Titus Will Be Missed

I gotta admit, until earlier today, I had no idea there was a gorilla named Titus, though I had seen him several times. Titus was named by the famous zoologist and gorilla expert Dian Fossey when she first met him, and rose to fame at the tender age of five as part of Sir David Attenboroughs Life On Earth series, when he climbed all over the famous naturalist. Titus even went on to star in Gorillas In The Mist, along side Sigourney Weaver, the lucky, lucky primate! He even had a whole BBC documentary devoted to his life last year called Titus: The Gorilla King.

Titus became the first gorilla to have his life documented from birth, and over the course of his 35 years, he has provided researchers with unparalleled levels of information. Titus died last Monday, September 14th, after a short illness, reports BBC News.

BBC Worldwide has some videos on YouTube with Sir David and the crew that accompanied him on their first meeting with Titus and his brother. Below I embedded my favourite, the one showing a young Titus lying on Sir David, but they also have a beautiful one talking about how close the entire crew got to the huge primates.

Those Damned Water Aliens Are Back Again

Grab your shotguns! Turn up your obnoxious high pitched music! Release the flu virus across the population! But above all else, someone get Will Smith on the phone!!

The aliens are back, and this time, they're invading from the depths of our planets oceans, those clever so-and-sos.

Not a hoax, not a fake, maybe some hyperbole, lots of inaccurate assumptions on my behalf, National Geographic has the full, fact filled, non-sensationalist story, with video! But who wants that?!?

Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site

Okay, so this is kinda old news by now (very old news by internet standards!), but I've been meaning to post about it for days now! Days, I tells ya!

Remember, Remember

I almost forgot, but today is V For Vendetta Day!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent

To blow up King and Parliament.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England's overthrow;

By God's providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

V is such a great book, and was fantastically adapted into a movie! Great viewing with a powerful cast, each playing their role with joy and energy.

And on a related note, David Lloyd, artist on the original V For Vendetta comic will be coming to Cork to do a signing promoting his work, particularly Kickback, I believe. He'll be doing his signing in Other Realms, which is cool, because I work there! Yay! If you're in the area, call in and say hi! I'm sure he'll be happy to meet you, and there should be a fairly pleasant turn-out, as Cork isn't a huge Cork area, but V For Vendetta sells constantly. I can tell you from working there that we get in three copies every two weeks and they sell before the end of the first week on the shelves!

Why don't we get in more, so that there's always some on the shelf? If you know Realms and the management, then you know exactly why.

Update: David Lloyd will be in-store on the afternoon of Saturday, December 1st. As mentioned above, he will be signing copies of his newest Graphic Novel, Kickback, as well as his other works. While you are more than welcome to bring along your old, tattered copies of his work, Other Realms will also be getting in unusually large numbers of trades featuring his art. Please come along and show your support for a great artist who is kind enough to travel outside Dublin for signings!

Dibs On Optic Blasts!

A few posts back I told you about my "5 Questions" I was doing as part of Flickr. Well, I ended up with an unexpected 30 questions, all of which I answered. Some were funny, some serious but all of them were interesting, and I enjoyed thinking about the questions and how to answer them truthfully.

One of the questions asked was "If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?" After thinking long and hard on it, I decided on my answer.

Wow. Um... Is it terrible if I say that I'd love if super-powers existed? Does that count? Seriously. I have always dreamed about it, and still do. I wake up in the morning, and if I'm feeling particularly silly, I'll lie in bed wondering what it would be like to open my curtains and see people flying outside, or turn on the TV and hear about the newest crisis averted by the premier super-team. Yeah, I admit I'm only thinking of the cool stuff, and not the "Rogue mutants nuke elementary school" stuff, but it's just a nice dream, right! Sure, it's not "end world hunger" or "stop war", but it's my change! And a cheat. With super-powers in existance, anything is possible!

Now it seems I might not have as long to wait for that to happen after all! This last year or so has turned up some very interesting occurances that alone are odd, but together are just far to coincidental to ignore!

In the last few months two amazingly comic relate discoveries have been uncovered, both relate to the Superman mythos. In Mexico, a huge cavern with gypsum columns up to 36 feet long was discovered 1,000 feet below ground! It looks incredibly like Kal-El's Fortress of Solitude, and is a stunning example of nature at her most impressive. The second event relates to the discovery of Kryptonite! An unknown mineral composed of the chemicals sodium, lithium, boron, silicate, hydroxide was discovered to match the description of Kryptonite, only missing fluorine. Unfortunately, this material has been named jadarite, much to the dismay to millions of comics readers around the world!

