The Martian Trailer Typecasts Matt Damon

Poor old Matt Daaaaaaaaaamon. You'd think somebody in Hollywood had it in for him. First he got stuck out in the far reaches of space in Interstallar and now he's all on his lonesome again in the new trailer for sci-fi thriller The Martian.


Don't feel too sorry for him though. First, Christopher Nolan. Now, Ridley Scott. Matt Damon is getting his pick of the great directors in Hollywood. Maybe all this solitary stuff on faraway planets is Damon just trying to get away from all these other Hollywood actors and their spoiled behaviour on sets. Have you seen the cast list on this one?


Kristen Wiig, Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Donald Glover, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena and Chiwetel Ejiofor. That all adds up to a lot of talent and just maybe a lot of tantrums that Damon got to mostly avoid.

This looks great so far but as it's not out till November, I hope this is the one and only trailer we'll get. It's already over 3 minutes long so we really need to see nothing more of this until we sit down to watch the film in cinemas thank you very much. 

More trailers at I Love That Film

The Relationship between Production Contexts and Films: Hollywood vs. Britain Part 3

This is another blog for my students of film and media.  Following on from my case study blogs on Prometheus, Juno and Attack the Block recently, this is the final part of an essay explaining how the Hollywood and British production contexts differ and how these production contexts can affect the films that are produced. Part 1 of this essay on Finance, Production, Technology is here and part 2 on distribution and exhibition is here.

Trends and Genres

Both films are part of the science fiction genre which is consistently popular with mainstream audiences.  Prometheus is part of a trend in Hollywood to make sequels and prequels to existing popular films whereas Attack the Block is more unique.  Prometheus would get more of a budget invested in it because people are aware of the Alien films and they are already a popular series.  Attack the Block is riskier as it has no built in audience except perhaps Nick Frost’s fans and people interested in the science fiction genre.  Generally British films are less likely to follow trends and be a bit more unique.  They are more likely to deal with real situations and characters in the social realist tradition.  Attack the Block has elements of this with its working class characters but also takes science fiction genre conventions to make it a more appealing bit of escapist cinema.   

 Social and Political Issues

A British film like Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen is a better example of social realist cinema.  This is film is unique and in no way tries to appeal to a mass audience.  It is about a young man in Scotland and his struggles with unemployment, poverty, drugs and crime.  It has no stars, a premiere in Glasgow (near to where the film was shot) and favours unknown actors over international stars.  The audience will be small as this is a film that does not offer any escapism, spectacle, beautiful stars or happy endings.  As a result it is made on an extremely low budget.

Stars

Stars such as Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender can be used by blockbusters for promotion in marketing materials, at premieres and can often help the film to appeal to the target audience.  For example Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in many action films and his face on a poster can help the film sell to action fans.  Nick Frost helps Attack the Block to appeal to fans of Shaun of the Dead and he is featured a great deal in the trailer and posters.  Sweet Sixteen on the other hand has no stars to aid in its realist depiction and the main actor Martin Compston is a non-professional chosen because he basically leads the life of the main character.

Regulatory Issues

Hollywood films often work with the MPAA and BBFC to ensure that their film will be passed by these regulatory bodies with an appropriate rating.  As Hollywood films need to make huge amounts of money at the box office to make a profit, the producers are often willing to trim scenes and ensure their film gets a low rating to encourage families to see it.  There was some debate over whether Prometheus would receive a 15 rating or lower.  Fans of Alien wanted the film to have a higher rating but Fox who invested in the film wanted a lower rating so more people could see it and they could make more money.  Similarly film franchises like the Die Hard and Terminator series have become progressively more family friendly as they have continued in order to draw in wider audiences.  

Attack the Block had less money to make and therefore the producers accepted the decision for it to be rated 15.  Sweet Sixteen is rated 18 by the BBFC for the continuous use of very strong swear words.  Although director Ken Loach wanted the film to be seen by the target audience of sixteen year olds it was aimed at and who would most identify with it, he refused to change anything to get a lower rating.  He felt the language was realistic and relatable and less offensive to people in Scotland that are depicted in the film.  The BBFC would not budge but the local council of Inverclyde where the film is set overturned the ruling and gave it a fifteen rating so younger people could see it.

