Picturenose

Today’s news starts with something I found quite surprising. In this Associated Press piece on backstage.com, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight (2008) is compared (favourably) to one Mr J Nicholson’s turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). They even go so far as to suggest he may even be nominated posthumously for an Oscar for his efforts. Regular readers will know what a huge fan of the new Batman I am - but I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to be that good a performance. True, he was shaping up to be a very fine actor indeed and his death was a loss to cinema - but a comic-book creation? I think that’d be a first (unless of course you, the reader, know different).

If you’re a fan of free movies and animation (and who isn’t?) you’ll be delighted to hear of a fledgling site offering just these things - along with graphics, sound loops, ebooks and more. Legaltorrents deals in, er, legal torrents, that is to say, files you can download, use and share legally. There are animations, indie (very indie) movies and some other bits. Quite a limited selection for the moment, but one that I intend to visit regularly and which I hope will grow and grow. The site is in beta testing at the moment, which means you may experience some unforseen crapiness, but it looks to be fine to me. You’ll need to register too - but your email and name aren’t a huge price to pay for something so obviously worth supporting.

Sort of in keeping with the movie theme is a great picture group to be found on flickr.com - GAW. ‘Geek Ad Wednesday’ to use the preferred nomeclature, is a group dedicated to mocking up adverts for products used in films and TV series. There are some genuinely superb efforts in there and it’s definitely worth checking out - if only to prove what an uber-movie geek you really are. The link above contains mock-ups for Cyberdyne, InGen and Benthic among others. Come on, how many of you knew all these before looking? Better yet, many of their efforts are in hi-res, so if you like them, you can make your desktop wallpaper out of them. Now that’s geeky.

To finish up, there’s a question I know has been worrying you all - how would you escape from a situation that a character in an action/horror movie might find themselves? I know I think about it a lot (well, it beats working). Just as a heads-up for all those who worry about, say, being a serial killer’s victim du choix, there’s a very helpful guide on The Guardian’s website to help you avoid this and other terrors, such as an alien invasion or torture. It must have been a slow news day at The Guardian, but I found this article a lot of fun.