Pfangirl Through the Looking Glass

It seems like Trailer Tuesday has been skewed towards horror films lately, so for haters of the genre, I apologise now. It’s just that they’ve been piquing my interest lately. Anyway, the following isn’t quite a trailer, but a collection of footage while principal photography for 28 Weeks Later is under way. 28 Weeks Later footage Now I have a confession to make… I used to think zombie movies were hopelessly lame. If a bunch of drooling corpses are slowly shuffling towards you, well, then just run away. You have time! Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and then the Dawn of the Dead remake, changed all that. Suddenly zombies were rabid, inescapable maniacs infected with a fast-acting virus. They entered my nightmares and stayed there for night after night of bloody, biting, flat-out chases. No 2 horror films have freaked me out in recent years as much as 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead. Now both films are both getting sequels, and it looks like 28 Weeks Later, starring Robert Carlyle, wi...

Paul, Robin and myself went to the Drakensberg this weekend for a little mini break. Unfortunately Paul has all the pics on his digital camera, and my PC is waiting for a Windows reinstall, so I’m afraid this little weekend report-back will be sans pics… until at least later in the week. On Friday evening we drove up to Nottingham Road in the Natal Midlands to spend the night on Paul’s sister’s farm (and chop an hour or so off the journey). Along with the usual menagerie of farm animal life they now have 7 dogs, including feisty new Jack Russell puppy, Rocky. On Saturday morning, we decided to show Robin around the farm before departing. It was at this point that our holiday took a little detour. Clearly out of revenge for all the ham, bacon, pork chops and gammon I’ve eaten in my life, a young sow (called Bacon) came snuffling up, sniffed at my shoe and promptly bit me above the ankle. It was more of a nip really, but Bacon still drew blood, and seeing as it has been at least 15 years...

I finished reading Frank Miller’s 300 on Thursday evening. After Alan Moore’s very hefty 400 page-plus Watchmen, 300 was an absolute breeze to read – it could be finished in 1 or 2 sittings very easily. I suppose any graphic novel is a bit of a come-down after the depth of Watchmen. While 300 is exceptionally beautiful to look at – essentially each panel could be wall-mounted as art – the story is a stripped down and stylised take on the Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans (King Leonidas and his personal bodyguard of 300 men) defended Greece against a massive invading force of Persians. At times the novel seems to be a simplified celebration of machismo. Chapter titles include Courage, Honour, Victory. At other times, Miller seems to let a critique of these qualities seep through – as arrogant as Persian king Xerxes is, the main atrocities and abuses seem to be committed by the Spartans, who spend a great deal of time celebrating their role as ‘defenders of democracy and reaso...

This is simultaneously hilarious and absolutely cute! And, well, although I'm a dog person I still think I need to have this put onto a T-shirt.

So what’s news? Well, Paul, Robin and I are going away to the Drakensberg mountain range this weekend to an out-of-the-way little place called Injisuthi. The weather is going to really determine the length of our hikes, but, regardless, it’s a chance to get away before peak holiday season kicks into full gear. Next year I’m planning to make 2 day getaways more common place (to see more of our beautiful KwaZulu-Natal province), as well as hopefully head overseas for a few weeks of real adventure – I haven’t travelled internationally in over 10 years, and I’ve been feeling quite left out. Hmm, I realise now that I haven’t said anything about last weekend. The short version is that after dinner on Friday night we just vegged around and watched assorted horror films on TV. These included the original Saw which, after all the hype, I found pretty overrated. The flashbacks to other Jigsaw tortures were gripping, and gut-wrenching, but the main story arc was only so-so, and the ‘big twist’ wa...

Well, it’s been a big week at Novagen, our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Club in Durban. 3 of our guys received their blue belts. Now the belt system in BJJ is somewhat different from other martial arts. There are only 5 belts – white (which you start with), blue, purple, brown and black, with a number of intermediate stripes on each. So it isn’t a case of advancing every few months or so if you meet the requirements of a set test. Advancing in BJJ is as a result of a number of factors – technical skill, general improvement, time devoted to the sport and success in competitions. The guys who received their belts did so as a result of their technical abilities and improved skill at grappling, as well as time (the one belt recipient has been practicing for 4 years). Although certain technical abilities are tested to receive a blue belt, generally BJJ grading is quite subjective, particularly when advancing above purple belt – the most difficult grading jump to make. It’s at the highest levels wher...

Hmmm, work is a bit thin on the ground today (I'm almost complaining), so here are some bits and pieces I've come across. James of The Mousetrap , South Africa's premiere gaming webcomic, has thanked ME for inspiring him in his cartooning pursuits. It's a small world, you see. I was best friends with James's older sister in primary/elementary school, and remember playing cartridge video games with the precocious little sprog who was Claire's little brother. Now we're both contributors to GEAR magazine . --- The Halo movie has been officially consigned to development hell . Boo hoo! As you may have guessed I'm not particularly upset by the cancellation of yet another video game-to-film adapatation; particularly one that has always seemed to me to be a bog-standard sci-fi shooter. It is a pity though that South African director Neill Blomkamp has lost out on a high profile opportunity to prove himself on the big screen. --- Oh, and head HERE for an absol...

