February of 2008 when Death Ray 11 was being written, the magazine wherefrom these pieces are plucked, must have been a splenetic month, for my review of Family Guy: Blue Harvest also seems quite damning. But then there’s New Zealand weresheep comedy Black Sheep, which I enjoyed a little more.

Ah, I remember why! None of us got paid for nearly three months, and our boss was very evasive about exactly why… A story for another time.

Reproduced in this post, for your convenience and the lessening of RSI risk, is the AVP review. Click on the links in the text for the others.

Aliens Versus Predator: Requiem

TWO STARS

2007/83 mins /15

Director: The Brothers Strause

Writer: Shane Salermo

Starring: Steven Pasquale, Reiko Aylesworth, John Ortiz, Johnny Lewis, Ariel Gade, Kristen Hager

Painting by numbers Alien film rendered in rainslick black, acid yellow, and flourescent blood green.

The second in what will hopefully be a short franchise presents a story with themes so dilute it’s as powerful as a weak glass of Kiora.

The plot: The Alien chestburster born from a Predator at the end of the last film goes on the rampage on the Predator ship, causing it to crash in small town America. Facehuggers escape, and run amok. Meanwhile (it’s the kind of film with a lot of “meanwhile”), on the Predator homeworld, an alarm alerts a veteran Predator, and he nips off super-quick like to clean it all up, before anyone on Earth notices. There’s a lot of fighting, then the military blow up the town to stop the spread of the aliens, so you could say our Predator buddy is unsuccessful. Fin.

Earlier Alien films have made a variety of points:  the power of the mothering instinct, the greed of corporations, what it means to be human. Unfortunately, this movie takes its cues from the Predator franchise alone. It’s nothing but a welter of rubber-suit action, only without the novelty of either original Predator film. It is “horror SF” in its most debased form, SF because the monsters are aliens, horror because we get to see a load of teenagers being slain.

This co-mingling of low-grade DNA shapes the film. We have a traditional suburban set-up, with a number of bland characters. These are just enough this side of the superficial to make us be bothered to guess what order they are going to die in. There’s a troubled brother, a nerdy brother, a sheriff with a dodgy past, a hot blonde… blah blah blah. So far, so straight-to-video, but what really irks is the egregious deployment of a sub-Ripley Gulf War vet mother and her Newt-esque child. This only shows the film up for what it’s not. Actually scratch that, we don’t know she’s a Gulf War vet, only that she shows up at home in a US Army uniform and can drive a tank and fly a helicopter. These really are thumbnail character sketches – of characters from other films, movie shorthand so that we don’t need a real story. The rest of it, cool Predator weapons, swimming Aliens, the inclusion of a certain Ms Yutani, is pure fan service. It’s only missing a gratuitous tit shot.

This reduction of idea goes on: selectively ignoring the Alien’s acid blood so we get a better fight with the Predator, having the super-secretive clean-up Predator skin a man alive and leave him in plain view, just for the gore, while the franchises haemorraging of sophistication sees the Predalien invade a maternity ward, causing clutches of aliens to burst out of pregnant mothers’ bellies. This kind of thing makes you wonder, do the Brothers Strause understand what these films are about, or are they just turned on by the action? Probably the latter, because as in the first AVP, the life cycle of the Aliens is sped up, so we don’t have to sit through any boring suspense before the silver-toothed xenomorphs start chowing down on our pack of McStereotypes. It’s short attention span SF by MTV directors for people who know these properties only as trademarked action figures. In the end we’re left watching two big guys in unwieldy costumes hit each other in the rain. And that is really is it.

However, this is a leaner, more gripping film than the first AVP. It’s pacily directed, and though fashioned from lumps of cinematic Lego, they are neatly stuck together. If you can put your brain in neutral and forget the films that came before, you might enjoy it. But it is so bereft of any kind of genuine thought – AVP 1‘s concepts might have been rubbish, but at least it had some – that it’s hard to keep mental disengagement up.

