Walking Leaf

One of my favourite movie website – other than IMDb - is Empire Online. The site recently added a new feature, Empire Blog, and I’ve noticed a post that talks about on how to improve the hit real-time drama that is 24.

Being a fan of the series, I was reading with much interest on how to make the show better. Here is Nick de Semlyen’s blog in full, amusingly written and I must admit some of the points he made are really good, in particular moving the action away from LA and introducing better villains.

The unprecedented lameness of the latest season of 24 has got me thinking about ways the writers can save my favourite show…

1. Stop with the torture. Jack Bauer has now electrocuted, stabbed or injected agonising truth serums into his girlfriend, his brother, 80% of his workmates and the entirety of LA’s Muslim community. It’s not only getting old, but implies that torture is a good thing, especially in that dodgy episode where Jack beat up an amnesty organisation spokesperson.

2. Move the action out of LA. Six seasons, six terrorist conspiracies, and they ALL go down in Los Angeles? Die Hard managed to spice things up by using three different cities — why not take Jack to China, London or Brazil during Mardi Gras? Recent rumblings suggest that this will indeed be the case with Season 7 — though producers nixed moving Bauer to Africa for budgetary reasons, it’s hinted that he’ll spend his next horrible day somewhere on the East Coast.

3. Keep things focused on CTU, or — even better — at some new government agency with all-new characters. Cut all the political crap, which worked when David ‘Gravitas’ Palmer was President, but not with Wayne ‘Soul Grooves’ Palmer in the hot seat. Forget nukes, dirty bombs and White House take-overs. Concentrate on making the story smaller, more intimate, on agents doing some actual agent-work, and their personal stories. Which brings us to…

4. Make the characters cool again. Hands up who misses Tony? Nina? Hell, even twin slimeballs Ryan Chappelle and George Mason were more likeable than the non-entities that passed for major characters in Season 6. Arse-chinned Milo “dropping the pressure” on that Muslim chick was the final indignity. Have the cougar return to eat the whole CTU office and then bring in some great character actors who have more to offer than being young and mildly photogenic. Scary-voiced Powers Boothe was a good start.

5. Kill Jack. A hugely risky move, that might backfire, but it would at least restore some of the show’s dangerous feel from the early days, when it felt like the writers would do anything — and off anyone — in the service of the story. There’s no tension when Jack goes into an operation anymore, because we know he won’t get killed. (He’s actually died at least once already, and been brought back to life). So surprise us - make him actually dead. I was hoping they were setting up Curtis, aka Black Jack, as his replacement, but that’s obviously not going to happen now.

6. Send Bill Buchanan into the field. With a shotgun. Ideally two, strapped to his back, Ash-from-Evil-Dead-style. The Silver Fox has brooded in his office long enough — it’s time to set him loose on the mean streets of LA. Ratings would instantly double.

7. Better bad guys. 24’s most long-standing problem is with its villains. Season 1: Dennis Hopper with dodgy accent. Season 2: can’t even remember. Season 3: Rent-a-Mexicans and well-spoken Brit baddie (so 1990s). Season 4: The bloke from The Mummy. Season 5: Okay, the exception, Logan rocked. Season 6: The bloke from The Mummy’s nephew. Probably. Come on, bring in someone who can give Bauer a run for his money. Like Jet Li!

8. Make the characters get tired. Only Season 1 had a scene where Jack napped for a bit. Since then, there’s been almost no indication that people stop functioning at full capacity after staying up for hours and hours and hours. It would up the tension considerably.

9. Bring back Aaron Pierce! Properly, not in a five-minute scene involving kiwi fruit (shame on you, Season 6 writers!) Preferably with shotguns.

10. Introduce Chuck Norris as Jack’s new partner. This would be the most awesome thing in the history of the universe, and the terrorists would have no chance.

I can imagine Chuck Norris as CTU’s new field agent. He would definitely kick some serious terrorists arse! One point I like to add to this list, make Jack Bauer use blue language. “DAMMIT!” lacks the power compare to full explicit swearing… Jack is truly angry when he loses his cool…

During the European Grand Prix coverage on ITV, I saw this amusing advert featuring the McLaren Formula One drivers.

This new Mercedes-Benz commercial entitled ‘Anything you can do” reveal the rivalry between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. But unlike the action on the track, this was done with humour and a bit of fun.

I particular like the twist at the end with Mika Hakkinen!

See the advert below with a special behind the scenes video attached.

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The longest-running animated television show, The Simpsons, celebrated their 399th episode by creating a stylish and amusing parody of hit ‘real-time’ drama 24.

The episode entitled ’24 Minutes’ features guest appearances from none other than Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) as the hard-ass CTU agent who never sleeps or goes to take a break in the comfort area, and his CTU assistant, the know-it-all computer wizard Chloe O’Brien (Mary Lynn Rajkskub).

Sample these two video clips below with Kiefer providing the familiar intro to the show plus edited highlights of 24 references!

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It’s quite amusing to see the famous ticking clock and the split-screens.

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Probably the most amusing news story on Kiefer - the star of ‘real-time’ drama 24.