So, Mother Nature, now we have a Fortess of Solitude and Kryptonite. When are you going to give Marvel a shout-out? I want my damned optic blasts! I want human flight, steel skin, phase-shifting, and all the other wonderful things those wacky mutants get up to! Not all for myself, of course. I'll just be happy with optic blasts. And if Claire could get telekinesis I'd be greatful too.

Thanks.

Denis.

First Degree Burn

USA Network premieres a brand new series shortly called Burn Notice. From the website:

When spies get fired, they don't get a letter from human resources.

They get BURNED...

While on assignment, agent Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) gets a "Burn Notice" and becomes untouchable. Having no idea what or who triggered his demise, Michael returns to his hometown, Miami, determined to find out the reason for his sudden termination.

Unable to utilize his normal contacts and needing to stay under the spy network radar, he puts his Special Ops training to use to help those who the police can't or won't, in order to fund his ongoing personal investigation.

Sounds interesting. Kinda. But it gets more interesting when you learn than my favourite cult star and yours is involved: Bruce Campbell!! Bruce plays Sam Axe, a former special ops warrior who is enjoying the peace and quiet he finds at the bottom of a row of shot glasses.

All this sounds kinda interesting, especially when described as "a fancy new spy-turned-one-man-A-team". Nice! I'm looking forward to seeing this. And the fact that it's on USA Network, or more importantly, not Fox, means that it's more likely to get it's initial 13 episode run completed. At least we'll have that.

New Nathan Fillion Series

Normally my headings are something clever. Something I put a lot of thought into. I could have used "Mal Hits The Road", or "Firefly Gets New Horsepower", but I didn't like either. Instead, I got straight to the point.

Drive, according to TV.com "follows the lives of a group of Americans racing each other in a sinister and possibly mortal cross-country race. Each has a special reason to compete - and each must win."

Sounds interesting? Yeah. Not very. In fact, if Nathan Fillion wasn't involved, I would have forgotten it even existed already. The fact that Tim Minear is creator and executive producer helps too. In case you're not aware, Tim was one of the guys that gave us the short lived, but hugely popular Firefly series, along with Joss "Is My Master Now" Whedon.

The premise of the show sounds far too close to the madcap comedy movie Rat Race. Everyone racing across the continent to get to some far-off finish line. But they don't even know where the finish line is!?! To illustrate the point, Nathan played a little game at a recent convention. He gave two con attendees half of his boarding pass each and told them to find a specific dealer in the dealer's room, but no information about where that dealer may be. He texted the dealer from his mobile phone and informed him to give the first person to show up with half his boarding pass a free book.

I'm looking forward to seeing this, but only because of the main actor and creators previous track record. I'll post my verdict on the actual series once I've seen it. For now, get excited. Or not.

Are You Watching Closely?

Last night Claire and myself went over to hang out at Noels place for a few hours. With nothing much to do for the evening, we decided to watch "The Prestige", which Hazel had picked up on DVD. I love the movie, having had the extreme pleasure of seeing it in a crowded cinema, and was happy to watch it again, knowing the outcome and watching for clues.

About half and hour in I realised I was the only one in the room who had seen it! Noel, Hazel and Claire all missed it in the cinema. I was the only one aware of how it all fell together.

So we all sat in silence and took in the master storytelling, the crisp cinematography and the stunning acting. We enjoyed the twists and turns, the jumps back and forth between characters reading about characters reading diary's, the shifts in loyalties and friendships, the pledge, the turn and the prestige.

Maybe it was the fact that I was so wrapped up in the story when I saw it the first time, or maybe that I hadn't heard anything about the movie before seeing it; maybe it was that I foolishly didn't expect there to be a twist, or that when we got one, I thought that was it, but whatever it was, when I first saw "The Prestige", I didn't see the ending coming at all. Last night, the others had the big reveal twigged from the start! I'm not going to clarify what that is here, that would be ridiculous. Just watch the damned movie if you haven't already. It's great fun, even if you get nothing else from it. I will say that if, like the others last night, you do figure it all out early on, then the movie can still be eminently enjoyable. It graduates from "What's going to happen?" to "How is it going to happen?" and both are equally as entertaining to see play out.

I loved seeing the movie a second time. All the little threads from throughout the story reveal themselves far more clearly.

We have also decided that Christopher Nolan should be hired to bring the joy of Dirk Gently to the silver screen. Admittedly, the humour of the series isn't what Chris is known for, but who better than the man that gave us Memento and The Prestige to direct the twists and turns of Dirks adventures??

While "researching" (thank you Wikipedia) about Nolan and Gently I discovered that Nolan is bringing the old British series "The Prisoner" to the big screen and the wonderful BBC have commissioned a radio play of Dirk Gently to be broadcast as three series of six episodes each, the first airing in October of this very year! Better yet, a guy named Dirk Mags is in charge, and I've heard his radio plays of "Batman: Knightfall" and "Superman: Doomsday and Beyond". I have every faith that these new radio plays will rock as much as his other work.