There’s a reason why films like this are the way they are, and modestly budgeted too. The twin franchise has reached that Freddy 4 stage, where it’s enough to wheel out the titular bad guys to get the fans cheering. Folks who can chew and walk at the same time are going to be perpetually disappointed by such offerings. This could be Aliens Versus Jason, or Aliens Versus Mickey Mouse. Both creatures have become so embedded in US contemporary pop culture that they have ceased to be interesting. It’s the purest form of film-as-business, an exercise in spreadsheets, there’s simply no need for anything but the simplest ingredients to make cash. This is fine, Brothers Strause, we all need to turn a buck, but don’t expect critical acclaim for it. And why is it called Requiem? If it’s a requiem for anything it is one for imaginative filmmaking. Very nearly, but not quite, shit.

Did you know?

The Predator was named Wolf by the filmmakers, after Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction who was also a “Cleaner”.

An interview with Peter Mohan, Canadian TV producer behind Mutant X, Psi Factor, Blood Ties and more.

A review of Adam Roberts’ novel Swiftly.

I’d been waiting a long time to say what I said here. Lots of people love SG, and so for years I was forced to remain silent (repeatedly demolishing one of the few truly popular SF shows of the time would have alienated a large chunk of the readership). Not lie, you understand, just not scream “Can’t you see how bad it is?” at every opportunity I had. Reviews were one of the rare places I could vent, but these were often given to fans of the show. No one on SFX or Death Ray had much time for it, to be honest.

To save the feelings of these misguided others (not least the SG cast and crew, who were generally very nice people) I tried to be reasonable in this piece, but frankly I thought the entire franchise dreadful television. If I were writing this now for this blog, it would be a lot more ranty, with more swearing. I reckon a large part of its popularity is down to the fact that there was very little SF on telly at the time, or am I being generous?

I like the film though. That counts for something, eh?

Stargate

1997 saw the beginning of what was to become the longest running SF show besides our own Doctor Who. But it was hardly groundbreaking stuff. Just why was Stargate so popular?

1994, and an SF movie called Stargate hit the screens. Meeting with middling reviews, it made a good return, but sank out of the popular consciousness with rapidity.

Stargate was yet another SF concept that drew inspiration from Von Danniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which suggests aliens were behind many of the ancient world’s technologies. A disgraced archaeologist named Daniel Jackson (James Spader), who regards the pyramids as landing platforms for alien spaceships, is recruited by the US government to help in deciphering the writing on a mysterious artefact found in 1928 in Egypt. He succeeds, and activates a wormhole to the alien world of Abydos. Jackson is sent along on a military expedition led by Colonel O’Neil (Kurt Russell) to Abydos, where an offshoot of the ancient Egyptian civilisation lives, and once there they must do battle with a parasitic alien who is worshipped as the sun god Ra.

The film, produced at a time when SF was going through a lull in popularity, was an entertaining yet fairly pedestrian affair. Despite its big themes and healthy budget, the movie feels small. It won six awards, among them the Saturn Award for best SF film, but was derided by critics for its over-reliance on effects. Though the film earned nearly four times its budget of $55million worldwide, plans for a trilogy of films were scrapped, and producers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich continued their patchy career as movie moguls elsewhere. It produced a couple of firsts – first dedicated film website, one of the first uses of realistic water CG effects (ironically, not for water, but for the Stargate wormhole). Entertaining yet entirely average, that should have been that.

Except it wasn’t.