Conclusion

Hollywood, independent and British films are very different in many ways.  Although British films are attempting to become more commercial and Hollywood studios distribute some independent and British films that they thing will make a profit, there are still many films getting made for niche audiences on very low budgets. With the UK Film Council being a thing of the past, British films will have to be more commercial in order for the industry to survive.  This may mean more British films that attempt to follow trends and fit in clearly defined genres and lose some of their distinctive Britishness.  Social realist films like Sweet Sixteen always struggle to compete with Hollywood blockbusters but without government support for smaller and more realistic British films, they may in future have an increased struggle to get funded in the first place.

The Relationship between Production Contexts and Films: Hollywood vs. Britain Part 2

This is another blog for my students of film and media.  Following on from my case study blogs on Prometheus, Juno and Attack the Block recently, this is the second part of an essay explaining how the Hollywood and British production contexts differ and how these production contexts can affect the films that are produced. Part 1 of this essay on Finance, Production, Technology is here.

Distribution and Exhibition

Distribution techniques for Hollywood and British films differ in many ways, mostly due to the marketing budgets of the films.  Prometheus was one of the first movies to have a ‘trailer preview’.  Ahead of the launch of the official trailer release, a preview featuring director Ridley Scott was released to let fans know that the anticipated trailer would be released in three days’ time.  Also the producers of the film made a series of videos especially shot to be released on the internet and to potentially be spread by movie lovers virally.  ‘In concert with the movie's traditional marketing effort, which includes the trailer, Scott and 20th Century Fox have pursued a second, more innovative path to publicity. It began unexpectedly at this year's TED conference, with a presentation by entrepreneur Peter Weyland’ (Gomez, 2012) who is a fictional character from the film.  This series of viral videos extend the story and universe of the film in the same way as viral marketing for previous Hollywood blockbusters such as The Dark Knight and Cloverfield had done.  The traditional trailers emphasized the science fiction elements as well as the links to Alien and the fact that Ridley Scott was returning to science fiction.  There was also a great amount of spectacular imagery and action elements emphasized in the trailer and poster.  The use of stars in the marketing also would help the film to appeal to an international audience.

Attack the Block on the other hand uses its only star Nick Frost, the science fiction genre elements and ‘from the producers of Shaun of the Dead’ as selling points to be highlighted in much of the marketing.  Nick Frost has some international recognition from Shaun of the Dead but will also help the film a great deal in Britain.  The distinctive British location, language and characters are also emphasised and this could be a draw for some audiences but also could put off a wider audience, unfamiliar with the language of Britain’s youth.  There was even talk of subtitling the film for US audience.  Film festivals are often essential for spreading word of mouth about smaller films.  They can win competitions, awards and gain valuable attention from film fans and the press.  A screening at SXSW film festival helped Attack the Block to secure distribution in North America.  The marketing strategy included posters, trailers, t-shirts and TV spots but was nowhere near as massive as the promotion of Prometheus.

Prometheus’ was released on 3396 screens in the US on its opening weekend allowing as many people to see the film early in its release as possible.  Hollywood blockbusters spend so much on marketing a film in the lead up the opening weekend in an attempt to make their money back as quickly as possible.  This saturation release strategy works well for blockbusters with mainstream appeal.  The stars of the film attend premieres in order to get more written about the film in the media.  Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and director Ridley Scoot all attended various screening and did interviews to help promote the film.

Attack the Block on the other hand had very low opening weekend figures in terms of box office and number of screens.  It was released on far fewer screens than a Hollywood blockbuster would be with around 350 screens in the UK and only 8 in America.  The distributors will hope for the release to go wider as word of mouth spreads as they will not spend as much on marketing as the biggest blockbusters do.  It premiered at a film festival in America as well as in Leicester Square in London with stars in attendance.  The premiere of Attack the Block is unlikely to attract the same amount of media attention as Prometheus’ premiere because the stars are not as internationally recognised.

Part 3 on trends, genres, social issues and regulatory issues is here.

The Relationship between Production Contexts and Films: Hollywood vs. Britain Part 1

This is another blog for my students of film and media.  Following on from my case study blogs on Prometheus, Juno and Attack the Block recently, this is the start of an essay explaining how the Hollywood and British production contexts differ and how these production contexts can affect the films that are produced. 

The Hollywood and British production contexts have many differences and can produce very different films.  There are a number of factors that affect the relationship between production contexts and films and these include finance, technology, social and political issues and use of stars.  The Hollywood production context has changed a great deal since the ‘Golden Age’ when all the studios were vertically integrated and the ‘Big 5’ had full control and dominance over the production, distribution and exhibition of films.  Now there are a greater number of studios in Hollywood that are producing films such as DreamWorks and Sony Pictures Studio as well as Paramount and Warner Brothers and others that survived from the ‘Golden Age’.

