A Blog of Very Little Brain

A cool summary of how to deal with all things GNU/Linux for the total “newbie” is presented by the ever-informant Dominic. It’s a nice summary of how to get things up and working, and what do to when those thing

Speaking of things not working, I’ve once again decided to go headon with the possible solution to running COBOL code on GNU/Linux. Failed. Miserably. I’ve tried compiling and running TinyCobol and OpenCobol, which both threw errors. I’ll try hiting whatever forums/support those projects have and hope for the best.

Actually not much computer related, to be honest

In a (sort of) response/rebuttal to the whole Mohammad Danish cartoons fiasco, “Dimona Comics” have announced an “Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest“. One of the judges will be none other than the semi legendary Art Spiegelman, also known as the creator of Maus, one of comics’ seminal masterpieces.

Ronald Moore, producer of the current incarnation of Battlestar Galactica (a.k.a. the gift that keeps on giving), said some stuff about the show, video games and whatever else he had on his mind.

I’m a fan of The Prisoner, no secret there, so here are scans of three “novelisations” and a Jack Kirby The Prisoner comics.

The above two links are courtesy of the Website at the End of the Universe, which also obituaries the passing away of Science Fiction writer Stanislav Lem.

Finally, some notes on how to finally get rid of that mind-numbing, productivity-stamping, over-rated, user-unfriendly computer peripheral, the mouse.

I believe in equilibrium.

This goes to say that whenever something tilts to one (usually wrong) side, eventually it will be tilted to the other side, balancing things right. For example, more often than not, someone releases some research that claims the opposite of what we all know. I’m not referring to Microsoft Get-The-FUD campaigns and their ilk, but to a third-party (usually a respected one) that announces, that something isn’t the way you always thought it to be, only to return on their claims several months later (sadly, after the damage has already been done).

For example, several months ago, Symantec published an article claiming that Firefox has twice the amount of security flaws than Micrsoft’s Internet Explorer. I have claimed then, and still stand by it, that being Open-Sourced, Firefox not only is not twice as insecure, but can deal with those flaws much faster and more efficiently, while Microsoft either ignore or refuse to recognise flaws (which exist nonetheless), until they release a fix for them, which can take as much as several months.

This been said, lately, Symantec had a change of heart, now counting “vendor- and non-vendor-confirmed flaws”, clearly showing that Firefox is the more secure of the two.

Another recent example comes in this article regarding Nature.com’s comparison of the Britannica and everyone’s favourite encyclopedic punch bag, Wikipedia. To refresh the memory, Nature.com conducted a review of 50 articles from each publication, and found, to their surprise, 30% more errors in Britannica than in Wikipedia. A short debate erupted, some claimed the triumph of the “common intelligence” over the old-fashioned academic one, some wondered what was the basis for error (for instance, what the hell is Wagnerian Rock?) but the sad writing was apparent on everyone’s wall.

Not really.
You see, it appears that Nature.com “cooked” their research. Cooked, I said? More like steamed, stewed, roasted, soaked overnight, mashed, baked, fried, boiled, and brewed, as, according to the Register, “Nature sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children’s version and Britannica’s “book of the year” to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry.“
And they could only find 33% more errors? This doesn’t bodes well for Wikipedia. But then again, those mashed-up examples that Nature.com used for the Britannica are more-or-less how Wikipedia articles are created.

The Register has an article about COBOL. It’s mostly “COBOL is still alive!” and “You can still use COBOL” stuff. Nothing really interesting if you’re actually working with it, and keep updated, but I assume this is shocking or even horrifying news to people who think the world of computers starts and ends with AJAX.

Speaking of ancient languages, here’s something really bizzare. This blog has a neat-o post about Doctor Who special effects, including a detailed review of some of the code seen here and there on the TARDIS screen. Turns out that after writing the program for all those “high-tech” grapics seen on the TARDIS’ screen, they actually displayed the BASIC and Assembly code on said screens. It’s quirky, but then again, wasn’t the Terminator running on DOS?

As a side note, the world of gaming seems to be going, no, make that spiraling down, and fast. First came the announcement about a video game based on “Desperate Housewives“, and then came this Pokemon penis, er, stylus.

I’ve thought about my previous post regarding Alan Moore and the movie version of V for Vendetta. I believe some clarifications are in order.