I don’t know what it is about CSI. I moan about it continually but it’s the kind of mindless, polished-looking entertainment that I find myself settling down to watch when I don’t feel like doing something constructive in the evenings. Last night’s Season 4 episode of CSI: Miami , entitled Urban Hellraisers, had me groaning in frustration over its blatant stereotyping of gamers and its support for the idea that video games make you prone to violent crime. Jack Thompson must have been jumping around in glee! Literally every stupid misconception was there. [SPOILER ALERT] Essentially the plot saw a group of college students (who met on an Internet chat room, of course!) embarking on a killing/robbery spree styled exactly on a GTA style urban crime game. Completely desensitised to their actions, these kiddies are driven purely by a desire for points that will put them in first place on a score sheet. Personally, I can’t remember the last time when ‘points’ motivated me to do anything in ...

Alright, as some of you may know, I work for an advertising agency, and one of our clients is giving away an XBOX 360, the Premium System, worth R3700. Now I wouldn't normally use this blog to force competitions down your throat, but I know a lot of you have gamer tendencies and, like me, wouldn't mind owning a 360 even if you don't feel like paying for it. So here's your chance to WIN. It's a South African-only competition though... Enter here.

Seeing as it's Halloween and now less than 2 months until Christmas, I thought I'd combine the 2 holidays with the teaser trailer for Black Christmas , a remake of the 1970's slasher that has a maniac killing young nubile women in a sorority house around the festive season. Personally, I'm a little jaded by the slasher genre, which hasn't offered viewers anything new in a good long while (Help! A masked, weapon-wielding psycho killing teens!). The genre has also been beaten soundly in the 'freaky' stakes by new sicko torture fests like Saw and Hostel. So I doubt I'll be seeing this in cinemas when it is released (surprise, surprise) around 25 December, unless the reviews are very good, and nothing else on circuit grabs me. Still, I'll definitely make an effort to watch it on DVD or TV. Especially since the film does have some positives in its corner. The Black Christmas remake comes from the team who made the original Final Destination, and does at l...

Well, it’s Vampire-Blog-A-Thon Day , thanks to the organisational skills of Nat over at The Film Experience . Given the topic, and especially how most vamp-themed flicks these days seem to be schlock aimed at bloodthirsty teens, I thought I’d discuss 3 of my all-time favourite filmic vampire females. In all 3 cases, the ladies are lead characters (in good to excellent films), and their performances alerted me to these great actresses. Marie in Innocent Blood “My first rule – never play with the food.” Marie (Anne Parillaud) is probably one of the sexiest, but simultaneously cute and loveable vampires to ever grace the screen. Forget Kate Beckinsale rolling around in the buff with Scott Speedman in the Underworld sequel. Parillaud’s motel-and-handcuffs romp with a thin and surprisingly sexy Anthony LaPaglia is a far more gratifying sequence, in terms of sexiness and a light touch of humour. In fact, Innocent Blood, from John Landis, is a surprisingly satisfying vampire movie, even if it...

Last night, in the continued adventures of Persephone and Chad, the the Litch King, the deadly duo made a new friend - Meredith the Core Dweller! While Persephone and Chad hang back and blast enemies with their magical staffs, hulking Meredith rushes in with his fiery, volcanic fists to cause some serious damage.

First Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and Butters were on a quest to find the Lord of the Rings porno and return it to the Two Towers video store. Then in Good Times with Weapons the boys boughts martial arts weapons and pretended to be their favourite anime heroes. Then God harnessed the power of the PSP to find Heaven's champion AKA "our very own Keanu Reeves" in the episode Best Friends Forever. Now, Geek culture take some more bashing in Make Love, Not Warcraft, new Season 10 episode of South Park. You can read more about the episode here, Frustrated by having their characters repeatedly killed while playing World of Warcraft, Cartman devises a scheme in which the boys can reach their desired high levels by killing 6 million boar (at 2 experience points each) over a course of 7 weeks, sleeping for just 3 hours a night. Of course, these efforts turn the boys into bloated, pimply geeks with no life, and a vocabulary filled with gaming slang. The episode looks hilariously spo...

