I’m still working out the bugs, so if it suddenly goes wonky, let me know :)

Mostly I’m just excited about the AJAX. Which would be way more impressive if I could upload the damn image I was going to use. (upload fail :(

But, having admitted to myself that, really, I don’t have enough story yet to worry about whether reality is overtaking me, I’ve decide to start posting the story. The theory is, if it’s out there, I’ll feel guilty enough to actually get to the, y’know, plot…

The premise (or premises - like apocalypse, I’m uncertain of the plural) for Waketrailers is that if the world ends, chances are it won’t be epic, and the people who survive won’t be heroic. The waketrailers themselves are people who have always been on the edges of the action: people who know friends of friends that lead glamorous, exciting lives. But the waketrailers, who find themselves with no transferable skills for the apocalypse, aren’t any less prepared than the supposed trailblazers. Think of it as an Anti-Heroes.

Part 1 is here: Starts with a whimper. It’s a prologue, really. Plot may or may not follow…

That’s not the funny part. The funny part is, we weren’t even trying to, and we did better than most.

Where does it start? We’ve heard all the theories, we each nurture our favourite. It commonly falls between the military-industrial [The axis of counter-terror and oil, oil, oil.], and the ecological [Ice melt, water rise, wind blow. And oil, oil, oil…]

The city being what she is, we hear a lot of weight placed on local politics. But the world was ending long before we took those first faltering, Bambi-legged steps into independence. [Independence? You mean when they cut us loose?]

I place the start of the end somewhere about the 5th century BC. But then, I’m a romantic. I still don’t want to think that it was our fault. [Hah]

Because when you saw it happening, there was never any one moment, any one cause, any one instigator. There wasn’t a tipping point. And if there wasn’t a point of no return, how could we have stopped it? [No, you’re right, you couldn’t have stopped it. Doesn’t mean it’s not your fault.]

Where do I start? Not when we realised that the world was ending. And not when we just thought the world was falling apart, and that wiser souls could put it back together.

It’s like watching the controlled demolition of a building you once loved. You’re pretty sure the building could be saved, but you’re also pretty sure they should know what they’re doing. So you keep an eye on it, watch them strip out the wiring and the plumbing and the insulation, until only the shell is left. It makes you uneasy in a way you can’t define, and you think it might just be sentimentality.

It’s not until they’ve laid the charges and withdrawn to a safe distance that you realise you’re watching a live video feed, and you’re still inside the god-damned building.

I have to go back to before we started living in fear.

Oddly enough, not an entirely negative experience.

The truly excellent Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, parts of Toy Story and miscellaneous uncredited script-polishing, including Speed, and just general awesomeness), was supportive of but frustrated by the recent WGA strike, and, in his own words (via whedonesque):

I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

The result is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, due to be released in three parts over one week in July.

Here’s the Dr. Horrible trailer:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

The Internet embraced this (the internet loves Joss Whedon, and the combination of Whedon, free stuff and singing supervillains is pretty much unbeatable), and, so, about twelve hours after Act 1 was launched, the Dr. Horrible server crashed.

Hence the blind rage.

Not entirely negative, because it’s gratifying to know that the Whedonites have it in their power to cause the server collapse. And because I finally managed to watch Act 1 this morning, via a temporary site, and, yeah, worth the wait. (I’m not going to review it yet - I want to wait until all 3 acts are up)

It’s actually written by Whedon with his brothers and a sister-in-law (from which one can only determine that Ma Whedon would have been proud: more concrete evidence of this can be found in this speech given by Whedon to Equality Now):

The main site should be fully functional by now at www.drhorrible.com, with the first act up now, and the next two going online over the next few days. If the site’s crashed again, try the fan site for news. There’s also outlying areas on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace…

It’s only going to be free until 20th July - there are plans for a DVD release and so forth.

Oh, and there’s a online comic strip about Dr. Horrible’s nemisis, Captain Hammer, available from Dark Horse Comic’s Myspace page, written by one of the other Whedons, Zack.

Go! Watch! Buy T-shirt!

‘Course, the real reason I’ve failed to update the reviews is that the first thing I did on returning home was watch the penultimate episode of Doctor Who, and immediately collapsed into a fangirlish heap of ‘What? No! They can’t! They wouldn’t! It can’t be!’ (If you don’t know what I mean, watch this now. Or not. I’m not forcing squealing fandom on anyone. Really.)

