The Shape of Things to Come

 

Yesterday, Jude and I were down at the Birmingham Hiton Metropole, but this time not to run a convention.

 

This time was something else entirely, but (curiously enough) still convention related.

 

We’ve both worked with Hilton Birmingham for many years on a number of different conventions, from Eastercon to Expo, and we’ve been instrumental in bringing a lot of other business to the Hilton over the years. So much so that Liz Watson, the Commercial Director at Hilton, asked us to come down to speak to their teams with a view to seeing how their approach works at the moment, and how it could work better for conventions and conferences, particularly those that don’t have a ready stash of money on hand to be able to pay for everything up front.

 

We talked about Comic Cons, Eastercons, Fantasycons, Worldcons, Games Cons, Pens and Writing conventions, and everything in between, we outlined the differences between those cons that are established and have people that do this every year, to those conventions that have a different committee every year and so no continuity of command, and all the fun that that often brings when you’re coming at it new each year, particularly from their point of view where the contact point changes.

 

The Hilton team were very willing to listen to other options on how things are paid, moreso than I’d thought they might have been, on when money might be available and on the understanding that some conventions might be building the convention for years before they actually get the bid, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll get the bid, so asking them to sign for something before securing the space would be a pointless endeavour.  Likewise with deposits, many conventions don’t have the money up front, with a lot of the finance coming after the provisional booking needs to be made.  In particular, we were thinking about the Eastercon model of having things optioned two years in advance and how it would be all but impossible without using personal funds to put a deposit down that far ahead, but that the venue needs to be secured in order for the bid to proceed.

 

Flexibility is the key, and going forwards, I suspect it’s going to be much easier to sort bookings.

 

We also spoke about service when the conventions are operating, the need for additional staff (we’re looking at the bar here…), and the need to talk to the people running the con, at the con, which is something Hilton have always been good at, but again they were willing to take it all on board.

 

What was supposed to be a single hour turned into a couple of hours, at the end of which we offered assistance to the team where it was needed and as of this morning, already have one email in that we’re helping with regarding a new convention there.

 

Liz was very pleased with how things went, which was really important to both me and Jude as Liz has been a champion in the convention industry for decades, and it was great to be able to help her as she’s helped us over the years, and given how well it went, we’ll be going back to do this again in the future.

 

And as it happens, I’m talking about three other new conventions tomorrow, but more on those when I have the details finalised…

Alien Romulus: A Film of Two Halves...

Don’t get to the cinema as often as I used to, in some respects that’s because I don’t have the time I used to have, and in recent months, thanks to Worldcon, I’ve not had time at all.  The other reason is that there are less films coming out that I want to see on the big screen, but every once in a while, there’s a film that you just really need to go to the cinema for.

 

In advance, I’m a huge fan of the Alien concept, note that I didn’t say the franchise, which has varied wildly depending on which film it was.  But like many others, it means that I know most of the franchise from top to bottom.

 

Alien Romulus combines both the best and worst of the franchise. From the opening scene just outside Zeta 2 Reticuli, and they bring something back on board, to the first shots of a mostly terraformed world, and the massive tower of the atmosphere processor rising above the surface.  The opening to the film is superb, everything the Ridleyverse ever promised, you can imagine replicants running around out there, you can see why everyone is only in it for themselves, and it’s the first time we’ve really seen the Alien universe as it really is, not a separate universe such as the AVP parts of the franchise, not Covenant or Prometheus where it’s another world entirely, this is the universe as it was originally envisaged, dark, dirty, hopeless.

 

Loved it…

 

Up to the space station on perfectly reasonable reasons, not going walking on an alien planet without space suits, not treating strange alien creatures like squishmallows, none of that, every action taken is sensible and the characters are realistic, with fully fleshed out motivations. 

 

Of course, things go sideways, aliens start occurring, and the characters start dying.  Gestation times are sped up as they have been in every film since the first, but the first chestburster (it’s in the trailer), is weaker because of how quickly it was implanted, it doesn’t just burst out in the manner of John Hurt, but has to slowly tear its way through because its not strong enough to do it in one hit.

 

Considerations like that, are gold to fans like me.

 

I see a lot of people saying the first half of the film was too slow, and I suspect that that’s a generational thing, I don’t mind a half hour of setup, particularly when the opening scene has such promise.  This was well thought out and had a good premise that was not spoiled by too much CGI or stupid plots.  I didn’t like the last ten to fifteen minutes, but that’s because it veered very close to Prometheus and Alien:Resurrection, for my money the two weakest films in the series.

