It looks as if we won't be seeing a second Hellboy feature film any time soon. I know the IMDB still says it's coming in 2007, but with nobody other than Ron Perlman cast yet and Guillermo del Toro juggling productions for 2006/7 I'll believe Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is moving forward when I see a teaser.

In the meantime, the news of Hellboy's appearances in other media is more promising; the sketches on the Hellboy Animated project's production diary make it look like a very nice piece of work. And of course, the comics are still going strong.

[Via C.H.U.D.]

The Royal National Theatre's Stagework web site is both good to look at and useful. It's a great deal more than just an advert for forthcoming productions; there's tons of background information on the staging of the plays, the themes of the work, the backstage activity involved, timelines for each production and so on. Very impressive work.

[Via Christian Science Monitor]

Coming soon(ish) to a fashion emporium near you:

[The Hug Shirt...] is a Bluetooth accessory for mobile phones in the shape of a t-shirt that allows people to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the loved one

[Via Needcoffee.com]

David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne) on the past and future functions of album covers.

We connect the typefaces and designs of some fairly arbitrarily designed LP covers to the music inside that we know and love, as if the images actually embody some part of the music. Well, OK, if you want to be picky about it you probably can tell something about James Brown by his choice of footwear as seen on that LP sleeve. But you learn nothing about the Kinks from their sleeve. Our sense of the author and the music being represented and embodied graphically is imaginary. We see the music and its package as all of a piece. This of course is what good packaging does. Salty snacks and washing detergents are sold mostly based on their brightly colored packaging. Most people don’t make this assumption about books — we don’t assume that the cover of a book is a visual representation of the writing, as imagined by the author, but with music we sometimes do make this leap. Hence the love of LP sleeves… and even CD booklets.

Actually, his point about book covers isn't entirely accurate. Certainly in genre fiction it's still commonplace for the covers to signal the type of story, or at least the story's subgenre. If book covers aren't remembered as well as album covers, isn't that at least in part because books that stay in print long enough to be reprinted a few times will tend to go through several, usually very different, covers, whereas albums that are reissued after twenty or thirty years will generally retain the same cover art?

(There are exceptions to that rule, but as far as I can see they're usually instances where an artist's album is relaunched when their label decides to give one of their more commercial singles another push – see, for example, Nerina Pallot's Fires, which was released with this cover last year but has now been repackaged with this one now that Everybody's Gone To War is being pushed chartwards.)

Despite my quibbles Byrne's post is well worth reading, particularly for his thoughts on what function album art will serve in the download age.

The battle for The Head of Vecna. Very, very funny.

[Via James Nicoll]

Elephants Dream is worth a look if you've got the bandwidth to download a copy in a reasonable amount of time.

(NB: the movie is available in various video formats and resolutions, with file sizes ranging from 99MB to 425MB.)

[Via The Tao of Mac]

10 Things I Hate About Commandments. Yes, it's another remixed trailer. But it's another good remixed trailer, so why not spread the joy?

[Via MetaFilter]

This page links to more 1980s pop videos on YouTube than you can shake a stick at.

I respectfully submit that anybody who can't find something to love on that page either hates pop music or is dead. I mean, consider the letter 'E' alone:

• E.G. Daily – Say It, Say It
• Earth, Wind and Fire – Let's Groove
• Eartha Kit – Where Is My Man
• Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon
• Eddie Grant – Johanna
• Eddie Jobson – Turn It Over
• Eddie Murphy – Party all the Time
• Eddy Huntington – USSR
• Edgar Winter – Frankenstein
• Edie Brickell And The New Bohemians – What I Am
• Eighth Wonder – I'm Not Scared
• El DeBarge – Who's Johnny
• El Norte – Entre Tú y Yo
• El Ultimo de la Fila – Insurreccion
• Electric Light Orchestra – All Over The World
• Elton John – Nikita
• Elvis Costello – Veronica
• Enigma – Sadeness
• Enrique y Ana – La Gallina Cocoua
• Enuff Z 'Nuff – Fly High Michelle
• Enya – Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)
• Erasure – Sometimes
• Eric Carmen – Hungry Eyes
• Eric Clapton & Robert Cray – Old Love
• Erik B and Rakim – Microphone fiend
• Escape Club – Wild Wild West
• Eskorbuto – Os Engañan
• Étienne Daho – Tombé pour la France
• Europe – The Final Countdown
• Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams
• Evelyn King – I'm In Love
• Evelyn Thomas – High Energy
• Every Little Thing – Shapes of Love
• Everything But The Girl – I Don't Want To Talk…
• Exodus – Strike of The Beast
• Expose – Seasons Change
• Extreme – More Than Words
• Extremoduro – Jesucristo Garcia
• EZO – Flashback Heart Attack

