There is a serious shortage of baby robot dinosaurs in the world today.

I got this funky press release a bit back and kept spacing on posting it. I tell you, you’ve got to keep an eye on those wild folks from Finland. They are really starting to lead a movement in ‘from the ground up’ film making. A bit indy beyond indy film.

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Do you really know someone before you’ve learned his darkest secrets? Finnish writer/director Miro Laiho is asking this question with his next film “8”, which is a 30-minute psychological horror film and the best thing is that it will be posted free on the internet.

“8” tells a story about people who have to relive their worst memories and re-experience their most painful traumas all over again. The film is based on the theory of 8 circuits of consciousness created by the LDS-psychologist Timothy Leary in the 1960’s and 70’s. It combines Inception, David Lynch and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Official website of “8”

“My dream is to raise the awareness of Finnish genre film on an international level, because I think that we Finns have the potential to create not only the everyday drama or comedy films but something more out of our crazy imagination. “8” merges dark drama to psychological horror reaching surreal levels. I’ve always been fascinated by the structure of human mind and how we maintain defence mechanisms and therefore a certain false identity, unable to find our true selves.“, director Miro Laiho states.

Director wants to thank you in advance for supporting the project “8” on Indie Gogo
and thus he gives you all of his previous films for free:

The Reach (FIN: Loppuun palaneet) 2010
(made in 48 hours, was nominated for best cinematography and sound design / music in the Uneton 48 short film competition)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nalabn32zD8

The Border Guard (FIN: Rajavartija) 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh548uY6GHA

The Awakening (FIN: Herääminen) 2009
(Miro Laiho’s directorial debut, winner of best short film’s award in Iik! Horror Film Festival of 2009.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QYLFrQuPNs

Laiho is doing his written thesis in Tampere School of Art and Media about the subject "Innovative methods in short film marketing and funding." It is related to the crowd funding campaign started about a month ago at the crowd funding site Indie Gogo. “8” is also the thesis work of the director of photography, film editor and digital effects supervisor. It will be a business card to help the film students jump into the professional world as filmmakers and thus is a very important film to them.

Support the film in the crowd funding – page:
http://www.indiegogo.com/shortfilm8

In the film’s official website you’ll find an interactive trailer, making of – material, concept art and much more:
http://shortfilm8.com

[  Mood: Neutral ]
Dear Permuted Press,

Hi, Matt C. here. I’ve just read some books of yours I’d like to review but I feel like I need to say a few things first.

I like you guys, I really do. I’ve read a lot of your books over the last few years. You’ve introduced me to some great writers I would have otherwise missed. I think you do a great job of fostering new writers and getting them out there. Plus I like your format choice, the books look great on the shelf.

Still I have a few gripes I have to make, some things I see writers there doing a great deal and editors just letting them go. Not every book is guilty of all of these just sometimes in combination, sometimes just one, sometimes none.

1. Using the title of the book repeatedly in the book. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. In some cases this is understandable, if your novel is about a rabid dog named Cujo and you name your book Cujo obviously it is going to turn up quite a bit. On the other hand if you name your book Death Storm and every other page uses ‘death storm’ to describe the storm that causes zombies, rainfall in general and worst of all if a character makes a play on words on the title – "The rain has stopped but the zombies are out…let’s go make a death storm of our own." WINK. it makes one feel as if they have been hit by a shovel. Think about a movie that you’ve seen where a character during a speech did that pause ‘title of movie’ pause take and how a small light in your soul went out.

2. You, the writer, know guns. You’re a LEO or former (or current) military or an avid collector, for whatever reason baby you know guns inside and out. That’s good it gives some realism to the story. What it shouldn’t be is a license to list the contents of every weapons cache the survivors find, itemized by make and model, boxes of ammunition by caliber and type and any special extras like laser scopes, combat webbing, etc. Once I noticed this I started paying attention to the phenomenon. One author provided excruciatingly detailed lists of weapons finds all of which were never mentioned again after being accounted for. It was like reading a copy of Guns n’ Ammo. Say more with less.

3. Don’t fall in love with your protagonist, give them some flaws. And no "Just cares too much" and "Will keep trying and trying until they succeed" are not flaws.

Ok, that’s it for me.
Remember always try the head shot first and don’t forget to double tap,
Matt C.

Fantasy Flight Games has an interesting new book in their Warhammer 40k line Black Crusade. It gives players a chance to walk on the dark side of the WH40K universe as agents and soldiers of Chaos. If it is like the other books in the line it will be high quality and a must have for fans of the RPG.

Paizo’s RPG superstar contest is down to the final four contestants. The titles alone are interesting.

Steve Jackson just posted his yearly state of the union address for Steve Jackson Games. It looks like things are going pretty well over in Munchkinland.

Holy Crap! Iron Sky is almost a go. How awesome is that? Those mad Fins are almost are ready to fire,
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It’s a Wrap! Iron Sky Finishes Principal Photography
Gold Coast/Australia – 04-Feb-2011 — Iron Sky, the Finnish-German-Australian co-production, has finished principal photography in Queensland Australia. Iron Sky is a dark science fiction comedy where Nazis fled to the Moon in 1945 – and in 2018 they are coming back. Iron Sky took about nine weeks to shoot, half of which took place in Frankfurt Germany, and the second half at the Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland, Australia.

