It’s been quite a hiatus for the FAM. Why that was, no one knows. Perhaps the FAM was in hiding, on the lam after a particularly large methamphetamine deal went decidedly South; or maybe the FAM has been kept in a dank, dingy basement for the past two or three weeks, the unwilling plaything of a cruel and demented mistress. Like I said, we’ll never know. But the FAM is back, albeit with a gaunt visage and a faraway look in its eyes. Poor, poor FAM.
To ring in its return we present to you, our adoring, viewing audience Rowdy Roddy Piper’s breakout film, They Live; directed by the one and only John Carpenter. Now, I realize that there has been a particularly heavy dose of Carpenter on the FAM as of late and, rest assured, this will be the end. For a while. Hopefully. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They Live is the story of a young man named George Nada who comes into the possession of a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the truth lying under the surface of our perceived reality. That truth being that the world is controlled by skull-faced aliens who jerk us about like puppets through the use of hidden, subliminal messages. This lifting of the veil terrifies Mr. Nada and he is encouraged to save the human race by masticating chewing gum and “kicking ass”. He is partnered with Kieth David — who previously appeared in Mr. Carpenter’s The Thing — who plays the part of Frank Armitage. Frank Armitage is also the pseudonym that Carpenter used when he wrote the script and is also the name of a character in The Dunwich Horror by one Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The story of They Live a has equally pulpy roots, the plot being taken from both “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and a story called “Nada” from a comic entitled Alien Encounters by both FantCo and Eclipse.
It is no surprise then that They Live turned out the way it did. This is a classic sort of quick and dirty sci-fi, with brash, one-liner-spewing heroes and a central premise masquerading as social commentary. But you know what? As cheesy as They Live can be — um, Rowdy Roddy Piper stars in this — it is still fantastic, a delectable morsel of Carpenter’s truly over-the-top films that are both unabashedly silly and truly enjoyable. It is mindless, yet guilt-free entertainment and sometimes, that’s all one need.
Every boy needs a hero. Someone he can look up to. Someone whose life he can model his own after. Someone to give him hope. In a far off land in an unspecified time, health young Billy is going to bed. But before his grandfather turns off the light he decides to tell they boy a story. The story of Tarboy, an amalgam of all the poor robots crushed and driven before the implacable greed of their robot masters. Down there, in the black depths of the tar pools into which they have been discarded, their consciousnesses become one. A single mind bent on revenge wielding sticky, onyx fists.
Tarboy, created by James Lee and Hania, is a sterling example of flash animation. A brisk, epic short film, it is a perfectly packaged capsule of awesome. A fantastic robot flavored, afternoon pick-me-up.
fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapOH GOOD MORNING COMRADES I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE.
What’s that? Oh, um. I was just, uh, playing with my tribble.
Ariana showed me the following picture last night…
…which spurred me to revisit that notorious “Closer” slashup, the gravitational pull of which sent me spiraling down a long, twisted YouTube wormhole of Trekkie aberration and depravity. Woooo!
To help you get your sluggish blood pumping, I’d like to share a bit of what I found with you. Just the tip…
This Sunday night is a special “late to the party” edition of Coilhouse, wherein I’ll blog some items that have already been immortalized elsewhere on the web – in this case, BoingBoing, IO9 and EnglishRussia – but that still deserve a place here in the ‘haus.
The first of these is The Matrix, starring Charlie Chaplin. This was created by the team that produces “Big Difference” (Bolshaya Raznitsa), a Russian show that parodies other Russian television shows. Neo’s incredible kung-fu maneuver at 4:45 takes the cake figuratively, and Agent Smith takes the cake literally one minute after that happens. Enjoy!
I don’t like robots; not one bit. This is because they’re all secretly mechanical murder machines many of whom stand fully, blank-eyed and mouth agape, within the Uncanny Valley; a mere stone’s throw from the Creepy Sex Doll Meadow. This is all well-trod ground; my feelings on robots being spelled out in no uncertain terms on this site.
Which is why these images by Brandon Jan Blommaert depicting lumbering colossi, their bodies comprised of recycled refuse, devastating the countryside are so terrifying. For me these are not the fanciful musings of an, but a probable reality, a portent of things to come; one that I live in fear of every minute of my life. These are the monsters that haunt my nightmares; composting the human race into oblivion.
Those who only casually listen to the lyrical stylings of hip-hop scribe Eminem may not be aware of the many intricacies found therein. However, any serious scholar of the man’s oeuvre will inform you that, should one truly wish to understand the depth and sheer breadth of his work, one must listen to it in the original Klingon. Only then will one truly grasp his mastery of the language, the way in which he subverts and molds the guttural utterances, fashioning witty puns and subtle adianoetae — which are, more often than not, lost in the translation to English — making him very much the Nabokov of rap. To that end, I present his classic treatise and social indictment, Without Me performed in his native tongue.
Yes, yes. You’ve already seen blurbs about Machinarium all over the friggin’ bloggitysphere. But when a game this scrappy and adorable and smart and just painfully lovely pops up, we can’t not archive it here.
