113 replies to this topic

[The Ghost Who Walks]

I also adore MGS2, in fact it's my favourite of the series because it'd anbitious, deep, challenging and we get to see characters, particularly snake from an even better point of view that develops his character better than if we were actually playing as him.

Yeah. I don't get why so many people whine about having to control Raiden, he was a great character and contributed to see Snake from a different perspective.

[Tybre]

Personally my favorite is MGS3, but a large part of that comes from the fact that I've loved Big Boss since the way original Metal Gear. Well, not THE original. I played the NES port instead of the original MSX, but content-wise, it's the same. Will agree MGS4 was probably the weakest of the Big Four, but I don't think it's that bad. And it's still better than MG2: Solid Snake...

Anyway, as for film cast, why not use the people the characters were originally modeled after back when the series was on MSX/NES. Sean Connery for Big Boss, for example. Snake, I think it would be smarter to could with one of his two PS1 models, since MSX was Mel Gibson, and I just can't see Gibson as Snake. Plus either of his PS1 models would make for some lols: "According to Shinkawa, Snake's physique in Metal Gear Solid was based on that of action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, while his facial appearance in the same game was inspired by actor Christopher Walken."

[Conlazmoodalbrocra]

If this is true then...YEYYYYYY!!! Both great actors and a great videogame. Could work out very very well. Then again, it could be !

[Loomis]

Fakerooni.

[danslittlefinger]

deleted

Edited by danslittlefinger, 17 July 2009 - 07:34 PM.
Original title The Prisoner misleading

[Jim]

What's this got to do with The Prisoner?

Or anything very much, for that matter?

[danslittlefinger]

deleted by dlf

[Jim]

Since you asked so nicely.

Original thread title of The Prisoner changed.

[Jim]

For anything of passing interest but not specifically Bond e.g. links to tabloid stories etc.

Rather than a lot of little threads, all such stuff can be found in here for those who want it.

[jamie00007]

I hope Craig has the sense to stay away from video game movies. Any more, anyway.

[Harmsway]

I don't agree. I love the games, but just because they games feel somewhat cinematic do not mean that they'd exactly translate to good cinema. The games are terribly talky due their dependence on exposition (far talkier than film would allow), and often have dialogue/scenes that are often remarkably laughable.

We need a director other than Kojima, one who can see the good in the METAL GEAR franchise but really turn it into something bold and truly cinematic, otherwise we'll get another SILENT HILL - something that captures the aesthetic of the source, but carries with it all the flaws inherent to the original.

You might be right, thinking of it. However, IMDb lists their current choice of writer/potential director as Kurt "Ultraviolet" Wimmer (who admittedly also made the excellent Equilibrium), and I'm not convinced he is the type of director you suggest (his CV is very much mediocre).

Wimmer made a pitch based on METAL GEAR SOLID, but he's not signed. They're looking at a number of different directors.

[danslittlefinger]

deleted by dlf

[danslittlefinger]

I did not start this thread and wish the topic starter (Jim) of it to change it to theirs, as I would like it to be seen that my stories are relegated to here by them and not me.

[danslittlefinger]

deleted by dlf

[danslittlefinger]

deleted by dlf

[Jim]

http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk/8157128.stm

RIP

[stromberg]

Since when did 007 drive a Lamborghini?

I think you are mistaken here.
I posted this article originally in the General Discussion thread as it does not have a 007 connection, it was then moved here.
My question remains: why?

Our fault, sorry. Moved to the correct thread as requested.

[danslittlefinger]

Since when did 007 drive a Lamborghini?

I think you are mistaken here.
I posted this article originally in the General Discussion thread as it does not have a 007 connection, it was then moved here.
My question remains: why?

Our fault, sorry. Moved to the correct thread as requested.

Look forward to not being the only one whose posts are put in here.
Fairness is a two way street.
Oh sorry, I'm whining now.

[danslittlefinger]

'Angela's Ashes' author McCourt dies in NYC at 78


NEW YORK – Frank McCourt, the beloved raconteur and former public school teacher who enjoyed post-retirement fame as the author of "Angela's Ashes," the Pulitzer Prize-winning "epic of woe" about his impoverished Irish childhood, died Sunday of cancer.

McCourt, who was 78, had been gravely ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer and the cause of his death, said his publisher, Scribner. He died at a Manhattan hospice, his brother Malachy McCourt said.

Until his mid-60s, Frank McCourt was known primarily around New York as a creative writing teacher and as a local character — the kind who might turn up in a New York novel — singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother Malachy and otherwise joining the crowds at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.

But there was always a book or two being formed in his mind, and the world would learn his name, and story, in 1996, after a friend helped him get an agent and his then-unfinished manuscript was quickly signed by Scribner. With a first printing of just 25,000, "Angela's Ashes" was an instant favorite with critics and readers and perhaps the ultimate case of the non-celebrity memoir, the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proven him wrong," McCourt later explained. "And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools."

The book has been published in 25 languages and 30 countries.

