A beautifully realised low-budget indie sci-fi fantasy from one of the most talented new creators around right now, Ink is a wonderfully told story about an asshole of a father whose daughter is kidnapped in the night by a mysterious creature, and the forces of darkness and light locked in a battle for her soul across the conscious and subconscious realm. The film is populated with many weird and wonderful characters, interesting set pieces, and some stunning fight scenes considering its low budget origins. It’s visually stunning, incredibly original, and unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
It’s also pretty infamous on the ‘net for breaking the mould. It didn’t get much of a theatrical release and it was only when pirates started downloading the film in its thousands that word begun to spread, and soon it became a cult smash. This gave the creators the chance to sell the DVD on their website, leading to many more sales than they’d ever gotten without the help of word-of-mouth.
Downloading is given a bad name, but Ink proves that you can make the system work for you if you just embrace it rather than try to punish those that just want to share great art.
BONUS VIDEO!
Jamin Winans has been busy. After Ink he went and created this fantastic little short movie. Well worth the watch, and features the father and daughter actors from Ink.
More information and links about Ink after the cut.
To say that Star Trek: Frontiers arrival on MZP has been a long-time coming is much like saying that Guns’n’Roses took a tiny bit of time to release ‘Chinese Democracy’ – it’s been one hell’uva wait, one in which the few MZP Trekkies who knew of its long online VS history had doubts would ever happen, more than once. It’s great, therefore, to see ‘Faithfulness the Best Relation’ upon us then – a reduxed version of Joshua Maley (and co’s) original pilot, part of an updated and revised Seasons 1-3 in advance of a final Frontiers adventure at some point in the future. Given it’s been years since I read the original pilot, I had only a rudimentary memory of the story and characters, so in many ways it was all fresh to me and I can review it as such. The question is: does Maley manage to create a successful Trek pilot from the get go? Well… honestly the answer is yes and no.
If you’re a writer, you probably fall into one of two general categories — you’re either more comfortable writing drama, or writing comedy. I’m sure there are people muttering to themselves right now that writers are writers and can switch between the two. If you’re one of those people, you’re very lucky. But, speaking from my own personal experience, a writer tends to fall into one of the two and gets comfortable there. For me, my taste is for drama. I’ve tried comedy, but I never really settled into that ‘genre’.
But that doesn’t mean you should only write serious stuff, or only write funny stuff. The best drama writers push jokes in, and the best comedy writers keep a dramatic edge.
One thing that sticks in my mind about Night Stalker is how unexpectedly underwhelmed I was by the first season finale, despite James Jordan’s efforts to craft an effective climax to the shortened run. ‘Zero Hour’ thankfully, I can say right now, is a stronger piece of work – dealing with and furthering every single mythology plot-thread within the four other (that few?!) arc episodes of the year, bringing them together into a cohesive whole. Despite this commendable feat of plotting, this finale however falls a little way short of being considered as great as the previous three mythology tales for a couple of reasons.
I’m a fan of standalones. I am. I think they can provide an accessible way of storytelling and touch on ideas or themes more serialised tales can’t, as well as lending elasticity to the kind of stories being told. Episodes like ‘Sacred Ground’, however, sorely test my faith in the whole thing. Night Stalker has been up and down in quality depending on the strength of the plot and writer all season and nowhere is it more evident than in Ian Austin’s debut of the series. An interesting, if derivative, idea with a clear theme is buried under dull characterisation, threadbare direction and languid plotting.
I’ve been a little blog-quiet lately. I know, I know, a suck a disproportionate amount. Luckily my good blog-friends have kept the place ticking over nicely with various bits and bobs. But here’s a few things I’ve been doing lately.
I have something of a vested interest in this outing of Night Stalker as, well… I was originally going to write it as my second episode of the season. I brought the idea of a piece of music that incites behaviour based on the legend of Gloomy Sunday (Google it) and the premise still fascinates me so I was looking forward to seeing what Alden Caele and Jeffrey Moore (in, I believe, his MZP debut), made of the concept. I’m glad to say ‘Danse Macabre’ is as good as I could have made the idea, written well enough to escape the usual uninspired standalone fayre the season has so far, on most occasions, delivered.
