King's Chronicles

The news this week...
Damn shame about Heath Ledger. I never met him, but I thought he had a lot of talent and I almost always liked him in the movies I saw. A bunch of other writer and director types and I said some nice things about his portrayal of the Joker recently at this site: http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1576855/20071219/story.jhtml and I was really looking forward to seeing him in the role. Last I heard his work on THE DARK KNIGHT, including post production, was complete, so at least we'll have that one last finished performance from him. I'm not so sure that applies to the Terry Gilliam feature he had just started filming.

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Scientists in England claim to have created a helmet that reduces and possibly reverses the effects of Alzheimer's disease by beaming infra-red light directly into the brain. The thing looks like something out of Buck Rogers or possibly the Happy Helmet from "Ren and Stimpy."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=510172&in_page_id=1774

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The photo of that "creature" on Mars? Bigfoot. Trust me on this.

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Lots of rain this week in Southern California. Snow too, up in the mountains. I like rainy winters as that means more water reserves for summer. The problem is we get all our rain now and virtually nothing again until November. That means the scrub brush that looks so pretty and green now will be brown and dry by May. That's like filling the canyons with kindling wood. All we need is that one little spark and it's fires all summer and fall. I guess that means the water we're stocking up now we'll be using to spray down our homes in September.

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Also here in LA, the Writer's Strike drags through another month. The WGA has taken animation and "reality" shows off the bargaining table, meaning we have basically lost the fight for automatic royalties on those two issues. For more information on why that may not be a total defeat, I direct you to Mark Evanier's blog:

http://www.newsfromme.com/

Mark puts a much more detailed and hopeful spin on it than I ever could. At any rate it's good that both sides are negotiating again. Hopefully this will mean an end to the strike fairly soon.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Boip! Boip!" - Slim Gaillard