I love playing games and wish I had the time to play more. Video games, board games, running-around-blindfolded games (I’ll come to that later), I’m a sucker for it all. Suffice to say, the Hide & Seek Festival last weekend was right up my alley.

The Hide and Seek festival is an annual event in London, where people come together to play and talk about games. It celebrates the creative and social aspects of gaming and they invite artists and professionals from all disciplines to experiment with game design. Hosted at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, the festival is a couple of days of pure social gaming pleasure, harking back to the unfettered fun of childhoods past.

I couldn’t find the time to spend the whole weekend at the festival, so I had to decide between the Saturday and the Sunday. I chose Sunday, cause the games seems somewhat funner and less spots were taken for them. I would have loved to have gone both days, but this year that just wasn’t possible. I did however go to the Werewolf gathering on Friday night, which was a lot of fun.

I didn’t get to play as much games as I’d like, but the games I did play were great. I’ll try to write a bit about each of them (and also one I didn’t get to play, but is unique enough to talk about).

Werewolf

Ever since my first Werewolf night (got dragged to it by Cristiano, I had no idea what I was getting myself into), I’ve been a huge fan and with all the BarCamps I’ve been going to, I’m proud to say I’m a pretty good player. If you don’t know the rules, check out the Werewolf wiki. In short: group of Villagers with a couple (2-3) hidden Werewolves (and maybe extra characters, like the Healer or the Seer). At night everybody has their eyes closed, the Werewolves kill someone. During the day the Villagers have to figure out who the Werewolves are and lynch someone. Game is over if all the Werewolves or all the Villagers are dead. The game revolves around talking; if nobody talks the game just doesn’t work. For me, it really helped to become (a little bit) more outspoken, cause you do have to be a bit blunt if you want to get your point through.

I played three games at the H&S; the first one being the most fun (and stressfull!). During that game there were 12 Villagers, 2 Werewolves and one Seer. And I was a Werewolf… Before the game had even really started, one newbie already had a question: “What exactly does the Seer do?” Okay, so she’s the Seer. Now my stroke of genius was not to kill her straightaway. Later on in the game it gave me the edge towards other experience players (like Sheila and Glynn) that of course I wasn’t a Werewolf, cause otherwise I would have killed her at the start. Anyhow, my fellow Werewolf got lynched in the very first round, but I managed to survive right to the last round, where two of the final three Villagers nominated and (with my help) lynched the final other Villager. The Werewolves were victorious!

Now that was a great game, but of course after that nobody trusted me anymore. So in the two following games even though I was a simple harmless Villager, nobody believed me and I got lynched both times. I’m trying to find a venue (separate room, no hire charge) so that we can organize a couple more Werewolf nights, cause I want to play this more often than only at BarCamps!

And I Saw

I went to the Southbank and I saw… remember that kids game? That was the basis for And I Saw. Throughout the Southbank “game area” they had hidden big blue stickers with a 5-digit number on them, like the one in the photo below. Idea was that you had to find as many of those stickers as possible and text the number when you found one. Every player also had a sticker, so the more players you met (or sneakily shadowed) the more points you collected. At the end of the day the scores were tallied on their website and you could see what you had seen that day. Results: I was seen 10 times and I saw 28 things.

The Lost Sport of Olympia

“Discovered” by Jane McGonigal while doing research for The Lost Ring ARG (for the 2008 Beijing Olympics), the Lost Sport of Olympia is a mysterious game the ancient Greeks used to play that was eventually banned from the Olympics. If you haven’t played it yourself, I’m guessing it will sound just plain weird, but (like Werewolf) I really enjoyed myself, albeit in a different manner.

