Robert Altman died last night at age 81.
I’m ashamed to say I’ve only seen two of his movies—Gosford Park and…Popeye. But I have every intention of catching up. And apparently my father has caught some of Altman’s early directing work while watching Combat! reruns.
According to this email from Peter Jackson, it looks like PJ and his crew will not be making The Hobbit. But—horror of horrors!—someone else will.
The Hobbit: An Uwe Boll Film. Coming in 2009!
From Variety:
Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures will remake John Carpenter’s frightener “The Thing.”
Script will be written by “Battlestar Galactica” exec producer Ronald D. Moore. The 1982 original dealt with a shape-shifting creature from outer space that terrorizes researchers at an Antarctic facility.
I recently finished watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica, and while I’ve aired my admittedly unfair grievances about the show before, I recognize it’s a great series and I’ll give Moore the benefit of the doubt on this arguably unnecessary remake of a remake.
Back to the $10 word titles. Nothing new to report, really—I just wanted to get something up here before it began to rot.
I’m still working on my “Zombie Alamo” story, tentatively retitled “The Wanderer.” Yeah, it’s more generic, but it’s also more evocative of what I’m trying to do with the story. DG says she prefers “Vengeance Upon the Dust,” and of course there’s a very good chance she’s right to do so, seeing as how she’s usually right, but I’m sticking with “The Wanderer” for now. It’s a reference to a famous Anglo-Saxon poem of the same title, which is the thematic inspiration for my story.
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Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide, has a piece in The Guardian about the current wave of zombie popularity.
Mariners report new island in South Pacific
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A new volcanic island has risen from the South Pacific near Tonga, according to reports from two vessels that passed the area.
The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the northern Tongan islands group of Vava’u in August, reported on their Web log on August 12 that they saw streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water — then “sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice.”
This is it, people—the stars are right! As predicted in The Necronomicon, R’lyeh has risen and soon dread Cthulhu will lay waste to the earth. Your only hope is to be eaten first! Pray to be consumed quickly by the Bloated One and his hideous spawn! Ia! Ia! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
I’d intended to work on Vengeance Upon the Dust today (incidentally, I’ve come to dislike that title and will probably change it), but as usual, I found myself too distracted to get anything done. After watching the second half of Hitch, going to the convenience store, and spending some time with DG, I sat down at my computer, ready to let the creative juices flow.
Soon I was surfing Wikipedia and playing Doom 3. Such is the plight of the aspiring writer in the twenty-first century.
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So I finally watched Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It was interesting to watch Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead after having recently watched all of Romero’s films, as well as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later…. I enjoyed the latter, though I admit it didn’t really feel like a zombie film, and the same could be said for Dawn of the Dead ’04. Other than the fact that the “Infected” of 28 Days Later… can be killed like any human while the zombies of Dawn have to have their brain destroyed, there’s hardly any difference between the portrayal of the monsters—they’re fast-moving, violent, cannibalistic savages.
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Unsurprisingly, our big winner for most comments in October was Ed. Ed has decided to forego the actual Halloween Grab Bag prize in favor of mad props. So, mad props to Ed for his superior ability to run up his comment count.
Still working on Vengeance Upon the Dust, which I think is officially a novella and not a short story. However, I owe it to you all to finish it, and will do my best to do so as soon as possible. I’ve pulled the previous chapters off the site for a few reasons. First, I’ve already done some revising and the website version is no longer accurate. Second, I don’t want to be continually taunting you with an unfinished story. Third, I’ve decided to issue the completed story as a PDF chapbook (I’ll have alternate versions if you can’t read PDFs) rather than post it here. This way, I’ll have the option of publishing it professionally in the future (if I can interest anyone in it).
However, all my faithful readers here will get a copy of the chapbook if they want it. I’ll even mail a paper copy of it upon request.
Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Halloween. It’s funny how anticlimactic Halloween is when it doesn’t fall on a Friday or Saturday night, so you end up going to your big costume party the weekend before.
Well, assuming I get the last part of Vengeance Upon the Dust up today, I’ll have made it. Thirty-one brand-new posts and not a single day missed. Not too shabby.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be resting on my laurels tomorrow, though. Well, maybe for a few days. But there’s a big change a-brewin’ here at BBn, and I think most of you will like it. Until then, go out and find the most sincere pumpkin patch you can, crack a cold one and await the Great Pumpkin. He’s coming this year, I just know it.