“We have been working on Iron Sky 24/7 for years, and it’s amazing to think that the main part of my work in it is finally done” , said the director of the film Timo Vuorensola. “Of course I’ll be involved in the post production and editing too, but I can’t help but feel a bit dazed. During these years we’ve met such a big bunch of great, talented people, and it makes me a bit melancholy to think that we won’t be seeing them in quite a while – not before the premiere of Iron Sky in about one year’s time.”

“Plans for the future? In the short term, they include sleeping for 48 hours straight”, added Vuorensola.

“Wow, I feel like I had stepped out of a time machine”, said the producer of Iron Sky Tero Kaukomaa. “It feels like there’s been just a nanosecond between the start of the principal photography in Germany three months ago, and today’s wrap here in Australia. Next week we are already presenting the first promo in Berlin’s EFM.”

The Iron Sky shoot was surrounded by natural catastrophes both in Germany and especially in Australia. In Germany the last shooting day had to be transferred to Australia because of a sudden massive snow storm. In Australia some of the outdoor location shoots had to be moved into studio because of the flooding. A day and a half after the first location was shot in downtown Brisbane, the whole area was under water. In the last week of the shoot cyclone Yasi hit the northern part of the state, but didn’t cause disruptions to filming.

“It was great to know that we were snug and dry in studio with all this happening around us,” said the Australian producer Cathy Overett. “And we are delighted with the end result. We’ve had a great team on the shoot here and it shows in the production values. The performances from our cast and the footage we’ve assembled so far promise a film that will punch well above its modest budget.”

“The shoot itself was a child’s play for the visual effects team,” said the visual effects producer Samuli Torssonen. In fact, Samuli and his assistant Juuso Kaari were instrumental on set in ensuring the lighting, image capture and management of the vast green screens were spot on in capturing the key footage needed to build on with CGI. This included directing a number of plate shots himself, both in studio and on location. “But now the real work is about to begin for me and my crew. After the shoot we will take the project to Tampere, Finland, where our 15 person team is eagerly waiting for the final cut, so we can start crunching the frames on the 500 very ambitious special effects shots of Iron Sky.”

“We are still looking for talented visual effects professionals who know they way around Maya, Lightwave, Nuke etc – if you are looking for a job and don’t mind moving to cold, dark Finland, send us your showreel: jobs@ironsky.net“

Kobold Quarterly is giving the newest issue of their magazine away for free.Go to their site and use this code: KQ11Gift to check them out. They really have inherited the crown from Dragon Magazine.

Eloy over at Third Eye Games is doing a bunch of giveaways this month speaking of free. It looks like they have a new game coming down the pipe that looks interesting as well.

I’m a big fan of Twilight Creations, inc Zombies!!! board game. It has received a video game treatment, check out the trailer here.

It looks like Wizkids have gotten some sort of rights to the Lord of the Rings. They are going to issue a collectible game, which I assume would mean squad level style combat in the LOTR universe and also a boxed ‘semi-cooperative’ clix game. What that means I have no idea. Depending on what the figures look like I may try out the collectible game.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group looks like they are going into overdrive with the Space:1889 stuff. So if you are into Victorian pulp adventure they’ve got the goods. They just put out a set of bennie (benefits) poker style chips with the 1889 logo and artwork on them. I’ve got a set of the more generic bennie chips and I can tell you they are really pretty cool things to have when playing Savage Worlds.

Chaosium has a hardcover BRP Rulebook coming out that I am pretty jazzed about. I love the Basic Role Play System and am something of a book fetishist so this will most definitely be on my want list this year.

If anyone feels like buying presents here’s what I am eyeballing over at Fantasy Flight Games.

Mansions of Madness – This looks like too much fun.
Arkham Horror – Innsmouth Expansion. Eventually you will need a ping pong table to play this game with all the additional maps.
Arkham Horror – Lurker expansion. More cards = more fun.

Wizards of the Coast made a pretty big announcement last week. They have said except in limited productions (like for stand alone box games) they are discontinuing the Dungeons and Dragons line of miniatures. Presumably they will no longer support the miniature wargame that went along with them or will do so in a limited capacity. This certainly explains why you are getting sheets of counters in every box set now. Personally counters really don’t bother me that much, and the ones Wizards makes are sturdy with decent artwork. I do like miniatures, but with this notification Reaper Miniatures is going to be the only provider of pre-painted fantasy minis that I know of (correct me if I am wrong). I wonder how this will impact the industry though, are we going to be seeing more counter-based wargames? I know Fantasy Flight Games experimented with it a bit back in the 1990’s with the surprisingly fun Diskwars game, but sales for it were less then stellar and it came and went pretty quickly.

(Correction: Wizards is going to do one last release for the D&D Miniature line and then after that will release the occasional ‘collectors’ series of figures, like the Beholder collection last year)

Speaking of miniatures, Wizkids Games has got the Star Trek license. Interestingly though, it seems to only apply to the most recent movie and not any of the TV shows or previous films. (Sort of like when MWP got the rights to produce a ‘Serenity’ game but had to be careful about mentioning ‘Firefly’) They’ve got a somewhat odd looking ‘away-mission’ box game coming out and then a more straight up star ship combat game next. These look as if they use the standard Clix mechanic as seen in the Hero/Horror/Halo games. There are also rumors that Wizkids might be bringing back their Mage-Knight game, the Clix game that started it all, in some capacity. I don’t know how much truth is in that last bit though.