With The Lost Game one person is the Runner who is blindfolded and put in the center of the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is drawn out on the ground with chalk; it’s not really a labyrinth, cause there’s only one path, but it winds a couple of times around. The other players have to create the walls of the labyrinth, standing on the drawn-out outline. With his arms folded across his chest (grabbing his shoulders) the Runner has to go navigate through the labyrinth, but is not allowed to talk to the walls. The only communication comes from the Walls humming. How they hum or when they hum is part of the tactic of the game, but you can imagine that only Walls infront of the Runner should hum, highlighting in which direction he should go. Now what (to me) makes it even more interesting is that the Labyrinth isn’t built completely from the start. There aren’t enough players for that, so the Walls have to keep moving around making up the parts of the labyrinth only moments before the Runner goes through them. Here’s a video of one of the groups at Hide & Seek:

The Lost Sport: 5 circuit labyrinth from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

It’s not your most conventional game, but I love how it combines tactics, co-operation and skill. I started out with a group in a small labyrinth of 3 circles, playing a Wall, and after a couple of tries one Runner managed to get 30 seconds. Most other groups at the time were still stuck at 1 minute plus (the world record is 13 seconds!!), so we graduated to the bigger 8-circuit labyrinth. Turns out it was a lot trickier, but still a lot of fun. When one of the other groups wanted a go at the big labyrinth, a couple of us returned to the smaller one and I attempted my first blindfolded go as Runner. I did it in 36 seconds! Not bad for a newbie apparently. I’ve even joined the London Olympic Team, who are training for (you guessed it) the Olympics.

Cruel 2 Be Kind

Now this game I didn’t play, cause I was too late with registering for it, but I saw people playing and it just looked crazy. With Cruel 2 Be Kind you register a team and with your team you go out and kill other teams. You “kill” by being kind. This means serenading them, complementing their eyes or mistaking them for a famous person. Problem is you don’t know who are players and who are normal people enjoying a day out on the Southbank. So you could be is singing to a complete stranger! Besides that once you kill a team, they become part of your team and as the game continues you get bigger and bigger groups.  Because all members of a team have to be participate in a kill, you get these large groups of about 20 people running towards another group singing some love song. It was hilarious to watch!

All in all, it was a great festival and next year I’m definitely keeping that weekend free to enjoy the full two days. If you want more information, check out the Hide & Seek website.

I haven’t been watching Doctor Who for that long; I only jumped in at the end of season 2, but since then it only seems to be getting better. Last week I decided to watch all the episodes I hadn’t seen and watched the first two seasons, so now I’m kind of on a Doctor Who high. I loved last Saturday’s Doctor Who episode, the penultimate episosde of this season (The Stolen Earth) and just had to take some time to theorize about the finale. I don’t want to spoil anything, so: beware, spoilers after the pic!

Beware: Here be spoilers! 

If you’re reading this I assume you’ve seen the episode I’m talking about and the major cliffhanger at the end: the Doctor starts regenerating! Seriously, was anyone expecting that? The moment he got shot, I of course had the feeling that would happen, but before that? No way. And now what? How will this be resolved? Reports are that David Tennant has signed on for the three specials of next year and has even started filming some of it. But can we actually trust these sources?

I think there are 5 possible situations that could happen:

1. The Doctor regenerates into a new actor and stays that way.

If this is the case, I have to applaud the makers for keeping this secret. In this darn age it seems an impossible mission and if they actually managed not to reveal this major spoiler… freaking amazing. I don’t think I’d be that happy though with this option, cause that means no more David Tennant! I’m sure whoever they’ll get to replace Tennant will be great and we’ll warm up to him, but still let us keep Tennant a few more seasons.

2. The Doctor regenerates into a new actor, but turns back into Tennant.  

In this scenario there are two things that could happen. First one is that this new form the Doctor turns into is a one time appearance. He changes back into Tennant and this form is never seen again (with some mumbo-jumbo that time has changed so the next time he regenerates it won’t be into that form). Second thing that could happen is that this is a preview of the next Doctor. Whenever Tennant leaves the show, this is the actor who will take over.

3. The Doctor “degenerates” into a previous incarnation and stays that way.

Ehm, well, it is a possibility, right? But, yeah, highly unlikely.

4. The Doctor “degenerates” into a previous incarnation, but turns back into Tennant.

I could see this happening. I wouldn’t put it pass Davies to bring Christopher Ecclestone or an earlier Doctor back for a moment, only to “fix” it and continue with Tennant. It also wouldn’t be too difficult to have kept secret; a couple of scenes with the previous Doctor on a closed set, pretty easy to keep quiet.

