Things are progressing nicely with Slingers. I’ve been beefing up the show’s tech bible. A piddling little thing when we took it to LA, it’s now grown into the backbone of the future we created. Initially the fun and challenge was creating believable people, drop them into fantastic scenarios and hope there was a spark. Now we’re in pre production, these people have a past and the history of their culture is coming together nicely.

Don’t panic. It’s still more Ocean’s 11 than Dune.

It’s a nice feeling when you see something you dropped onto a page begin to come alive and it’s been a trip watching the Brownlees at work on this. Their work is now filling my hard drives and decorating my office. And boards like the one gracing my desktop at the moment continue to edge me on into directions I wouldn’t have thought of.

More writing, more meetings and a fair bit of drinking ahead.

Oh and I just this minute started writing our second show – working title: De-Tech.

Been a great week so far…

One of the odder things I’ve been involved in recently was a Q&A session with JJ Abrams, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto about the new Star Trek movie. It all took place in Playstation Home:

It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it

PPC Interactive and @danlight in particular love having a bash at stuff like this. I found it surprisingly similar to the last thing I did with Reuters (perhaps the first time Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, will be compared with Captain Kirk). We used a mix of platforms again, and in retrospect I’m not sure that CoverItLive, UStream and Twitter were the best way to interact with something like Home, but it was a fun learning experience for me.

Funnily enough I was playing with some new software today that should make these kinds of events a lot easier to produce and up the interactive element. Will post about that later when it’s ready to launch.

Tech stuff aside though, this was all about the people and while it took a little while for the journalists to acclimatise and find their virtual legs, the director and actors were happy with what was going on and got it immediately – those around them perhaps less so (which is fairly typical) – but I think there is something here to build on.

Looking forward to see how far we’ve come by the time Star Trek II is upon us…

Baggage out of the way – when it come to a fist fight I’m going to hold William Shatner’s jacket and hope JJ Abrams loses his footing every time. I’m a huge fan of the original Captain Kirk and Shatner’s career as a whole – right up to auctioning his kidney stone, YouTube and beyond. It was going to take a lot for me to swallow this reboot. I watched the trailers with increasing annoyance – Kirk seemed to be nothing more than a frat boy, bedding his crew and getting into brawls while a lot of CGI exploded around him. Meh. Then today I got soaked on the way to see the damn thing and my mood was pretty bleak.

About two hours later I’m suddenly looking forward to seeing the new Star Trek movie again, but this time with a large Friday night audience so we can cheer on the good bits. Of which there are many.

The film is still a good three weeks away from general release so I’m not going into any kind of detail regarding the plot or what this all means for the franchise, but there are a few things I can talk about.

Chris Pine is a revelation. He fills Kirk’s boots well and (without going full tilt as Ewan McGregor did with his Obi-Wan) still manages to inject just enough familiar James T into proceedings to nail the cockiness of the character without impersonating Shatner. It’s a horrible task to be given, but he more than rises to the challenge.

The new Spock is pitch perfect and while it’s these two who push the movie along I’ve got to hand it to Karl Urban for becoming almost non recognisable as Bones. I’ve always dug him as an actor (please go see Out of the Blue if you haven’t already) but this is his role. His performance just hints at the beginnings of the Kirk/Spock/Bones love triangle while bringing just enough contempt for his surroundings that it’s easy to recall the bearded McCoy’s return to the Enterprise back in The Motion Picture.

The rest of the main crew suffer to some degree in the same way they always have – there’s just not enough available screen time to develop them in the same way that can be done over a series. Instead we make do with some very broad strokes. They all come off well, but it’s a real shame that Uhura once again becomes trapped just answering the phone (when she’s not playing girlfriend). This is where the movie is in danger of looking out of touch with not a single strong female role in sight. Something that needs fixing.

There’s a hard lump of exposition to swallow about 3/4 of the way through, but its no worse than similar scenes in most high budget action flicks. Elsewhere the film continues the grand Star Trek tradition of having a pretty naff villain but that’s OK too. It’s a relief they don’t try and flesh him out more at the expense of the more familiar crew. As it is Chekov is relegated to nothing more than a comedy accent. Sulu at least gets to kick some ass. Simon Pegg pretty much plays Simon Pegg which is forgivable and adds some welcome laughter.

The special effects are flawless and the action scenes exceptional, but even more emphasis seems to have gone on the sound design – the move from a cacophony of screams, ripped and torn metal to the empty silence of space is brilliantly done and really ups the stakes following the now familiar space sequences of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica.

While the new crew are still finding their feet (or dying spectacularly) Abrams wisely leaves all the hero shots for the most familiar point of reference that fans and non fans alike have – the Enterprise herself. Every single shot of the ship is handled with respect leading up to her final entrance – the one that I’m guessing will receive a round of applause from most packed theatre audiences when it opens.

