Rise

Mirror Obscura

Bent-con

Soles

Bond 23 becomes 'SKYFALL'

 

Skyfall will be the name of the twenty-third James Bond movie, which begins filming this week in London, with other location shoots that include Shanghai, China, Istanbul, Turkey and Scotland. Legendary Pinewood Studios will also be used for certain interior sets.

Director Sam Mendes, along with cast members Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Javier Bardem  Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe, were introduced to the press by producer’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson on November 3. Due to scheduling conflicts, other cast members Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney were not at the press conference. Mendes noted this, and was unwilling to say what their roles were in the film.

Meanwhile, Mendes praises the script by John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. But all that’s been released about the plot of the film is that “James Bond’s loyalty to M comes into question when MI6 is attacked. Bond must seek out and eliminate the threat while dealing with the consequences of M’s past actions.”


The other thing confirmed is that Skyfall is not a direct follow-up to Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace, which could now free the creative team to return the film series to its stand-alone roots.Still, I wonder if there will be any carry overs from the two films, insomuch as the mysterious organization known as Quantum -which is the replacement for early Bond villain organization, SPECTRE. Rumors have circulated that Bond will encounter Ernst Stavro Blofeld, most likely played by Fiennes.

Skyfall will have its London debut October 26, 2012 and will be released in the United States on November 9, 2012.

Bikes

Artful

Displays

Relax

Pre-Halloween Fetish

Random Choices II

Random Choices

Books: The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde (2006)

Sometimes, especially in his Thursday Next series, Fforde does not explore the other characters too much. I mean, Thursday is well rounded, nearly three dimensional person, but a lot of the times, you don’t get much more than two-dimensional with the supporting ones. Ironically, in The Fourth Bear, the second novel in Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime series, he allows some of the supporting characters to move a bit forward. 

After all the glory that Jack Spratt got solving of the Humpty Dumpty murder case four months ago is now gone, a series of blunders and mishaps – the biggest being the Red Riding Hood murder investigation where a few people were eaten by the wolf – has found the NCD under the gun to be disbanded. And because of the Riding Hood case, Jack is been ordered to take a psych evaluation and some time off. Shortly after this, the sinister psychopath The Gingerbread Man has escaped from the mental asylum that Jack put him into twenty years ago, and he's going on a rampage, while a death of a reporter named Goldilocks – a huge advocate for the bear population living in the area- gives DS Mary Mary  (who finds romance with a fellow officer) a chance shine, whether she wants it or not. But a simple investigation uncovers a more sinister plot that may go high up. Also, why goes Jack keeping running into the Gingerbread Man, only to be left alive? And what do the intricacies of bear society, the illegal trafficking in black market porridge, and a theme park based on the Battle of the Somme have to do with each other?

The Fourth Bear is a stronger book than The Big Over Easy (as I’ve mentioned before about Fforde’s World Building style sometimes gets in the way of the plot), because I actually think the story is more effective. His weirdness, his silly humor, his ability to create a coherent universe that makes some sort of logical sense is what makes these books (and his Thursday Next books) a delight to read. These series of novels -what makes a good writer, I think- allows Fforde to let his imagination run wild and the reader is awarded greatly because of it.

Suicide takes another gay teen

It can be said that prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition. Here, in Norman Oklahoma, when the city council was weighing a debate about October being Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History Month in the city -which was passed 7 to 1 in favor of it- the debate about it rose to a predictable dislike for that said group.

A 19 year-old teen named Zack Harrington was there, and he was witness to his fellow Oklahomanians illogical reasons as to why this was a bad idea. We don't have to go over the minutes, as you can read the article. But none of you will be surprised at what was said.

But for one young man, whom his sister described as a person who was "internalizing everything and analyzing everything," it was his breaking point. While the measure passed, I think he saw all the ugliness that came from adults, people who were his parents age. Like all gay youths who somehow survived the High School years, and now are trying today to tell kids who are coming out so much sooner, that it does get better, to see adults acting like this must have triggered something in Zack.

Being face-to-face with intolerance sometimes has an effect of not wanting to fight more, but perhaps to ask one self, "what's the point?"

I think young Zack, while maybe happy for the city passing the bill, felt that the struggle for acceptance, for understanding was a fight he no longer wanted to battle. I'm sad that he decided this, but in some ways even I can understand his plight. We need more people to help fight what is a good cause, and the more we end our lives, the longer the fight will take.

It seems obvious to me, as I've said before, all of us need to help one another. We cannot do this alone, and the weak, the disfranchised, the homeless, the unemployed, the gay youth of today need people to show up at their doors, talk to them on the phone and tell them again and again that life is worth living. Yes, death is a great equalizer, and no matter how rich, how poor you are, you cannot escape it. But to die for this, seems pointless and a waste.

And we all need to stop it.   

The Cast of JUDAS KISS now out on DVD

Here is the cast of JUDAS KISS, which came out on DVD today. 