5. The Doctor tries to regenerate, but is stuck in his current form.

I think this would be the most boring option; something goes wrong, so the regeneration can’t be completed and they have to find some other way to heal the Doctor or something like that. After all the big fuss, it would kind of feel like the easy way out and I would really be disappointed if they do this. It has to be something “grander” than this, don’t you think?

The first situation would be the most shocking and sure to go down in TV history, but I don’t think it will happen. With what we’ve heard about Tennant, I truly think he’ll be back for future episodes. I’m hoping it won’t be the 5th option, but from the others I’m not sure which I’d rather prefer.

So do you think I’ve covered every possibility? Or will Davies do something even more ridiculous? Any other possible scenarios you can come up with?

Interesting links for June 20th through July 3rd:

• Peleg Design – Some of these designs are gorgeous. I love the wine bottle holder and the domino candle holder.
• TMB?s 10 Comic Book Movie Alternate Castings – Interesting alternatives to comic book castings. A couple of them truly make sense; I could easily see the girl in Chuck as Sue Storm (way better than Jessica Alba; but then anyone would have been better than her).
• A special “Where’s WALL-E” edition of Why For? – Great list of easter eggs hidden within Pixar’s movies. Did you know Marvin (the clown fish) from Finding Nemo appears in Monster Inc.? Or that The Incredibles appear on a comic in Finding Nemo?
• The 50 Best Pun Stores – A list of 50 Stores with great puns as names. My favourites have got be Thai Tanic (Thai restaurant), Cane & Able (Mobility Healthcare specialists) and Bon A-Pet-Treat (Pet Bakery).

Episode 65: “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures (translated from Bengali)”

I get a smile on my face everytime I see this video. Matt Harding spent 14 months visiting 42 countries to create this video that features him dancing this silly dance in all the places he has visited. In 2003 and 2006 he previously did the same project and even then the result was cool. The difference of this video is, that Matt invited people to dance with him and the result is just heartwarming:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Part of what makes it work though is the choice of music (Praan by Garry Schyman); this so going on my list of getting-out-of-a-dip music. This video and all the previous ones can be found on WhereTheHellIsMatt.com.

Unlike in the US, where both Wall-E and Wanted opened last weekend, here in the UK we got stuck with only Wanted (we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks for the from-what-I’ve-heard-so-far “perfect” Wall-E). But, man, what a film did we get stuck with. It might not have the same finesse or perfection or timelessness that Wall-E undoubtly will have, but it takes you on one hell of a ride.

Wanted stars James McAvoy as lifeless gutless office cublicle dweller Wesley Gibson. His life sucks and he knows it; his girlfriend is cheating on him with his slimy best friend, his boss yells at him every day, his whole life consists of everyday the same old boring routine. It all turns around though when one day the sexy and deadly Fox (Angelina Jolie) shows up to inform him that his long lost father is actually an assassin and was murdered yesterday. Wesley is recruited into his father’s old organisation (led by Morgan Freeman), The Fraternity, a secret society of super assassins, who will train him to avenge his father.

First off, this movie is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Mark Millar, but trust me, it is nothing alike. This movie isn’t an adaptation, the whole premise is even completely different (superassassins in the movie, superheroes/villains in the comic)! I’m mainly surprised of Millar’s claim that 70% is like the comic. No, it isn’t! More like 15%. They’ve lifted a couple minor scenes from the beginning of the comic, threw in a couple of characters with the same name, but rewrote the rest of the entire movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love the film as it is, but don’t expect an adaption of the book. Truth is I’m not even sure a true adaption would have worked; I don’t think a lot of movie goers would have appreciated that story.

There are people who are going to hate this movie, who will call it stupid, who will lament the loss of this generation’s moral code (I’m not making this up, just check out the message board on IMDB). While I’m not disagreeing with all of them (I mean nobody can claim Wanted is a smart film), it somehow seems to me that some people expect every movie to be Oscar-worthy and dramatic and serious, and thereby disregarding and belittling all other movies. Some movies are just meant to be brainless entertainment. And Wanted is one of them.

