Paul R. Hardy's Blog

So I managed to get myself down to our mini-maxiplex, and catch up with something I missed...

(there will be spoilers to follow. REALLY MASSIVE PLEASURE KILLING SPOILERS. You have been warned!)

So this is a film that is rather less than the sum of its parts. But what parts they are! A post-apocalyptic setting, fantastic production design, clones, spaceships, big things blowing up...
And yet I can't help feeling that many of these parts have been used better elsewhere.
The protagonist is unexpecte...

The letter Thorn. Or Þorn.
Which is probably why
nobody uses it any more.I put something odd in my new book way back when I was writing the first draft, and forgot to check whether or not it works when you look at it on a Kindle. And joy of joys - it does!

May I introduce... the letter Thorn!

You see, the English language has a long and messy history, both in its spoken and written versions. The alphabet we know, love, and wish-we-could-get-that-damn-song-out-of-our-heads used to be somewhat diff...

"You have sunk my battleship, your majesty."(I write novels and make films, so I have to do a bit of research every now and again. And sometimes I stumble across Very Interesting Things. So here's one of them!)

Georg Leopold von Reisswitz was not your typical wargamer.

He never applied paint to an orc or a space marine. He never spent pizza-fuelled weekends conquering distant parts of the universe. Nor did he ever step foot inside Games Workshop. But he laid the groundwork for all these pastime...

On some tracks you can go both ways at once.
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) <!--[if gte mso 9]>

It’s the most basic terror that science fiction can provide – not only are there aliens out there, but they want what’s ours and will stop at nothing to get it. Alien Invasion stories are a staple of the genre, but they’re often undermined by the failure of the writers to do some basic preparation before they begin – such as understanding the laws of physics. Or biology. Or economics. Or common sense…

So I’m going to go over a few of the major problems and suggest solutions writers could use...

Argh. I left this blog post half done for a bit, and then Phil Plait went and did a similarly themed one, which is doubtless much better. I almost threw this away, but what the hell. My next post on this subject, though, will attempt to answer the question he didn't: ways to make an alien invasion actually plausible. So stay tuned!


Slightly more realistic than Tom Cruise.'Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast a...

The house in this poster isn't in the film. It's been
added because no-one is able to cope with the
concept of a Vincent Price film that isn't gothic.
(It does turn up in almost every Tim Burton film,
though)The Last Man on Earth
(feature film, 1964)
Directed by Ubaldo Ragona & Sidney Salkow
Written by William F Leicester and Richard Matheson
Based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Amazon US DVD
Some notes on buying: you should really get a version that's original B&W,...

This is the cover to the first edition I read.
All the other ones are better. I'm just a
masochist, I suppose.The Stand (Complete & Uncut)
(Novel, 1978 & 1990)
Written by Stephen King


US Paperback - US Kindle 
UK Paperback - UK Kindle
(easy way to check if you're getting the full, expanded version: use the Look Inside feature to see if it has the introduction where King explains why he did the 1990 Complete & Uncut edition)


Review (spoilers!)
A terrifying bioengineered virus...

Party like it's 1999. Especially if 2000 isn't going to happen.Last Night
(Feature Film, 1998)
Written & Directed by Don McKellar

Amazon CA DVD - Amazon UK DVD
(don't bother with the US DVD - it's rubbish. The Canadian DVD isn't much better but at least it's widescreen, though possibly not anamorphic, and the transfer is supposed to be much better. The UK edition is something I haven't seen but does at least claim to be widescreen)


REVIEW (spoilers!)

The world ends in six hours. How a...

It's been a while since I blogged, so I decided I might as well give myself something to talk about - this is the first in what will be a semi-regular series of reviews of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films, books, comics and anything else that reaches my notice. This one comes from a very recent film, but I'll range back over older stuff too. As well as review each one, I'll add a few notes about how the apocalypse is depicted in each case.


Lots of actors means lots of actor heads
on the p...