Things that terrified me as a child: Willow

Picture the scene; A young, wide-eyed Alfie, about 4-5 years old, sitting down to watch Willow for the first time, I believe it was the first ever fantasy movie I saw. What I now realise is a highly underrated fantasy movie was, at the time, just a nice little movie with swords and sorcery, little men in rat suits, it was amazing. Until about 2/3 of the way in, this pops up:

HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT?!  Even more than the death hounds that came before, even more than the troll that turns inside out and becomes a dragon, the image of mid-transformation Madmartigan haunted young me

QUICK RANT: Nod Ya Head and Black Kryptonite.

In Will Smith’s son “Black Suits Comin’ (nod ya head)”, from the soundtrack to the 2002 film “Men in Black 2”, there’s a lyric that goes: “Check it. Yo it’s this chick right, Serlena, making me sick right, Earth is worthless to her she be tripping like. Threatening me and my mens, trying to get the light. Thinking she’s superwoman, but Black Kryptonite finishing whatever you start son. The best looking crime fighter since myself in part one” Now, I can only assume from the reference of Serlena, the movie’s antagonist, being Superwoman that the term “Black Kryptonite” is something he’s calling himself, as he is a man in black and kryptonite is one of superwoman’s weaknesses, he’s basically saying “I will defeat you, because I am a confident man in black who is also Kryptonite, and you are Superwoman compared to my mad skills”, as such, the Superwoman/Kryptonite reference shouldn’t be taken literally. However, (I’m assuming) unbeknownst to Will Smith, Black Kryptonite is an actual kind of Kryptonite that has been brought up in the cartoons, smallville and the comics. It first appeared in the Superman Animated series episode “Monkey Fun” (first aired in 1997), in which Titano, Lois Lane’s beloved childhood monkey companion (I shit you not) returns from a years of suspended animation of space, radiated by black Kryptonite, which causes him to grow uncontrollably. Monkey fun indeed. Anyway, it reappeared in a 2004 episode of Smallville and a 2005 issue of Supergirl, where it split people into 2 separate entities, one good and one evil, but since this happened after the release of both MiB2 and Will Smith’s musical contribution to the soundtrack, we’ll ignore it, and focus on the 1997 interpretation of Black Kryptonite. what I’m trying to say is, exposing anyone, be it Superwoman or Serlena, is a stupid idea, especially if you wish to defeat someone. Fighting an evil alien lass is one thing, but fighting a GIANT evil alien lass, whilst giving off a radiation that will cause her to keep growing, is suicide. Now let me see ya NOD YA HEAD! etc etc.

Titano: The Definition of Monkey fun.

RANT: Living with a baby face.

Recently, some friends of mine have discovered the joys of drinking in a dimmly-lit room full of strangers while loud music plays. I, of course, am talking about clubbing. Now, that isn’t really my scene, as the only reasons I can think of for going to a club is if you enjoy dancing (and don’t mind that people are watching), or if you’re  “On the pull”, 2 activities I’m not comfortable taking part in. However, the option is there, and I believe it’s an important experience for a young person in our day and age. However, I don’t have I.D, preventing me from entering these 18+ clubs, despite being 20 years old. You may be saying “But Alfie, you’re a handsome, mature-looking young man. Surely your clearly adult face can get you in to a club. Will you marry me?”. Well, that’s the thing, my face kinda resembles that of a small baby. To the point that I’ve been refused lottery tickets and energy drinks. I’m not even sure energy drinks have an age limit on them! As for the lottery tickets, you must be 16 to buy them in England. Meaning that I – all 20 years, 5″11, 17-odd stone of me – look like I’m 15. Which means one of 2 things; Either I’m going to have to wait another 3 years until I can buy a gorram beer or shop staff need to get some common sense. I mean, I could always get some I.D, but I don’t have £50 to burn. Bloody society.

Quick rant: Andrex advertisement.

Okay, so recently, I’ve found myself getting annoyed at advertisements, but fraking hell, it’s getting beyond the point of common decency. Andrex have a new advertising campaign asking if people “scrunch or fold” (hashtag #scrunchorfold), basically asking how people wipe their arse. I mean, you could argue that they’re talking about blowing one’s nose, but come on! We know what they’re talking about, they know what they’re talking about, I don’t want to see this on T.V. It’s bad enough I have to see adverts for sanitary towels where they trivialise bladder weakness whilst I’m trying to eat my tea, now this. And from a company that has always annoyed me, with their fraking puppy mascot. Damn T.V.