I am so happy right now, nothing could ruin this day... what's that?? Essays, you say? Nope. Sorry. Won't work. I'll do them tomorrow. No money? Meh. I'll survive. Nothing good in the cinema? I have DVDs. I have to wait seven months to hear the radio plays? Ok. Shut up now.

More Pictures, More Updates

I posted a bunch of new photos on Flickr today, but also played with some of the new additions to the site that they have introduced since last I tried tampering with my sets and layout.

New photos include food, friends and funny stuff. And I have two Collections now as well, Toys and BBQ, making use of the brand new feature.

Flickr continues to prove it's awesomeness, and I still love it. It's already been worth ever cent I spent on it, and I have another year to go before I have to renew it, so that's great!!

1941-2007?

When comic stores opened across America on Wednesday, the 7th of March, readers were unaware of the shocking moment they were about to bare witness too. Too often in comics, due to their nature, fanbase and the necessity to print weeks in advance to ensure delivery, secrets get out. Rarely are readers thrown an unexpected twist.

But this Wednesday was to be different. While all the focus was on Spider-Man Back In Black, or the brand new line-up for the Fantastic Four, no-one was watching Captain America. Why would they? At the end of Civil War he was remanded into custody on his own decision. His mask was in the hands of Punisher, and Steve Rogers, the man best know as the symbol of Truth, Justice and the American Way in Marvel comics, was under lock and key.

No-one saw this coming. There were no rumours. There were no leaks. There was just shock. In Issue 25 of the current run of Captain America, Steve Rogers received four gunshots to the torso that ultimately proved fatal.
The reaction has been incredible. CNN have done a piece on it, interviewing Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada, among others. Captain America co-creator Joe Simon, aged 93 years, has stated that he is shocked, and feels that Steve is needed more now than ever before.

Before reading the issue in question, I had my theories. It could have been ex-head of SHIELD, the now rogue Nick Fury and an LMD (Life Model Decoy). It could be a clone, a hologram, a trick to put Steve under-ground. And it still might be. When I read the issue and confirmed it for myself, I texted a few people I thought might have interesting opinions on the issue. Unanimously, the verdict from all (and I texted quite a few people) was, "meh. He'll be back within six months". And while I might argue the limited time-span, I can't argue the inevitability. That's why there's a question mark in this posts title!

Look at Colossus. Awesome death that held incredible meaning. Left for five years, and brought back. Captain Americas' boy sidekick, Bucky. Dead, dead, dead, until he returned as the Winter Soldier. Superman. Okay, we all knew that one was temporary. Not a chance they were going to off the Big Blue Boyscout. And don't get me started on Jean Grey!! Or any number of the X-Men. Wolverine and Cyclops are as bad. And Magneto?!? I remember someone once joking that his secondary mutation was an uncanny ability to die, but find the loophole to bring him back. Copies, fakes and "I got better" have all been used.

So why write about it? Why talk about something that even I have to agree will be thought of as "Hey, remember that time they actually tried to kill Captain America? Fun times, fun times..." Well, it's all in the telling.

Ed Brubaker has written a powerful tale of honour and glory, mixed through the mud of blood and sorrow. Discovery and loss, love and pain. He tells it with passion and grace. Even when I knew what was coming, turning the page and seeing it was still a shock. It was, pardon the expression, well executed. Steve's reaction was pure Steve. And I could feel the power of the moment coming off the page, especially as he began to slip away. Remember, I'm a bit of a fan of Captain America, so seeing this really hit me.

Of course, it's not all Eds work. The art of Steve Epting is fantastic. I haven't heard his name much before, but he really does this story justice. From the opening black'n'white to the closing, final image, he shows what he's made of.

So that's it. He's gone. And I have to admit, the Marvel Universe suddenly got just a little darker, a little scarier than it was yesterday. But I think Alan Moore said it best in the pages of Top Ten. I have to paraphrase, as the original text referred to a female, but here goes:

Eulogy for a Hero.

As we gather to remember the hero so nobly giving of his life so that others might live, merciful Lord, accept this, our brother, into thy bosom until such time as, in thy infinite wisdom, he may be cloned, reincarnated, or otherwise revived.
This we ask, in thy name.
Amen.

Steve Rogers 1941-2007

The Comics Wizard

So I popped into town today and nabbed the newest issue of Wizard. I get it every month, or at least every month my local comic store gets it in. Usually I leaf through the pages, stopping occasionally to stare at the pretty pictures. All in all, I "read" the magazine in a half hour or so.

