Skulls in the Stars

Through watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I’ve learned that today is Patrick McGoohan’s birthday!  If you don’t know McGoohan, you should: he was the star and one of the driving forces behind The Prisoner television series, arguably the best and most challenging television series in history.  The Prisoner is a series about a retired secret agent (”Number 6″) struggling to maintain his identity after being abducted to a mysterious prison for spies called “The Village.”  Before The Prisoner, McGoohan played agent John Drake in the Bond-esque spy thriller Danger Man aka Secret Agent Man (I can play and sing a pretty darn good Secret Agent Man theme).  He has also appeared in countless other movies, notably (to me, at least) as the warden in Escape From Alcatraz, sinister art dealer Roger Devereau in the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy Silver Streak, and King Edward I in Braveheart.

Happy birthday to Patrick McGoohan!  Be seeing you!

Still some light posting this weekend, as I’m in the house-buying mode. Something I came across recently, which is a little old but entertaining: an enterprising Norwegian teenager has been recreating, with stop-motion animation and Legos, the entire first Half-Life video game! He’s up to seven parts so far, and they get increasingly entertaining. The video of part 1 is linked below the fold:

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I don’t want to get carried away with entertainment birthday posts, but I can’t miss the opportunity to give birthday wishes to a man who has cemented his reputation in action, comedy and horror… simultaneously in only two films!  Happy birthday to Simon Pegg!

Pegg has been acting for years but his true international breakout role was in Shaun of the Dead, the magnificent zombie comedy that he starred in and co-wrote.   This role is beloved among horror fans and has earned cameos for Pegg in Grindhouse and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, as well as Romero’s upcoming film Diary of the Dead.

One could hardly imagine anything better than ‘Shaun’, but then Pegg’s next acting/writing achievement is a parody of action and horror films, Hot Fuzz, which may even be better than ‘Shaun’!  (Any film which brings together Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, and Edward Woodward is pretty much by definition great.)

Look for Pegg in the upcoming Star Trek film as a young Scotty, as well!  So happy birthday to Simon Pegg!

On a completely unrelated note, if you haven’t seen it yet, the trailer for the new Indiana Jones film has been released on YouTube, and it looks pretty darn entertaining.  I embed the clip below the fold…

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A bit of sad news, this morning: actor Roy Scheider has died at 75.  Scheider had an impressive television and film career, which included two Oscar nominations.  One of these nominations was for The French Connection, the magnificent crime thriller which basically invented the modern movie car chase.  Scheider also had turns in a number of other thrillers, including Marathon Man (”Is it safe?”),  Blue Thunder, The Punisher, and The Rainmaker, to name a few.  He played a magnificently amoral Russian mob boss on the television series Third Watch.  He also made his mark on the science fiction genre, starring in 2010 and in the short-lived but enjoyable television series SeaQuest DSV.

As far as aquatic adventures go, however, Scheider will be remembered most for his role as police chief and aquaphobe Martin Brody in the amazing Jaws.  He gave Brody a funny and human side that made the movie touching and all the more tense because you cared about the characters.  Scheider’s strength even made the inferior Jaws II a watchable film.

He will be missed…

One of my vices, if you would call it that, is an endless desire to make ‘top ten’ lists of things. Or top eight, or six… whatever I can find! I’m a lot like John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity (including the history of relationship troubles).

Anyway, today I’ve had video game villains on my mind. I thought I’d make a list of some of my favorite video game villains. My favorites include those with great personalities, those who scared the hell out of me, and those who just kick ass! My list below the fold. Some minor spoilers are involved, so if you’re planning to play the game mentioned, you may want to skip that description…

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CNN reminded me that the comic series Y: The Last Man is coming to an end; the final issue is released this week. For those not in the know, Y is the story of a plague that wipes out, in a heartbeat, all male mammals on Earth: with the exception of one young man named Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand. Faced with a world in chaos completely run by women (note: the chaos comes from 3 billion people dying, not from the fact that the world is run by women; don’t write me angry comments), Yorick ventures out in search of his girlfriend, who was in Australia at the time of the ‘event’. Though it may sound like an opportunity for cheesy and wacky sexual hijinks, the story is actually quite serious and at times downright poetic. A few images and metaphors over the course of the series have blown my mind, as have a number of the plot twists. Unlike many, many comic series, Y is a story completely thought out: the issues I’ve read so far (up through #5 carried with them implications and consequences that were initiated all the way in issue #1.

It’s worth mentioning that CNN also reports that Brian K. Vaughn, the writer of Y, is now writing for Lost, whose season premiere is tonight. Knowing that Brian is penning some of the stories makes me eager to watch the show again!

Update: Whoops, the season premiere of Lost is tomorrow night; tonight is apparently the last season’s finale again.

Thanks to the ’shaky-cam’ filming method of Cloverfield, apparently a significant number of viewers have been getting sick during the film:

Scary movies are supposed to leave patrons feeling a bit scared and jittery, but the newest horror flick is leaving Oklahoma City-area moviegoers with a different feeling — nausea.

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Some moviegoers across Oklahoma City have gone so far to complain to theater managers, forcing some to refund tickets or offer other compensation.

“I heard a few people kind of whining about it,” said moviegoer Thomas Dozier. “They were talking about, like, ‘I have got to get out of here.’ Everyone around me was freaking out.”

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But for those with a sensitive stomach, precautions might be warranted.”Take Dramamine, and you’ll be fine,” said Hastings.

Here’s an even easier bit of advice for queasy Cloverfield  viewers: close your eyes.  You’re not actually moving while the movie is playing, unlike on a roller coaster, so you can simply shut your eyes for a few moments during a slow spot in the film to let your brain settle down.  This is the same advice you’ll get on many virtual reality rides at amusement parks.

The girlfriend and I just got back a little while ago from seeing Cloverfield and, this being a horror blog among other things, I thought I would give my impressions of the film (along with probably half the blogosphere).

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Most of my flights around the country are rather dull, if not genuinely unpleasant.  On the flight back from San Antonio, though, I ended up having a conversation with my row-mates, one of whom is a charming young woman and excellent musician named Jeanette Hawkins!

She credits as her musical influences Sublime, No Doubt, Bob Marley, The Carpenters, though her sound is all her own (as are her songs, which are original compositions).  Her sound is somewhat folksy, and is primarily her vocals backed by her acoustic guitar playing.  If that sounds interesting, you can check out her MySpace page at this link.

I of course normally don’t do musical posts, but this may be my only chance to look back in the future and say,  “I met her when…” 

One of the nice Christmas gift surprises this past year was a pair of books from my girlfriend’s sister!  (Thanks!) Both books deal with the physics of Hollywood movies, though from slightly different points of view:  Don’t Try This At Home, by Adam Weiner, and Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, by Tom Rogers.  Both books are quite recent publications (late 2007), and cover quite recent movies.  I give a brief description of each beneath the fold…

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