Of all the second season Night Stalker episodes, I’ve been looking forward to this the most without question. Jose Chung was a character beautifully brought to life in The X-Files and later Millennium by the legendary Charles Nelson Reilly and genius comedic writing talents of Darin Morgan. The idea of James Jordan actually trying to ape these two fantastic pieces of work filled me with excitement and dread in equal measure – these are two of my all-time favourite pieces of TV, bear in mind. The fact that ‘Jose Chung’s ‘Back From the Dead’ actually almost – not quite but almost – matches the quality of those two pieces of work fills me with huge admiration for Jordan. My friend, I never thought you had this in you.
It was inevitable at some point this season we’d get an episode revolving around the Beacon’s erstwhile boss, Tony Vincenzo, and it’s one I welcomed given how little the character gets to do in a fair few Night Stalker tales, standalones especially. ‘Anathema’, however, really isn’t the story to do him justice. It’s yet again indicative of the uneven quality of the show – one week we’re up when we’re treading deeper water, another we’re down when we’re going through the motions. This Vincenzo ‘centric’ could really have taken off but writer Vinicius Moraes fails to get us there.
Or should we maybe call this one Zodiac? Yes, this is James Jordan’s take on that great real-life crime story for Night Stalker and one instance where I’m nowhere near close to complaining at this being a massive rip-off. ‘Cipher’ is a great cover of an even greater story, one of the more chilling modern mysteries of our age, of a brutal murderer never caught. To me, that’s much scarier than sewer monsters or soul suckers – the simple, calculated evil of a man, and that’s what Jordan is interested in here. It allows for an episode that, typically for a Jordan script, eschews formula for a talky but often interesting retelling of the Zodiac legend.
A quite unusual Night Stalker this time around in that halfway through it throws you off the track you’re convinced you’re on, while still managing to feel familiar at the same time. ‘Hades’ felt like a mesh of several X-Files episode concepts rolled into one package and Chris Haigh’s second of the season manages to unfortunately, despite some solid ideas and an attempt to create rounded secondary characters, highlight further just how unevenly written the show really is. Every week is clearly a different writer because every week is a different quality of show.
We return to the standalone piece after the success of the mythology double-header and, sadly, once again Night Stalker falls into a formulaic and not entirely successful pattern with ‘Inbox’. Unlike some of the other such solitary pieces, this one actually attempts to break out of the box and take a slightly alternative approach but I can’t figure out why it doesn’t work – whether it’s the narrative, Vinicius Moraes uneven writing or maybe the unusually poor presentation in places. I’m going to say it’s fusion of all three.
The second of two-parters such as this usually either go one of two ways – either they fail to capitalise on the set up provided by the first part or conversely they eclipse the beginning and the build up before it. ‘Man of Light’, luckily, sits much more firmly into the second camp. While it’s not quite as good as ‘Man of Darkness’, it manages to more than live up to its potential with yet another well-paced, intriguing and in this case revelatory mythology piece from James Jordan which cements this duo as Night Stalker’s two most successful ‘arc’ episodes in its history so far and an encouraging sign hopefully of what’s to come.
It’s pretty clear now that from my perspective, Night Stalker only ever truly reaches it’s potential when there are two factors in play. One – it’s a gimmick or mythology episode, something beyond the procedural standalone. Two – either Angelo Shrine or showrunner James Jordan are on scripting duties. Regardless of the story strength, they have the best grasp on the characters and this world over any other writer for the series (thus far). Why do I think ‘Man of Darkness’ is the second strongest episode of the season? It’s mythology and it’s Jordan. And it’s one of the strongest ‘part one’ tales of anything I’ve read in some time.
A little bit of a step back down this time around for Night Stalker after the high point we just reached, though ‘The Talisman’ edges closer into the territory of standalone that manages to balance the procedural mystery element with a shade more characterisation and emotion. I’m not sure just how much Alden Caele contributed here (given his story credit) so I’m going to refer to Vinicius Moraes as responsible for the scripting decisions made here, delivering a piece which attempts to do something new with a very old urban legend but ultimately fails to overcome a disjointed story I never got the feeling truly knew what it wanted to be or say.
Welcome to The Men Behind the Curtain an evil lair where JT Vaughn, AJ Black, Pete D. Gaskell and Jeffrey Moore plot, scheme, ramble on about random real life minutiae, post about television and movies, use Simpsons or Darkplace quotes for post titles, and generally blabber on about Virtual Series.
Disclaimer: None of the actors represented on this website, Monster Zero Productions, or Virtual Mutant, have any involvement or association with our Virtual Series.
Their likeness is merely used to enhance the scripts and help readers picture the characters. No money is being made.
