Haven’t posted anything substantial here in a while, so I thought I’d give a rundown of what I’ve been up to lately.
Obviously, I’m still writing reviews for Forced Viewing and acting as site admin. We’ve got some projects in the works–nothing I’m going to give any details about yet, but we’re pretty excited about them. Also note that we’ve got a Facebook page.
Non-horror-related stuff I’ve been watching: Fringe, obviously, and Desperate Housewives (which still manages to come up with some good stuff). Just started Burn Notice, but don’t know how committed I am to it yet. Alcatraz looks like it has potential. Revisiting Intelligence and The IT Crowd, and watching Black Books on an intermittent basis. Will probably start Mad Men after the spring finales.
Carlos (the three-part French miniseries about Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos “the Jackal” Ramirez) was excellent. I enjoyed Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor, but most people who aren’t already familiar with Le Carre’s Smiley/Karla mythos are going to be lost. (I somehow managed to read the Karla novels in reverse order, starting with Smiley’s People, and only just began Tinker Tailor, and I found myself a bit adrift at times.) My friend Robin put it best: there’s just too much plot for a 2-hour movie.
The 1979 British miniseries is on the docket. Also hoping to get around to F for Fake and the two Mesrine movies.
Right now I’m working on a few gaming projects as well:
Project Number One is definitely going to be a Call of Cthulhu campaign, mostly set in Europe (the first couple of chapters might be set in the States) in the early to mid-’70s. (Which explains why I’m interested in movies about the Cold War, terrorists, criminals, spies, and art forgery…)
Project Number Two is the current iteration of the Radical Dynamics game I’ve talked about in the past. Right now I’m describing it as a cross between The X-Files and Leverage (or what I imagine Leverage is like, since I haven’t seen it yet). I may be dropping the alien invasion angle. System undetermined–this was going to be Spycraft at one point, now I’m uncommitted.
Project Number Three is a dark high fantasy campaign, heavily influenced by ’60s and ’70s Gothic horror movies (especially the AIP Corman Poe adaptions and Hammer Horror). I’m going to have to put a lot of work to keep it from feeling like a knock-off of Ravenloft or the current block of Magic: The Gathering expansions (you just know the dev and design teams at Wizards are locked in the basement with a stack of Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee movies). As with Project Two, system TBD. I’ve been looking at a lot of D20 variants, and none of them have tickled my fancy so far.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it. See you in a couple of months.