Three years later, Stargate SG-1 hit the Showtime network in the US. The creative minds of Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright replaced Emmerich and Devlin, and the two leads were taken up by McGyver’s Richard Dean Anderson (O’Neill – note the show’s version has two ‘L’s) and Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson. More regulars joined the show: Amanda Tapping as scientist Samantha Carter, Christopher Judge as rebel alien slave Teal’c, and Don S Davis as Major-General Hammond, the man in charge of the operation. “SG-1″ was the name of the team, just one of several which explored the ancient wormhole network. Ra’s race were the show’s first villains, and given a bigger backstory. It was revealed that Ra was not, as the film had stated, the last of his kind. Albeit a high ranking “Sector Lord”, he was but one among thousands of other Goa’uld. More alien races followed, each having had a part to play in the history of mankind. Humanity in the SG universe is a re-evolved form of a bunch of extra-galactic aliens named the Ancients. The Ancients built the stargates and are the ultimate source of most of the other races the SG teams encounter, of which more and more were revealed as the years went by as the mythology becoming increasingly complex. In an extension of the film’s central conceit, many of these alien races had been meddling in the affairs of Earth over the millennia, each one giving rise to a new set of legends. Thus we got Thor, who is essentially an alien grey; and Merlin, a spiritually ascended pre-Earth human. The team also encountered a number of planets across the galaxy that bore remarkable similarities with various historical and legendary periods on Earth, their inhabitants having been transplanted at different times in the past.

This familiarity was the show’s greatest asset. The audience’s fuzzy knowledge of the legends presented made it more accessible, and the production team could legitimately plunder stock costumes and riff on well-known cultures without qualms. Unlike other series, SG-1 had a solid, science-fictional reason as to why there was a planet of the Romans, or a planet of the Britons, and why everyone everywhere was human.

Unfortunately, this is inexcusably naff no matter how you dress it up. Episode after episode had the team landing somewhere in a Canadian pine forest, encountering a bunch of folks in unconvincing period garb and solving their problems. It had all the usual character stereotypes common to this kind of SF TV – passionate scientist, intuitive woman, honourable alien warrior and military-minded leader. Richard Dean Anderson’s determination to play his O’Neill as part comic relief, quirking his eyebrows at every opportunity (eyebrow acting, in fact, was a particular bane of this show – Teal’c was another character whose brow seemed to be operated off stage by effects technicians) did not help. But the show was a hit, and proved resilient to cancellation.

The show was canned by Showtime after five years, only to be picked up by Sci-Fi, who would produce for another five years. Eventually, it would beat The X-Files to become the second-longest running SF series in the world, after Doctor Who. The show’s budget slowly increased, to around $1,400,000 an episode, more effects were introduced. Spin-offs followed. 2002 gave us the moralising cartoon Stargate Infinity. Set 30 years into the timeline’s future, this non-canon effort tried to put an educational spin on things, yet failed to find a young audience. Stargate: Atlantis fared better. Begun in 2004, this show featured another SG team operating in the Pegasus galaxy, the location of the fabled city (here a giant, flying technological construct of great power built by the Ancients). Now in its fourth season, the show has picked up a healthy following of its own, perhaps helped by multiple crossovers with its parent. Another spin-off, Stargate Universe is under development, while two TV movie, follow-ups to SG-1, will be released this year. There have, of course, been a number of spin-off products. A roleplaying game, novels and a collectible card game are to be expected, but there’s a World of Warcraft-style MMO on the way. These are a serious financial gamble, requiring a great deal of money to create and run. To even think about something like this is economically uncountenanceable without the certainty of a guaranteed audience. It is a badge of the show’s success, and will be released later this year.

Despite its popularity, Stargate is not a franchise that has met with universal acclaim. It has won a number of plaudits, but it has never managed to transcend its genre like the best Trek series or The X-Files, and remains purely an SF show for SF fans. Not all SF fans love it, and was poorly received by a large chunk of the British genre press. In later years, when coverage in certain magazines became more frequent and more positive, this was down to the show’s popularity, not because of any change of heart on the part of the publications (we were there!)

But why this popularity? If we take a look at the most popular recent SF shows, they have two things in common: a deep, involving mythology, and  characters with which the audience can fall in love. The X-Files had it, so did Star Trek, and Doctor Who.

