaware, Iron Chef is a Japanese TV series in which an invited challenger chef is called forth to Kitchen Stadium, a massive 'cooking arena' to do battle with one of Chairman Kaga's specially chosen 'invincible men of culinary skill', the Iron Chefs. I'm not exaggerating, by the way, this is taken from the show's introduction. The challenger and the selected Iron Chef (of which there are four, each representing a style of cooking (French, Japanese, Chinese, and later Italian) must offer their best and most original takes on a selected 'secret ingredient', which might be something simple like beef or chicken, something a bit unusual like bell pepper or curry spices (unusual as a main ingredient), or something completely outlandish, at least by our standards, like monkfish or cod roe (fish eggs).
The dishes they end up making tend to sound like they would be unappetizing, but then you get a good look at them, and you realize that this is good food. And suddenly you start watching because you're wondering 'What can they possibly make that weirder than trout-flavored ice cream?' And then you're hooked.

A few quick factoids about the series:
The total ingredients bill for the series (six seasons' worth) was close to $8 million. This is to say nothing of the outlandish examples of mens' formal attire that the host, Chairman Takeshi Kaga, was outfitted with on a weekly basis.
Among the guests invited to the show to taste and judge on the show include such Western notables as actor/martial artist Jackie Chan, actress Julie Dreyfus (who apparently speaks fluent French and Japanese), and video game designer Shigesato Itoi.
Only one American challenger was able to defeat an Iron Chef.