 Finance, Production, Technology

Finance has a huge impact on the relationship between production contexts and films.  Hollywood is known for making massive budget, special-effects and star filled blockbusters.  Prometheus is a perfect example of this.  It had a budget of approximately $130,000,000 and grossed over $402,000,000 at the worldwide box office.  The companies that invested in its production are Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, Brandywine Production, Dune Entertainment and Scott Free Corporations.  These companies would have considered investing so much money because of the blockbuster appeal that the film would have.  They can afford to take big risks by investing into huge budgets but they reduce the risk by working with stars and directors that they know have a reputation of making profitable films with international appeal.  Prometheus had internationally recognisable stars like Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender.  It has quite a complex storyline for a blockbuster that is hard to understand.  This might reduce its appeal compared to some simpler blockbusters but the visuals and spectacular special effects will also help it to appeal to a wide audience, despite its thoughtful themes.  It also has a star director, Ridley Scott, who had made some very profitable films previously such as Gladiator and Alien.  This also showed that he could handle the special effects that would be required in Prometheus and would be a key part of the marketing campaign. 

The British film Attack the Block had a low budget compared to Hollywood blockbusters but a bigger budget than the smallest independent films like The Blair Witch Project with a budget of $60,000.  $13 million was invested into the production of Attack the Block but it only made nearly $6 million at the worldwide box office, meaning the film made a loss.  The film only had Nick Frost as a star and he is not that well known compared to the biggest A-list stars in Hollywood.  The filmmakers would have struggled to raise the budget as there is less chance of big international box office without internationally recognised stars.  Also director Joe Cornish had never made a feature film before and the subject is very distinctly British in terms of characters and locations.  Investors would normally be reluctant to give first time filmmakers £13 million to make a British film with a cast of mostly unknowns, set in a tower block and featuring characters that open the movie mugging an innocent nurse.

However Joe Cornish has had a great deal of experience in television and has developed a strong following with his radio and television shows.  He is also co-writing Spielberg’s latest film with Edgar Wright who recently had a huge international hit with Shaun of the Dead.  Like that film, Attack the Block takes very English characters, stars and settings and mixes them with a popular genre.  So the science fiction element could help to draw in bigger crowds and therefore make investors feel more comfortable putting in £13 million.  Also casting Nick Frost might draw in international fans of Shaun of the Dead, helping Attack the Block sell worldwide.  It was funded by Studio Canal, Film 4, the UK Film Council and Big Talk Productions. There was no funding from the Hollywood studios and it was mostly financed by British companies and the UK Film Council which is a funding body set up to help produce films that promote British culture and tell British stories.  Interestingly two of these companies are very involved in television which suggests Joe Cornish is likely to have had a working relationship with them before shooting his first feature film.

Prometheus was all shot in 3D and with IMAX technology and uses a mixture of computer generated and practical effects.  This makes it even more expensive to produce but also gives it more appeal to huge audiences as it promises great spectacle and the latest in cutting edge technology.  It is a science fiction film that takes place on distant planets and features numerous alien life forms, explosive set-pieces and space ships and other computer-generated special effects.  This focus on spectacle helps the film to sell to an international audience and to have a mass appeal.  Audiences see the marketing and expect something spectacular and out of this world. 

Similarly Attack the Block also combines practical and computer generated effects for its alien creatures.  Director Joe Cornish had a much lower budget so had to limit the CGI and work more with traditional techniques.  He said ‘they designed this terrific costume-suit, and then we shot that, and then there’s a little bit of enhancement by a company called Digital Negative, and a very brilliant European company called Fido. So the end result is a combination of practical, with a little bit of digital’ (Den of Geek).  Attack the Block was shot on locations in and around London to add to the realism.  This also makes it stand out from much of Hollywood’s science fiction output including Prometheus which was mainly shot at Pinewood studios.  It also will save the producers of Attack the Block money as fewer sets have to be built.

 Part 2 on Distribution and Exhibition is here.