Note we use mythology here purposefully, not arc-plot. SG-1 was always more about world-building than the on-going storylines we see in more recent creations like Lost or the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. SG-1, in common with many series from this period, did have an arc built in to the first season, but it was very much in the background, and standalone episodes predominated. Other Canadian-produced SF shows with full arcs from this time, such as Earth Final Conflict, lacked the flexibility to present one-off tales convincingly, and thus fell victim to syndication demand that episodes be broadcastable in any order. SG-1‘s robust, planet-a-week format was friendly to this market. Its mythology and later arcs grew organically, and there’s a sort of charming honesty to that. It made the viewer feel they were on the same voyage of discovery as the writers, rather than trying to puzzle out their intentions as with 24 or Lost.

Stargate’s other grand advantage was its cast. The regular crew were stereotypes to be sure, but they were carefully picked ones. Daniel Jackson, in particular, became extremely popular, (the rumour is perhaps too popular for some, forcing Shanks to depart the show for a couple of seasons). Later, Richard Dean Anderson took on more and more duties as executive producer, eventually taking his character out of the team so he could spend more time with his family. He stayed as an actor in the show as the new head of the Stargate programme, though. Later additions to the cast included Beau Bridges, and Farscape alumni Ben Browder and Claudia Black. That Shanks was brought back and Black’s character was given a permanent slot because of her good reception by the audience highlights another of SG-1‘s strengths – the production team listened to its fans.

Our biggest criticism of the franchise is that, for all its charm and energy, Stargate was pretty lowbrow stuff. The hallmark of a great SF series is in its tackling of real SF ideas. The best shows, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, eventually generate its own questions, based on that universe. Stargate‘s SF was borrowed and blowsy. Though the central conceit of Stargate – a human panspermia instigated by a highly advanced ancestor civilisation – is an SF motif, in Stargate it served only as a basis for a fictional history. Likewise, each episode played with ideas that were rooted in SF – being projected into an alternate universe, being replaced by robots, going to the planet of the misogynists – but these were, like the show’s dabbling with ethics, simply to present the team with a weekly dilemma. Such things were a matter of convenience for producing a likeable action adventure series, not a real examination of anything. In this it owes as much to the cosy conventions of epic fantasy as it does to SF. Of course these fun trappings of world building and character are central to all good SF shows, and Stargate did both well. A universe is the body of TV SF, ensemble cast the heart. What Stargate SG-1 lacked was brains.

Good fantasy evokes deep emotional responses, good SF examines intriguing problems. Stargate, for all its charm and occasional spectacle, did neither of these things – you only have to watch the flat death of Daniel Jackson at the end of season five to see this, a death that is followed by a cheesy apotheosis. There was never any deep discussion of concept or of issues in the show. Everything in Stargate was knowable, safe, conquerable by Earthman ingenuity, friendship and quips. It’s low-fibre SF, a soap opera in space, well-designed, internally fascinating, but junk food TV, nevertheless.

But an awful lot of people love junk food, and no matter what we might say about its relative merits, we predict that Stargate will reign for some time as the absolute epitome of SF-lite.

Aliens galore

A brief guide to the ETs to be found beyond the Stargate.

The Alterans

The greatest of the Four Great Races, the Alterans were the first evolution of humanity, and populated both the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxies with humans. They built the stargates, and much other advanced technology. They have ascended to a higher plane of existence, but are split into two factions, Ancients who are good, and Ori, who insist everyone should worship them.

Goa’uld

The original baddies of the film and show, the Goa’uld are worm-like parasites that trick other races into believing them to be gods. Humans make particularly good hosts for them. Though it is revealed that Ra is not the last Goa’uld as stated in the film, there are still only a few thousand of them. They have spread humans further round the Milky Way. Good Goa’uld are called the Tok’ra.

Jaffa

Humans taken from Earth and genetically modified to be servants of the Goa’uld. Part of their duty was to be hosts to juvenile parasites. Teal’c is a Jaffa.