I rest my case.

I've just watched the video for Obsession by Animotion for the first time in, oh, 20 years or so. I seem to remember actually liking that video when it was first released, and right now I have absolutely no idea what I saw in it! (On the other hand, the video for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer is still precisely as much fun as ever it was.)

[Via MetaFilter]

The trailer for Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, is back up on YouTube.

As the trailer concentrates on explaining the circumstances in which the two lead characters get to run the show it may not be that good a guide to what's to come in the series proper. Even so, the cast and Sorkin's track record are more than enough to whet my appetite. Here's hoping the show lasts long enough for Josh Malina to join the cast.

If Channel 4 buy this and bury it in a post-midnight slot before the first season is out I may have to kill somebody.

[Via Keith Hypnopompia, posting at Barbelith Underground]

PVP on network neutrality.

From the Urban Legends Reference Pages: Old lady who receives the gift of a radio from some schoolkids pens an interesting 'thank you' letter.

An analysis of game console prices over time.

It's just as well Sony have a good chunk of mindshare in the gaming market and the resources to persuade major developers to produce content for their next console, because every other games console priced as high as the Playstation 3 in the last twenty years has crashed and burned.

[Via Daring Fireball Linked List]

The 50 Best Marvel characters:

[...]

36. She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters
Created by Stan Lee and John Buscema.

The jade giantess gained her super strength thanks to a spectacularly ill-advised blood transfusion from cousin Bruce 'Hulk' Banner. She then went from savage to sassy, establishing herself as a screwball comedy heroine with Carole Lombard's wit, Rosalind Russell's bite, and Cyd Charisse's legs. But none of those gals could juggle cars.

[...]

15. J Jonah Jameson
Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Spider-Man's ultimate nemesis, beating Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin and all the other rogues. The Hitler-moustached Daily Bugle editor is the bane of Peter Parker's existence, not only hounding him through the press, but also creating super-villains and commissioning a series of killer robots to destroy him. Rupert Murdoch has never shown this sort of dedication to any of the dreadful fearmongering campaigns he's concocted. (Actually, more plausibly, Rupert Murdoch just hasn't built a killer robot that he's really satisfied with yet. I expect all the unusued prototypes are sitting in a warehouse somewhere in East Cheam.)

[...]

There's one character with whom I was unfamiliar, but I feel strangely compelled to make his acquaintance after reading this description:

46. Swarm, Fritz von Meyer
Created by Bill Mantlo and John Byrne.

Swarm has appeared in comics only a scant handful of times, yet he has massive cult appeal. To understand why, there's just one thing you need to know about Swarm: He's a Nazi made of radioactive bees. Shakespeare only wishes he'd come up with stuff this good.

Come on! How can you not want to read that? (Though I've got to say that he sounds like someone who'd be more at home in Mike Mignola's Hellboy or B.P.R.D. comics.)

[Via linkmachinego]

Volkswagen's new car storage facility at Wolfsburg looks as if it fell back in time from the year 2050.

One day all multi-storey car parks will be built this way.

[Via kottke.org remaindered links]

Charlie Stross paints an all-too plausible picture of the fate of the National Identity Register, as seen from the vantage point of the year 2016:

[...]