June's Little Gems

Great month for films!  Even the worst on this list was bearable and at least useful for my PhD.  I don’t think I’d give any of these (except number 11) under 6/10.  So without further ado, here’s the countdown of what I watched this month:

11. The Tapes (Lee Alliston and Scott Bates, 2011)

British found footage horror.  Three annoying friends with a video camera try to make a Big Brother audition tape.  When they discover a barn that is the setting for swinging parties, they decide to secretly film the participants in action.  But they soon discover they are about to witness a lot more than old and fat wrinkly folk swapping partners.  It’s vaguely interesting and amusing for the Big Brother audition tape angle but the characters are damn annoying and this adds nothing new of note to the genre.

10. OSS-117: Lost in Rio (Michael Hazanavicius, 2009)

Bond-style secret agent spoofing from the director and star of The Artist.  Not as good as the Austin Powers films but has some very funny moments.  Jean Dujardin’s square secret agent getting jiggy in an orgy with a group of dirty hippies on a beach is the hilarious highlight.

9. Mr Nice (Bernard Rose, 2010)

Howard Marx is played by Rhys Ifans and the film distils the frankly occasionally boring book down to the highlights of Marx’s time as a dope smuggler.  Could have been a lot more fun if directed with a bit more flair but still, this is a pretty effective and almost quite emotional tale of one man’s fight to give people the right to smoke weed (and make himself a fortune).

8. Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011)

The first of two Indie science-fiction films I watched this month from writer-star Brit Marling.  This one deals with the discovery of a new planet exactly the same as our own but more specifically focuses on one young lady’s relationship with a very troubled man.  How the two are connected and why leads the film to be dramatic and suspenseful but it’s all a bit too understated and slow for my liking.  Infinitely more interesting if less beautiful than Melancholia though.

7. Take Me Home Tonight (Michael Dowse, 2011)

Topher Grace and Anna Faris star in this really sweet, pretty damn funny 80s coming-of-age-over-one-night story of a boy going after the girl of his dreams.  The 80s music is a joy, the script is sharp and occasionally hilarious but as with any rom-com, just too predictable to be a great movie.  Still, this deserves to be seen by more people.  Worth watching for the coke head best friend character’s antics alone.

6. Friends with Kids (Jennifer Westfeldt, 2012)

Impressive directorial debut from writer/producer/star Jennifer Westfeldt that does a deft job of balancing depressing autopsy of married with kids life and finding the funny side of two friends going into the baby-making business together.  As with most rom-coms it’s painfully predictable but there are enough cringingly honest scenes and decent laughs to make me want to see more from Westfeldt.

5. One Day (Lone Scherfig, 2011)

This is actually a surprisingly good adaptation of the book.  The leads are great despite Hathaway’s dodgy accent and the ending had more of an impact than it did when reading the book.  It’s all so quick that I wonder how much sense it would make to people who haven’t read the book.  Such well written characters and a touching love story told over twenty years, it’s hard not to be swept up in the emotions of it all.

4. Sound of My Voice (Zal Batmanglij, 2012)

See review here.

3. Michael (Markus Schleinzer, 2012)

Horrible tale of a distinctly average Austrian man who has a small boy locked in a room in his basement.  This is paedophile drama with a total lack of sensationalism.  Fortunately it’s not one of those indie films that tries to make us understand and care for the monster behind the headlines.  It just does an excellent job of showing the banality of evil and thankfully has quite a strong ending that gives cathartic pleasure in the fate of one character while leaving the fate of another painfully ambiguous.  If you can stomach a film about a paedophile, this is gripping, disturbing stuff.

2. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)

How come people don’t tout this as De Niro’s best performance?  Hilarious and a little heart breaking, this is a real departure from what I’m used to seeing De Niro doing.  The tale of a man desperate to be a comedian is surprising, funny and just a tad sad.  One of my new favourite Scorsese films.

1. Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi sort of Alien prequel is visually stunning, exciting, mildly scary and a hell of a ride.  A great cast get decent characters and the story spills over with interesting ideas.  The last half is less intellectually stimulating but more pulse-pounding thrilling.  The suspense of the first half gives way to all-out action with a host of creatures, gore, self-surgery and sacrifice as Rapace delivers a great Ripley inspired kick-ass action heroine with just the right mix of fragility and strength.  Fassbender nails the eerie android David and fortunately it’s all left tantalisingly open for a welcome sequel.  

How was your month?  Best and worst?  Got an opinion on any of these little gems?

Why I Love That Film: Aliens

Ladies and gentlemen!  May I present to you I Love That Film's very first guest post from a fellow writer and teacher, David Jackson.  Here's why David Jackson loves Aliens:

In all honesty I feel that this review is moot; why I love Aliens and therefore why everyone else should love it is self-evident and can be summed up in the following three words:

It’s fucking great.

