The Matazone blog

In Neuromancer, the main character Case has killed people in dirty meaningless fights, he’s a self-destructive drug addict, running himself into the ground, barely eating, and trying to convince the city streets to open up and swallow him in a dark alley one night. This character is a vortex of self-loathing, and I just don’t see many actors who would want to try and do that in a science-fiction film. I’ve spent fifteen years getting to know the character and seven years writing about it, so in this regard I feel that I know Case pretty well.

Does that character description fit with Hayden Christensen in your head? He’s most famous for playing Anakin Skywalker (who became Darth Vader) in the second and third of the Star Wars series. In fairness to Christensen, in the Star Wars films he (allegedly) went to Lucas and said ‘Are you sure you want Anakin to be this whiny?’ and Lucas said ‘No, make him more whiny!’. With direction like that the it’s hard to do much. While Christensen may yet display previously unseen depths of acting and character in his performance as Case, he’s not yet shown that he is capable of portraying the complexity of the part. I really hope he surprises us, and I’ll be the first to stand applauding if he does.

Christensen might be able to pull it off with good direction, but the director attached to the project, Joseph Kahn, doesn’t give me a lot of hope on that one. He’s best known for the very dumb action film Torque (scoring a rating of 3.4 out of 10, barely skimming out of the worst rated 100 films on IMDB) and the Britney Spears video for the song ‘Toxic’. The story of Neuromancer is fairly complex, with multiple antagonists with differing agendas, which is partly why this film hasn’t ever happened yet despite 20 years of people trying to make it. I’m very concerned that they are going to strip it back to a pile of meaningless action sequences.

If they made this film feel like a drunk hurriedly stumbling home through the bad area of town, people hurrying past and predatory eyes watching the progress from shadows, then it would feel right. It’s more likely to feel like a glossy jet-bike ride, and that’s going to be a huge betrayal of the book. Christensen’s casting feels like the jet-bike version of the story, and that’s why the people who want this film to be good are so worried about him.

Tonight I finished playing the rather jolly game Assassin’s creed. I liked it lots, some people don’t, but there you go; however, the ending is left open so you can go and find all the collectables in the game (although quite why you would bother is beyond me). The openness of the ending leads players to think that there might be something more to do (there isn’t really), but I thought I’d check reliable GameFAQs to see if they had anything for me, when I stumbled on the increasingly desperate guide by a chap called Brad Russell.

Skip down to the FAQ’s bit at the bottom of the page (press ‘Crtl’ and the ‘F’ key on your keyboard at the same time and type ‘FAQ’ then skip through until you get to the start of them). It gets quite funny as they go on, while the poor guy’s will to live is sapped by a constant barrage of questions all on the same lines.

You can read one man’s despair here.

It’s a bit slow going to begin with, but stick with it to the end of the creation of the 4×4, which suddenly jumps the video from being a bit dull to astonishingly cool:
Videotrace demo.

Cute cat: check
Christmas wrapping paper: check
Cat in a box: check

It’s got everything.

A friend in America sent me a link to follow up the post from last week about a man who tried to change a tyre on his car using a shotgun to loosen the nuts…

This time we have a couple of guys were looking to get tattoos of a magnum, so they were tracing around a real one which was, of course, loaded. Hand and arm wounds later, there are two 22 year-olds who now have a permanent reminder of how cool guns really are. (Slightly more info here.)

Those guys were American, but just to show that stupidity with guns is not only a US policy, a referee at a football (soccer) match in Kuala Lumpur was mobbed after showing a red-card to a player. He was a policeman, so he then went to his car, got his gun, and fired shots in the air to calm the mob. Personally a referee with a gun would not make me feel any more calm, but that’s just my perspective on this. Perhaps gunshots are considered calming over there; it’s one of those cultural things… Or perhaps not. The man was arrested, although it wasn’t stated whether the charges were ‘being a bloody idiot’. (Link)

Two more quick interesting/cheerful links:

Fog machines are now being used as anti-burglary devices, filling a pharmacy with thick clouds in seconds and preventing theft because no-one can find anything. How very cool. More here.

A wedding dress shop owner held onto a dress from a cancelled wedding for fifteen years and then the original purchaser eventually wore it down the aisle. “I knew you’d be back for it,” said the owner. Aww.

DiCarlo had stuffed the bow and the sleeves with paper so they would hold their shape, and wrapped the gown in plastic. She left it hanging in a corner of her basement storeroom.

Now that’s just a bit creepy… But sweet. Possibly. I have a horrible vision of the room filled with shaped wedding dresses, like some kind of uber-Miss Haversham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Scare yourself here.