Asgard

Aliens from another galaxy, the Asgard are ‘alien greys’ who were worshipped as the Norse Gods. They could not ascend due to genetic flaws caused by their cloning system. To spare themselves the pain of an associated disease, they committed mass suicide. One of the Four Great Races.

Replicators

Super-advanced, hive-minded, self-replicating machines. Each one is small, but they can join together to form specific tasks. The enemies of the Asgard. One of the best SF ideas in the show. The Asurans are a form of Replicator.

Wraiths

Originally beetles, the wraiths are parasites that feed on the lifeforce of others. Having glutted themselves on humans introduced to the Pegasus Galaxy by the Ancients, they have evolved into humanoid creatures. Due to a series of tactical blunders on the Ancients’ part, the Wraiths beat them in a war.

Nox

One of the Four Great Races. They are exceedingly powerful, yet appear to be primitive Ewok-like characters.

Furlings

Never seen in the series, possibly extinct. Fourth of the Four Great Races.

Tau’ri

You and me baby, and all the other humans, from the advanced Tollans to the most primitive tribesman. Now, thanks to SG-1, we’re the Fifth Great Race of the galaxy.

My Waaagh! Banner nob is made up of bits from the old metal and new plastic nobs boxed sets. I need to get another light source, and a better backdrop.

One of my favourite models. I’m amazed by the versatility of some of GW’s modern kits. With this one, I sorted out the background (more or less, it’s my sofa in my office), but I still need more light. And the angle’s all screwy, as I haven’t got a tripod. Need to fix that.

A bit out of focus, and still needing more light. Although my Speed Freeks are Evil Suns in the main, I do plan to add another unit of shoota boys from the Bad Moons clan. It stands to reason that nobs from most of the ork households in a tribe would end up in the nobs mob, no matter their genetically predetermined clan affiliation. If I drop the background chunter and be honest, I actually just fancied a change from painting red!

]]> http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/more-experiments/feed/ 8 guyhaley Nob banner bearer Nob with big choppa Bad Moon nob with big choppa. http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/photographing-miniatures/ http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/photographing-miniatures/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 11:05:49 +0000 guyhaley http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/?p=2202 ]]> I’ve been most vexed by photographs recently. I’ve painted some great models and I’ve had a fair few people asking me to share, but my pictures are rubbish. So I emailed top photo dude Glenn More at White Dwarf for some tips, and he sent me this really useful link that tells you how to do it properly. He also gave me some advice regarding camera equipment I’m too poor to act on for the time being.

However, by hamfistedly following his tips using a not-great automatic, a lamp, a box, and an Orc and Goblin army book for a stand, I managed to take this picture of my recently finished Mordor Troll (note, it’s a nice paint job but I foolishly cut off the side bars to his helmet, thinking it was flash. D’oh). Not bad, and a definite improvement on the blurry nonsense I used to come up with. It’s a bit out of focus and on the yellow side, but I’ll sort that once I’ve tracked down the manual to my camera.

I have a troll!

The restrictions of the tournament were few — 1500 points, no special characters. When I told my old opponent Jes Bickham about this, he jokingly scoffed, “What is this, the dark ages?”

The pendulum of opinion both inside and outside GW swings to extremes over time. Sometimes “the hobby” is all about the rules, sometimes it’s all about collections of miniatures. At the moment, it’s on the collection setting. But really, these games, and the restrictions we imposed, were about our collections, not beard-gaming.

We play all kinds of games at the club, and our organiser decided on small-ish armies to make the games quick, and no special characters for no better reason than to make us choose slightly different forces to normal.

In my case, no special characters meant no Skarsnik. Nope, really. Skarsnik has become a mainstay of my army. In fact, I can often be heard to declaim that I am Skarsnik. That’s in between berating my Goblins for running away/not running away/ being the wrong shade of green. You may guess, I am tipsy. Screw tea with my war, I drink!

