DrunkGeek Productions

4 Lithographs from TFAW.com

Need to find some frames.

It has become commonplace for much of the revewing world and fans of George Lucas to rip apart any new work the writer/director releases post “Episode 1.” When the world first encountered Lucas’s penchant for radical ideas, or what some would call going bat shit crazy.

Growing up with the original Star Wars trilogy I found it hard to stomach some of the changes to the mythos Lucas made when the force changed from a spiritual well that any one with the right kind of training could learn to tap, to a microscopic parasite called Midichlorians, thus crushing any hope for becoming a Jedi, or Sith Lord. Also came the introduction of the Gun-gun race, and specifically Jar-Jar Binks, while appealing to the younger audiance, made legions of fans cringe at his pseudo-black face, and soft shoe dance antics. Lucas began cutting his role back in Episode 2, and making him a lynch pin of the formation of the Empire, to almost being a background character in Episode 3, but the damage was done.

Then came the re-edits of the original trilogy. Lucas made minor tweaks and enhancements to characters and special effects. And some changes that were not so minor; like Hahn shooting second, adding in a dance number to Jabba’s Palace, changing the Ewok song, Lapti Nek,” at the end of VI, and replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. While many of the enhanced special effects, and reworkings of more of the rubber monster scenes was a great improvement and made it appeal to a new audiance, the changing of Han shooting first, and placating Christiansen by replacing the older ghost of Anakin, continued Lucas’s trend downwards.

Lucas’s latest two endevoures, Indy IV and Star Wars: Clone Wars, have been met with utter hate and vitriol, it would make a lesser man curl up with his Sarlacc plushie and cry to sleep. We’ll start with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Now besides the extra long name, there are three scenes that people hang on as the worst of the worst, the CG Prarie Dogs, the great fridge escape from a nuclear bomb, and swinging on the vines with monkeys. The latter two scenes are at the heights of two intense action sequences, and while are both hard to take seriously, how seriously could you take a mine car jumping a huge gap and landing safely back on track, or running away from a rolling boulder or rushing water. And the prarie dogs aren’t on the screen for more than a minute, and provided a moments levity, hardly worth daming a film over. Then there is the overall story arc of dealing with aliens. Why is it so easy to believe Indy can tackle anything involving religion and mysticism, but once the word Alien is bandied about, a film becomes a plague.

Lastly we have the latest foray back to the Star Wars universe, with the CG flick “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” Aimed squarly at a younger audiance the goal of the flick doesn’t dissapoint in that regard, offering a fantastic action ride, with out any of the political intrigue of the prequel series. Though it wouldn’t be a George Lucas flick without something to hate. And apparantly Ziro the Hutt takes that pink frilly cake. With a voice that is described as Capote-esque, a skin tone of a purplish nature, with feathers and facial tatoo, the internet has found a new scapegoat. While the children seeing this movie won’t really understand that the character is gay or effemanent, they will see the humor that the character brings, and hopefully see the difference between Ziro and Jabba and that not all the Hutts are Crime lords.

Now. Wy does George Lucas do these things to his movies? Why make characters and plot choices that don’t always mix well with the majority of a viewing audiance, or at least the ones with interent access and a blog? Because it’s his world. He created the worlds, and can do with them what he wants. Those same people say that he should leave the Star Wars realm alone, would you say the same thing about Superman, or Batman? We’ve had 30-plus years of those characters, it’s time to leave well enough alone. We don’t need any new stories, just go ahead and stop writing new comics DC. It is time to let go. Right, let’s stop producing money. Because, you know, money isn’t all that great.

Lucas is doing the exact same thing as the rest of the entertainment world, trying to keep his worlds fresh and new, constantly reinventing them and adding new things. These new things may not always work, and some may even prove to have a neative effect on how we perceive the worlds. But its not the end of the world. Lucas is a film maker, and has lots of ideas that he’d like to share with the rest of the world, and because he has the money to do so, I’d expect to see more from Star Wars and Indy in the future. I’m already standing in line.

Recently there was a one week event that happened on the internet. This week was host to 3 videos released on 3 seperate days. No big deal right? People post videos of themselves on the net every 15 seconds. Now a days anyone with a digital camera can make their own TV shows. So what made this series of videos any different? A little something called production value.