Quick Plot Hole – Terminator 3: Rise of the machines.

So, just so no one brings it up, I know the terminator franchise is full of plot holes, with it’s paradox-inducing time travel and such, but I’m going to focus on this particular one. For this plot hole, we have to go back to Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Skynet had developed an android made of a mimetic polyalloy -liquid metal-, meaning it could change it’s appearance, turn it’s arms into swords and shit, it was, in essence, one of the most badass enemies in science fiction history. The only way it was destroyed in the movie was (SPOILER ALERT) when it was knocked into a vat of molten steel. All that changed when Skynet decided to send the T-X to destroy John Connor. Incorporating the mimetic polyalloy  of the T1000 and an endoskeleton similar to that of the T-101, making it a self-repairing killing machine, with several weapons built in to it’s system. It is defeated when the T-101 sent to protect John Connor crashes a helicopter into it, then uses his power core to blow it up from the inside. My problem with this is, why wouldn’t Skynet send another T1000 back in time? It was extremely effective last time, and without Sarah Connor around to protect him, John Connor would be so dead. But nope. they took the awesome technology of the T1000 and gave it the weakness of a fixed physical form (Albeit a sexy, Kristanna Loken-based form), but still. It’s almost like Skynet don’t want to kill John Connor…

UPDATE

So, in my research for this blog, I learned that, in the novelization of Rise of the Machines, the T1000 was discontinued by Skynet because they started to become self aware. This seems like a pretty lame cop out, but frak it.

Quick Rant: Advertisements.

For the past 2 or so years, 2 particular advertising campaigns have annoyed me, and as someone who spends too much time watching T.V, they have been unavoidable. Let me start with one hated by, as far as I’m aware, the entire British public. An insurance comparing company, GoCompare.com, have advertised using a Tenor, who sings a variation of the 1917 song “Over There”, in increasingly annoying ways. The other ad that annoys me is, funnily enough, another insurance comparing company called comparethemarket.com, who’s entire premise is centred around a CG meerkat complaining that people are visiting his website, comparethemeerkat.com (Although anyone who types meerkat when attempting to write market must be dyslexic or, more likely, an invalid. At least in my opinion), advertising the former in the process. This advert, however, has been embraced by the public (the mascot even has 2 fucking books released! Fuckin’ clown shoes), Now, as annoying as these advertisements are, they aren’t nearly as annoying to me as what they’ve evolved in to. The gocompare ads have evolved to having the tenor mascot humiliated and injured in various ways (Most recently, by Professor Stephen Hawking) with the caption “Saving the nation”, in this case meaning both saving them money and saving them from the annoying jingle that has been drummed into our heads every fucking day for the past 2 or so years. The comparethemarket ads now feature comedian Robert Webb as a human counterpart to the aforementioned meerkat, pointing out that ‘market’ and ‘meerkat’ are different words. The thing that annoys me about both of these things is, the annoying things they’re speaking out against now were things they’ve created. I mean sure, it’s smart advertising, brilliant, even. But it also makes them awful people.

Bastards.

My education history: A story of general laziness.

The Pursuit of Graphics A.K.A. The curse of media

So, a wee bit of an educational back story here. I left secondary school having failed most of my subjects, because, as I may have mentioned in an earlier blog, I’m an unmotivated chap. I did, however, get a pretty decent grade in Graphics, mainly because I enjoyed the subject. Went to college, not being able to get in to the subjects I was passionate about (art and graphics), and instead had to take GCSE Maths, English and compromise on a third lesson. Since the qualifications I had weren’t enough to get me in to A Level Graphics, I had to take BTECH Media, which they assured me would be just like graphics. This time, I dropped out, because, as I said, unmotivated chap. Left with no qualifications. Went to an adult education centre, left with qualifications for maths, english, IT and retail. Re-applied for college, this time I was sure I’d get in to graphics. Got a place for said lesson, I was chuffed, up until a month or so before beginning, when I learned the college I’d be attending wouldn’t be running any graphics classes, but it was okay, because they’d placed me in to an equally awesome class: MEDIA. I eventually passed that media class, barely (because unmotivated chap). But was it worth it? Kinda…

The perks of a cursed subject.