After recovering, and having contempt for spoilers, I spent several hours chasing the feverish speculation online about the series finale. To which the only real conclusion that can be made is that Russell T. Davies et al at BBC Cardiff have pulled off a major coup in these spoilered times - nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Sigh. I thought Heroes was bad for my cliffhanger rage…

Daaaviiiiid! (Isn’t he lovely? He is lovely, isn’t he?) If he’s leaving, I may have to hunt RTD down and kill him…

No stunningly original ideas (1 part Matrix, one part Minority Report, and so on…), and the themes/subtext are pretty obvious - Mexico/US relations, migrant workers and the exploitation thereof, water rights - but the story itself carries along quite well. It doesn’t attempt to create a ‘futuristic’ future, instead focussing on the depressed rural areas and Tijuana slums of a near-future Mexico cut off from the US. Instead of migrants, the country supplies the US with workers through the ’sleep dealers’ of the title: factories where workers are plugged in and remotely connected to robots in the States. Of course, spend too much time plugged in (as workers desperate for extra cash often are), and bad things happen.

This particular theme is eventually downplayed - possibly the movie couldn’t address the larger issue on this scale of film. Instead, it focusses on the connections between three characters - the young man who has to come to the city to work when his father is killed by the company who owns the water, the city girl who meets him and sells her memories of him even as she falls for him, and the remote fighter pilot responsible for his father’s death. It’s this third character that leads to the rather weak ending, as he tracks down the young man in order to apologise and try to make amends. This leads to rather forced (and rushed) attempt at a Hollywood ending, and although the film is explicit in saying not everything is resolved, it remains unconvincing.

It’s a shame, because the set-up is convincing and atmospheric, and the leads are sympathetic if a little two-dimensional. It’s always good to see SF films from outside Hollywood - there’s plenty of horror and fantasy (to whatever degree), but far less straight up SF.

There’s a slightly twitchy cross-cutting of stories/timelines/fact/fiction that could get irritating, but luckily it’s executed with enough irreverence to be endearing. Lots of nice comic touches, with a particularly neat central concept, whereby the central character (who loses his girlfirend because he talks too much), attempting to write about a character with aphasia, first develops aphasia, and then finds himself making sounds like musical instruments when he attempts to speak (only able to be understood when heard through electronic equipment).

First was the live event with Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion animation, or ‘Dynamation’ as he called it in his heyday. It was pretty much a whistle-stop tour of his life and work, a little over-zealously directed by his biographer(?)/co-author, Tony Dalton.

There were a few nice moments, and of course lots of great clips, if no particularly great revelations. But remarkable to hear that Harryhausen did the bulk of his work alone, given the painstaking, time-consuming nature of stop-frame animation. We’re so used to watching DVD extras full of CG effects animators, each working on tiny aspects of massive effects sequences, that it doesn’t seem possible that one man could produce such an elaborate sequence as the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts:

It might be tempting to say that these old special effects, all Harryhausen’s old ‘creatures’, show their age, or that it’s easy to see the join between live action and miniature animation, but so often with modern CG effects, a similar complaint can be made. What CG very often lacks is the ability to make us overlook the technical shortcomings for the sake of the story, while Harryhausen’s creatures are good little actors (admittedly, they’re often up against very bad actors…) that let you stay involved.

I have to admit I was surprised, when they announced the Festival programme, to find that Harryhausen was still alive - he’s 88 this Saturday. So, good to see the man still going, of no longer working, with a spark in his eye. There were also a few special guests, including one of the skeletons (still posable) from Jason and the Argonauts.

I had to duck out of the final Q&A session to dash over to the Filmhouse for Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Just made it time, and I’m glad I did, because this was probably one of the highlights of the festival so far.

A portrait of the controversial, opinionated SF author Harlan Ellison - a very different presence from the genial Harryhausen. Ellison, who has been writing since the fifties, and baiting controversy for most of the time since, is clearly still very much a firebrand.

But a heartfelt firebrand - Incensed at the idiots he encounters, whether publishers, producers, fanboys, Republicans, fundamentalist or aspiring writers, he’s at least partly frustrated at people’s failure to be as good - as intelligent - as they are capable of.

It’s a highly entertaining film, if always on Ellison’s side, regardless of how explosive he becomes, and it does cover, without sentimentality, some of the childhood trauma that may drive him even now. There are talking heads, ranging from Neil Gaiman to Robin Williams, but Ellison is the true focus throughout. As one of the talking heads (Josh Olsen, sriter of) says: ‘Harlan doesn’t have an off switch; he doesn’t have a censor button. He is simply incapable of sugar-coating it for you.’

The film is interspersed with excerpts from some of his work, of which, I should also probably admit, I have read very little. So, note to self: I must look up some of his work once I’ve escaped Edinburgh (and pay for it - the guy is notoriously litigious).