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Movies, Music, Guitars n' Comics
A carmaker conflict has caused NBC to hire Val Kilmer to replace Will Arnett as the voice of KITT on its "Knight Rider" revival. Arnett ("Arrested Development" Problem is, Arnett had a contractual conflict of interest. For the better part of a decade, Arnett has done voice-over work for General Motors -- as the voice of GMC Trucks. NBC's new "Knight," however, is "played" by a Ford Mustang. What's more, Ford isn't simply providing cars for "Knight Rider." It's taking an active role in the marketing and branding of the pic, a backdoor pilot for a possible series. Ford's logo even appears all over NBC's on-air promos for the pic. Not surprisingly, when GM found out about the Ford connection, it asked Arnett to pull out. "I was very excited at the prospect of playing the part of KITT in the new 'Knight Rider' movie," Arnett said. "However, because of a long relationship with General Motors as the voice of GMC Trucks, I had to respectfully withdraw from the project." While NBC and Universal Media Studios will have to scramble to replace Arnett's dialogue with Kilmer's work, the upside is landing a well-known name for the part. In addition to his roles in pics such as "Batman Forever," "Heat" and "Top Gun," Kilmer has done plenty of voice-over work, including the voice of Moses in 1998's "The Prince of Egypt." I have less than seven minutes left on the internet terminal with extortionate prices at the St. Giles hotel near Tottenham Court Road, so we shall make this post quite brief: Checked into dodgy youth hostel called the Generator that hadn't had hot water for a month and froze our buttocks off as the guard shushed us whilst we smoked outside. Proceeded to play at Camden Underworld and got into super finals at Electric Ballroom. Directors of GBOB Malaysia put us up in St. Giles hotel, where hot water is in abundance. Made friends with people of many countries and pissed off a sassy black lady when she ran into my cigarette. Caught up with old friends such as Ramteen who I have known since I was twelve. Snored like a baby Godzilla. Didn't win the super finals, but fuck it, we got to play at the Electric Ballroom and had a blast. Tonight, I go to Kul's place to stay for my remaining nights and we shall paint the town red down the east end. Tonight is when it happens. Tonight, we dine... in Brick Lane. Possibly. It was sometime in the late afternoon at our terminal in the Bahrain airport, when we ran into trouble. They were never told that there was a group from Malaysia going to London to perform, and this did not sit well with them. Somewhere behind me an African with a curious looking passport was being hassled. "Why are you going to London?" asked the Hazamat looking customs official. "I can go wherever I want," said the Big Boi-looking African, "it is my business where I go!" He was pulled to the side. We were pulled to another side. Myself and my bandmates, two people from the organizing comittee of the Global Battle of the Bands in Malaysia (otherwise known as GBOB), numerous people from Astro and two winners of a competition to follow us to the show - a young Chinese man, his first time flying out of the country, and the Silent Cancer of the first runner ups, Revenge. We had our papers, we had our visas, there was no reason for stopping us, but Hazamat would not allow it. Not until he had heard it straight from the horses mouth. One month ago my band Y2k won the GBOB. It was totally unexpected, to say the least. We thought we hadn't performed as best we could, but somehow the gods of rock looked kindly towards us, and gave us safe passage to London to compete in the finals. Or so we thought. Hazamat looked through our letter of invitation from the London office of the GBOB. He dialled the number and got his confirmation, cursing to himself as he did so. "Ask them why they didn't fax us!" said his colleague. But it was too late. They had to let us pass, onto the plane where we would have to endure cramped seats and recycled air for another eight hours and where I would also end up spilling water all over my crotch and snore uncontrollably. I realize I sound negative. This is not the mood becoming of someone who lady luck has decided to deem worthy of going to another country to play a gig, and not just any country. The land where I once lived, and studied, and did silly things. Now I was going back to rock out with my cock out, so why should I be so negative? Because of the water. I am typing this from the Generator Hostel on Tavistock Place. The weather in London is cold, even colder with the wind-chill. Our room is a tiny closet with bunk beds, green and blue walls and a very large number over the door resembling a prison cell-block. I am not a number. I am Y2k. But even this doesn't bug me. What bugs me is the water. Namely, hot water. Or, as is the case