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Bryan Talbot, Fantasycon GoH
It’s thanks to my old friend Bryan Talbot that I could legitimately put ‘model’ on my CV, if I were so inclined… back when he was living in Preston and creating The Tale of One Bad Rat, Bryan pressed my entire family into service to help with the photoreference for some of the frames. That’s…
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Still on that Real/Fake Experience Theme
Remember the big fire at Universal Studios in 2008? They lost some backlot structures and library material, all replaceable, and King Kong. The ‘Kongfrontation‘ attraction, in case you didn’t know it, involved a giant robot that picked up the bridge that your tour tram was crossing, and shook it. Life sized. A giant robot! King…
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Oscars, Before and After
I was going to drive down to Hollywood Boulevard last night to take a look at the Oscar preparations, but it was raining fairly steadily (‘a storm’, in local parlance) and I was frankly not that arsed. At the moment, everything’s locked up around there – when I last looked they appeared to be tenting…
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For Virtual, read ‘Nothing There’
Back when I was working on BUGS we grappled with several ‘virtual reality’ story ideas and none of them ever worked out. We finally concluded that they never would; an action show is about real perils, not perils that you know are merely perceived. When you send your characters into a virtual reality you’re essentially…
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Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure
My first movie Tarzan was stuntman and former Range Rider Jock Mahoney in Tarzan Goes to India, so maybe it was TV that introduced me to Gordon Scott’s take on the ape man. All due respect to Mahoney, but he didn’t look right and he was on the wrong frickin’ continent. He looked like he’d…
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Shutter Island
I’m not trying for spoilers, here, but if you want to keep yourself pure, don’t read on. Read this instead. It’s probably my most popular post. I set out to see The Wolfman at the weekend, but got there an hour before showtime so bought a ticket for Shutter Island instead. (I saw The Wolfman…
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I’m the Axeman, Baby
Let me get one thing straight. I’m no musician. I don’t play, I don’t perform. But I’ve owned a guitar since I was a teenager and, when no one’s listening, I get pleasure from stumbling my way through the dozen or two chords that I learned back then. I could probably manage a tolerable Kumbayah…
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On My Radio
I love the radio ads for casino resorts and hotels here. They all end the same way: “Please gamble responsibly.”
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Back in LA
Last night’s wrap party was great. I knew so many people there that I always had someone to talk to, unlike those vast BBC affairs where you just keep circulating because you don’t want to stand on your own looking like a tool. There were loads of people I didn’t know, as well, and some…
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STFU, Parent
Whose blog is it, anyway?