 

And on that subject: Fan Service

 

If the sound you use is exactly the same as one from a previous film, fans are going to notice, if the doors are taken from Alien:Isolation, we’ll notice, if you say “Get away from her…” we know which words come next.

 

And that’s not a bad thing…

 

In small doses…

 

I would hope that this film provides enough return to allow Fede Alvarez to get another film, one where he puts together something that isn’t catering to older fans like me, but instead is its own story, taking its own path.  Don’t get me wrong, if you like Alien films, go see this, definitely go see this, it’s easily in the top three of the Alien films, and as we all know, Alien and Aliens are the first two (whichever order you put them in), so this marks a return to form for the franchise, and a film that had our whole group glued to the screen for the entire film.

 

And Androids…

 

You ever think the Alien is the scariest thing in that universe?  Think again, superbly nuanced performance from David Jonsson, worth the entrance price for him alone.

Expo Awards - Judging in a time of Social Distancing

In previous years, it hasn't been quite so much of a problem to be able to judge the awards, as getting them to the individual groups hasn't required that we be aware of protocols including not being able to meet up in person.

So what, I hear everyone ask, there's always PDF's of the product to look through, not seeing the problem.

Historically, the expo awards have been judged on several different criteria, and many of the products submitted can't be judged objectively by a PDF (or indeed, don't have PDFs of them), so meeting up was agreed to be the best way forwards.

For the last two weeks, I've been journeying up and down the country and taking all submissions to the judges, or they've been coming to me and we've been doing the judging out in a garden with whatever lights we could find to make the best of things when the daylight started to give in.

As always, the judges are appropriately bribed for their services with a good meal and as much as they can drink, and as always, we never name the judges, except to be clear that none of the judges have worked on any of the awards submitted, and range in age from low teens to mid fifties to get a good range of different perspectives on what has been put forwards. 

As Expo has grown in popularity, so too have the awards, and we had to split them into categories a few years back.  For these reviews, we won't be giving the judges marks or making comment on how well the product did, but we will be noting what was particularly noticed about it and if there were particular positive/negative things said about the submissions.

After six hours of judging, even the coffee couldn't keep us at it.

With that, a big thanks to all the judges for all their work in this, we couldn't do it without you.

Corona’s Virus Adventurers Guild Briefing - Messiah's and Morons

Morning Everyone

Busy weekend, good weather contributed to a whole bunch of idiots buggering off down the docks to sit on the beach, thanks to all of you who gave up the Easter Sunday to work crowd control, and of course, the announcement that our glorious leader has managed to fight off the virus and has risen again to lead us in our time of need…

Risen again… On Easter Sunday…

I don’t pay much attention to what politicians get up to most of the time, but when someone’s constructed a narrative that has him as the Risen Lord, I have to ask one thing…

What was he doing in the previous 40 days…? What had he give up for Lent?

Oh yeah, he’d given up caring about everyone but himself, good job there.

Still, we’ve had a report from the brewing house, there’s a lot of beer that about to be spoiled and we’re going to need volunteers to…

Sit down Lebowski, I’m not finished yet…

We’re needing volunteers to take the beer that’s nearly gone and get it over to the baking guilds, turns out that if you mix beer and flour, add a little sugar, you get bread, and we’re needing bread more than beer at the moment.

That’s not heresy Lebowski, that’s facts, there’s more than a thousand barrels down there, and that’s enough to make bread for most of the city and then some.  We’re running low on a number of supplies, so until the relief ships get here, we’re going to be prioritising keeping essential services running and repurposing buildings as they’re needed.

I’m glad to see that most of you didn’t take the caravan north to rejoin the army, can’t say that I’d have relished losing you all to that, and as we figured, the local criminals took the announcement to mean that they thought you’d all take the chance and get out of here.  City watch reports that it’s had some of their uniforms lost, nothing else taken, but it means that we’re going to be getting a lot of fake watchmen out there for a while.  We’re circulating advice on flyers delivered by the air elementals about not letting watchmen in the house, but there’s only so long that’s going to hold, so we’re going to be called in for more and more domestic matters as this goes on.

Never thought I’d say it, but I miss being in dank dungeons covered in entrails and fighting for my life, that was easy compared to this.  Zargolds president has reported that he’s got it all under control, but remember that the last time he recommended anything, it was household bleach because “It’ll clean all the Germs out…”  In the meantime, you all know the score, Messiah’s and Morons all around, Just remember.

Let’s be careful out there…