Kiefer Sutherland has only himself to blame for the delay of his Jack Bauer action figure. The Emmy Award-winning actor set fire to the prototype model during a drunken night out…

The action figure had been developed by McFarlane Toys and would have hit the retail stores sooner, but the ‘real’ Jack Bauer decided to destroy it.

Sutherland explains, “They tried to come out with one a couple of years ago and they had sent me the doll for my approval… We took the doll out for a night to have some fun and we’d had some drinks. We sat it on the corner of the table. We started torturing him around 11 o’clock at night, and, by two o’clock in the morning, we had set him on fire in the parking lot.

“We got up the next day and there was just this puddle of wax. His clothes didn’t burn, which I thought was pretty cool… and then I got a call the next day saying, ‘Did you like the doll?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it was great.’ And they said, ‘Well, OK, good, you gotta send it back to us because that was the prototype… It took that guy a year to make it.’ I said, ‘Well, let me look for it, I think I left it in the trailer.’ This went on for about a week and then I had to just kinda come clean.”

To be fair, the model of the all-American action hero doesn’t even look like him. So did Kiefer do the right thing?

Source: andPOP

After all the hard work recording and editing, I’m proud to announce the official eMagi Podcast are ready to download.

Two shows are available: the Pilot and Episode 1.

The pilot episode features Walking Leaf, NeoBladeFX, Emily, and a small role played by Yas and Janus. The podcast editing and production was done by Yas.

The topics on the first show include: Dino Love making, Chase HQ: The Movie and general news.

In Episode 1 entitled ‘David Blaine Must Die!’ the podcast features the usual cast. In addition, special guest appearances from Luna and Rob.

The topics discussed on that show are: How eMagi was created, Snakes On A Plane, David Blaine’s next trick and Josh’s ‘Misplaced’.

You can download the first two shows on eMagi.co.uk or via the direct links:

Pilot Episode

Episode 1

Warning: These podcasts do contain strong language and themes of a sexual nature. You have been warned!

Normally we record the latest episode of the eMagi Podcast on a Friday night. But I’ve notice not many members of the Eternal Sunset forum was online via Skype. So Yas and I decided to record a special edition of the podcast featuring a really silly voice provided by yours truly. And the conversation involves me pitching a film idea to David Hasselhoff, Sylvester Stallone, Matt Damon and Jerry Bruckheimer!

The film is a video game adaption of ‘Chase HQ’. It features three main characters. Two bent cops who have special feelings towards one another. They drive around in Detroit looking to ram into people from behind… The villain is the driver in a getaway car waiting to be bang.

The show format involves me making fake phone calls. I pulled off my silly voice (to get into the character) and Yas couldn’t stop laughing! It was quite enjoyable as we improvised the scene and hopefully this podcast episode will be release soon.

After recording last Friday’s Eternal Sunset Podcast, it was quite a nice surprise to recieve an email from Yas featuring the pilot episode. Yas did a really good job on the editing/post production side based on the recording made through Skype. He even sampled and remixed my voice as the theme tune to welcome the podcast!

Despite being around 15 minutes long (after recording one hour worth of material - the karaoke bit was cut out…), it was a pleasant experience to hear it. The topics we talked about were surreal and my sense of humour made it very memorable and amusing.

Yas mentioned that this is only a rough cut and that sound effects were needed. I wrote him an email back providing my feedback on the podcast. Hopefully other members enjoyed it as well.

Anyway, we are now working on recording a new one immediately. And I have already submitted some new topics to talk about in the next podcast. Should be fun!

Last Friday night (August 11th), we tried to record our Skype conversation as a podcast for Eternal Sunset. But it didn’t go according to plan as Skype was experiencing lagging and we didn’t prepare enough material to talk about… so instead we just improvised some stuff, talked briefly on Chase HQ and it’s gay references and in the end, we started singing!

But in the end, it was a good way of rehearsing for the real thing as we should have planned what to talk about and have a script to follow. Only Mike and I were brave enough to talk while everyone was listened in. We should be more relaxed about this and don’t feel the pressure or become shy just because it’s recording…

In fact, once the recording session was over, everyone was more confident in themselves and the conversation was more interesting/amusing than the podcast itself! But at least, Yas recorded around 1 hour worth of (good?) material to edit on. Looking forward to hearing it later!

Anyway, we need to work on the next - proper - one with some topics to talk about and include some sound effects to make it more entertaining.

On the Eternal Sunset forum, there are two threads challenging members to create some adverts for the Nintendo Wii and possible film posters featuring video game characters. Well, this looks like fun I thought and spent the next few minutes producing my masterpieces in Adobe’s Photoshop CS2.

My first image is a believable press advert to promote Nintendo’s new console, Wii. Playing around on the idea of a ‘hands on’ approach with the Wiimote and the slang for pleasuring yourself… In addition, included one of my favourite character in Super Monkey Ball. Nice.

The second image took me a while to do - finding the required elements on Google, adjusting the filter features in Photoshop - but the end result looks fantastic. Based on a movie I like.

I wonder what everyone wil say about my Photoshop skills?