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The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film

Screenhead presents The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film and then proceeds to explain how they might after all be filmed and which film director might be best suited to the task.

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Comics Uncategorized

Tell me about the rabbits, George!

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The Google’s Garden

FAR! FAR away, the Google lives, in a land which only children can go to. It is a wonderful land of funny flowers, and birds, and hills of pure white heather.

Google wants people to stop googling or at least stop using the term googling as they view it as diluting their trademark much in the same as what has happened in the past to Xerox and Hoover.

However it would appear that not only have people been googling long before the search engine was even a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but the Google also has existed for a long long time as well, in The Google Book by V. C. Vickers. [via]

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Security Uncategorized

goodthinkful

I think Bruce Schneier’s right on the money when he calls this Opinion Monitoring Software Orwellian.

It’s like the sort of thing you can imagine a nascent Ministry of Truth using to separate the goodthinkers from the crimethinkers.

It starts out well enough and sounds like a useful tool to track world opinion on the US and its government’s policies and as result make the US a more responsible player on the world stage.

A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a “sentiment analysis” is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.

But like any tool there is scope for misuse of the technology should the research into it actually bear fruit in this case.

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Reviews TV

Crouch End

I’ve never been to Crouch End but I can say for sure that it doesn’t look anything the hell like it is depicted in the television adaptation of the Stephen King story of the same name.

It was a decent enough Lovecraftian horror story but the location made it nigh on unwatchable as it was so obviously an American town with a few added details like a red phone box (can’t recall the last time I saw one of those outside of a US movie or television show lamely trying to make somewhere look like Britain).

For a better view of the real Crouch End I’d recommend watching Shaun of the Dead, a great movie and apparently it was filmed in Crouch End. Alternatively you could go on a virtual tour of Crouch End with views from the base of the real clock tower there.

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I’ll eat you up, I love you so…

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak was one of my favourite books as a young child if not my very favourite.

I readily identified with Max and his wolf costume, and the wild things themselves were fascinating and a little scary.

“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws”.

I’ve discovered that this children’s classic is to be made into a motion picture and will be directed by Spike Jonze. Perfect.

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Monster Island

I just got through reading the novel Monster Island by David Wellington and thought it was pretty damn good for a first novel.

There’s a bit of a zombie zeitgeist at the moment and though I’m a fan of the genre this is the first zombie novel I’ve read, I’m not even sure if there are any others. The novel does give the typical zombie story a wider scope than you get in a movie much in the same way as the events in the excellent The Walking Dead comic series written by Robert Kirkman does.

Basically civilisation has collapsed and the Earth seems to be overrun with zombies. Ironically states like Somaliland which were unstable and ungoverned are now the most stable places on the planet. Dekalb an American UN weapons inspector is captured by a female Somali warlord and despatched to New York (the monster island of the title) with a troop of Somali girl soldiers to retrieve much need medical supplies from the UN headquarters there.

In addition to your standard zombie fare there are a number of new ideas and expansions on the basic themes particularly in the case of the character of Gary, a zombie that has managed to retain his human faculties and intelligence.

I first learnt of the novel due to David Wellington’s website on which he publishes his work chapter by chapter in a blog-like format that readers can read entirely for free. I read much of Monster Island there before buying the novel and as I couldn’t wait I have already started reading the sequel Monster Nation online and will no doubt start on Monster Planet the final part of the trilogy in short order.

I’m convinced that publishing like this online or like Scott Sigler who records podcast audiobooks of his own work is the future and more and more writers will adopt it as a way to promote their work and interact with their readers.

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Comics Copyright Uncategorized

Alan Moore’s Lost Girls

Alan Moore writer of seminal graphic novels Watchmen and From Hell faces controversy and accusations of copyright infringement over his latest work Lost Girls.

Moore not only faces criticism for the pornographic content of the graphic novel but also because Great Ormond Street Hospital maintains that it holds the copyright for the character of Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, who is one of the main charcters in Lost Girls.

But is Peter Pan in the public domain and if it isn’t are the characters copyrighted. Never Neverland: Peter Pan and perpetual copyright

Alan Moore discusses Lost Girls and the issues surrounding it in this BBC Radio interview.

Neil Gaiman has written in his online journal about Lost Girls.

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China bans Da vinci Code

According to BBC News the movie The Da Vinci Code has been withdrawn from cinemas in China.

Officials in the country said the move was to make way for local Chinese films to be shown during the peak summer viewing period.

But others say the ban may have been implemented because of the religious content of the film.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing said there had been speculation that the film was proving too popular with Chinese Christians.

Bizarre that a movie that has been attacked by Christians in the West is banned by China because it is too popular with Christians.

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Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book

I just bought the book Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book by Robert Hamburger.

Book Description
Dear Stupid Idiots,

A lot of you have been saying that I don’t know anything about REAL ninjas. But that’s a bunch of bull crap! You dummies don’t know anything. And maybe YOU should get a life. I bet a lot of you have never even seen a girl naked! You idiots believe that ninjas had some “code of honor.” Yeah right! If by “code of honor,” you mean “code to flip out and go nuts for absolutely no reason at all even if it means that people might think you are totally insane or sweet,” then you are right. But if you mean a “code to be nice and speak nicely while sharing and not cutting off heads,” then you’re the biggest idiot ever!!!!!! So if you have any brains, you will shut up and get a life. So go shut up, you stupid idiot.

No thank you,

Robert Hamburger

Anyone who knows anything about ninjas knows that this book is totally sweet. And by sweet I mean awesome. I shall read it immediately.

Edit: 20:43:37 22/04/06 I have read it and it is indeed sweet.