It’s here in particular that it becomes obvious that Abrams is a fan. What he’s accomplished is nothing short of releasing the idea of Star Trek from the trappings of the franchise – something that superhero movies from X Men through Spiderman to Batman have failed to do (Lucas being an idiot took his new trilogy even deeper into the mess he’s allowed to grow around a couple of half decent sci fi flicks). It’s quite a feat and if anything raises expectations even higher for the inevitable sequel.

With that there are myriad ways to fuck it up – but that same thing was said all the way way to this point with the new outing of Star Trek. From now on I’ll be giving the guy the benefit of the doubt.

Yep – I’m off to see how the new crew do. Awfully big shoes to step into…

Keep an eye on my Twitter stream tomorrow afternoon – I’m seeing the new Star Trek movie around noon so will be tweeting when I surface around 2.30ish.

Once I get back here I’ll go into more (non-spoilerish) detail.

Unless Nimoy joins us and we end up watching Wrath of Khaaaaaaaaan.

Nice overview of the social media junket for the new Star Trek flick by Dan Light:

We’d been talking to Paramount for a while about how we could put something of the occasion online for the franchise’s worldwide following , but some of the details didn’t get locked down until the last minute. Turned out I was one of those details.

They flew Dan to Australia only to unveil the movie early in Austin. I’d have kicked someone in the balls, but Dan takes stuff like this on the chin all the time. I hate to think of the mess I’d have made out in Cannes last year if he hadn’t been there:

Dan Light: Professional

Post title borrowed from No Kill I – the best punk rock Star Trek band that ever was.

I took it easy over the Easter break but am now back in the office for the duration. First thing I found this morning was that the Brownlee Brothers had filled my dropbox with reference material. Lots of pretty pictures of robots, spaceships, sidearms and sexy people. First job of the day was to sip coffee and take all that in. Happily, as usual, we were on the same page. One of the images they dropped through was a mock up of the gun that Harrison Ford used in Blade Runner.

It’s not a movie weapon I’ve given too much thought to before, but oddly enough I’d saved a story about the original prop only last week when I read that it was up for auction. It’s a thing of beauty:

I mentioned in the previous comment that I’m not a car guy and that goes double for guns. But stick ‘em in a movie with the right cast and director and I’m in heaven.

Right now we’re just beginning to pull together the look and feel of the weapons used in Slingers. Being the idiot writer that I am it hadn’t quite sunk in that we get to actually build these things too.

Exciting times ahead… one weapon in particular is going to be a lot of fun.

Remember kids, guns don’t retire replicants. Blade Runners with guns retire replicants.

I’m constantly surprised at which movies make money – hello Fast & Furious – but the success of Taken was always baffling.

At best it was a straight-to-video movie elevated by the presence of a single good actor. I’d more or less forgotten it existed, until I saw the trailer for Johnnie To’s Vengeance.

There’s a slight similarity in plot, but To is a fucking good director and I’ve been following Anthony Wong since Rock n Roll Cop (I’d seen him a bunch before that, but this was the film in which he really stepped up) – but the film has French icon Johnny Hallyday firmly positioned front and centre:

“1, 2, 3…”

Takeaway 1: Never fuck with a guy with a gun – wearing a suit.

Takeaway 2: Taken suddenly looks like the dried stain on a bed sheet it always was.

David Lynch “Ideas are like fish”

From David Lynch Foundation Television (Beta)

Friday morning I spoke to Noel Clarke from Centurion, Kidulthood/Adulthood, Doctor Who etc.

I’m lucky in that out of all the people I’ve interviewed and spoke to over the years very few of them have turned out to be dicks. On the whole they’ve been a very enjoyable bunch of characters. Noel immediately went to the top of the scale though – funny, charming and genuinely involved in the conversation.

While we waited for each Audioboo segment to load we chatted around a range of subjects from TV and film to LA to comic books to tech like Twitter. Here are the parts of the conversation that we recorded (as usual the lion’s share of questions came from his followers on Twitter):

Background on Centurion and his role

Talking history and stuntwork

Talking around his career and inspiration

Working with Neil Marshall and winning the Bafta

Social Media and new baby advice for @documentally

Thanks again to Noel for his time and all the fans for their questions. Interviews with other Centurion cast members are here.

The next step is to talk my way onto Centurion‘s regular press junket and see if we have another chat with all involved later in the year… I’ll keep you posted.

Jeff Pulver has kindly asked me to speak at the #140Conf in New York in June.

I’ll be speaking about some of the stuff that Twitter has allowed me to do over the last 12 months or so and learning what a whole bunch of other interesting folk have been using it for. I’m hoping to get a better overview of the possibilities that such  a disruptive platform offers and not make too much of an arse of myself.

I’ll also probably talk about some of the people Twitter has helped me work with:

Top image: Sylvester and Tweetie by James Cauty

Bottom image: Steven Spielberg by me.