What the frick is FILK?

Having recently got back from Green Man music festival in Wales and having heard some pretty great psychedelic tunes from the likes of Amorphous Androgynous and Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, it got me thinking about how many actually pretty good tunes have been inspired by sci-fi or fantasy over the years. I am not including 'Star Trekkin' in here - though 'There's klingons on the starboard bow' is a lyric that lingers, you must admit.

Rock is no exception and most people will know of Hawkwind, probably the most sci-fi rock band of all, somes songs and poems for whom were written by the seminal sci-fi author Michael Moorcock. Anyone must admit Silver Machine is a great song!



Other rock bands have gone similarly sci-fi over the years; Metallica were inspired to write the 'Ride the Lightening' album in part due to H.P. Lovecraft's tentacle-faced musings in the book The Call of Cthulu: The Best of HP Lovecraft. Iron Maiden wrote 'To Tame a Land' after they had read Frank Herbert's Dune, and disturbingly I now learn Led Zepplin wrote 'Misty Mountain Hop' after reading Lord of the Rings! F*cking hobbits get everywhere, but if its good enough for Robert Plant....

But its not just big bands at it. From a little 'net surfing I now learn there is a whole genre out there of folks writing music specifically about sci-fi and fantasy! Its called 'Filk' and there are loads of bands doing it, mainly using acoustic guitars as its based on folk but not surprisingly bunging the odd synth and theramin in there for good measure.

I must admit to feeling a curious mix of admiration for the courage of people's convictions mixed with mild disturbance on watching this video, but I guess its like anything, there will be good filk and bad filk...



Anyway if you're interested in learning more after that please let me direct you to this list of songs which are considered filk, which includes songs by some of the biggies like Metallica and Blue Oyster Cult as well as popsters like XTC, as well as some more 'novelty' style songs bad and good. Bad being Leonard Nimoy's 'lowest point' - The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.



And good being, well, whatever floats your boat! 'The world's fastest filker' Tom Smith sums up the whole 5 years of Babylon 5 show in a single song! What's not to admire...!

Twittering for nerds

Twitter is all the rage these days, but to anyone whose is not self-obsessed and wanting to tell everyone every 5 minutes what tedious daily task they are up to (aka celebrities) or a PR/salesperson wanting to promote or flog something, it probably doesn't appear to be that useful. I mean, at least Facebook has uses when you're not using it, like being a 'friend archive' as someone described it to me the other day - which kind of makes Facebook sound like a dusty cupboard you've rammed your old schoolmates into, filed under G for God actually I never liked them much anyway, or O for Once dated, and now seem to be stalking me.

But I digress. Twitter seems to be pretty much a place randoms come onto and witter. But as much of my life is spent delving into finding uses for digital developments these days I've discovered that actually if you download and use an app such as Tweetdeck that has a search function, or use Twitter's own search deck, Twitter is actually a really good way of inputting yourself into pretty much the world's conciousness on any given subject.

Because people will be wittering away out there on anything, and some of them actually have some pretty interesting opinions and things to say. The recent I Love The NHS Twitter debate, which was frankly a pretty uplifting thing to watch happen, is a big example. Obv I am interested mainly in the more nerdy example here though!

1. Twitter is great to find out about what TV shows of any genre people are talking about you might have missed. A search on sci-fi for example lets me know right now District 9 is a really popular film, and obv one I must watch when it comes UK-bound. Neat!


2. It's good to revisit old subjects that you loved and would like to find people to talk to about them. For example I love Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and of course Buffy. On Twitter I can get some of the same 'humour' from some guy setting himself up as Gene Hunt or check out what people are still only watching Buffy now. Though should I feel pity or jealously towards the latter...


3. It can be a friend to help back your opinions in nerdy arguments! For example I was recently talking to a friend about the now dead Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune and he put across the sacraligious view that 'most' people actually think he was a pretty wooden actor and possibly he's overhyped. A quick twitter search though on what is a pretty obscure subject backed me - "Mifune is the man!". Yes indeed, take that, you non-believer!


