Isegoria

At the Mountains of Madness is the movie Guillermo del Toro was born to direct, and now it looks like it should start filming in June. The truly sanity-blasting element of it is that Tom Cruise is set to star:

Ron Perlman told us that he’s in the movie, playing a newly invented character, a “dog-sled guy” who’s more no-nonsense than the academics and intellectuals on the mission.

Cameron raised our hopes a while back, when he called Mountains of Madness an “epically scaled horror film” and added that “we haven’t seen anything like this… since Aliens.” He added in a separate interview, “The design work is phenomenal, both the three-dimensional and two-dimensional design work, the physical maquettes, the CG test scenes; the artwork is phenomenal. The fans certainly won’t want for a visual feast with this film.”

Charlie Sheen says that he has tiger blood and Adonis DNA. Scott Adams examines the claim:

In my two minutes of interaction with Charlie [a few years ago], I got the strangest vibe from him. There was something extraordinarily deep, or maybe dark, or intense, about him. You often hear it said of celebrities “He’s so normal.” I didn’t get a normal vibe from Charlie. Not even close. It wasn’t a crazy vibe, or a drug vibe. It just wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. It was haunting.

Like many of you, I’ve been watching his crazy-talk interviews and reading about his unusual life choices. I’m not embarrassed to say I’m fascinated by it all. But the thing that interests me the most is the intersection between honesty and insanity. There is some theoretical amount of honesty that is indistinguishable from mental illness. Charlie is blurring the line, or maybe spending some time on both sides of it. It’s clearly intentional. And it might be working, at least in terms of pressuring his show to restart, at which point it would be the most watched show on television.

It might look to you as if he is crazy because he speaks about himself as some sort of walking god with powers beyond what we humans possess. Crazy, right? Maybe. If we allow him some literary license when he says he has tiger blood and Adonis DNA, let’s examine the claim.

I witnessed him do hours of dialog during the taping of his show and he never missed a line. His costars didn’t do nearly as well. I was very impressed.

Charlie has also survived incredible amounts of drugs and still appears totally healthy. He looks better than any 45-year old I know. He has also spoken of his ability to go all night without getting tired. I’m usually done by about 9 PM. Maybe he does have an unusually strong constitution.

How about talent? He’s had dramatic roles in films, and he’s the highest paid actor on television. Is it totally crazy for him to think he’s built different from the rest of us? Successful people often believe they are special. Charlie’s problem is that he’s saying it. He’s also saying anything else that pops into his head.

How about his nerves? Would you have the guts to even attempt to do the sort of work he does in front of a live audience? I get the sense that nothing scares him.

Imagine if you stopped filtering everything you said and did. You’d have to be in Charlie Sheen’s unique position to get away with it, but just try to imagine yourself living without self-censorship. Wouldn’t you sound crazy?

Imagine you are so unafraid of consequences and the opinions of other people that you start sentences before you have a plan for how they will end. Sometimes a sentence turns out well, and sometimes you compare yourself to tigers and mythological gods.

I think Charlie is fascinating because he’s living without fear. That translates into a disturbing degree of honesty. And at the moment it gives him an amazing amount of power over the media, which he is using to his advantage.

Tyler Cowen recently watched Things to Come:

This Alexander Korda adaption of H.G. Wells was in 1936 perhaps the most visually spectacular movie of its time. It looks like the first thirty, black and white minutes of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, yet few people watch the movie today, in part because the actors shout at each other.
[...]
The distinction between “a good movie” and “a movie which is good to watch” has never been more salient.

When I watched Things to Come a few years ago, I found its “prophetic” reputation odd.

Wells, like Kipling before him, sees air power through the lens of Victorian gun-boat diplomacy.

Peter Biskind opens his Vanity Fair piece on Mel Gibson — The Rude Warrior — with a quote from Lethal Weapon director Richard Donner:

I have a bust of Abraham Lincoln in my office, and it’s not because of the greatness he did for our country, but it’s because that whenever I look at it I have to remember an actor killed him.

Arch-Randroid David Kelley says that the skeptics are wrong; the new Atlas Shrugged movie is simply beautiful:

Ever since the project launched last April, skeptics have wondered how a film with a limited budget of $10 million, rushed production schedule, and lack of big-name talent could possibly do justice to the novel. Over a thousand pages long, with an intricate plot, epic scope, multi-layered mystery, a hero who does not appear until the final third of the story, and a complex philosophical theme, Atlas Shrugged has posed an insurmountable challenge to film-makers. The streets of Hollywood are littered with the ashes of prior efforts, some with much larger budgets.

The skeptics are wrong. The completed film was shown today for the first time in a private screening. It is simply beautiful. With a screenplay faithful to the narrative and message of the novel, the adaptation is lushly produced. The acting, cinematography, and score create a powerful experience of the story.

Reason‘s Matt Welch — who, somehow, hasn’t read the book — thinks that both lovers and haters will enjoy the movie.

As this behind-the-scenes video re-affirms, Francisco D’Anconia remains the most interesting man in the world:

Matt Zoller Seitz of Salon lists 10 revisionist works that present the villains as the good guys, including College Humor‘s take on the Death Star Attack.