with us, the lack of. Yes, there is no hot water, and no one in this hostel, not one of the hundreds here, have taken a proper, comfortable shower. Those that have, have not enjoyed it. Like my guitarist, Hermano Grande. He braved the cold, freezing shower at 5.30am, unable to sleep, numbing himself with the negative degrees of celcius just so that he could cleanse himself. I opted for scrubbing just my armpits, itself a difficult and painful endeavour. And don't get me started on the nether regions. We have no hot water and are surrounded by frenchmen. God help us. How in blue blazes did this happen? We have no idea. We entered the Global Battle of the Bands and somehow made it into the finals and now I'm still in a daze after hearing that we've won. It's still a frickin' shock to me. All the other bands were so good, we were so sure we were going to lose. So yeah. Back in the hood again. Back to London, and this time with my band mates. I can't fucking wait. Ah, the joys of being a writer. Technically, there's not much cost involved, is there? All you really need is a laptop, or a typewriter, hell, maybe even just a pen and a notepad. Not much cost at all. But then again, there's the need to spin ideas from one's head. There's the tough bit. Ideas have no cost, and yet are priceless. You have to pluck them from the air and hope their good enough. And sometimes you can't pluckin' pluck. Like me. I've got so many projects I have to write right now and the clock is steadily ticking. I have one definite telemovie to finish by next week (and may have another on my plate with a similar deadline), a pilot for a TV show, a corporate video and of course, my own little projects. Ah, the joys of plucking. The whole weekend I tried to write. And what did I do instead? Stared at the computer for a bit. Then re-arranged items on my desktop. Then I backed up some files and decided to defrag the computer. Since it's defraging, I decided to watch an episode of 'The Green Wing' on DVD. That turned to five episodes. Then I met up with a friend and had a drink, complaining about how I couldn't get 'in the mood' to write. And that's the thing, isn't it? If you're not in the mood, you just plain aren't. You can't force it. But I need to. Deadline's are looming, people, and due to my track-record of being able to conk out thirty pages a day people assume I shall shower them with the seeds of my deranged brain instantly. Bugger that. I suppose I shouldn't complain, considering I'm doing what I've always wanted to do in the first place: tell stories in different forms of media. I get to direct, write, compose, everything I always wanted to do. But, fuck me, it's tough to get in the mood these days. I feel like one of those housewives with a horny husband who's feeling up her left tit and she turns to him and says, "sorry, luv, I've got a headache". Ah, joy. My second episode for Dark City, entitled '4:20pm', airs next wednesday, 18th of July at 10:30pm on Astro Ria. It's a time travel episode, confusing as fuck to direct for both me, the cast and crew (on which I'll elaborate later) and the trailer looks like this: Like I said, it was confusing because it was a time travel episode. After the first two scripts I wrote based on synopsis' from Niche films (one of which, 'Cellphone', I directed) they asked for more stories, so I pulled out the old folder and looked for some old stories that I never got to shoot. One of them was this, '4:20pm', a short film I was originally supposed to shoot with the boys who later became known as Voxel. I figured, with all the horror and murder and rape and pillage of the other episodes, something a bit more 'Twilight Zone' would be cool. But, good God, it was confusing. Shooting a time travel story is annoying because on set you don't usually shoot scenes in sequence, and since we had two different sets we figured we'd shoot one set on day one and the other on day two, but trying to remember what time the clocks are meant to be showing and whether or not the mug of coffee is in shot or not or whether it was hot or cold or whether the character was from the future or the past was a twisting head fuck. I've tried to edit it as clearly as possible so that it won't go over the heads of those watching it, but it could still confuse people. The one shot I really like in this, though, is my little FX shot, where the future protagonist hides behind a wall as his past version walks past, all in the same shot (it's the last shot of the trailer). If anything, I'm just glad I got that shot. The episode showing this week, directed by Na'a Murad, is called 'Ghost Rider' (don't know what the Malay name is) and has no relation to the Nicholas Cage movie based on the Marvel comic book. It's about a rempit (motorbike racer) who is possesed by the spirit of a racer who died when he buys his bike. I'm acting in it as a mechanic (so no crap Chinese accent