4. Its good to meet other friends....erm, nerds. Once you've done some searches you'll soon start to find the people and also organisations who talk about sci-fi a lot. Check out who they are following or who is following them and soon you can start to build a great network of nerds. I know, sounds like a horror story for many, but its pretty cool for me....I've discovered some good newswires like SciFiRules to some cool individuals like SFX columnist Jayne Nelson and the US's PinkRayGun. Where the hell DeathRay magazine is though, have no idea - come on guys get digital!!

These are my main uses for it now, if anyone has any others let me know...? But obv I'm also using it to promote my blog to my universe audience of three. If anyone would like to follow me or be my sci-fi friend I'm JudgeAnderson.

Catching up on a retro Dracula..

I recently started to re-read Marvel's Tomb of Dracula, which I have the three black and white collections put together a few years back.

I first bought this collection as read somewhere it has influenced Joss Whedon when he came up with the concept of Buffy. The recent surge of re-interest in vampires, especially the angst filled type apparently now all the rage in emo-love-vamp novels like Twilight, recently made me pick up the collection again.



The parallels are certainly there. Written in the 1970s, and with a definitely 'pulp' vibe, it stars Rachel van Helsing, a blond, pretty - and certainly superior vamp slayer who even at one point describes the act of slaying a vamp as 'dusting'. Familiar indeed. She's not got the humour of Buffs, but this is the 70's. We weren't all so ironic then..well, I wasn't, but I was about -4 years old when this comic series started in '71.

Rachel also has her own version of Buffy's so-called "Scooby" gang of friends. The Watcher/father figure is Quincy Harker. She also has a rather drippy non-Alpha male who is into her, Frank Drake, who could be Xander, but who shows none of Xan's self-deprecating humour. Though he does 'find' himself later and become more heroic, something which also happens to Xan.

Sadly I think the 70s was a bit early for sapphic celebration and 'nice' witches so there is no Willow character; but we do get a strong silent Indian character Taj. On top of that there is the recurring Blade vamp slayer, who despite he's cringworthy 70s dialogue - "Dig?" - at least actually has charisma. Though both him and Taj do come in for some casual racism from other characters and indeed the Marvel writers alike!

But you can imagine Whedon reading this thinking, "You know, the ideas in this could feed into something really really good..."

This is not to say that Tomb itself isn't good. Its often shamelessly pulpy but it is lifted a distance above normal pulp by the great writing put into developing the best character of all, Drac himself. Tomb is, for me, all about Drac, and the TombScoobies are often just a Plot B, though do serve to show just how much those who are touched by Drac are so horribly damaged by him.

Drac starts off rather two-dimensional, as indeed do the stories - pretty much the first whole volume is Drac vs the TombScoobies in various wheezes where Drac dodges a wooden arrow/stake/holy water combo at the last minute, normally by using his mist trick. Almost overnight however it's like the Marv Wolfman, the lead writer, realised this was beginning to grate. So its welcome when Drac gets much more depth and many more shades of grey.

He meets a human woman he actually admits he cares for, and whom he protects in a Dracula fashion for a while rather than chew the neck off, before she tragically leaps out of a window. He goes mad at one point, on a mission to protect yet another woman who reminds him of his long dead wife. Suddenly, Drac starts to become a troubled, damaged, romantic hero as well as a killing machine. It's impossible to just judge him; you begin to sympathise with him, and even at times root for him, while stil cursing him as once again he does something unspeakably awful.

This addition of more romance in his character itself isn't new as Dracula in most guises was often portrayed as handsome and charismatic (though maybe not in Nosferatu!), but the difference is that even Rachel Van Helsing herself recognises his 'certain charm' - something Bram Stoker's original Van Helsing probably never noticed unless he 'dug' guys.

Surely, a vamp slayer is not meant to find the vamp attractive, only his hypnotised, hapless and often helpess blond victims? Especially if the same vamp killed her parents, has killed her friends..? But again, you can see where Whedon might have got some further inspiration for Buffy's love/hate for Angel/Angelus and probably even more so, Spike.

Apparently Wolfman reprised Dracula in a later mini-series in 1991, that some say is a further improvement - but this is something I have yet to read. But for Buffy fans interested in looking for some of Whedon's inspiration, I think Tomb is a must.

I can report Moon is an awesome film...

