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Post Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 1:52 pm 
 

Don't Taze Me, Bonk!

  


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Post Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 1:57 pm 
 

LOL!  I will try to withhold the urge.

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Post Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:01 pm 
 

jasonw1239 wrote:I first heard about them around 1981 in a record store in Montreal when I picked up their album called Sonic Attack that has 3 or 4 songs written or co-written by Moorcock.

Hawkwind and Moorcock go waaay back.  Long ago, Moorcock did record a very, very weird concept album with his group, the Deep Fix; members of Hawkwind contributed musically.  Moorcock also lent his name as co-author to some awful fiction that starred the members of Hawkwind.

Hawkwind recorded a studio album in the 1980s entitled Chronicle of the Black Sword, which adapted the Elric saga and included a Jerry Cornelius-related song, "Needle Gun".

Michael Moorcock also performed some spoken word on one of Nik Turner's (ex-Hawkwind) live albums from the 90s and on the 2-CD reissue of Hawkwind's Live Chronicles (live concert performances from their 80s "Black Sword Tour".).  The Live Chronicles reissue includes a booklet-sized reprinting of a Moorcock story.

Kingofpain89 wrote:Whaddya know....I learn something new every day.  I had no idea that Lemmy (of Motorhead fame obviously) was once a member of Hawkwind.  8)

Hawkwind had a b-side that was entitled Motorhead.  One version of the song has Lemmy singing instead of Dave Brock.

  


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Post Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:04 pm 
 

JohnGaunt wrote:Hawkwind had a b-side that was entitled Motorhead.  One version of the song has Lemmy singing instead of Dave Brock.


Last song he wrote for the band before he was kicked out, if I recall correctly.


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Post Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:19 am 
 

Moorcock also worked with Blue Oyster Cult, most memorably on "Black Blade." I'll bet you could never guess what that song was about ...

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Post Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:25 am 
 

Uh, Xax, you might want to read my post  :lol:


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Post Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 3:13 pm 
 

Tragic, and strangely ironic:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22360485/?GT1=10645

I doubt this would have made front page news on MSN if it weren't for the circumstances of the guy's death.


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Post Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:08 pm 
 

Xaxaxe wrote:Yeah, that "review" is just a little too breathless. You'd think the book cured cancer or something.

I've still never read a word of the Potter series, which I'm sort of proud of in a perverse sort of way. I never saw Titanic, either ... man, I'm a rebel.


Never saw Titanic.

Skipped portions of text in the later Potter books...which badly needed editing for style and content.

In the last book, the author has run out of things to do and starts repeating her former plots...her characters mainly wander around for a year....apparently too kind and gentle to kill the wizards who are killing the good guys right and left....taking the least logical course of action in almost every situation.

In the final scene, Rowling describes everything except the most dramatic moment...sort of like, "...and...oh yeah...Voldemort dies, or something."

Other than the clever use of folklore (possible for anyone with a dictionary of folk tale and faerie lore), some pig Latin and the announcement that Dumbledore was gay....it's pretty much the old tale:

Boy slays the slayer of his father and marries the princess.


Toss in a few shocking twists that aren't particularly twisty or shocking, a load of illogical behavior, some really inattentive and lazy heroes...and you got all the Harry Potter books wrapped up.

My Harry Potter anecdote comes from the first movie:

Dumbledore (on the screen):  "I enchanted the stone so that the only person who could find it was someone who didn't want to use it.  One of my better ideas."

Me (sitting in the back row): "Or, you could have enchanted the stone so that NO ONE could find it.  I mean, just as an alternative plan."

The guy in front of me turned around and glared.... :D


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Post Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:40 pm 
 

FormCritic wrote:
Never saw Titanic.

Skipped portions of text in the later Potter books...which badly needed editing for style and content.

In the last book, the author has run out of things to do and starts repeating her former plots...her characters mainly wander around for a year....apparently too kind and gentle to kill the wizards who are killing the good guys right and left....taking the least logical course of action in almost every situation.

In the final scene, Rowling describes everything except the most dramatic moment...sort of like, "...and...oh yeah...Voldemort dies, or something."

Other than the clever use of folklore (possible for anyone with a dictionary of folk tale and faerie lore), some pig Latin and the announcement that Dumbledore was gay....it's pretty much the old tale:

Boy slays the slayer of his father and marries the princess.


Toss in a few shocking twists that aren't particularly twisty or shocking, a load of illogical behavior, some really inattentive and lazy heroes...and you got all the Harry Potter books wrapped up.

My Harry Potter anecdote comes from the first movie:

Dumbledore (on the screen):  "I enchanted the stone so that the only person who could find it was someone who didn't want to use it.  One of my better ideas."

Me (sitting in the back row): "Or, you could have enchanted the stone so that NO ONE could find it.  I mean, just as an alternative plan."

The guy in front of me turned around and glared.... :D


Funny stuff.. I've never delved into the Potter books, almost guaranteed I'd be disappointed.  Being an english major, and a bit anal retentive about certain writing styles, I'm always leery of completely unprofessionally trained writers...Ever since I was introduced to Tom Clancy. Great plot lines, lots of technical details, interesting characters...and absolutely zero sense of any sort of coherent writing style.  The books read like they were dicatated by someone who had no background in literature to a souless secretary who transcribed everything verbatim. I'd venture to say his first few books (which I read, just because EVERYONE was reading them at the time) are virtually styleless. I'd say unreadable, except so many darn people read them...why, I have no idea, when the movies of his books are actually far better (not the usual way things are done....typically written works are far superior to filmed works...not in this case).

Another popular writer whose popularity escapes me is John Grisham.  Once again, I have forced myself through a few of his books. His detached, numbing, unexciting, humorless style leaves me baffled, as so many good movies have been made from his works.  Once again, great plots, terrible writing style. Ok, scratch that, his plots are dumb too. D-U-M-B.  I'm honestly baffled by his popularity.

