Vincent Schiavelli, who died of cancer at his home in Sicily on December 26 aged 57, was a popular character actor noted for his roles in films such as Ghost and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Schiavelli’s somewhat hangdog countenance appeared in more than 120 film and television shows; he excelled at parts which required an eccentric presentation, and in 1997 the magazine Vanity Fair declared him one of the best character actors in America.
Trailer for the Silent Hill movie
It’s got Pyramid Head! I am so psyched for this movie now
Last-minute Christmas drinks in the Lord Edward tonight at 8pm for anyone who’s interested.
We’re almost finished in the office for the Christmas break. I’ve still got 15 days holidays to take this year. Except there’s only 3 working days left. See the problem here?
Every year, we spend forever deciding who takes the consoles home for the Christmas break. Since the “BAGSY THE DREAMCAST, DOUBLE STAMPSIES, NO REVERSIES” method isn’t particularly fair, and the stakes were particularly high this year, we held a Burnout 3 championship to see who would take the Xbox 360 home.
Well, I won.
To be very honest, I’m not interested in the Xbox 360. My TV isn’t nearly up to the task of making games like “Condemned” look pretty. But the title of “Burnout 3 Champion”? Oh boy. What a great Christmas present.
(Today, I also got crowned Mario Kart DS champion – sweet.)
The trailer for Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” has emerged from the ether with Kottke and others are pointing out how awful-looking it is. And true, at this early stage it’s like a heavy-handed mix of Terrence Malick and Baraka (but without any of the nice things such a mix would suggest).
He’s got a bit of reputation as a ‘prankster’ director (on one of the making-of featurettes on the Braveheart DVD, you can see Gibson reading “Directing an Epic for Dummies”). But I’m going to say that this is just a ruse. Gibson has officially Lost It and is now certifiably batshit insane. As evidence for this, I present this image which you will find as a single frame cut into an intense part of the trailer. You’ll have to go through the trailer frame-by-frame to find it yourself.
Southpark may have been closer to the truth than we know. Kaablaa!
Amazon wishlists have never really worked me. Too cumbersome to suit my way of doing things and too limited to suit the things I want a wishlist for. So last year, I began using the del.icio.us “wishlist” tag. If I saw something I wanted, it would get tagged under wishlist+$itemDescription, e.g. wishlist+dvds, wishlist+clothes and so on.
This means that I’m able to keep things out of my head while still keeping them in a central place, one I use every day. But more importantly, it gives me a quick list of everything my heart desires that I can access from any computer on the internet. On my recent, exciting trip to San Francisco, I was able to go into an internet cafe and print out entire shopping lists based on my wishlist tag, Unfortunately, this meant I came back with an armful of DVDs.
But around Christmas, this system really starts to show its strength because it has the advantage of giving people a quick overview of everything I’ve had my eye on. It paid off. My Livejournal Secret Santa bought me a book from the list – The Mafia Cookbook (Thanks Karena!).
Incidentally, here’s my wishlist. In case you were… y’know… curious
Technorati Tags: wishlists, del.icio.us
You know, it might be a bit hokey, but I’m so glad that the JCB song from Nizlopi is number one in the UK charts the weekend before Christmas. It really shows the power of viral marketing – so many people have sent me the link to the video over the past few months – and now it’s finally made it to the top of the charts. I don’t know if it was the well-deserved success, the amazingly touching song or the fact that I’m a complete pussy, or some combination of these, but I genuinely got teary when I saw them on Top of the Pops.
And it’s keeping the Crazy Frog off the top, so that’s another reason to celebrate.
Searchable database of all Edge review scores since issue 1
I have to say, I wasn’t too impressed with The Virgin Suicides, but I really enjoyed Lost in Translation. So I’m willing to give Sophia Coppolla the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her new movie, Marie Antoinette, a biopic about the life of… well, Marie Antoinette. Right now, it looks like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon set to some 80s New Wave music.
And even if the trailer didn’t attract me (and it does), the cast is eclectic enough to pique my interest, with Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithful and Kirsten Dunst all running around in period costumes. I’m looking forward to it.
Ricky Gervais has started a series of podcasts for Guardian Online. And they’re off to a tremendous start. The story of how they taught a monkey to fly a spacecraft had me crying with laughter. Some very, very funny looks from around the office. Those few minutes were laugh-out-loud funnier than the entire series of Extras.
