Joseph O'Brien

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2010-04-11T11:53:00.001-04:00

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An Open Letter From Doctor Manhattan

2009-03-13T21:43:00.001-04:00

What'd you do with your entire Friday? Me, I did this:

Find more videos like this on HardcoreNerdity

In response to the responses Watchmen scribe David Hayter got to his open letter to fans this week on Hardcore Nerdity.

Keeping Up Appearances - HcN Podcast #41

2009-03-12T16:49:00.002-04:00

The fine folks at Hardcore Nerdity had me back for another go-round at Watchmen, fanboys, screenwriter David Hayter (whose open letter to fans stoked a few fires online this week), and the awesome new Star Trek trailer on their weekly podcast, which you can listen to here. Thanks to John, Simon and Adrienne for another great discussion.

Prisoners Of Gravity - WATCHMEN Special

2009-03-06T21:42:00.001-05:00

Fifteen years later, and this episode of TVOntario's much-missed weekly geekasm Prisoners Of Gravity (produced by my pal Mark Askwith, hosted by the inimitable Rick Green and featuring title art by Ty Templeton) remains the definitive look at Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen.

If you haven't read the book, it's a pretty intense primer. If you have read the book, I guarantee this will make you rush back to it and start flipping pages immediately to look at all the things you missed.

Keeping Up Appearances - HcN Podcast #40

2009-03-05T17:42:00.002-05:00

In which I gripe about Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Watchmen, alongside Hardcore Nerdity's Jonathan Llyr, Simon Evans and Adrienne Kress, as part of HcN's excellent weekly podcast.

You'll also hear a great interview with Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter, who, when he's not writing superhero blockbusters, is also the voice of Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid.

Go listen here.

ESCAPE FROM CITY 17

2009-02-18T19:56:00.002-05:00

Some days, I swear I'm taking crazy pills.

There are a lot of people this week who are agog, a-blog and a -twitter about this:

This is a little guerilla-style filmlet directed by the Purchase brothers, a pair of commercial directors, based on a great Valve software game called Half-Life (or, more specifically, Half-Life 2). It has some lovely CGI and not much else to recommend it, but it's a fun few minutes of a Half-Life movie, which is cool, because there isn't actually a Half-Life movie and I and a lot of other people would really like to see one, thanks. But it basically boils down to five minutes of two not-particularly-convincing actors running around in a trainyard shooting the same five guys with plastic guns.

However, for reasons I can't fathom, a lot of people are going apeshit for the thing; King Kong apeshit, in fact. And not just the usual gaggle of pudding-lobed troglodytes who dwell, and possibly procreate, amongst YouTube's comment boards. Film industry professionals like John Rogers and Bill Cunningham talk about this thing like it's the fer chrissakes wheel. Like it's fire.

Now, they're no doubt spun up, at least in part, by Warren Ellis calling it a "game changer". Except, as we all know, Ellis is paid twelve cents every time he uses the phrase "game changer" to describe any given blip on the internet fadar; he gets fourteen cents every time he uses "paradigm shift". The pictures of people with metal things in their genitals he gives away for free.

I can only assume that none of these fine people have ever watched a fan film before. I guess they missed out when Sandy Collora (another commercial director) made Batman: Dead End in 2003:

Or are blissfully unaware that James Cawley has been producing seasons of new episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series with members of the original cast and writing staff for half a decade now:

They certainly haven't heard of Shane Felux, who marshalled VFX artists from around the world to create his nigh-on feature-length Star Wars fan film Revelations. Or of Pink Five. Or even Troops, arguably the birthplace of the whole fan film movement, produced a dozen fucking years ago.

Now, I'm not saying any of these are the wheel, either. Or fire for that matter. At their best they only start to approach real professional-grade production values. They are what they are: the creative expression of fannish enthusiasm taken to an almost absurd degree, and there's no bad there. But what they aren't, is "game changing", and neither is Escape From City 17. In fact, it's not even the most interesting piece on the board. Even compared to the thin slice selection of films I've mentioned above, it barely rates a B.

del.icio.us Tags: escape from city 17,youtube,warren ellis,john rogers,bill cunningham,star trek phase II,james cawley,batman dead end,sandy collora,fan films,purchase brothers

Filed Under: "I Wish I'd Thought Of This First!"