But this issue has tonnes of interesting tid-bits!! It's just full of useful information. Pity none of it counts towards my college degree.

I've been excited about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie since they put up the first teaser trailer. Actually, I've been interested in it since long before that. Since the first rumours of a John Woo, CG movie were circulating. That's a while ago. Anyway, Wizard revealed some of the cast I had never thought to look up! Sarah Michelle Gellar as April O'Neill, which helps explain why she's a kick ass ninja herself now! Fantastic Fours Chris Evans (not the ginger one!) has been perfectly matched to the voice of Casey Jones. Nice. And Patrick "Professor Charles Jean-Luc Xavier Picard" Stewart will lend his distinctive voice talents to the main villain of the piece, Max Winters. I had already heard that Mako, voice of Uncle Iroh in Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as tonnes of other roles, had recorded his dialog for the Turtles sensei, Splinter. He passed away just days after they made the announcement of his involvement.

This next bit of news is for my good friend, Sharon. I would say that she'll be shocked to read this, but I texted her about it as soon as I found out, so reading it here will be nothing new. New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult is taking the helm of the Wonder Woman comic. Yeah, ok. I've never read anything by her, but Sharon swears by her, so she must be good. I trust her choice of authors, because she's the one who told me to read "Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom, and that's awesome.

Ian McShane, of Deadwood and Lovejoy fame will be voicing Captain Hook in the third outing for the Shrek series. That's far more exciting than Justin Timberlake as Prince Artie.

Sounds like Marvel is taking things to a new level in the aftermath of Civil War. Wizard lists 50 ways that these events have forever changed the face of Marvel comics. And these aren't insignificant trivialities to take up a few pages. All 50 are important changes, and if Marvel live up to the potential, it could change the way their universe is written. That's a big "if" though.

There is lots more cool stuff in the magazine. It makes an interesting change from just "all the pretty pictures".

Post Of The Century

Wow! So here it is, my 100th post! That's quiet an achievement for me. I didn't think I'd get this far in less than a year. I started this blog way back in May 2006, explaining the title. Around the same time I got a Flickr account, and already have well over 500 pictures on it! Woo!

In my time here I've blogged about trailers, random stuff and all the things that interest me. I've written reviews on movies, talked about where I stand in Civil War and enlightened you all on the joys of rubbish TV movies. I've complained about WarCraft, and missed it. I could go on, but you get the picture. I've been busy.

It's been fun blogging. 80 posts in 2006, and 20 already in 2007! I would have written this sooner, but college kept getting in the way. Darn college stuff.

So, what do I want for the next 100 posts? More stories, more fiction, more reviews. More writing that challenges me to be better. And at least one post soon where I announce that I actually got a degree. Eventually.

But my 100th post should be special. It should have some announcement to make it memorable. It should be different:

I'm starting a web-comic, provisionally titled "Tomorrow, Maybe You'll Be Gone", the alternative title for my blog way back when. Images and early drafts should be up soon. Now that I've taken the time to announce it, there's no going back.

See you all in the funny pages!

The McSpuds

Seamus and Sheila have a new brother!

From Marvelous News.com.

Oh yes. He will be mine.

For those of you not lucky enough to remember or even know the Irish legend of preschool entertainment, Bosco, Seamus and Sheila were the two children of the McSpud family, a crazy stop-motion animation.

Broken Promises

Before I start, I just want to say that I hadn't put up a post about Steve Irwin before now partly because of what I said about the direction I wanted to take my blog in and partly because it still feels like a dream to me. A horrible, twisted dream. I just can't believe it. He just kinda seemed invincible. Amuse or annoy, irritate or fasinate, the man always entertained. More importantly for me, he was a great father and loving husband. My thoughts go to his family, especially his son that will never get to know him.

This is all I have to say. Everything has been said a thousand times already across the world.

We'll miss ya mate.

R.I.P. Tony Jay

Anyone that's played a few computer games or watched Disney cartoons should know his voice. Tony Jay was a great voice actor, and I got to know him mainly through his computer game work. He was the voice for Magneto in X-Men: Legends, The Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series and the narrator for World of Warcraft, to name but a few. His cartoon work includes voicing Shere Khan in the Jungle Book spin-off Tale Spin, Galactus on Fantastic Four, Sul-Van, Jor-Els father-in-law on Superman: The Animated Series, Chairface Chippendale in The Tick and Dr. Lipshitz in Rugrats. He made appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Twin Peaks and Matlock.

Even if you didn't recognise the name, you probably recognise the voice.

He passed away on August 13 at the age of 73, after failing to recover from micro surgery for a non-cancerous tumor in his lungs. May he rest in peace.