With no Skarsnik, my army’s leadership is a lamentable low of 7. So there has been a lot of running away, but some surprising successes. Here’s my list:

• “Tiny” McFearsome – Night Goblin Warboss, Armour of Silvered Steel, Ogre Blade. (So-called as he’s tiny, an ancient but still awesome Marauder-range Goblin hero sculpted by Trish and/or Aly Morrison. They’re Scottish, which explains the “McFearsome” part).

• Bouncer Zig – Night Goblin Big Boss, Great Cave Squig, Sword of Strife.
• Tolly Grin Cheek – Night Goblin Battle Standard Bearer, Bad Moon Banner.
• Fingzap – Night Goblin Level 2 Shaman, Dispel Magic Scroll
• Da Red Hats – 40 Night Goblins with nets, banner, drummer, champion, three fanatics and spears and shields.
• Spiny’s Stickers – 30 Night Goblins with shortbows, banner, gong basher, champion, two fanatics and Old Moonhat the Spiny (boss).
• Gutfurk’s Arrer Boys – 30 Night Goblins with shortbows, banner, gong basher, champion, two fanatics and Boss Gutfurk.
• Bouncer’s Boyz – 10 Squig Hoppers

• Da Snappin’ Death Balls – Squig herd, 16 Cave Squigs, 12 Night Goblins.

We all played three games, with the number of victory points scored by each player totted up to give a leader board.

Round One

Tomb Kings, led by Pharoah Ashley. I lost horribly, as I fed my units one at a time through tiny gaps in scenery where they were shot down. Frankly, neither Tiny nor I wish to discuss it.

Round Two

A victory against Count James of the Empire, memorable for Bouncer’s Boys hammering across the board then rolling the entire opposing army up from left flank to right. The squigs died one by one, but hilariously ended the game, one man strong, chasing thirty handgunners down the battlefield.

Round Three

Also a victory, against Evil Lord Charlie’s Dark Elves. A great game this, really close, until victory in the last turn came about due to the panicking of my opponent’s large unit of Executioners by… Goblin shortbow fire. I laugh uproariously to say it. The darkest and best of Har Ganeth ran away like the wet elf-goths they are, right into one of the many, many fanatics whizzing around their position and… Well, they all died, and their general legged it off the board, shrieking like a schoolgirl. Some awful animosity rolls here, though. I failed four tests, and twice I got the dreaded “1″ result on the table, which killed about 15 gobboes off. If you don’t know, “1″ on the animosity chart means d6 strength 3 hits on the nearest animosity-prone unit (2d6 if the unit is a horde), and the same back as your target retaliates. Neither unit, and this is the killer, can do anything for the rest of the turn afterwards, which is awful. It’s the first game I’ve suffered this since the latest Army Book came out. And Ouch. Oucy ouch ouch. My advance was stymied for most of the game, leaving me at the mercy of those damnable machine-gun crossbows Dark Elves tote.

Still, Tiny won the day. He only died once in the tournament, and in true Gobbo fashion, only had to fight one melee. In the narrative I constructed in my head, Skarsnik will be most displeased. Concerned by Tiny’s feisty nature and occasional outbursts of tactical acumen, Skarsnik sent Tiny away on a “speshel mishun”, hoping that the better-than-averagely-competent Goblin would die in the process. Unfortunately for the King of Karak Eight Peaks, Tiny returns in glory.

When I nearly walked out of the pub without my figure case, I explained that Skarsnik told me that, should Tiny survive, I had to leave him behind. The battered Lord Charlie said “I like to think you’re actually that mentally unstable.” Oh how we laughed, like at the end of an episode of Thundercats.

Little does he know, eh Skarsnik? Eh? That’s right.

I am Skarsnik.

Read all about it… rise of the festivals books city a fresh role in literary life – Features – Yorkshire Post.

Maybe one more reminder of this tomorrow, then I promise I’ll go back to standing aloof from the grubby business of commerce, like a proper author should. That’s what it says I should do in my artistes’ handbook anyway, but I might be wrong. It’s stained with absinthe, cigarillo burns and something else that looks really icky, and is written in French.