2009-02-17T23:48:00.002-05:00

Elton John's Rocket Pictures has announced the production of Pride And Predator, "which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about."

Fuck me. That's good.

Creeping Shadows

2009-02-15T19:48:00.001-05:00

Creeping Shadows
Originally uploaded by Joseph O'Brien

Today on Totally Fucked Up Shit

2008-08-01T02:28:00.004-04:00

Bus beheading 'a mystery'

From the Toronto Star:

Steve Lambert
THE CANADIAN PRESS

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. – Police said this afternoon that they don’t know what prompted a passenger on a Greyhound bus heading to Winnipeg to viciously attack the man sitting next to him.

Passengers said the man repeatedly stabbed his seat-mate before beheading him and carrying the victim’s head around the bus.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell wouldn’t confirm those details but did say a 40-year-old suspect was in RCMP custody and police were planning to interview him.

No charges were immediately laid.

Colwell said the behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.

“It’s not something that happens regularly on a bus,” he said. ``You’re sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic ... the way they (the passengers) acted was extraordinary.”

Colwell said they “were very brave. They reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured.”

Shocked passengers described the horrific attack as something incomprehensible.

One moment, the quiet man near the back of the bus was minding his own business. The man hadn’t talked to anyone around him, and seemed to pay no attention to the younger fellow sitting next to him, who was listening to music on headphones.

The next moment, witnesses said, the older man stood up, still quiet, and repeatedly stabbed, then beheaded his younger victim.

“We heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times,” Garnet Caton said today from a hotel in Brandon, Man., where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.

“There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy.”

Caton said the bus stopped and everyone scrambled to get out while the attacker started methodically carving up the victim’s body, not paying attention to anyone else.

Caton and the driver shut the bus door from the outside while they waited for police to arrive.

“We put our bodies up against the door, waiting for him to come out ... and he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much displayed it ... and dropped it on the ground in front of us,” Caton said.

“All very calmly. He was wearing sunglasses. It was no big deal to him.”

Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead from Kentville, N.S., also recalled the chilling scene.

“The guy came to the front of the door with buddy’s head in his hands, decapitated. He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up,” Olmstead said.

When police arrived, the victim and his attacker were the only ones left on the bus, Colwell said.

“When attempts were made to have him exit and surrender to police were unsuccessful, additional resources including the RCMP emergency response team and negotiator team were called in to assist.”

The man eventually tried to flee by breaking a bus window and jumping out, Colwell said.

“He was immediately subdued and arrested without incident and is currently in RCMP custody.”

Both Olmstead and Caton said the attacker and the victim appeared not to know each other.

They said the attacker boarded the bus in Brandon last night. The victim, who Caton said appeared to be about 19, had been on the bus since Edmonton.

Police would not confirm the victim’s age and said his name would not be released until his family had been notified. The suspect’s name wasn’t released either.

Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the full weight of the law must be brought to bear on the perpetrator.

“We want to make sure the process is followed as aggressively as possible, the full legal process ....” Day said from Levis, Que., where Conservative MPs are gathered for a summer planning session.

“This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare. Certainly the horrific nature of it is probably one-of-a-kind in Canadian history.”

Greyhound called the event tragic but isolated.

A company spokeswoman said bus travel is the safest mode of transportation, despite the fact bus stations do not have metal detectors and other security measures used at airports.

“Due to the rural nature of our network, airport-type security is not practical. It’s a very different type of system,” Abby Wambaugh said from Greyhound’s corporate offices in Texas.

The bus was carrying 37 passengers and the driver to Winnipeg from Edmonton.

A portion of the east-bound Trans-Canada Highway was closed overnight as officers remained on the scene.

Passengers had no explanation as to what might have prompted the attack. The suspect had been on the bus for only about an hour and didn’t even sit near his victim, at first.

“He sat in the front at first, everything was normal,” Caton said.

“We went to the next stop and he got off and had a smoke with another young lady there. When he got on the bus again, he came to the back near where I was sitting.

“He put his bags in the overhead compartment. He didn’t say a word to anybody. He seemed totally normal. About a half an hour later, we heard this blood-curdling scream.” Steve Lambert
THE CANADIAN PRESS