The Last Candle

I’m a few weeks late to the ball commenting on this (and I love a good ball), but a second Silent Hill movie is in the works. Lord, save us all from its imminent mediocrity.

There are a slew of film adaptations of video games in production right now, Hitman, Alice, and Postal, for example. Now, according to director Christophe Gans, Silent Hill 2 can be added to that list. <p/> Gans, the Antibes-born director of the first Silent Hill movie, has revealed that a second SH film is on the way and that it will correct the mistakes of the first.

Emphasis mine. That list of upcoming game films is like a listing of the next Guaranteed B Movies: Alice, which had a terrific visual design but an utterly bland and uninspired narrative and cast, and Postal, which has nothing to offer but a limp social commentary and a lot of senseless violence. Both are destined for cult classics, surely. The movie adaptation of Hitman might be good — it’ll probably end up somewhere between The Transporter (bad) and Jason Bourne movies (good). <p/> I wonder what mistakes from the original Silent Hill Gans attests will be rectified. Hopefully the first thing to be fixed will be a replacement for the original’s abysmal Roger Avary script, which almost single-handedly ruined what was otherwise a pretty good flick (as blogged back in April). <p/> So how about, Gans? Give a Silent Hill fan some hope, will you?

Gans confirmed in an interview with French magazine DVDrama that “there will indeed be a Silent Hill 2 and it is officially ordered and is already well underway. Once he has finished his adaptation of Driver, Roger Avary will be [working on the script], helped by his friend Neil Gaiman.”

Bring on the suck. As for the Gaiman involvement, which might have been enough to counter Avary’s writing, it was debunked by Gaiman himself. <p/> And just to add another facet to this sob story in the making, the Silent Hill 2 movie isn’t necessarily meant to follow the best game in the series, Silent Hill 2, natch. Besides, the boss-man of the second game, one of the greatest monsters of all time, Pyramid Head, was completely ruined story- and symbol-wise in the first film, so bringing him back a second time would just be silly. But I wouldn’t complain. <p/> In short, there’s no good way out for this one.

Portrait of Ruin, the new Castlevania game, includes as one of its many Role-Playing Game trappings a variety of useful and interesting items and utilites, some of which are only useful, but almost all of them are interesting. <p/> One of the types of armor found in the game are the “Hobo’s Clothes,” which drape easily in the not-useful-at-all-but-interesting category. When attempting to equip the Hobo’s Clothes, Portrait of Ruin takes an opportunity to shame the player, who perhaps deserves a bit of ridicule for exhibiting curiosity towards such shabby vestments.

Sorry, Mom! I’ll wear the Poncho next time, I promise.

The folks I usually jam out with on the great Guitar Hero have likely heard me wish for a guitar peripheral that has two sets of fret buttons: besides the inital set of five next to the bridge, there should be a second set of the same five buttons down next to the body, perfectly placed for those intense high-pitched solos and Blackmore-esque noodling bridges. <p/> Back when the upgraded version of the guitar peripheral for Guitar Hero II hadn’t been announced I had even hoped that the extra frets would make it into the official version of the axe. No such luck, sadly — Guitar Hero II’s peripheral did see some improvements, including more comfortable buttons and a sturdier tremolo bar, but there were still only five fret buttons. Too bad. <p/> And yet, a third party has made the dream come alive. Meet the Double Range Freedom V. <p/> You see that? Two sets o’ frets! Marvelous! Wireless, too, and they made the higher fret buttons tiny and separated, so the player can’t just shift a fretting finger a couple centimeters to the side to fudge over to the next fret. No such sloppiness on the Freedom V: if you want to noodle about on the high frets, you’d better be precise with those fingers. <p/> I love it. I’m not in the market for a new guitar controller just yet, but seeing as how the strum bar on one of my first-generation official controllers is getting a little squeaky (and has already seen one internal repair job), the Freedom V is lookin’ mighty fine. <p/> I have to admit, though: those Flying V-style peripherals look really goofy. Stretching out the points on the body would go a long way, but I guess the cute guitar look is standard since the original SG-style controllers turned out so well. <p/> On the other side of aesthetic quality, the official wireless controller looks like a Fender Strat that got a little droopy after being left out in the sunlight for too long.

My local bank notes on their front page that they’re “Enhancing Its Online Banking Product With a New Website, Online Banking and a New Multi-Factor Authentication Security System.” Fabulous. “Please watch for the changes in January.” January 2007 is about three or four years too late, and the clock is tickin’ on ‘07 already. <p/> But the update is good news, which is especially obvious after visiting the page itself. (Note: if the page looks good, they’ve either updated to a better design, or you’re about ten years late to visiting the Internet. Welcome, and have a look around.) <p/> Just look at that late Nineties-inspired navigation: links strewn about, no cohesive template among pages, all content aligned to the center, and so on. Viewing the page source shows the infamously bad FrontPage as an accessory in this shameful display. But as the NRA might say in a bizarre, Gaiman-esque, Tron-infused parallel universe, FrontPage doesn’t kill people, bad web designers do. (Also extremely dangerous: enraged bloggers. Present day, that one.) <p/> I’m sure the web banking component is secure, although a it’s a little clunky on the usability side, which is at least consistent with the rest of the site. But the archaic look of the site makes me wonder if the backend is just as outdated and under-appreciated in the security department. The fact that the page is hosted on Windows 2000 (and previously Windows NT4/98! Hosted by Tennessee!) doesn’t help too much, but I guess it doesn’t hurt. <p/> Of course, now that I try to log into the web banking to count my pennies, my credentials are being rejected by the service. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one, but the page really needs to get better before it gets any worse. Burn it all, build a new church. <p/> If I didn’t have USAA to compare to the Chelsea State Bank, however, I might not complain as much: USAA is the best business I’ve ever used. To put the comparison in, ah, friendlier terms, if the Chelsea State Bank is a Budweiser, USAA is a majestic 120 Minute IPA. <p/> (Why do I have two banks? Because I need somewhere to deposit those awful paper checks, and a hometown bank is as good as any place. Well, at least I thought so, until I saw their web page.)

My monochrome 3G iPod is lookin’ pretty worn and weary these days, scratched and bumped and dented. Music sounds fine, though, even if the audio gains a bit of noise when you wiggle the stereo-mini plug in its socket. <p/> And my cell phone is a bit too fat to sit comfortably in a jeans pocket, bulky antenna poking into a leg and all. The phone lacks helpful data functionality (ie, it’s no smartphone) that would be a modest but hepful mini-PDA. <p/> I mean, both devices are trued and true utilities: fully functional, with enough aesthetic class to make the tech not just solid, but also fun to use. <p/> But hmmmmmm. <p/> Oh, wait. Cingular? Never mind, then — I’ll stick with Verizon and wait for a middlish copycat phone.