Though every last letter of that pronouncement is wholly true, the horrible realisation has dawned upon me that there are people on this Earth who have not seen Aliens. Those who have an excuse – the absence of running water, let alone DVD players – notwithstanding, this situation is unforgivable. It is a situation almost as unforgivable as the fact that there are people alive on the verge of adulthood who are younger than that other great James Cameron movie – Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

 

Before I get into highlighting the fact that only three of my students have seen any of the Back to the Future trilogy and one of them claimed they ‘were rubbish’ (and has since been committed to psychiatric care), I should resume reviewing Aliens. The topic of the death of culture itself can wait.

For the uninitiated, Aliens  is the 1986 follow-up to Ridley Scott’s uninventive but flawlessly executed Alien, and concerns the PTSD-afflicted Ellen Ripley’s ill-fated attempts to investigate (with the assistance of gum-chewing soldiers) the disappearance of an entire colony of humans on the planet where the titular phallus-bonced xenomorphs were originally found.

There are so many reasons to love this film from an aesthetic and technical point of view. Aside from the despicable haircuts, it’s hard to place it as a 1986 movie – a testament to the excellence of a production put together on (even then) a mediocre budget of eighteen million dollars. The academy award winning practical and special effects still equal those of any CGI-driven blockbuster of today, and even the slightly phony rear-projection face-offs with the Queen in her nest towards the end of the movie are more convincing than watching Ryan Reynold’s head floating against a background of pixellated green mush. The central character of Ripley is portrayed within a believable Feminist framework that is rare today. It is an action movie. It is a horror movie. It is a cyberpunk commentary on the dangers of unlimited corporate power. It’s even a serviceable Vietnam War allegory. To cover it all would require an entire book.

I remember seeing snippets of Aliens at a young age and finally saw the director’s cut in full aged fourteen when the boxset was released on VHS in 1997 before Alien Resurrection came out and ran head-first into a brick wall. What impressed me most was the design of the Colonial Marines’ military hardware – it was both futuristic and grounded within a recognisable practical reality. The designs are so cemented in the collective geek imagination that it they have been knowingly and smirkingly assimilated into other media. The UNSC troops and vehicles in the legendary Halo videogame franchise are the clearest example. Even Sergeant Apone makes an appearance in them under the guise of Sergeant Johnson.

One thing that is brilliant about the use of military hardware from a narrative point of view is that it underlines the menace of the xenomorph threat itself. The Colonial Marines are over-equipped to the point of complacence. Their weaponry is in fact overpowered to the point of liability – it indirectly results in the destruction of the colony they set out to save. One message of the movie is clear – flesh is stronger than steel. As an allegory for the trials of the US during the Vietnam War, it serves to illustrate how the superior numbers, guerrilla stealth and almost fearless nature of the North Vietnamese were more important than all the high-explosives at the Americans’ disposal.

Characterisation is a strength of this film – oddly because it doesn’t try too hard. The heavily-armed ready-meals who populate this film are painted with broad but memorable strokes. Sometimes, the best icons are the simplest. What really matters is the character of Ripley herself and how she is used to deftly handle second-wave Feminist issues in the script by Cameron (and some extent Alien screenwriters Giler and Hill).

Summary of powerful female characters in a modern film: take the recent Salt or maybe Tomb Raider (Jolie coincidence? I think not) or even the horrendously overrated marathon pop-video wank-fests known as Kill-Bill parts 1 & 2. Their approach is ‘because I am sexy, I am powerful’. Supermodel physiques that in reality can barely pull back the bed-sheets in the morning pull off feats of superhuman strength and speed far outclassing the obviously physically-fit male counterparts of these movies. I see this and I’m immediately bored. Why is it that their power has to be linked to their attractiveness in the most conventional terms? Why do we need to define female characters by their sexuality at all?

Aliens eschews all this and gives us in Ripley a character with powerful biological drive in terms of mothering instincts,  and assets that are universally praise-worthy in anyone. She is pragmatic, determined and cool-headed. She isn’t given any super-strength or inexplicable martial arts skills and the justification of her place in a masculine hierarchy certainly isn’t centred on her appearance. Surrounded by gung-go troops, an incompetent combat-virginal Lieutenant and a slimy corporate executive, she uses her experience and ingenuity to help the group survive. Some people might criticise Ripley, in her leather jacket and blue overalls, as being a character that’s essentially neutered. They might also argue that the loss of her own child and subsequent near-suicidal attachment to the orphan Rebecca (also known as Newt) are simply concessions made to give her a traditional female grounding. 