First, I kept referring to Moore’s cinematic writing, which might seem to be inappropriate, as we tend to think of the art – the drawing – as the cinematic part. This would’ve been correct, had Moore’s writing style been different. An Alan Moore script includes everything we will see: the position of the characters in the panel, the POV, what the characters do, what they look like when they do it; making the artist less of a creator and more of a deployer.

For example, this opening panel from the (unpublished) Nightjar script:

“Two tiers of three frames each with all the frames the same size, then a narrow strip along the bottom with frame seven quite small and frame eight being the title logo. If you’ve got a better idea then please don’t feel intimidated by all this junk – just go ahead and do what you like.

First of the six flash-back frames that form the opening sequence. I’m still quite fond of the idea of maybe using some different medium for these first few panels to give them a different look. If you’re doing the rest of the strip using a half-tone maybe you could do these frames in pencil? Just a thought… This first frame shows a view of an overgrown and untended terraced garden, looking towards the peeling back door which is opening towards us showing a rectangle of darkness within. Someone unseen is opening the door from inside – we can see his fingers clasped round the edge of it. The garden is deathly still, maybe just a couple of insects droning somewhere. There’s junk everywhere – bricks, pram wheels, tin bath, plant pots – I want to give the impression of a frozen instant, like something out of an old photograph album. As an almost subliminal detail there is a small bird swooping low over the garden, it’s shadow falling neatly beneath it. We have caught it at one split instant of it’s flight. It’ll be gone by next frame.“

So yes, we are basically talking about much more than just the writing/narrating/plotting. This style places the writer in the role of scriptwriter, director, and actor, while the artist is the cameraman, set designer and “puppeteer” of the actors. It’s a writing style which has become synonymous with Moore, and at times is even referred to by name.

Second, I am well aware that movies are not made for the sole reason of realising a story in another media. I mean, I’m sure Kubrik’s main reason for creating “The Shining” was to reimagine Stephen King’s horror story in cinematic tools, but to his producer, and that producer’s boss and so on, the main reason was “Successful book by famous writer + famous director = Mucho $$”. Movie licenses cost money, and a director/writer/producer can stand in a Hollywood studio and scream till he’s blue in the face about the innovative qualities of the original piece and the cinematic breakthrough that the adoption will be, but the guys with the money only care about whether the original’s name will sell tickets, and whether the adoption will be marketable enough for them to shill out the dough for the license.

This is partly the reason why Alan Moore’s Magnum Opus, The Watchmen, still rolls around unproduced. A complex book that always been more critically than commerially acclaimed, and no real way to make it into a 90-120 minutes movie without losing either the comic fans (for being unfaithful to the original), or the movie-goers (for being too complex and heavy), or, more likely, losing both.
I think this is also the reason why V for Vendetta was made into a movie. I’ve no idea on how successful was the comic book, but the movie equation is golden with script written by the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix), and featuring Natalie Portman. Add a dark, gothic atmosphere and recent success of comic-book movies, and you have a seller. Sadly, not the seller I’m looking for.

Finally, I think my point regarding the cinematic qualities of V for Vendetta being the exact element that would make it a bad movie wasn’t explained fully. I’ll leave the overall concept, which was detailed in the previous post, alone, and focus on the key elements that “make” the comic book and would break the movie.

V for Vendetta has a very strict format. The story was seperated into 3 volumes, which are made of 3-4 issues, each issue split into 3 episodes. There are visual – monochrome, full page – separators between every episode, issue and volume, which help set the tone, like some grave, monolithic bookends. The plot develops accordingly, the internal and external narrative progresses accordingly. This almost beckons a movie trilogy, separated into acts and scenes in correlation with the segmentation of the comics. Any attempt to make it into one 2 hour movie forces some serious cuts to be made, damaging the story.