On the action front Wanted delivers and it lives up to it’s R-rating/18-certificate. As you might have seen in the trailer, there’s a great car  chase at the beginning of the movie and after that (not to give any spoilers away) it only gets better. It’s R-rating comes from a lot of bloody Wesley, bullets going through heads and part of the film being set in an abbatoir, but it wasn’t as disgusting and bloody as it could have been. I felt queasier at 300 and Sin City, then with Wanted, just to give you a slight idea what type of R-rating we’re talking about.

James McAvoy is great as Wesley. If you had told me last year, this guy would be an action hero (not completely fitting, it sounds too goody two-shoes) I wouldn’t have believed you. But he manages to pull it off. His character starts off as a (to put it in the terms of the movie) pussy and turns into a bad-ass killer; and McAvoy makes you believe it. Wesley isn’t that likable, but you don’t care, he isn’t meant to be likable, he’s a killer. I didn’t get Angelina Jolie‘s casting as Fox when I first heard about it, but that’s because I was expecting the Fox from the comic. She’s perfect though as Fox in the movie, although her acting chops are thoroughly underused here; except for a couple key scenes, she’s just standing pretty for most of the movie. Any random actress/model/”actress/model” could have filled that position.

I was expecting a lot from director Timur Bekmambetov; I loved the visual style of two of his previous films, Nightwatch and Daywatch. Here he delivers… sometimes. Some scenes are beautifully shot, in a comi-book visceral like style, slightly over the top, but still stunning. Other times though he does the same “mistake”as a lot of current day action movie directors: he doesn’t focus and moves the camera way too quickly. Give us time to see what on the screen! Next to that there are a couple of screen transitions which were a bit confusing. Still I do look forward to see what he does next; he has the potential to be phenomenal.

Wanted is the perfect action summerflick; lots of action, a flimsy story, but a lot of fun. It’s not going to go down in cinematic history, but it’s a great way to spend an entertaining summer afternoon.

Recount
It’s not my cup of tea, but I’m sure there a lot of people who will be interested in this movie. Recount is a behind-the-scenes retelling of the 2000 presidential elections. Written by Buffy-alum Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach (Meet The Parents, Austin Powers), it features a solid cast (Kevin Spacy, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary and Tom Wilkinson). [Trailer]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
If you haven’t heard about it already, this year a new chapter of the Star Wars saga is coming out… and this time it’s an animated TV show. To kick it off a feature film will be released in theatres, hence this trailer. Set between Episodes 2 and 3, it centres on Anakin, Obi-Wan, Amidala and Anakin’s padawan learner Ahsoka battling the clones and their masters. Before seeing this trailer I was a bit apprehensive of this project; after the previous 3 crappy ones, did we really need another Star Wars movie? Seeing this trailer though does give me hope for this actually turning out pretty okay (although I’m not a fan of the animation/CGI style). But does anyone here truly believe new character Ahsoka won’t die sometime during the series? [Trailer 1] [Trailer 2]

Traitor
I hadn’t heard of this movie before, but it looks intense and dramatic. Don Cheadle plays a former special operative working for terrorist organizations and Guy Pearce is the FBI agent after him. From the trailer though it doesn’t seem to be as clearcut as that; expect no bad guys and good guys in this movie, but a whole lot of shady grey characters. [Trailer]

The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor
I admit: I was a huge fan of the previous Mummy movies. Both of them (not The Scorpion King though; that was crap). So I was kind of excited when I heard they would make a third movie. And then I heard that Rachel Weisz wasn’t coming back. And that this time it would be Chinese mummies. And that the son would be all grown-up now. Yeah, not that excited anymore. This trailer though has gotten my hopes up a bit; it still could be a great entertaining summer movie. Plus it’s got Jet Li as a fighting magic-wielding mummy; that’s gotta count for something! [Trailer]