McCourt, a native of New York, was good company in the classroom and at the bar, but few had such a burden to unload. His parents were so poor that they returned to their native Ireland when he was little and settled in the slums of Limerick. Simply surviving his childhood was a tale; McCourt's father was an alcoholic who drank up the little money his family had. Three of McCourt's seven siblings died, and he nearly perished from typhoid fever.

"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood," was McCourt's unforgettable opening. "People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests, bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years."

The book was a long Irish wake, "an epic of woe," McCourt called it, finding laughter and lyricism in life's very worst. Although some in Ireland complained that McCourt had revealed too much (and revealed a little too well), "Angela's Ashes" became a million seller, won the Pulitzer and was made into a movie of the same name, starring Emily Watson as the title character, McCourt's mother.

The white-haired, sad-eyed, always quotable McCourt, his Irish accent still thick despite decades in the U.S., became a regular at parties, readings, conferences and other gatherings, so much the eager late-life celebrity that he later compared himself to a "dancing clown, available to everybody."

"I wasn't prepared for it," McCourt told The Associated Press in 2005. "After teaching, I was getting all this attention. They actually looked at me — people I had known for years — and they were friendly and they looked me in a different way. And I was thinking, `All those years I was a teacher, why didn't you look at me like that then?'"

But the part of it he liked best, he said, was hearing "from all those kids who were in my classes."

"At least they knew that when I talked about writing I wasn't just talking through my hat," he said.

Much of his teaching was spent in the English department at the elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, where he defied the advice of his colleagues and shared his personal stories with the class; he slapped a student with a magazine and took on another known to have a black belt in karate.

After "Angela's Ashes," McCourt continued his story, to strong but diminished sales and reviews, in "'Tis," which told of his return to New York in the 1940s, and in "Teacher Man." McCourt also wrote a children's story, "Angela and the Baby Jesus," released in 2007.

More than 10 million copies of his books have been sold in North America alone, said Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.

"We have been privileged to publish his books, which have touched, and will continue to touch, millions of readers in myriad positive and meaningful ways," Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy said in a statement.

McCourt was married twice and had a daughter, Maggie McCourt, from his first marriage.

His brother Malachy McCourt is an actor, commentator and singer who wrote two memoirs and, in 2006, ran for New York governor as the Green Party candidate. At least one of his former students, Susan Gilman, became a writer.

McCourt will be cremated, his brother said. A memorial service is planned for September.

- This one strikes home for me. I met the man several times and he was a true upfront person in every sense of the word, - a dying breed, pardon the pun- Slan Agat Mr Court -

[Mr. Blofeld]

I had heard he was dying of meningitis; what a damned shame.

[OmarB]

Reading that just gave me a headache. That man was seriously a great.

[Tybre]

For once, a dead person I can say I'm actually saddened by the death of (and it occurs to me in typing this that sounds much more assholish than intend). At 113 years and 42 days old, Henry Allingham was the oldest living male and the oldest living Briton. Allingham was the oldest living veteran of World War I, the last living member of the RNAS, and the last living of the men who founded the Royal Air Force, among a few other impressive records. According to Wikipedia, Allingham died of natural causes on July 18, at 3:10 am, in his sleep. Allingham had once credited his old age to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women – and a good sense of humour".

I wouldn't be surprised if some of this has already circulated around British news outlets, what with the death being two days ago, and I don't imagine many people either in or outside of Britain have heard of the fellow. I only stumbled upon the Wikipedia article this past march by pure coincidence. I was looking up the earliest members of the RAF just to see if I could fudge a character I created for one of my books being one of the founding members of the RAF.

For more information on Henry,

http://en.wikipedia....Henry_Allingham

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...hest-peaks.html
"And here's one of us taken above Mount Everest..."

[danslittlefinger]

http://news.yahoo.co...s_nm/us_baldwin
Stephen Baldwin files for bankruptcy.

[Sark2.0]

http://news.yahoo.co...s_nm/us_baldwin
Stephen Baldwin files for bankruptcy.

I guess being a creepy-looking evangelist doesn't pay what it used to.

Also, how bad is it when people know you as the guy whose brother is a successful actor?

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...MS-Belfast.html

Sienna does a Bond.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...itor-Blunt.html
Spying for Russia was my biggest mistake, by traitor Blunt, the 'Fourth Man'
By David Williams
Last updated at 1:38 AM on 23rd July 2009



Traitor: Former MI5 officer Anthony Blunt said working for Moscow was his 'biggest mistake'

An extraordinary memoir by the notorious traitor Sir Anthony Blunt - released today, 26 years after his death - describes for the first time his life at the centre of the Cambridge spy ring.
Blunt was known as the 'Fourth Man' - alongside Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby - in the most effective Russian espionage operation of modern times.
He never spoke of his treachery but now provides a fascinating insight from beyond the grave.