The panel narrative is built by short action scenes. Character enters room, waking woman, CUT to detectives brainstorming on computer, CUT to character and woman talking, CUT to police officer being informed, CUT to detectives talking, CUT to character saying goodbye to woman, leaves room and is stopped by policeman. (I’m leaving the actual details to limit the spoilers). The pacing of the panels, their positions, how many panels for each scene, etc. Those were created with the idea that the action will be read and viewed by a comic book reader, not on a screen. To adopt this to a movie would demand two things; either maintain the pacing of the action, and kill the scene, or ignore the original and “reimagine” the action (which would probably kill the scene…)

The comic book format offers some unexpected advantages. It’s a silent film, and Moore takes full advantage of it. There is no background music to dictate the tone, for instance, but more than that, there is only as much “sound” as the writer allows us to experience. The above scene ends with the death of one of the characters, and the whole fight between the two is fast and silent (no sound effects like “Pow!” or “Wham!” etc.), the dying character looks at us with what is obviously a terrified shriek, made even more terrifying by the lack of sound. Just think of watching the same scene in the movie, and there is no sound. No music, no voices, nothing. Wouldn’t have the same effect. On the contrary.

Superman’s origin has been told about 4-5 times already (not including the changes forced by the Crisis and Zero Hour); Batman’s origin was told about 3-4 times as well. The X-men were “rebooted” about 3 times, not including the “ultimate” version and similar projects. All of DC/Marvel characters have a history full of retold, retconned, reimagined, rebooted and rephrased stories told over and over again by dozens of different writers and drawn by dozens of different artists. In this view, the movies are just another link in the chain.
V for Vendetta was told once. Start to finish. It was drawn once. There was only one artist drawing it. This isn’t “yet another version”. So why make it?

There is an ounce of vanity to creating such a movie. A writer/director taking on themselves to create such a movie don’t usually think “I will humbly deliver the genious of Alan Moore to the masses”, but rather “I love this story, bet I can make a hell of a movie out of it”, which roughly translate to “I can do this better”. This doesn’t fit the Wachowskis, whose breakthrough project was a philosophicalhilospohical mash-up full of narrative holes (which they attempted to plug with CGI effects and martial arts scenes) that failed to hold one movie, not to mention three. Any shred of actual, solid, cinematic quality was thrown to the four corners of the earth with the two bloated sequels which did nothing, told nothing, went nowhere, and cost gazillion of dollars to do it. There are some good directors/writers who are probably more capable of “doing it better”. Terri Gilliam comes to mind. Tim Burton, perhaps. Johnny Depp as V would probably be perfect, and might give enough of his own interpretation to make us forget the original V, one of comic books greatest anti-heroes. Just for reference, Evey, a 16-year-old girl, is played by the 25-year-old Natalie Portman. There’s a scene where Evey is supposed to fool another character into thinking she is less than 15. I just don’t see that happen here.

A lot of hoopla has been thrown around due to the latest release of the V for Vendetta movie, based on Alan Moore’s comics by the same name.

I’ve not seen the movie, so I can’t really commend about it (let’s just say that fans of Moore, and the writer himself are Not Pleased), but I think that Alan Moore’s works would, in general, make a lousy movie, as they are very cinematic.

I know this sounds like arguing for the sake of argument, but there’s a very simple logic behind this one. Take any Alan Moore comic, and you’ll realise what I mean by “cinematic”. The quasi-camera movements of the POV (the sidewalk to top floor zoomout at the start of Watchmen comes to mind as a good example, as well as the train scene from the first V for Vendetta), the way characters move around the panels, etc. It’s all very “cinematic” and makes the panels almost spring out of the pages and come to life, as if you’re watching a movie instead of reading a comic. And for that reason, it will never work as a true, live-action or animated, movie.

If it’s still not clear, the whole concept of Moore’s writing revolves around making the comics itself an engrossing, moving, vivid, immersing and, in general, cinematic. This works in the confinements of the media, i.e. a printed comic book. Taking this, and presenting it in a movie just doesn’t work. If anything, it’s redundant. V for Vendetta’s plot is spread across 10 issues, dictating the narrative development and the pace of the story. This isn’t a Batman movie, based on a comic that is 70 years old with a thousand issues to its name, but a short, concise, and self-containing story, created with the format in mind, and for the format. Transposing it to a 2 hour movie would mean crippling it, removing all that is good about it, and hanging it to dry. It might be a great movie, but it will be a great movie despite being a poor representation of the original material (not that it’s a bad thing, Kubrik’s The Shining basically butchered the Stephen King book, but was a masterpiece nonetheless).

There’s also been rumours that the Watchmen movie license is rolling around in Hollywood, looking for someone to take it and make a movie out of it. Here’s to hoping it will never find one.