Beautiful Watchmen photo gallery

I WAS a relative latecomer to Watchmen - I first read it three years ago - but I love it like no other.

The richness and depth of the storytelling and characterisation by Alan Moore, the efficiency and crispness of Dave Gibbons' artwork - it left me spellbound then and does the same now whenever I return to the graphic novel (which is often).

So I have stayed away from putting too much on here about the film because I thought it was bound to be terrible, some Hollywood abortion that will take the source material and piss all over it (c. A Moore)

But .... but .....

The people behind it have been bang on the money so far in the way they have drawn the wider community into the making of the film and nailed the look of the graphic novel.

That feeling grew this morning when I saw these pictures on IO9. Click through for the full gallery.

Damn they look awesome, especially in black and white.

They were taken by Clay Eno for his book Watchmen Portraits, a behind the scenes look at the fim and the characters. Clay also recreated the Minutemen picture and did other photo work for the film.

Of course, that doesn't mean the film will be any good, but I have much more hope now than I did.

I'm now in the will definitely see it camp, instead of the it's bound to be shit gang.

Buck Rogers disco dances - great sci-fi moments number one

BUCK Rogers was one of my favourite shows when I was younger - mainly because he hung around with some hot future babes in the form of Wilma Deering and Princess Ardala.

In the surprisingly few shows that were filmed (best titles included Space Vampire, Planet of the Amazon Women and Space Rockers), that love triangle was never better expressed than in this landmark scene in the opening episodes.

Have a look at this golden moment where Buck grows tired of future dancing and convinces the orchestra to get down. The embed code is disabled, but click here to watch it.

Never mind the fact that the conductor instantly understands what Buck means from the most vague of instructions, or that Gil Gerard is to dancing what I am to Lithuanian basket weaving. Or that prior to this scene, Twiki gave Buck what is effectively a date rape drug that he uses later to knock out the princess.

When I was a young boy, this was the height of cool sophistication.

And I dreamed, like Buck, of having to choose between the smokin hot Princess or buttoned up and sexually repressed Wilma.

A difficult choice to be sure, but I think Wilma would have won out for me. Why? Well, with Wilma, there's always the chance to release the volcanic passion smouldering beneath that dress uniform. (which incidentally showed in episode after episode that clothing technology had not advanced sufficiently in 500 years to disguise one of the most pronounced camel toes I have ever seen)

By contrast, with Ardala what you see is what you get, she seems incredibly needy, and plus you'd always have to come up with more plots to take over Earth, and who wants that?

Still, it would be fun while it lasted, and something to tell your mates about.

As I said in the title, this is number one in a series of great sci-fi moments, picked for no other reason that they resonated with me at some point in my life. I'll put more up as and when, but please fell free to suggest your own for me to include.

Watchmen Widget

The Mirrored Heavens come to earth

A WHILE back I read a book called the Mirrored Heavens, which I thought was really cool and said so on my blog.

Anyway, the book is out now as a mass market paperback, so I thought I'd give it another plug by posting this interview with the author, David Williams. If you want, you can buy the book here. I would recommend it as a cracking techno / cyberpunk thriller.

Tell us a little about MIRRORED HEAVENS.

My agent sold it as “John LeCarre on SF crack”; I’ve never managed to get my hands on any such drug, but I suspect if one took it one would see visions of spaceplane hijacks and maglev train chases while various spies, handlers, and agents ran desperate missions and double-crossed/triple-crossed each other.

Who are your antagonists?

The mysterious terrorist group Autumn Rain. They blow up the world’s space elevator about ten minutes into the book, and vow that further strikes are imminent. It becomes evident pretty quickly that their real goal is to infiltrate the U.S. government, replace the president, and give orders in his name: i.e., they’re takeover artists. Someone's gotta stop them, and that leads us to…

Who are your protagonists?

It’s complicated:

• Claire Haskell, the data-thief who gets reunited with wet-ops specialist Jason Marlowe, her first love—even as both of them start to suspect that their spymasters are manipulating their memories for reasons unknown…
• Strom Carson, the operative assigned to hunt down his onetime mentor, Leo Sarmax, a legendary assassin believed to be in league with Autumn Rain and last seen on the Moon, deep in the wastelands of the lunar South Pole mountains.
• Lyle Spencer, the mercenary who escapes from the ultimate prison with the secret of the Rain and a price on his head.

Who’s your biggest inspiration?

That’s easy. Judge Dredd. I grew up on him: not the lame-ass Sylvester Stallone version, but the original, cool-as-hell British comic icon. Dredd took on everybody from aliens to the mafia, dispensing deadpan witticisms while he was doing it. Little did I know, but he was also teaching me how to write SF the whole time…

What are you working on right now?

Well, I’ve been finetuning my website at www.autumnrain2110.com, which features all sorts of cool geopolitical and military data about the world of the early 22nd century. And I’ve turned in the sequel THE BURNING SKIES to Bantam, so now it’s on to the last book of the trilogy. Which is a very weird feeling…

Christian Bale's Terminator Salvation rant - stay off the fucking set man!

ANYONE who follows film in any way knows how intense Christian Bale can be.

He takes method to a whole new level, like when he lost all that weight for the Machinist, or bulked up for Batman.

But on the set of Terminator Salvation he outdoes himself when some poor bastard had the temerity to get into his eyeline on set while he was doing his job.

Listen to it here.

It's not just the sheer intensity of the bollocking, it's the length of it - he is unhappy and lets the Director of Photography know it again and again.

I love the moment his voice breaks at the start, how his accent veers from American to British, and when he says that we're done professionally. Brilliant!

The lesson being, don't get in his eyeline.

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Check out this wordle cloud of the rant