..and if you ever liked Solaris, Silent Running, 2001- A Space Odyssey you'll like this film as it nods to them all.

Hopefully anyone with even a small percentage of geek in them will know about this film but its basically about a guy working single handedly running the infrastructure to harvest helium3 from the Moon. Helium3 provides all the energy Earth ever needed so all our problems have been solved - yay! But not yay for the Billy no-mates Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), has been working under contract there for three years and is going a bit stir crazy what with only having robot Gerty to talk to. Anyway he's only two weeks from going home when, after an accident, he realises pretty quickly things are not as he thought.

He's not alone..in fact there's a guy on board who looks exactly like him! Anyway here's a vid of the trailer....



...So, first off its amazing this film was only made for $5 million. It looks good - the effects are simple (they used loads of models) but effective. Apparently the director (Duncan Jones aka Zowie Bowie) used cat litter to recreact the Moon's dust bowl for example, unknown as to whether any cats relieved themselves on said litter while film was in production though.

Lots of ideas in this film too all of which keep you thinking later. Cleverly it starts out so that you're thinking Gerty is a bit of a Hal 9000 character..but it's not that simple. He starts to see a vision of a girl, in a nod to Solaris, but again this isn't where we end up going. And just when we do really get on track, again the full extent of the clone storyline isn't fully revealed until later. Anyway if you've not seen it I'd not read any further as I'm about to get spoiler-y!

I think Sam Rockwell is brilliant in this. The way he plays Three Year Sam versus One Week Sam is spot on. You end up feeling sorry for the same guy about what he does and doesn't know depending on which Sam he is. Older Sam is the main emotional draw as he's the one finding out too late that his life has been a lie...and now as he literally falls apart he is incapable of doing anything about it. Also he is by far the slightly more likeable one...being softer and calmer than the One Week Sam, watering his plants and talking to them sporting a beard not unlike Silent Running's Bruce Dern.

However without One Week Sam, nothing would have changed. Without his anger and drive (that it appears Three Year Sam has lost to an extent) the whole reveal would never happen. Something in there then about what we gain and lose as we develop as people, as well as the more pointed 'are clones right' debate.

I did wonder though whether Three Year Sam would have flicked the switch quite so quickly on Gerty, just after Gerty makes the salient point about actually, are clones and robots that different, just bodies with programming - even if the clone programming includes all the memories and fellings of the original Sam?

According to One Week Sam yes, they are different. He makes an escape whereas poor Gerty is rebooted, forgetting perhaps all the progression he made to help Three Year Sam to the extent he did. Yes there was a good reason for the reboot, but it felt like an afterthought. But hey maybe I like robots too much. Anyway as I say, lots of sci-fi references, simple, effective SFX, great storyline and great acting. And kitty litter. Mmm.

Dollhouse...totally rocks!!

As everyone knows j'adore good old Joss Whedon, developer of my all time fave show and life-heroine Buffy the Vamp Slayer. So I was a bit perturbed when his new show Dollhouse seemed to include absolutely none of the usual Whedonesque trademarks. Kooky humour? Zilcho. Strong women? Erm, no, girls whose roles it was to basically be hos, and worse, not know it.

So thank god that in ep 6 suddenly it turns on its head and becomes, like, reaaaally good! No longer derivative Alias style drudge, but with secrets within secrets etc etc, and it seems another purpose to the 'Dollhouses' that what we originally thought.

Okay, still not perfect. Theme tune AWFUL. Eliza Dushka who plays Echo isn't a massively ranged actress, but she does spunky chick really well...(I misss Faith....).

Anyway if you've not seen it, here's the ep trailer. Do not spoil me anyone further! I have not seen ep 7 yet...bloody Virgin Media box ate eps 7, 8 & 9.

Hello....sorry for crapness

I've not blogged for ages I know, life has been extremely hectic. Am going to try and blog a little more often though going forward. So geekwise what have I been up to? Main thing I guess is continuing the Cthulu game we started up....my main character Haifa went mad, annoyingly...(!)..if not surprisingly given the amount of tentacle-faced badboys she's been hanging out with... so now I have temporarily taken on a new character Gene, which is actually pretty good as he's more gun totin' than Haifa. You can check out updates here.