There are a great many indie- “webisodes” and “vidcasts” out there, Loading-Ready-Run, Hero Envy, The Guild, pretty much everything from Revision3 (Tekzilla, The Totally Rad Show…), and a thousand other vidcasts found on iTunes or the Zune Marketplace. The first 3 are akin to normal TV fair, falling somewhere near the sit-com genre of television, while Revision3, and Lab Rats, and many of the other “How-To” and news shows cover the non-fiction genre. And the majority of them do it extremely well Though many, through no fault of their own, look like they are filmed with Sony HandyCams, and don’t have actors that the common person can name; though those of us in the net culture know them by face and stand in line for their autographs. They use this to their advantage. They fill a gap that conventional TV can’t or won’t fill, because taking chances costs money.

Then along comes the writers strike, and one man, not to be put down, continues to write. But he has a problem he can’t sell this material to conventional media outlets, because by all rights, he shouldn’t have been working in the first place. So what does a man in his position do? Call up a group of your closest actor friends and guilt trip your family into helping, and put together 45 minutes of one of the funniest Super-Villian musicals ever.

This is exactly what Joss Whedon did. And he had the internet captive for 3 days waiting for the continuing adventures of Dr. Horrible (Niel Patrick Harris), Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and Penny (Felicia Day). Thus bringing apointment internet to more than just the geek culture, reaching outside of the normal circle of folks who would normally watch a webisode/vidcast (I know, my mother asked me if I’d heard of this “Dr. Horrible Sing Along” web site).

Traditional media is trying to capture the internet content realm by producing it’s own webisodes off of some of their more popular series. NBC has “Heroes” and “The Office.” SciFi had a webisode series for “EUReKA!” it’s first season, and USA had web only content for it’s scifi series “The 4400″ and “Psych.” And with the exception of “EUReKA!” the web series do not have the main characters, and all of them don’t affect what happens in the show proper. While a sometimes nice addition to the main story, the webisodes are nothing more than pointless videos that usually end up being a 5 minute commercial for the show and it’s sponsor.

Amanda Tapping, of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, recently proved the exception to the rule, and predated Dr Horrible by almost a year, with her web series “Sanctuary.” The show had the advantage of professional writers, cameramen and F/X folks, and it helped. The show was option by SciFi and will be premiering on the network soon. But it all started on the internet, and the generosity of a group of fans. While Sanctuary did have a release schedual, you could hardly set a clock by it. True appointment internet is still a ways off.

With the advent of the DVR, the common person is able to timeshit, and store programs for future veiwing. It is even possible to place shift this content )legally even) to a portable device for watching outside of your living room. And with the world becoming more connected (albeit slowly thanks to the phone companies, but that is another article) we are able to watch TV shows, and surf the web from our phones. We are always looking to fill in down time with some form of entertainment, some distraction from our daily lives, the grind of working 9-5. This is where the webisode/vidcast comes in, but in order to attract the common person into watching this content, higher production value, and named actors are needed. There will always be an audiance for the indie productions There will always be that gap that can’t be filled by the traditional media companies.

The internet is ripe for more content, and we are all here at the beginning to witness the best, and the worst.

PS> Comments are broken for some reason. I can’t figure out the problem, help is greatly appreciated if you are familiar with css and PHP. If you’d like to comment I’m on Twitter under Gorbash. Thanks for reading.

When it comes to advertising in this country, more, louder, and repetition is the mantra. Apparently we need to see the same home owner’s insurance and car commercials twice a break, every 10 minutes in an hour show. Twenty minutes of commercials in a hour long program is ridiculous. It is no wonder viewership of television shows is down, no one wants to be interrupted right when Jack Bauer is about to pull up to the warehouse where the bomb is hidden, only to be bombarded with tampon commercials, and pills for incontinence.

We could adopt the BBC’s policy of network television. Make everyone pay a yearly/monthly fee to own a television set, thus eliminating commercials during our shows, and possibly going back to 45 even 50 minute shows. As an added bonus it will give the government groups one less thing to blame our obesity problem on.

Another disturbing trend that is getting way out of hand is the product placement in shows. Granted, I’d much rather have some one say, “Get me a Coke” or “Let’s call Domino’s” than substitute made up places. It makes the shows more real, gives the viewer something to relate to, “Hey I eat at Domino’s and drink Coke just like Mulder and Scully.” But this week we were witness to some of the most blatant, and downright distasteful product placement yet.