Front, from L to R Julian LeBlanc, Charlie David, Julia Morizawa, Director J.T. Tepnapa, Timo Descamps, Richard Harmon, Production Unit Manager Tellier Killaby and Sean Paul Lockhart 

In the back, from L to R: Assistant to the Director David O'Neill and Executive Producer Steven Parker

Flaunting their Genetic Luck

Mike Chang

Happy Birthday to my little sister

We certainly are two people with opposite viewpoints about a lot of things. And at times, we've come to bad words and sometimes blows (when we were kids) over them.

Time has healed some, but there is obviously more time needed. I'm not sure we'll ever see eye-to-eye on most things because its hard to forget the things I've said.

No matter what, I will always love you. And while we have huge gaps of time/space between conversations now, you're still my sister. Siblings are suppose to get along, I guess, but I believe that not always to be true. I suppose will have to have simple, imperfect one.

Happy Birthday.

This Year

I broke free on a saturday morning
I put the pedal to the floor
headed north on mills avenue
and listened to the engine roar

my broken house behind me
and good things ahead
a girl named cathey
wants a little of my time
six cylinders underneath the hood
crashing and kicking
aha!
listen to the engine whine

i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me

i played video games in a drunken haze
i was seventeen years young
hurt my knuckles punching the machines
the taste of scotch rich on my tongue

and then cathey showed up
and we hung out
trading swigs from a bottle
all bitter and clean
locking eyes
holding hands
twin high maintenance machines

i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me

i drove home in the califonia dusk
i could feel the alcohol inside of me
hum pictured the look on my stepfather's face
ready for the bad things to come

i down shifted
as i pulled into the driveway
the motor screaming out
stuck in second gear
the scene ends badly
as you might imagine
in a cavalcade of anger and fear

there will be feasting
and dancing
in Jerusalem next year

i am going to make it through this year
if it kills me
i am going to make it though this year
if it kills me

Books: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (2010)

Taking a page from 1984 and other dystopian novels, Jasper Fforde creates a horrid English future, but without the usual tropes of the genre such as storm troopers, surveillance robots, or a super-computer. What time in the future this new series is set is not fully revealed, but Fforde does give hints, suggesting that (from my point of view) its somewhere in the late 24th or early 25th Century. History is relegated to a centuries-ago "Previous," which came to an abrupt end by "Something That Happened."

In Shades of Grey we are introduced to the citizens of Chromatacia who are layered by color, which are funneled and continually adjusted by underground pipes that also maintain the greener than green parks and brightly hued storefronts of a society whose leader, the axiom-prone Munsell, may or may not exist. Chromatacia has a sort of Boy Scout way of doing things insomuch as merits are given out for good behavior and keeping the status quo. Demerits are given for some of the smallest infractions, and they come with instructions on how humility is better. Humility keeps people from asking too many questions and thus keeps it populace busy doing pointless tasks. At the top are the arrogant Yellows and the bottom is the Greys, who are treated with a sort of respect (because “rules are rules,”) but are treated like cheap labor –which is a problem, as there seems to be a labor shortage going on. What we have in between is an assortment of color-coded middles with Last Names right out of any paint catalog. All these middles are in an endless quest for any sort of minor upward mobility that will enhance their color. And here, you are what you see, and perception is limited by an individual's access to gradations of his own or other colors, and social order depends upon the incuriosity of its citizens from birth until they die, appropriately, of the dread disease Mildew. But like any totalitarian society, there are leaks and there are traces of that long gone society all over the place. The traces that remain of that bygone world are available to a ghostly underclass that roams free because the populace is under orders to pretend they're invisible, or to those with enhanced perception. 

Entering stage left, is 20 year-old Eddie Russett and his father into the Outer Fringe town of East Carmine. Eddie has a middling color, but he’s also gifted with a powerful ability to see more Red than he should, but he’s been sort of “exiled” here after running afoul of Prefects of his home town, Jade-Under-Lime, who did not like his idea of improving queue lines. But things go a bit out of hand almost as so as he arrives, as he discovers Jane –a Grey with an attitude who threatens to break Eddie’s jaw- who seems to hold secrets about many things. Soon Eddie discovers the leaks within Chromatacia, East Carmine and the Head Office. And his curiosity about the death of a resident and his desire to be closer to Jane may end up getting him killed as he begins to understand that all is not well.

In Shades of Grey, we see a lot of bad things happen to good people (keep in mind Spock’s saying of the “needs of the many”), and we see a creative spin on a totalitarian society by the ever clever Jasper Fforde, who also created another brilliant universe with his Thursday Next series. The one drawback to Shades of Grey is that Fforde seems to enjoy this World Building so much so, at times, it costs in the narrative flow of the book. Like the first Thursday Next book, which seemed to take forever to get going due to this, Grey suffers the same fate. Still, if you stick with it, your rewarded with Fforde’s brilliant, literate humor and supporting characters right out of a Charles Dickens novel.