Other stuff, am fricking grumpy that Sarah Connor Chronicles got canned!! Just when it was sorting its life out and getting interesting! No fair. Now I'll never get to see what happened with the really strange robo-crush John had for Cameron. Ahhhhh Fox, you paineth me.

On the good side, Ashes to Ashes' second series was an improvement on the first, as as I liked the first was pretty damn happy quality seems to be going up. Only 8 eps though, and now I have to wait a year for the next lot! ARRRGH.

Reasons for busyness have been...trying to stave off redundancy and so far dodging it, training to be a part-time police officer (called a 'special' in the Uk. No giggling!) and buying a new campervan.

I'm gonna start up a new blog about the latter as its freaking great! Can't say much about the po-leece thing other than I'm now expecting my life to be similar to McNulty's from The Wire. If I'm not drunk every night and working against the system I'll be very disappointed.

Oh yeah, actually met the actor Dominic West who plays McNulty just a week or so back, at Glastonbury festival. Tried to bag a photo of him but understandably the poor chap wasn't too keen as he was totally shitfaced. Nice to see he goes into the Method style of acting. Someone should tell Dominic that the series is over though, he can stop now...

Franklyn the movie - review

We went to see a preview of Franklyn last night - http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/franklyn. Described as an urban fairytale is most certainly made the most of London whene it was filmed. As the director said at the preview normally London always ends up looking like a gangsters paradise in movies, but the architecture available equally lends itself to sci-fi and fantasy. All those lovely old Gothic and abandoned buildings from an industrial era...well, I say 'all those' but no doubt most of 'em have been turned into luxury apartments by now that no-one can currently afford to buy. I had a good couple of hours guessing where we were in 'my' reality!

Anyway back to the movie. Besides being impressed with, ahem, how cute is Ryan Phillippe in one of the lead roles, it was good to go to a film and wonder what was going to happen for more than 5 minutes. I mean, I understood broadly what the 'schtick' was about how the real and imaginary worlds were linked pretty early on but wondered who would 'save' whom and how the relationships intertwined. At the same time I can see perhaps how people will less patience than me might want answers slightly sooner, though.

Perhaps it wasn't always hugely original - Eva Green played her part brilliantly but she was still 'suicidal art student'. Religion got a bit of a shoeing, as it generally seems to these days in most 'liberal' art.

But all the characters were well drawn and everyone acted their socks off. And Bernard Hill was in it!! ('Gizza job').

Lone Wolf and Cub

I have been trying to expand my manga experience of late, having become quite an anime fan with my love all all things Studio Ghibli (come on people, Spirited Away!).

Thankfully my geek-husband as he will now be known - ghusband? - is also into this and lately bought some of the Lone Wolf and Cub mangas for us to peruse.

I think - I say think - this is where the Baby Cart series of films got their inspiration, as it follows the tales of a ronin and his baby son as they go around, generally making cash from being hired as assassins. I say assassins, as the baby does get involved from time to time (he may do more, but I'm only on the first book).

In a way it sounds preposterous, but the books are not only nicely drawn but the stories work!! The ronin gets his son involved in and witnessing regular horrible bloodbaths - okay social services might have a few things to say about that - but he does this on the basis that the bond of understanding between son and father is more precious than anything.

Thus, if the kid knows and understands his dad is a killer, and accepts this - somehow that makes it noble and their relationship all the more precious. I know...EH???

Anyway, its Japanese, so what do I know. Actually, would have been cool if MY dad had been a ronin, and I was a bit handy with a samurai sword at the age of three!!!

Kirill Uncovered....

So I've been asked to upload an ep from a new web series....am happy to do so, looks interesting. Once I've checked it out a bit more I'll give it a review...

EIT - had to de-embed the pesky vid as it kept crashing my screen. Head over to here to see what I'm yapping about.

The SouthPark World of Warcraft episode rocks!

Hey - I'm back and I'm gonna crank this blog back up! I finally got married, so I have a life that is no longer about organisation but can again run free to embrace all things sad and geeky!

To celebrate check out this South Park episode which is possibly the funniest thing I've seen in donkeys!!