this time, just covered in a lot of grease). Hope those of you who've been watching are enjoying the show. Noonch. When X Men 3 came out, I had super high hopes combined with the tiniest of doubts in the back of my head. On the plus side, they not only were going to do the Dark Phoenix storyline, but also elements of the Joss Whedon run with the whole mutant 'cure', and Brett Ratner was still keeping in tone with Bryan Singer's style. Hell, I got nothing against Brett. I've enjoyed his past movies, ain't nothing wrong with the Brett-ster. But there was a worry: isn't there a bit too much going on? And there was. You've got all these new characters to introduce, a huge epic storyline and two and a bit hours to not only fit it all in, but also try and find some sense of closure. And it all felt rather messy indeed. My favorite X Men movie is still the second one - all the characters had already been introduced, there were a few new guys, true, but the main ones kept the story going and Wolverine got to go completely ape shit. The moment in the mansion when he first kills one of the soldiers all I could think was "Holy shit! They let Wolvie kill someone! They didn't even show that properly in the comic books until the whole Comics Code thing got lifted!" And I rejoiced. But X Men 3 was another kettle of fish. So much shit was going on that nobody got a chance to breath, least of all the audience. I mean, come on! Scott (Cylcops) gets killed and nobody seems to bat a fucking eye lid! What's up with that?! It seriously felt like the studios were nudging their wicked ways, saying "the first one made money, the second one made more! We need to keep it up! Stick everything in these damn books inside!" And what do you get? An unfocused mess. And Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut. I recently bought the two disc DVD and watched the deleted scenes - there are so many cool battle shots that weren't used, probably because they were running out of time. But who knows? Maybe it would have paced it better? Or maybe they could have just chucked out a bunch of the sub-plots and streamlined the whole damn thing. Spiderman 3 suffers the same problem, but in a way, worse. You can't even say it was the fault of a new director or writer because it's pretty much the same team working on it, but there are so many elements in that movie that feel chucked in purely because the studio wants to please the fans so that more will come to the cinemas - look at this! There's Gwen Stacy! Venom! Sandman! Harry Osborne's story arc! Tons of stuff! And where does it lead to? Incredible coincidences. A meteorite containing the venom symbiote just happens to land nearby Peter. I know that trying to do the whole 'Secret Wars' storyline would be a bit too much, but that's just taking the piss! And Eddie Brock? I had no problems with the casting, I fucking love Topher Grace's work, but doesn't it all seem a bit too much that he wants to kill Peter Parker just because he found out he photoshoped a pic of Spidey? And what the fuck was the point of Gwen Stacy? She was just 'the other girl', but they didn't play anything from her original storyline, making her nothing more than a redundant blonde who just happened to be in Peter's line of sight. They could have used the secretary as the love interest. They played on it before, dammit. And it's been in the comics too, no meandering of the storyline there. And, seriously, what was the point in having Sandman there? Visual FX? That's it?! He pops up, turns into the Sandman, does some cool sandmonster shit, then repents. The bad guy I thought they should have stuck with was Harry. His story's been built up over the past two movies, and in this one, he gets to kick some serious ass in the first fight scene with Peter, a huge improvement on his daddy's fight with Spidey in part one. But, amongst all of this, I still watched it, and will probably watch it again, the same way I watched X Men 3 again - because there is some fun to be had in watching these characters come to life and beat the crap out of each other just like we read about it in comics. The scriptwriting is bad, but in my opinion, the script was pretty bad in the first Spiderman movie too. At least now, the second time I watch it, my hopes won't be so high. And besides, both movies still kick the shit out of the infernal turd that was the Ghost Rider movie. |
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had already completed his part for the pic, which is slated to debut on NBC in less than two weeks. Producers Doug Liman, Dave Bartis and Dave Andron -- along with the network and studio -- were all fine with his performance..gif)
I don't believe it, I don't know how it frickin' happened, but a once impossible dream has suddenly come true tonight - my band, Y2k, are going to play the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town (UK) next month!