Russian paleontologist Kirell Yeskov decided to interpret Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a heroic retelling of what “really” happened in the war between the Men of the West and their enemies, and, using what we know about how heroic tales map to reality, wrote his own novelization of events, The Last Ring-Bearer, from the perspective of the forces of Mordor.  Yisroel Markov has translated it into English.

The story starts in the Hutel-Hara sands:

It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the largest load was not the rear `main force’ private, but rather the `forward recon’ one, but there were good reasons for that. The one in the rear limped noticeably and was nearly out of strength; his face — narrow and beak-nosed, clearly showing a generous serving of Umbar blood — was covered with a sheen of sticky sweat. The one in the lead was a typical Orocuen by his looks, short and wide-faced — in other words, the very `Orc’ that mothers of Westernesse use to scare unruly children; this one advanced in a fast zigzagging pattern, his every movement noiseless, precise and spare, like those of a predator that has scented prey. He had given his cloak of bactrian wool, which always keeps the same temperature — whether in the heat of midday or the pre-dawn chill — to his partner, leaving himself with a captured Elvish cloak, priceless in a forest but utterly useless here in the desert.

Does an Empire-perspective take on Star Wars exist?

(Hat tip to Laura Miller of Salon, who has written quite a bit about Lewis’s Narnia.)

GeekDad Daniel Donahoo interviews Kris Buchan on his LEGO mini-fig customizations:

One of the first techniques I applied to customizing from my modeling days was when painting, always use masking tape to mask off areas you don’t want the paint to get to, and it gives you a nice sharp line. I can’t stress highly enough that if you primarily use paint and need a clean straight line, that’s the way to go.

I have also become quite adept at sculpting, using a modeling clay. Lego Purists hate that, but then certain “purists” hate minifigs anyway if they aren’t part of some massive diorama, but to each their own. To sculpt I use a product called “milliput,” it’s available at all modeling shops and it’s a two-part compound. Knead two equals parts together and you get a great modeling clay that you can easily shape, cut, stretch and the best part is it air dries, i.e. does not require it to be baked in an oven like some other types of sculpting clay. After 6–8 hours, it is as solid as concrete and you can file, sand, drill it, etc. It’s great for creating chest bursting effects (as seen in the pic above).

I  learnt to not have any fears when it comes to cutting parts up, and a hobby knife is the best tool for that.  Also needle files and modeling sand paper to smooth out the cut pieces, to get end results like this guy.  You can get these tools quite cheaply from a hobby shop.

Finally after being inspired by such great decal designers such as Jared and Flickr members Roaglan, Triump and others I decided to try and do some custom decals myself.  The end results have not been too bad.  I’m not as savvy with programs like ‘Photoshop’ and other vector graphic programs, so I tend to use the most basic of all, Microsoft Paint.  Yep, that free program that you get with your Windows O/S. The lines can be blocky, but the trick is to do a large version than reduce it in size when doing the print.  It then looks perfect to the naked eye once in minifigs scale.  Then you simply print away on a color laser or Inkjet printer.  Waterslide decal paper is easily ordered from many printer paper supply online shops, just Google “Laser or Inkjet Waterslide decal paper.”  A very important tip for decal application is to apply Decal Setting solution to the minifigs surface that you want to apply the decal to, this allows you to move the deal into its correct position and then also helps the adhesion as it starts to dry.  Then once applied, use a Decal softening solution, which helps the decal set and is very helpful for when applying to curved areas like the head or arms, and makes the decal look like it’s been printed onto the piece once it’s dried.  Again, these types of products can be found at any good hobby shop.

Everything is a remix, Kirby Ferguson reminds us — especially Star Wars:

I’ve mentioned some of these influences before.

(Hat tip to Techdirt.)

I just watched the Atlas Shrugged movie trailer, and my first impression was that it needed to be placed in an anachronistic not-quite-1930s, like Batman: The Animated Series.

Tyler Cowen came to more or less the same conclusion:

Apart looking like a bad movie, I found this jarring. It should be in black and white, or muted colors, with the palate and overall look of a Visconti film. It has some Art Deco architecture (good), but signs of the modern world intrude at the wrong moments. It should not have high-speed rail (will this confuse conservatives? Did those governors end up cutting Medicaid and coughing up the money?) and it should not postulate unrealistic speeds for freight trains. It should not have 2011 cars and Dagny Taggart should not look like a mousy actress imitating Nicole Kidman playing a local news reporter. “If you double cross me, I will destroy you” doesn’t ring true. Hank Rearden’s line about only wanting to earn money comes across as either a parody of Gordon Gecko or as something worthy of Gecko’s parody. To be properly post-Wall Street, Rearden must somehow contain and yet leapfrog over Oliver Stone’s vision; a pretty boy look will not suffice.

If you give the little mermaid thick-rimmed glasses, she becomes Hipster Ariel:

Rob Pratt is a Disney veteran who decided to create his own Superman Classic cartoon:

Impressive — except for the bobble-headed, not-so-Fleischeresque character designs.

(Hat tip to io9.com)