(While we’re on the subject – the uh.. extras.. on the Extras DVD were also funnier than the show)
I was in San Francisco less than 24 hours before a gun was pulled on me. I think that must be like some kind of record.
Yesterday, I took some time out from my aimless wandering to worship at the church of Apple. This place is scary-cool. It’s easy to see why people are so devoted to the Apple brand when you see this much care and love in one place.
Empire’s 50 Greatest Independent Films
They managed to include Dead Man’s Shoes, so I’m happy
I didn’t want to like this movie. Fifteen minutes in and I had made up my mind that this was just Spellbound meets The School Around the Corner by way of Come Dancing and I was too old and too cynical to be taken in by such a cheap ploy.
But then, around the thirty minute mark, something remarkable happened. These kids stopped being precocious little brats and started becoming likeable creatures. Watching Cyrus’ reaction to the results of the initial competition sealed the deal for me. Believe me when I say that we need to watch this kid closely because he is wise beyond his 10 years and almost certainly an evil genius in the making (the director says that when she first met him and discussed her movie with him, he asked if she had secured a production deal yet).
Against my will, I had become emotionally invested in these kids. Their different personalities began to shine through and, by the time of the dancing final, I felt like I was joinging their teachers on the emotional rollercoaster they were riding. And the swell of pride I began to feel watching the kids put in some amazing performances was almost embarassing. It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.
Funny without lacking sincerity, sentimental without being po-faced. In spite of myself, I ended up liking this movie.
Dammit.
I’m a total sucker for theme parks. When I was fifteen, my family went on holiday to Florida, home of a thousand theme parks, and I made sure we saw every single one of them. But the thing I love about theme parks isn’t so much the rides themselves but the atmosphere created around each ride. For example, when you’re queuing for the ‘Jaws’ ride in Universal, the queue takes you through Quint’s boathouse. This is a perfectly realised model of the boathouse from the movie, with hundreds of incidental details dotted around the to help convince you that you are actually in a movie.
Also in Universal Studios is a ride loosely based on Dino De Laurentiis’ unsuccessful 1976 remake of King Kong. The audience rides in a cable car around New York being terrorised by the giant monkey, in a series of spectacular set-pieces. Kong appears, shakes the car and yells a bit, and scares the audience. But it’s starting to show its age now, and the animatronics can’t really fool today’s more effects-savvy audience. If you listen carefully, you can hear the hydrolics and steam motors driving every inch of your experience throughout the ride.
Ubisoft’s game of Peter Jackson’s King Kong is a worthy replacement for Universal’s aging King Kong ride.
Following the ‘classic’ Kong story, the game also uses a series of cinematic set-pieces to drive the action forward. These range from rafting downstream while being terrorised by the natives of Skull Island to battling dinosaurs in the middle of a brontosaurus stampede. And when these succeed, they are marvellous, memorable pieces of gaming. One of the most spectacular moments comes when the action shifts – one minute the player is controlling Jack, who has no choice but to run from the larger beasts on Skull Island (a luger and a spear will not trouble a T-Rex). The next minute, the player controls Kong, who can swat these monsters away in a tremendous show of power.
The story is mostly told by the bits in between the set-pieces. Through some fantastic voice-acting by the cast of the movie, we are presented with personalities that are as three-dimensional as their graphical representations.
But it’s in the atmosphere the game creates that it really succeeds. The island, dense with terrifying creatures, feels like an actual living, breathing place. There are hundreds of incidental details littering the environment to heighten the player’s experience and convince them they’re in a movie. Or on a ride. This is also helped by the lack of a heads-up-display – there’s no bar to tell you how much health your character has, or how many bullets are in his gun. This is all done through brilliantly-implemented visual and aural clues. There’s a wonderful moment in the 4 minute clip of King Kong movie where you get to see Skull Island from Kong’s Mountain. And I thought “Y’know, from this angle, this place is beautiful. Down there, it’s horrific”, as if I’d actually been there.
And this atmosphere isn’t confined to within the game itself. Along the way, you unlock ‘extras’ within the game. These mainly consist of ‘galleries’ of WETA artwork for the movie. But instead of presenting these as flat image files, we get to experience them as though we were walking through an exhibit in a museum. And this is so perfectly (yet simply) realised that you can almost smell the dust in the air.
There’s a lot to praise about this game, which is made even more stunning by the fact that it takes roughly 10 hours of average playing to complete. Now, there’s a whole other post about value for money with games you can finish over the course of a weekend. But for this one, I’ll just say yes, it is definitely worth it.