In the realm of fantasy, Glen Cook is a puzzler.  I've read the entire Black Company series, which held together nicely until the last book.  Read a few of his Garrett, PI and Dread Empire books.  Entertaining reads. However, the man has absolutely no ear for dialogue...none, zero, nada.  Everyone of his characters in any of his books are interchangable with any character in any other book when it comes to their speaking parts.  They all talk like they are sitting in a doughnut shop down the street, colliqiallisms and all (I always cringe when he, no lie, refers to something like the Archimedes principle or Newton's law of gravity in a story written in a fantasy world.....huh????), and you can never keep two much less three characters straight when they are talking to each other. And speaking of which, he is a master of giving a character a "hook" (i.e., he's angry all the time, or talks about eating and drinking,  or plays cards, or dislikes magic) instead of true characterization.  Once again, he has no real memorable characters based on any sort of in depth characterization.....I only remember his most famous characters for their "hooks" and not any sort of character development.

And as for Laurell Hamilton....hoo boy. Not enough time to go into what makes her best sellers very, very , very, very , very, very bad on almost every level of humanity.

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Post Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:31 pm 
 

Badmike wrote: leery of completely unprofessionally trained writers


Of course the same can be said for Gygax' nonfiction- it's not a professional style, but engaging nevertheless.

Badmike wrote: no ear for dialogue...none, zero, nada.  Everyone of his characters in any of his books are interchangable with any character in any other book when it comes to their speaking parts.


The best dialogue ever is in Zelazny's original Amber series, often written without narration. The shadow walks are some of the best stream-of-consciousness writing I've ever read.

  

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Post Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:58 pm 
 

sauromatian wrote:Badmike wrote:
leery of completely unprofessionally trained writers


Of course the same can be said for Gygax' nonfiction- it's not a professional style, but engaging nevertheless.

The best dialogue ever is in Zelazny's original Amber series, often written without narration. The shadow walks are some of the best stream-of-consciousness writing I've ever read.


EGG may have written one of the most "readable" rulebooks ever in the DMG. I just love that thing.  EGG was well grounded in fantasy literature but not the same thing as being professionally trained, I will agree.  But fun reading nevertheless.  

I have never read a Zelazny story I haven't liked...yet, I haven't read everything, but what I have read is uniformly good.  For dialogue, no one beats the master, Stephen King. I don't know where he got his "ear" for transciibing people talking, but I swear I could read an entire book of his that just features people talking back and forth. His conversations in his novels are always so natural and unforced, which makes the horror (when it occurs) that much more frightening, since it seems to be occuring in such a familiar mileau...

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Post Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:56 pm 
 

Badmike wrote:Ever since I was introduced to Tom Clancy. Great plot lines, lots of technical details, interesting characters...and absolutely zero sense of any sort of coherent writing style.

I recently re-read Hunt for Red October and found myself pleasantly surprised by how ... good ... it was. I mean, Clancy will never be mistaken for John Steinbeck or anyone like that, but it's a tight, tense, interesting read that shows a little bit of technical proficiency.

Ah, but maybe it was too successful ... because pretty much everything after that just trends downwards. Book after book shows a lazy author who has too much sway over "editors" who are afraid to touch his stuff.

I gave up on TC after three or so books, then made the mistake of trying one more time. I read the first 50 pages of The Bear & The Dragon before flinging it out a window. It's quite possibly the worst book ever printed in English ... well, other than Sandworms of Dune.

I've often thought that Stephen King has had much the same problem (too much authority over his frightened editors) in recent years, which has led to some bloating of many of his books. But at least King knows (and respects) his craft. Bad King is still miles better than anything Clancy has written since HFRO.

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Post Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:58 pm 
 

King lost it after he got hit by a van. I think his close brush with death brought him a vision of just how crappy it is to die.


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Post Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:26 pm 
 

LOL  Deadlord is trolling you Axe!


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Post Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 6:15 am 
 

don't know if any of you Cthulhu bods have latched onto this yet:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35142

Guillermo Del Toro is doing "Mountains of Madness"

sounds pretty cool!

Al


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Post Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 8:31 am 
 

Thanks Al,

There had been some discussion about the Mountains of Madness movie on Yog-Sothoth.com but the last I had heard the project was still not confirmed.

From the following quote in the interview it sounds like it is still not 100%. It sounds like he is not going to start the movie until he can land a bigger budget.

The movie could be done if we took a smaller budget, but I really think the way to approach it is to give it the epic, sort of Shackleton exploration feel


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Post Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 3:14 pm 
 

jasonw1239 wrote:There had been some discussion about the Mountains of Madness movie on Yog-Sothoth.com but the last I had heard the project was still not confirmed.


Production was delayed when the original cast was found torn limb-from-limb by unidentifiable tentacles. That's Hollywood for you.

  

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Post Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 4:13 pm 
 

jasonw1239 wrote:Thanks Al,

There had been some discussion about the Mountains of Madness movie on Yog-Sothoth.com but the last I had heard the project was still not confirmed.

From the following quote in the interview it sounds like it is still not 100%. It sounds like he is not going to start the movie until he can land a bigger budget.



imo, if hellboy II is a hit, which i think it most certainly will be, then i think he will get what he wants with mountains of madness. i think its only a matter of time.

on another thread on the site, it was confirmed now that the two movie companies arguing over the hobbit, have now also agreed a split for right/revenue, so thats also going to happen and new line have also sorted their issues with peter jackson with regards to lord of the rings, so he is on board for the hobbit too, albeit in an executive producer role if memory serves. there is also going to be a sequel to the hobbit as well, for all those maybe wanting to know!

some good projects in the pipeline then it would seem?

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