Amanita Design is the Czech indie game studio who brought the ‘wub those delightful point-and-click adventures, Samorost and Samorost 2. Aesthetically, their latest creation follows somewhat in Samorost‘s footsteps, but delves far deeper. For all its gorgeous visuals, ambiance, clever puzzles, and creaking, rusty robot action, what sets Machinarium apart and above other point-and-click games is its surprising depth. Such tenderness and subtlety, humor and intelligence!
This is worldbuilding of the highest caliber, with a compelling narrative that slowly unfolds as you play through, bringing Wall-E, Perdido Street Station and The City of Lost Children to mind in equal measure. No spoilers. Just click here, try out the demo, and you’ll understand why it might just be the best 17 bucks you spend all month.
We can’t all be Cherie Priest on the first try. But if the storyline of your latest dystopian/retro-futuristic tour-de-force has got you stumped, insert one thrupenny bit into the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000, and watch inspiration emerge from the æther. Three early attempts the got me the following tales:
Your title is: “The Blackpunks”
In a leather-clad set from Road Warrior, a young brooding loner stumbles across an exiled angel which spurs him into conflict with computer viruses made real, with the help of a sarcastic female techno-geek and her closet full of assault rifles, culminating in a heroic sacrifice that no one will ever remember.
Your title is: “The Chronotrons”
In a VR-simulated Victorian Britain, a young student of metaphysics stumbles across a magic diadem which spurs him into conflict with a profit-obsessed corporation, with the help of a tomboyish female mechanic and her welding gear, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence.
Your title is: “The Cybermancers”
In a neo-noir one-way spaceflight, a young farm boy with dreams stumbles across an encrypted data feed which spurs him into conflict with murderous robots, with the help of a shape-shifting female assassin and her wacky pet, culminating in authorial preaching through the mouths of the characters.
If you wish to see the guts of the machine, there’s an attractive diagram – the Wondermark Fiction Generator – on which the above engine is based. Written/designed by the super-talented David Malki, and coded by Liam Cooke.
Gorgeous design (reminds me of the Dollar Dreadful), and a fun way to get the gears turning when it comes to new fiction, despite (or because of?) the obvious critique that’s going on here. [Via Milly, thanks!]
Cherie Priest is one seriously inventive fiction/alternate history/sci-fi author who pens books about witches and voodoo and airships and sea monsters and zombies and ghosts and werewolf-hunting nuns. Needless to say, me likes her lots! She has a new novel out today, called Boneshaker, which BoingBoing just aptly described as a “zombie steampunk mad-science dungeon crawl family adventure novel” and which I cannot wait to get my grubby hands on. A brief description from Publisher’s Weekly:
Maternal love faces formidable challenges in this stellar steampunk tale. In an alternate 1880s America, mad inventor Leviticus Blue is blamed for destroying Civil War–era Seattle. When Zeke Wilkes, Blue’s son, goes into the walled wreck of a city to clear his father’s name, Zeke’s mother, Briar Wilkes, follows him in an airship, determined to rescue her son from the toxic gas that turns people into zombies (called rotters and described in gut-churning detail). When Briar learns that Seattle still has a mad inventor, Dr. Minnericht, who eerily resembles her dead husband, a simple rescue quickly turns into a thrilling race to save Zeke from the man who may be his father. Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist who embodies the complexities inherent in motherhood, this yarn is a must-read for the discerning steampunk fan.
It’s been a long week hasn’t it? Busy too. It seems that your inbox is always full no matter how much work you do, like everyone is clearing their desks by simply transporting everything over to you. Shit just doesn’t end. You wonder how you came to be here at this desk, writing this inter-office email, using words like “actionable” and “synergy”. How did this come to pass? No one makes their mark on this world by using “actionable”. No one. What had Murakami done by the time he was your age? Or DaVinci? Or Batman? I bet Batman wasn’t responding to emails, that’s for sure; because he’s the goddamn Batman and he doesn’t need a motherfucking desk job, Jim. His job is kicking ass, period. For real. Of course, he was also rich, which gave him the financial independence required to become the scourge of Gotham’s underworld. It’s an unfair comparison really.
All this brain power being used for introspection would be so much better spent elsewhere, don’t you think? And I don’t mean the email you’re writing. Just wrap it up. That’s it. Now hit “send”. Very good. As I was saying, your mental faculties should be applied to something worthwhile something like the Friday Afternoon Movie. Today’s FAM is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, based on the novel Roadside Picnic written by brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, who also wrote the film’s screenplay. Like all Tarkovsky, Stalker is a slow burn. It’s two and a half hours for a reason, partly because Andrei has a whole lot of pretty and haunting things he wants to show you and partly because the characters have Something To Say. Tarkovsky is of the “love him or hate him” variety of director so your mileage may vary, but Stalker is near the top for my favorite films. Just watch the movie and try not to think about what Tarkovsky was doing when he was thirty.
