Don't I know you from somewhere?

Caught a repeat of Sharpe's Justice the other day. Surprised to see how many of the cast went on to star in SF/F/H fare.

Obviously Sean Bean played Boromir in LotR. But you also had a pre-Life on Mars Philip Glenister, a pre-Primeval Douglas Henshall and a pre-Buffy and Angel Alexis Denisof.

And then last night I watched Sharpe's Challenge which had Bean fighting Toby Stephens. Both men had previously played Bond villains.

A less interesting version of this game can be played with Dr Who, trying to spot which programme the actors playing the supporting characters had appeared in before Who. Eastenders, Eastenders, Eastenders, Casualty, Eastenders, Eastenders ...

Kane

I've got way behind with Paul Grist's excellent crime comic Kane so the other day I read The Untouchable Rico Costas and Other Short Stories. Great fun. Continues the story of disgraced cop Kane as he attempts to bring down crime boss Oscar Daarke. The dramatic main story is nicely balanced out with some silly jokes and parodies of wellknown comics characters and Grist's B&W artwork is as delightful as ever. At first glance the cartoony art looks pretty crude, as though the Wallace and Gromit team have tried aping Sin City, but that just helps bridge the gap between the gags and the drama. One minute you're laughing but the next minute you really care whether Kane and his partners are going to get screwed over by an Internal Affairs investigation.

Well worth a look.

Zombie King

I'm a bit late with this but I just discovered Frank Cho's Zombie King #0 is available online.

WARNING FOR ELIZABETH: You won't like this link.

Doodling

Been going through one of my sporadic attempts at learning how to draw. Nothing fancy, just using photo reference to try and improve my abysmal grasp on human anatomy (apparently people are only supposed to have two arms).

The figures tend to look pretty stiff so the other day I spent a while sketching out copies of comic book poses. The theory was that if I drew some really exaggerated postures then some of that dynamism might carry over into my photo reference stuff, loosening the figures up a bit. Kind of worked, although most of the subjects of my sketches still look about as relaxed as someone who's about to receive a rectal exam.

Also spent a bit of time yesterday trying to figure how best to draw the female nose. Delineating the bridge of the nose tends to turn every sketch into Barbara Streisand but leaving out the bridge creates mutant women with these perfectly flat faces with a pair of nostrils burrowing straight into their skull.

The really worrying thing is that if anyone sees my sketchbook the content goes from pictures of glamorous women to a whole page of noses. This gives the impression that I have a rather strange fetish. I mean, these aren't the kind of hooters that most men go for.

Flash Point

Hong Kong legend Donnie Yen's new film FLASH POINT features UFC style grappling amongst his usual chop socky stuff. Although he still manages to make it incredibly acrobatic.

Trailer 1
Trailer 2
Shooting Diary

Bath Time

Just remembered that one of my old stories is available to view online.

Hi, I'm a Marvel ... and I'm a DC

I keep forgetting to post about this. Hilarious spoof of the Mac/PC ads with Marvel and DC characters comparing their various film projects. To make it funnier the superheroes are played by their action figures. To make it even funnier they actually give better performances than the actors in the real films.

I think there's about eight of them available now. Keep an eye out for new ones.

BFS Open Night

Went along to the BFS open night on Friday. Good laugh, much better than the disastrous March open night where only about three people turned up.

Topics of conversation included:

Seeing that as David Tennant's Dr Who is written as a sex god does Sylvester McCoy resent his stint as the character not being given the same treatment?

What stuff scared you as a kid? (For me it was Dr Who, the BBC version of The Day of the Triffids and the 50s version of The Invasion of The Body Snatchers.)

How exactly will Michael Bay fit his required amount of explosions (at least fifteen) into his remake of The Birds?

And what would be the most pointless remake Hollywood could produce? My money is on a shot-by-shot remake of Gus Van Sant's version of Psycho.

Plus, due to the large amount of writers present, a lot of whinging about there not being enough markets for stories. Translated this means, "My story has been rejected so many times I've run out of people to send it to."