First, in the season opener of EUReKA! at the end of the episode the logo for Degree Deodorant was placed full screen then bandied around the screen for the outro of the show. The characters even referred to the product as “Their new corporate sponsor.” The second indecent came during an episode of Psych, where the two main characters had a 4 minute discussion on Dunken’ Donuts, and whether the logo inspires thoughts of coffee or donuts after seeing a patch on the back of a stunt man. Now while the latter of the two examples fits my criteria of using real world products as reference, more than a casual mention is pushing the limit.

We can’t even escape commercials in the movie theaters anymore. We are subject to several minutes of ads we see a hundred times a day on television, this is in addition to the slides promoting local businesses. Where will this stop? Space billboards? Ads on animals, mountains, made from clouds? Man’s greed is the only limit.

Now excuse me while I drink my Coke Zero, while eating Domino’s Gotham City Pizza, while watching Dish Network’s new Turbo HD on my Vizio TV .

For a while we have known of a Massivly Multiplayer Online Game based on the popular science fiction series, Stargate was coming. For the longest time all we had were renered scenery shots and concept art. Then during season four of Stargate Atlantis the first video of the game was released. It resembled the wildly popular World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars, meaning it could run on low end systems and thus enjoyed by many more people.

This week being Comic-Con, and as is customary for every genre company to do, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment released a 2-minute gamplay trailer. I feel that I speak for the majority of Stargate fans, “I am ready to step through the gate.” This trailer looks awesome. So, without further ado, courtesy of GameVideos.com the Comic-Con ‘08 Stargate Worlds trailer:

Many things make one a geek. Action figures, comic books, DVDs, computers and gadgets. But, there is one gadget above all that, the item of absolute power that controls everything in one’s habitat The universal remote control.

Not all of these remotes are created equal, not by a long shot. Every device you buy comes with a remote that claims to have some form of universal control. Many times when trying to program these remotes with 4-8 digit codes, sometimes requiring multiple tries to find the right code to control other devices, leads to  much cursing and throwing of objects. And a majority of the time the so called universal remote can only control itself, and the most basic functions of the other devices. Not so universal.

Then there are those third party universal remotes. Again the remotes require the entry of codes four to eight digits in length, multiple tries to obtain the correct code, and while they are usually better at controlling some of the more secialized functions of some devices, you still need to pick up the devices remote to change some setting. Still not very universal.

Lastly there is the Logitech corporation. In short they make magic wands. Hand held electronic devices that acuratley replicate every function of the original remote, and have the addition of smart macros. What is a smart macro? In a normal macro, a remote can turn on all the devices to say, watch TV or watch a DVD or play a video game console. A smart macro takes it one step further and sets te secondary devices to the proper inputs, and remembers what inputs it has already puts those devices on.

So let’s say you want to watch TV through your Dish Network receiver. The remote will turn on all the apropriate devices, then changes in the inputs on the TV and surround sound to their correct input. You then find that of the 400+ channels nothing is on, and you want to watch a dvd. By pressing the “Watch a DVD” button, it changes the input of the TV and sound system to it’s appropriate setting, turns on the DVD player, and turns off the Dish receiver. Magic Wand.

These ease of setting up the Logitech remote is as easy as navigating a web page, and using drop down menues to select your device. It was even able to find my decade old surround sound receiver that doesn’t have the antiquated remote codes that other “universal” remotes require. I opted for the Logitech Xbox 360 remote based solely on the fact that I own a 360 and use it to watch HD DVDs. The normal version of the remote is the Logitech 550, the only difference being the Y X A B button on the face of the remote, and being able to control a 360 out of the box.

The only other remote left on my coffee table is my PS3 bluetooth remote, and that will change after a while when I obtain a IR USB dongle. At $75, the Logitech 360 remote is one of the cheaper in a line of Harmony remotes, with prices going as high as $800 for some of the more elaborate touch screen remotes that all the hip movie stars use. This remote is so simple to use, that even the most techno-phobe can operate it. It required a mere 15 minutes to set up, and another 5 to refine the macros, and is the sleekest, lightest remote in my arsenal. Logitech has found a customer for life in it’s Harmony line of products. It’s now time to start saving up for that movie star remote control.