The former MI5 officer, who became Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and worked at the heart of the Establishment, says he considered suicide when he was finally exposed. And he describes working for Moscow as 'the biggest mistake of my life'.
The details are revealed in a 30,000-word manuscript being made available to the public today at the British Library in London. It was lodged with the library anonymously in 1984 - the year after Blunt's death at the age of 75 - on condition that it remained closed for 25 years.
Blunt tells how he was ordered by his Russian controllers to flee Britain in 1951, as the net seemed to be closing on the Cambridge spies.
Burgess and Maclean had already been smuggled to Moscow but Blunt says he was uncertain and decided to sleep on it.
He wrote: 'I don't know whether one can be said to make decisions in one's sleep, but this is what seems to have happened to me. I realised quite clearly that I would take any risk in this country rather than go to Russia.'

He managed to escape detection until 1964, when he confessed to MI6 after being offered immunity from prosecution, and it was not until 1979 that he was publicly unmasked, dramatically named as a spy by Margaret Thatcher in the Commons.
Blunt makes no reference to specific betrayals, or to the British agents or servicemen thought to have died as a result of his treason. As a wartime MI5 officer, he is said to have passed hundreds of documents to Moscow, including secrets from intercepted German communications after British experts broke their codes.

Blunt challenges the belief that he was instrumental in recruiting Burgess and Maclean.

He claims, in fact, that it was the flamboyantly homosexual Burgess, who he met at Cambridge in 1931, who recruited him.
Blunt, then a don at Trinity College, said he did not at first take to the young undergraduate 'because he began immediately to talk very indiscreetly about the private lives of people unknown to me'.
However, he was soon won over by 'the liveliness and penetrating quality' of Burgess's mind as well as his wide range of interests.
Although Blunt was also gay, he insisted there was 'nothing sexual' in their relationship.


He was, however, caught up in Burgess's enthusiasm for left-wing politics. 'I found that Cambridge had been hit by Marxism and that most of my friends among my junior contemporaries - including Guy Burgess - had either joined the Communist Party or were at least very close to it,' he said.
Blunt wrote: 'The issue of Fascism, as posed by the advent to power of Hitler and later by the Spanish Civil War, became so urgent that the ivory tower no longer provided adequate refuge.'
Burgess had been ordered by the Russians to go underground, give up his Communist membership and take a job in government or the BBC.

He urged Blunt to do the same. 'I was thus faced with the most important decision of my life,' Blunt wrote. 'The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life.'
He helped recruit 'Fifth Man' John Cairncross - who later told the Russians Britain and the U.S. were developing the atom bomb - and American Michael Straight, who was to expose Blunt's treachery in 1964.

Blunt said he had hoped to put his spying career behind him after the war and left MI5 to resume his academic life. He wrote: 'I was disillusioned about Marxism as well as about Russia.'
His fellow Cambridge spies, meanwhile, had all secured important roles. Maclean and Burgess were diplomats in Washington and Philby had risen to become head of the counter-Soviet section of MI6.
In 1951 - on the verge of being unmasked - Maclean fled to Moscow with Burgess in tow. Although Blunt decided not to follow, the next few months were a time of 'extreme worry',
Philby eventually joined Burgess and Maclean in Russia in 1963 and the following year Blunt was named as a double agent by Michael Straight.

Faced with Straight's testimony and the promise of immunity, he confessed to MI6. In the manuscript he said he felt 'immense' relief, insisting he gave the authorities 'all the information I had about Russian activities'.

He believed his role would stay secret and It came as an 'appalling shock' when it became apparent in the late 1970s that his past was about to be made public.

Blunt said he 'very seriously' considered taking his own life.

'Many people will say that it would have been the "honourable" way out.' he wrote. 'After a great deal of thought I came to the conclusion that it would be a cowardly solution. It would have solved all my problems, but it would have made things as bad as possible for my family and friends.'

After he was exposed by Mrs Thatcher, he said, he took refuge in 'whisky and concentrated work'.

[Scrambled Eggs]

I imagine they all did.

From what I can make out, their lives were completely ed by them choosing to spy for the Soviet Union.

They probably had been able to see past the idealism and understand the Soviet Union for what it was long before they had to defect. But, they'd made their bed and they had to lie in it.

[danslittlefinger]

http://videogames.ya...back-59/1332719

http://www.hollywood...ac2de4e28ef8e67

Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

In "Asteroids," initially released as an arcade game in 1979, a player controlled a triangular space ship in an asteroid field. The object was to shoot and destroy the hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both.

As opposed to today's games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal, however, is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."

Senior vp of production Jeff Kirschenbaum will oversee the project for Universal.

Di Bonaventura's next outing is "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," which Paramount is set to open Aug. 7.

Lopez came out of Disney's writing program and worked on that studio's recent movies "Bedtime Stories" and "Race to Witch Mountain." He also wrote the most recent draft of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," currently in production with Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel starring.

Lopez and Atari are repped by ICM.

[tdalton]

Surely this is the definition of scraping the bottom of the barrel for film ideas. The truly sad thing is that there were actually four studios bidding on this.

Hollywood has officially run out of ideas.