What is important here is that is we are dealing with the female not the feminine. Her biological leanings are inescapable and provide drive without defining her means of success. Other characters in the films mentioned above are defined in terms of the feminine – the artificial, socially contrived characteristics associated with females but which (though we get confused in our culture) have nothing to do with the essence of being female or even human. In short, the abilities that Ripley displays can be believed. There is a clear relation between her outward presentation and behaviour and what she achieves. She’s not even the ever-pouting super-bitch that is commonly portrayed as being the kind of woman who excels in a ‘male’ environment. Ripley is tough, but sensitive in quite a straightforward, undecorated manner. In other words, a great leader.

Unsurprisingly, another area in which Aliens excels is in its action ... or should we be surprised? If you added together all the action sequences from the 137-minute director’s cut, you probably only get about 35 minutes of action. In these scenes, the xenomorphs themselves are seldom in the same frame as the Colonial Marines and there are long moments of fighting where the aliens aren’t shown at all. Far from being simple cost-cutting exercises, these are strategies that make the action work. Marines blast away at middle-distance off-camera threats because they are in a confused situation and attacked by almost invisible enemies from all sides. Constant cuts to their out-of-depth Lieutenant watching their decimation from camera feeds enhance the sense of helplessness. Snap-cuts to creatures being mown down by sentry guns in a dark corridor give the impression of the beasts being innumerable even though we are only shown a few being involved at any time.

The sense of action, in short, relies on atmosphere for its thrill and menace. This is not a ‘literal’ action film that shows you everything in candid, realistic detail. The lighting in particular plays a crucial role. In one set-piece, the aliens make their way around the Marines’ barricade and into the Operations Centre by crawling under the floor and over the ceiling grates – but not before cutting the power. Cutting the power of course results in the engagement of emergency lighting which saturates the scene with murky blood-red tones that underline the primal horror of the moment, create a tantalising half-light which makes the creatures more threatening and serves as pathetic fallacy for the turning point wherein there is no hope for survival. During Ripley’s rescue of Newt and her final duel with the Queen, strobing hazard-lights create a tense visual heart-beat.

Aliens is fantastic not only as a stand-alone film but as a sequel. It isn’t the simple ‘more expensive version of the original’ approach taken by many films (though it did cost more). It operates on an entirely different dynamic and unravels some of the more mysterious elements of the original in a logical way. The nature of the xenomorph is expanded upon with the exposition of a hive hierarchy, and their survival strategies adapt when the conditions of their human enemies change. Expectations set up by the original – such as that all androids are untrustworthy tools of the evil Weyland Yutani Corporation – are toyed with and then smashed.

In summation, Aliens is a movie that has aged well. It has clever direction, sympathetic and believable spins on classic stereotypes, and stunning production design. It is a movie-geek’s dream as well as a satisfying mainstream action-horror. The more you know about this film, the more you appreciate it, mainly because so much was achieved with such limited resources. Despite having relatively little action, what there is happens to be well-paced and hits harder because of the dramatic tension that develops between.

... and plus, Bill Paxton makes this face:

What more could you want?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 DAVID M. JACKSON is the semi-fictitious construct of a crazed Language and Literature lecturer born in Essex and working in Berkshire.

He has loved Science-Fiction all his life and regards it as the ultimate means of developing complex hypotheses regarding how technological development catalyses social change.

He is pretentious and precocious enough to have been writing Science-Fiction since the age of fourteen, though most of those ideas are in quarantine. When cleansed of their impurities, he will rebuild them faster, stronger and better than before.

His corporeal avatar currently occupies a position in real-space approximately 1.6 meters in height, 0.6 meters in width, 0.35 meters at its deepest point and 98 kilograms in weight according to the metric increments employed by homo-sapiens in the industrialised territories of Earth (Solar System).

If you want to read more from David M. Jackson, look for his new novel Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity on Amazon – due out as an eBook from 1^st July 2012.

Set in the near future, Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity sees cybernetically augmented police officer Jennifer Carter fighting to avenge her father’s death, evade arrest by her former colleagues and hold on to the last remnants of her humanity as Britain explodes into civil war.

Our real enemies are closer to home than you think …