The Null Device

It looks like the Wicker Man remake is going to be rubbish:

...In the original, Woodward's character was a virgin, making him ideal for sacrifice. That element has been ditched from the remake, because it was thought that while audiences would accept the idea of an American community that practised human sacrifice, the idea of a grown-up virgin was just too farfetched.

Anyway, it looks like the Wicker Man remake will take its rightful place next to the Sylvester Stallone Get Carter (with its all-American message of redemption) and the Californian-set Italian Job. It'll probably eclipse the original more than in the previous cases, though, because of the poor quality of the surviving prints of the original.

(via alecm) ¶ commercialisation crap film hollywood the wicker man 2

I just found out that there is an entire blog devoted to Commodore 64 music; and it seems to be surprisingly busy too. Some of the things on it include C64 music nights (and there's one in Manchester this weekend; had I known about it sooner...), new music software which manages to squeeze ever more out of the C64 hardware, homebrewed MIDI interfaces, C64s grotesquely hacked into rack-mounted synths, instructions on making one's own cartridges, ways of using quirks of the C64 hardware to make sound, people selling C64 game ringtones, and links to creative projects like Casionova, an 8-bit Kraftwerk covers compilation and more.

Not to mention a Commodore-branded entry onto the media player market, which doesn't actually play C64 software or chiptunes. You'd think that whoever owns the brand would have done more than commissioning a generic media player and slapping the chickenhead logo onto it. I wonder if it's of any better quality than the "Commodore" DVD+Rs I bought last year, which burned perfectly well but failed to read afterward.

(via MusicThing) ¶ chiptunes commodore commodore 64 crap retrocomputing turd in a can 0

The best summary of the Star Wars franchise I've seen:

So this ordinary, middle-class American male walks into a bar. "Gimme a beer, whatever you have on tap," he says, slapping down a fiver. The bartender, smiling, reaches below the bar, audibly unzips his fly, and a moment later produces a tall glass that looks suspiciously as if it might be full of warm urine. But our guy is a trusting soul, and he gulps it down anyway. Big mistake. He retches, curses, and then storms out, furious.

Three years later, the same guy walks into the same bar and asks the same bartender for a beer. No problemo , says the barkeep. Zzzzip . Handed what again looks like something better suited to a specimen jar, the guy barely even hesitates. Down the hatch it goes, and then halfway back up the hatch again. Tears of rage are shed; a lawsuit is threatened. Exit the dude, livid.

Three years later, the same guy walks into the same bar and asks the same bartender for a beer.

You're waiting for the punch line. It's not a joke, I'm afraid. It's a parable. The guy is you, the bar is the neighborhood multiplex, and the third steaming glass of piss you're about to be served with a smile is called Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith.

For God's sake, don't drink it.

(via /.) ¶ commercialism crap george lucas humour star wars 2

Apparently, the new Hitchhiker's Guide film really sucks:

This just doesnt feel like Hitchhikers Guide. Theres no sense of a big crazy universe packed with weird lifeforms that somehow reflects our own world. Hitchhikers Guide has always been a Swift-ian satire but the makers of the movie have decided to ditch all that and replace it with pointless surrealism and crude physical comedy.

(Please say it's not packed out with standard Hollywood-issue gross-out bodily-function gags.)

There are quite a few nods to Douglas Adams himself and although these go some way to making up for the almost complete absence of his name from the publicity, surely a better way of paying tribute to this much-loved, much-missed author would be to not fuck about with the sublimely witty dialogue that he sweated blood to create.

And here is a list of things not in the film.

¶ crap hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy hollywood 5

If you pass a computer shop and see a package of blank DVDs bearing the Commodore chicken-head logo, retro hipsters, think twice about buying them.

I recently bought a spindle of 10 Commodore DVD+Rs (for £6), only to find out that they don't work with my DVD burner (a Pioneer DVR-107D). Well, they half work; it can write them perfectly well, just that it can't read anything off them afterwards, and nor can my iBook. (Oddly enough, the Pioneer drive has no problems with other DVD+R media, including Verbatim.)

So now I have a spindle of 8 unused Commodore-brand DVD+Rs which are of no use whatsoever to me.

¶ commodore crap tech 0

A film about Ian Curtis is being planned. Unfortunately, the producer (Amy Hobby, who did Secretary) is pitching it as the story of Curtis as a "tragic romantic", and, even worse, the musical advisor is that purveyor of bland yuppie dinner-party techno, Moby. (via xrrf)

With credentials such as these, you can't hold out much hope for it. Though wasn't there meant to be another Ian Curtis film, based on his widow's biography of him, Touching From A Distance, and produced with the involvement of the members of New Order?

¶ crap ian curtis joy division moby no 0