When I say it was kinda worth it, we should probably look at the points of view of other people. If you were to ask my tutors, they’d probably say “No, he was an unmotivated chap, and he never completed his assignments”. If you were to ask my classmates, they’d probably say “Wait, who was Alfie?”. I, on the other hand, found the experience enjoyable. Unlike the first media class I went to where we only ever learned about print media, we learned about script writing, directing, advertising, stuff like that. I met -well, sat quietly in a room near- some ‘interesting’ people. Found out about some interesting low budget movies, some books, some software, all pretty awesome stuff. And even though I never got around to actually making a movie, it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for almost a year now. I have about 10 scripts written, some short films, one for an episode of a friend’s web series (www.youtube.com/lordjerrington) and a few unfinished concepts. At some point, I plan on filming something, but I’m, as I said before, an unmotivated chap, and I lack confidence when it comes to my work. But yeah, cheers.

Merry Christmas from “I AM ALFIE”

Merry Christmas from “I AM ALFIE”

Quick Plot Hole : Hellboy 2 Schufftein Glasses

So, I was watching Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, and I noticed 2 glaring plot holes that I hadn’t seen before. In the moive Hellboy and Abe Sapien use goggles called “The Schufftein Glasses”, given to them by Johan Kraus, to find the entrance to The Troll Market, because apparently fairy folk give off a Glamour so normal people can’t recognize that they aren’t human. Liz Sherman says that the goggles “penetrate that effect and reveal the true nature of things”. My problems with this are as follows:

A. Okay, I can buy that humans wouldn’t be able to see trolls and fairies for what they truly are, although the B.P.R.D had been doing so since World War 2, but okay, I can ignore that. But surely an icthyo sapien and Anung Un Rama, son of the fallen one would have no problem seeing supernatural creatures without the aid of overly-steampunk goggles.

B. When Abe looks at Hellboy with the goggles, he sees his flaming crown and fully-grown horns, even though the crown is usually invisible and the horns are filed down. Now, as some of you will know, Abe Sapien was a Victorian Scientist/Occultist named Langdon Everett Caul, who became an icthyo sapien after an arcane ritual gone wrong. Now, when Hellboy looks at Abe, he should, by all accounts, see a Victorian gentleman, mutton chops and all. Or perhaps he did see Abe in his true form and didn’t say anything. In which case, Hellboy’s a dick.

Caul, we hardly knew ye.

Then there’s that whole crowd turning on hellboy for no particular reason after saving them from a big-ass forest god thing, but shut up.

UPDATE:

On the night I posted this, I shared it to twitter and asked Doug Jones, the man who played Abe Sapien in the movies, what the reason behind this was, not expecting anything to come of it. But, lo and behold, 10 or so minutes later, I received a reply, consisting of the following:

As you can see, not only did he reply to my tweet, but he also Favorited the message I sent back, thanking him for his reply. And while some may nitpick and say he didn’t clear anything up, to those people I say “Screw you, Doug Jones read my blog!”.

Identity and talent crisis… Crises ?

“Mate, you’re ‘avin a LARP, ain’tcha?!”

In my last blog, I mentioned LARPing, and I just thought I’d clear up what it is, for people who are unsure what it is. LARP stands for Live action roleplay, which is a combination of RPG gaming and re-enactment. I’ve been doing it on and off (mainly off, due to a lack of funds) since 2009, the summer I left secondary. In doing so, I’ve had some memorable weekends and met some of the most interesting people I know, I wholly recommend it.

Now, I was planning to go to every scheduled event with the group I’ve been attending events with (www.seaxeandsorcery.co.uk), but due to the aforementioned lack of money, I may have been once or twice. But when I did go, severe character development. To cut a long story short, my character was a low-level soldier, now he has no sense of direction, is crazy and owes someone or another his services for eternity, because he got a bit carried away at an auction. Until his services are requested, I’ll be developing another character. An experienced monster-hunter/dealer of rare artefacts (funnily enough, this is the direction I wanted to take my other character in until, you know, crazy directionlessness). Next year, I hope to get back into the hobby seriously (for serious this time).

The internet has destroyed my creativity…

So, it’s the general consensus amongst my friends that I should be doing something to do with comics, be it selling them or making them or whatever. Now, not to toot my own horn, but I’m a decent drawer. However, being someone who spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet, I’ve been exposed to superhero redesigns and webcomics made so well, it makes my work look like the scribblings of a toddler. And I know, drawing isn’t a competition, but if it was, I’d lose. Nevertheless, I’m doing a few sketches, got a few concepts in mind, and if all goes to plan, I should have some stuff done by February.