This is one of those times where I will shamelessly plug something awesome. Something free no less. Those of you familiar with Podiobooks.com already know of Tee Morris (MOREVI, Billibub Badding Mysteries) and Philippa Ballantine (of Dragon Moon’s Chasing the Bard), will be ecstatic to learn that their latest works (The Case of The Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery and Digital Magic) are available in PDF form for free before they go on sale 08.08.08.

What these two have going is some of the best promotion for a novel, a sort of try before you buy. This is great for those of you unfamiliar with either author’s work. More after the jump from Tee himself, and links to the authors’ websites to download the free PDF’s and information on when to purchase hard copies of the books.

Award-nominated podcaster and Fantasy author Philippa Ballantine (of Dragon Moon’s Chasing the Bard) and I (Tee Morris) are feverishly working on a new spin on an old promotion. Following in the footsteps of other podcast authors like Scott Sigler and Matthew Wayne Selznick, “Double Trouble” is the first time TWO authors are collaborating to get both their new books — The Case of The Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery and Digital Magic — up the charts on Amazon.com, on the same day. Pip and I have been in the middle of a powerful media blitz and are not slowing down. This week we are offering up PDFs for downloading.  From our respective websites, we will be making available for download Digital Magic and The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant. The PDFs are the complete novels, and we’re giving them away for free in order to promote “Double Trouble” coming on 08.08.08 on Amazon.com.

PDF copies:

• The Case of The Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery
• Digital Magic

Amazon Links:

• The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery
• Digital Magic

So this weekend marks the opening of the biggest movie of the summer, and possibly the year, maybe decade?

I was at the first showing Friday afternoon in a near sold-out show, elbow to elbow with the fans and the curious, the young and the old. Seeing all these different people made me think what would drive the common person to attend a sci-fi and even a comic book movie. It lead me to this conclusion, there are newbies, fans, fanatics and fan-boys.

While the newbies are easy to spot, and they are always welcome, even when they don’t get what is going on half the time, a movie like “The Dark Knight” will inevitably turn these newbies into fans. TDK might have brought out a few more newbies due to the fact that one of the main characters died tragically (be it accidental or otherwise is not the point of this entry). The human race is morbidly curious, rubber necking at accidents, the publishing of obituaries, and of course seeing an actors final film. Hopefully this exercise in fulfilling that morbid need, many of these folks have become the next stage of person, fans.

Fans are those folks that when presented with a character, or genre of film, can tell you basic facts about said character. Spider-Man can shoot webs, crawl on walls, wear a red suit. Superman is an alien, has an “S” on his chest, and flies around saving humanity, “Truth, Justice, all that stuff…” And relevant to this topic is Batman, he’s dark, wears black, has a kick ass car, and lives in a cave. The fans came to this movie expecting to see just that, a rich playboy wear a cape and cowl and beat up criminals while driving around in a kick ass car. Said fans weren’t disappointed.

Fanatics can give you an extended backstory of these characters, probably reads the source material, has all the other incarnations of the character on video, would be more than likely to dress up as their favorite character at a con or movie premiere, and knows all the catch phrases. We fanatics found ourselves with our jaws on the floor with “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan has taken a character that we have loved since Bob Kane created him back in Detective Comics, Adam West portrayed the campy Bats, and Tim Burton gave us his twisted minds view of the Batman, perverted in Batman and Robin, and made him dark and brooding again.

Fanboys on the other hand are another breed all to themselves. No one likes a fanboy, not even other fanboys. Fanboys want everything to be the same with their characters. Any changes brings hate and vitriol from these people, and if you say anything that goes against what they believe brings scorn and abuse that would make a biker gang blush. This group of people can quote events and lines from every facet of their chosen worship, ridicules the fanatic for wearing costumes, while they sport Cheetos stained shirts of Original series Battlestar Galactica. To go from fanatic to fanboy is a thin line, without knowing it a person can cross into this realm of obsession with a simple criticism against someone who writes a negative review.

Change is necessary, don’t forget that. Not everything that works in the written word can be transcribed into moving pictures. Reinterpretation makes for a better viewing experience. Because if everything was the same, that would be communism, and we all know how well that works.