Curious as to what song was top of the charts in the UK on the day you were born? Then head on over to Hit40UK . Once you've got your results, however embarrassing, post them here. For the record, my birthday hit, for 10 Jan 1982, is: Human League - Don't You Want Me Ah, the joys of being born in the 80's;)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies / Who watches the watchmen? – Juvenal, Satires, VI 347 A little while ago, Wasp Jerky asked me to post my comments on Alan Moore’s Watchmen once I’d finished reading the seminal graphic novel. So here goes… Back in the mid 1980s, DC released 2 of the most revolutionary graphic novels of all time. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen proved that quality, mature comics could be made for adults, and, more importantly, that comics are an Art medium. Both novels are must-reads, but while The Dark Knight Returns puts a pseudo-psychotic spin on a hero and his attempts at clearing up a horribly corrupt world, it is far more stylised entertainment than Watchmen. Watchmen is Art. Every panel is Art… not so much in terms of Dave Gibbons traditional pencil and ink work, but rather in terms of layout, parallels with other panels and the inclusion of the smallest details, which enhance the issues being discussed. Because Watchmen tackles a l...

(Spoilers ahead) Everyone has their guilty TV viewing pleasures and mine is The Amazing Race . I don’t know what it is about this reality show, but really gets me involved. I get tense when there’s a close finish; I’ve even cried in sympathy when my favourite teams have been eliminated, or wept for winning teams I care about. I know the show’s manipulative, but, well, I just so enjoy letting myself be manipulated by it! Plus there’s the travel aspect. The show has made me aware of a number of destinations and their tourist attractions that I never would have placed on my ‘Must Visit’ list before the show. Anyway, The Amazing race: Family Edition (Season 8) ended last night in South Africa. This 4-person family spin on the award-winning month-long race around the globe was pretty entertaining. I did dip in and out of the series until the participant numbers dropped (there’s a helluva lot more noise with 4 member teams), but I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw. And after the scheming of Surv...

Now this one should be interesting, if only to see if non Lord of the Rings traditional fantasy can actually be pulled off, without it being a Lord of the Rings clone. I'm in two minds about this one, because while it seems to have a certain coolness factor (dragons, everyone!), with Jeremy Irons lurking about in dingy castles and Eastern European locales, I'm getting a bad Dungeons & Dragons vibe. Plus, Eragon, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini, seems to contain every possible horrible cliche that traditional fantasy is known for, from magical eggs, to heroes shooting blue mana balls from their hands, to the biggie - young blond farm boy discovers he is the chosen saviour of his people, and leads an army against their tyrannical, bald, black-wearing oppressor. *yawn*. Go, Hollywood for picking suich an original novel to adapt for the screen. --- Anyway, in terms of more interesting fantasy coming to the big screen, more information is appearing on the web about Nei...

This weekend was both good and bad. After a week of stress on so many levels, the start to the weekend was capped with a 1 and a half our drive home, thanks to a police blockade that had 4 lanes of traffic merging into 1. It literally took me an hour to travel 200m. Now I have severe anxiety about driving in heavy traffic, and combined with a killer week, it meant I spent a good portion of the weekend dipping in and out of a rather nasty funk. I really should just cry and get it out of my system for good. I didn’t help that I felt neglected for a good portion of the weekend. Paul was once again roped into DIY home repairs and family over-the-phone computer tech support. I hardly had him alone to myself at all. I just killed time playing the Bad Day LA demo (with its fun cartoony look but horribly chaotic gameplay), and proof read my sister’s psychology research project. On the better side of the weekend, we went for a ride with Robin in the game reserve on Saturday afternoon. Although ...

The Open Door, the new album from Evanescence , had a worldwide release on 3 October. It debuted at #1 in the U.S., Australia, Germany, Greece, Japan, and Switzerland and was in the Top 5 in Austria, Canada, France, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, Ireland, Korea, Norway, and Denmark! I don’t know what the figures in South Africa are, but Fallen, the band’s debut album, is the biggest selling alternative rock album in the country’s history. But the big question is, even with all this success, is The Open Door any good? The album is definitely more experimental / unconventional than Fallen. It requires repeat listening to really begin to appreciate it, particularly the second half of the album, which is less heavy, and veers almost into Tori Amos territory at times. This said, my first few listenings of Fallen were exactly the same, as I struggled to differentiate among tracks that just seem to blend one into the other. The Open Door has a fantastic beginning with 4 p...

My apologies for the rather terse updates of the past few days. To use advertising terminology I’ve been crunching under at least 3 deadlines for the end of the week. And by the looks of things, with our major client staging 2 huge launches next year, the workload is going to be like this right up until Christmas. So much for a cooling off period… Anyway, yesterday was pretty cool. A DTP operator and myself were taken out for lunch at a great little café-antique store combo, Churchills, in Windamere. The lunch was a gesture of thanks from 2 of the Account Executives after all the work we’d done on packaging for a new skincare product. And in the afternoon, right up my alley, I got to write a description for the Xbox 360 Premium, which is being given away as a prize for the latest Duel Matrix3 razor promotion. Anyway, you can hopefully expect my Evanescence review (finally!) tomorrow, and, having finished Watchmen last night, my thoughts on that graphic novel will be posted here soon. O...