Businesses use the ID card for authentication … except that the government doesn't want J. Random Corner Shop (which might be owned by a crazed Al Qaida-trained bomb maker — you can never be too sure) poking around their super-secret database. So to keep the wheels of commerce turning, there's a chip and PIN mechanism rather than actual on-line biometric authentication against the government's database, and the PIN is stored on-chip (as with the British credit/debit card system, described in several APACS specifications). In 2006, the chip and pin system was already looking worryingly insecure just three months after its national introduction; by 2016 the system has been successfully attacked by trying to reverse-engineer the chip. (Oops.) What this means is, checking someone's identity using the ID card is no more secure than glancing at their credit card, unless you're a government agency with a biometric scanner and online access to a secure database server — and credit card fraud is just as rife in 2016 as it was in 2005. But most folks don't realise this, because it is not in the banks' (or the government's) interest to trigger a panic. (There is a precedent for this behaviour; given a choice between sweeping it under the carpet/denying everything, and letting the UK banking system collapse, the government and regulators picked the former option. What did you think your shiny new chip'n'pin card was all about?)

[...]

Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina Bookends. Perfect.

[Via DoubleViking]

Mike Patton's new album Peeping Tom, is a bit of a departure from his usual style:

In keeping with the landmark 1960 psychological horror film that inspired its name, PEEPING TOM had its genesis as a modus operandi devoid of physical intimacy. Patton would write songs with a wishlist of theoretical collaborators in mind, then hope for a reply in the form of a finished track. "It's an exotic way of working for someone accustomed to a band environment," Patton says. "It was charming, really. None of the usual Animal House stuff. Instead of swapping spit and underwear, we were swapping files."

Lack of face-to-face interaction did not keep long-distance collaborators from turning in exceptional performances: Norah Jones' lascivious "Sucker," Kool Keith's "Getaway" and Massive Attack's "Kill The DJ" are intense and passionate as anything a live band environment could have produced-despite the fact that Patton has still never met Jones or Keith. "Plenty of people on the record are still complete strangers to me," he says.

The initial PEEPING TOM offering also includes contributions from Amon Tobin, Bebel Gilberto, DubTrio, Kid Koala, Dale Crover, Rahzel and several of Patton's Bay Area running buddies, such as Dan "the Automator" Nakamura, and Jel, Odd Nosdam and Dose One of hip hop collective anticon. The end result is an utterly unique multi-genre/multi-artist departure from Patton's more recent noisy output-one that would ultimately have to be classified as a pop record, alas a Mike Patton pop record, but a pop record nonetheless.

"I don't listen to the radio, but if I did, this is what I'd want it to sound like. This is my version of pop music. In a way, this is an exercise for me: taking all these things I've learned over the years and putting them into a pop format. I've worked with many people who have said to me, 'oh you have a pop record in you, eventually you'll find it,' and I always laughed at them. I guess I owe them an apology."

I've always preferred Patton's work with Faith No More to his wierder solo work, but the two tracks available at the iTunes Music Store (Mojo and Preschool) are really, seriously good. It's good to have him back doing (comparatively) mainstream music again.

[Via Needcoffee.com]

The Toronto Star has uncovered the real reason Margaret Atwood's book-signing machine failed to take off.

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

Steven Berlin Johnson's musings about serendipity led to a fascinating comment thread about the difference between the prospects of finding something wonderful online and the chances of stumbling across a surprising word or article in a library. Well worth reading from beginning to end.

I think the difference in how much serendipity people enjoy as a result their use of the web isn't so much a consequence of the pros and cons of online and offline information sources as it is of the extent to which web users use the web as a shopping mall rather than a source of entertainment and information. As we know, a lot of web users stick closely to just a few sites that they use on a regular basis; these people will probably find that the content they get from those sites is pretty much what they're expecting, just like someone who buys one newspaper and reads just a couple of magazines.

On the other hand, people who keep up with a reasonable number of weblogs – by which I mean old-fashioned linklogs, or community sites like MetaFilter – will see their chances of finding something surprising increase exponentially. At least that's how it works for me.

There's font geekery, and then there's this. Truly impressive work.

[Via kottke.org remaindered links]