In this day and age of pirated content being distributed via bit torrent, RapidShare, and over seas FTP sites, when a show like the recent Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is distributed for free why would one pay for it?

It all started for me several years back with a new web series called Red vs. Blue. They had this radical idea of producing quality content and give it away for free, with out nary an advertisement on the site. Their idea? Produce something that the community enjoys and if they like what they see give them a method to donate money in return for a slightly better quality video, and other free perks. Their model has apparently worked as they are still producing content, and they have one of the largest social communities this side of Facebook.

Living in a culture where advertisements permiate every facet of our lives, from television, web pages, before movies in theaters, video games and on the sides of cars; it is almost second nature to expect adverts in our daily lives, because let’s face it, stuff costs money, especially bandwidth. So in a rare move, Joss Whedon released his newest creation to the web for free, and without ads to boot.

Joss may be a special case. With a fanatical group of followers, anything the man creates will be devoured with out a second thought. I, myself am one of those fanatics. Having Joss’s name attached to something tells me quality is sure to follow, and the fact that it is free only makes me want it more. Though at the same time it is released on Hulu.com it is also sold for $1.99 an episode or $3.99 for a season pass of 3 episodes, or the price of a comic book.

So what would compell an admitted torrenter and proponent of Free Culture, pay for something that is free. Because I believe in free culture, and alternative media. And to get more of that media some of us must pay for it. And with that payment I get that added bonus of watching the episode in a slightly better quality, and the ease of transferring the file to my iPod to be watched anywhere in the world.

Right now this bastion of Free Culture is only available to the United States, which is a whole ‘nother blog post in itself. Time will only tell when this internet phenomena will catch on and more people embrace the instant gratification of putting their work out there for the community to devour, and reward their hard work with our cold hard cash.

So I have this whole web page thing set up, and while not much has come about because of it, I thought I’d take the opportunity to write out some of my thoughts and observations on things that no one will probably find interesting, even my mother, especially my mother.

While I hope one day to give up this life of manual labor and interacting with people face to face, and become a writer, I’m left with sitting alone with my laptop clacking out ideas for books, comics, movies and TV shows, that would never get off the ground, even on the Fox network.

Who isn’t a writer these days, or an MMA fighter. While I definetley try to be the former, I will never be an MMA fighter, more resembeling Butter Bean than Chuck Lidel. I do enjoy every now and then to watch a match or two on TV, I don’t pay for the PPV events, but it does show up on the VS. channel from time to time, I very quickly learned that it is nothing like boxing, or karate, but more about the submission hold, be it a arm bar, or leg bar, or some choke hold.

I used to watch a great deal of the WWF, now WWE. Monday night RAW, and Thursday night Smackdowns were bar nights for me and some friends at college, much to the chagrin of the jocks who tried to invade our watering hole. I could tell you at one point the entire back story of all the major wrestlers, their previous identities and the current alegiances. Why it is now that I can’t stand the program is a revelation. It’s not that I hate the sport, I’ve just learned that their are better ways to spend my time in front of the TV.

I’ve always enjoyed science fiction as a genre, both in the written form and in moving picture shows. Having been raised on the Original Trilogy, Back to the Future, and Flash Gordon, scifi holds a special place in my being. In college was the first time I had unfettered access to cable television, and I quickly found the SciFi channel, and the Shotime Network. SciFi was like a dream come true for someone like me, Mystery Science theater was still running on the network, and the station still showed older genre programs and movies. Then while flipping through channels I came across one on the Showtime Network that changed my life forever, Stargate SG-1.

Stargate was one of those films that I couldn’t watch enough. Egyptian culture was fascinating to me, as was other old Earth mythology, and Stargate took that love of Egyptian kings and blended them with science fiction, heaven. Then there is this TV station making a series out of my beloved movie, first reactions are usually the best, but I was skeptical at first, not wanting to like the show I tuned in anyway, and was blown away. Not only did this show keep the Egyptian alien mythos, but also added in Norse, Greek and other mythologies into the mix to create the longest running US scifi show in history, and now two DVD movies, and supremely succesful spinoff, and another spinoff in the works.

So I think that’ll do it for tonight. I’ll be writing more as the mood strikes, running my streams of unconciousness out to the rest of you, those of you who waste your time reading this anyways. And besides, evryone else blogs as well as fights in the MMA, so I should as well.