August
Somehow the little I had heard of this movie, gave a complete different impression on what it actually is about and it actually looks interesting. Josh Hartnett is Tom Sterling, a entrepeneur attempting to keep his company afloat in August 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst. To me it seems a hipper, younger Wall Street type of film and I wonder if we’ll look back at it with the same appreciation. [Trailer]

Tropic Thunder
A couple months ago I had posted the first (normal) trailer for this movie and claimed it could be the dark horse of this movie season. Now a Red Band trailer has also came out and to be honest I’m not that crazy about it. I want to like and love Tropic Thunder (especially Downey Jr.‘s character), but this trailer is cause for worry. [Red Band Trailer]

Vicky Christina Barcelona
I’ve always found it difficult to predict whether or not I’ll like a new Woody Allen movie. Somehow you never really know what type of movie it’s going to be. With Vicky Christina Barcelona I’d expected no difference. It stars Scarlet Johansson and Rebecca Hall as friends on a holiday in Spain, who get involved with a painter (Javier Bardem) and his ex (Penelope Cruz). Strong cast and an unusual premise, I think this is going to do pretty great during awards season. [Teaser] [Trailer]

The X-Files: I Want To Believe
I never was much of an X-Files fan; I’ve seen about half of the episodes (only started watching in the sixth season) and never watched the ending. So I have no idea how this movie exactly relates to the series. Yes, it stars Mulder and Scully, but I wonder if there are any important plotlines hailing back to the show. [Trailer 1] [Trailer 2]

Righteous Kill
You’d think a movie with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino should be pretty amazing. And this film isn’t. I’m not saying it’s bad, terrible, horrible, etc, but for a film with two legends in it you’d expect a little bit more. De Niro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives on the trail of a serial killer, who might be a fellow cop. [Trailer]

City of Ember
Based on the young adult’s book of the same name, City of Ember revolves around the titular city, a sealed-off underground settlement of which the electrical system is failing. The two main characters, 12 year-olds Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, race to figure a way out and save their people. I love the idea of this and if the effects and acting are any good, this could turn out to be an amazing movie. [Trailer]

It’s exactly three weeks ago that we held this dinner, but I still wanted to dedicate a short blog post to it. Cause it was the first Geek Dinner I’ve actually partly organized. I’ve helped a bit with previous events, but never anything that required too much work (or stress) on my behalf. This time I arranged the venue and food, and on the day itself kept track of all the attendees and payments. You’d think it wouldn’t be too much work, but with over 70 guests (!) I was kept busy the entire dinner.

Photo by Craig Murphy

After our previous (regular) venue kind of screwed us over, we were forced to find a new location. Now finding a Geek Dinner venue isn’t as easy as it may seem, cause we need quite a lot of flexibility. For starters, we don’t want to pay for the venue, so it has to have free room hire. Then the food can’t be too expensive. Plus, we never are really sure until the day itself (and even then it remains a rough estimate) of the number of people that are coming. Which for a lot of venues is a problem, cause they want to order the food at least a week beforehand. Besides that we really need a separate room, not some balcony or back part of a pub, cause otherwise nobody can hear the speaker. So yeah, pretty specific. (Btw, if anyone knows any other good venues in central London, please let me know. Any suggestions are always appreciated.)

Photo by Craig Murphy

Purely by accident, I stumbled on the Thai Smile restaurant, situated above a pub, close to Holborn. And they did exactly what we wanted. They were even fine with me phoning the numbers through a couple of hours before it started. The food was about 8 pounds per person and almost everybody thought it was delicious (I at least didn’t get any complaints). We’re definitely going to go back there, cause they did exactly everything we needed.

The Moo crew talk was great; they hadn’t prepared a real presentation, they just explained the origins of their company and then accepted questions from all the guests. There were some cool little moments, like Moo was first called ‘PleasureCards’ and, while talking about the Moo.com url: ‘The cows were annoyed’. Ciaran’s got a short video of part of it up on Qik (quality isn’t that super, but it’s better than nothing). Cristiano also made a timelapse of the entire evening:

GeekDinner with Moo Timelapse from Cristiano Betta on Vimeo.

It was a great event and I’m glad it went so well. I was pretty much busy the whole time, but I guess that’s the price you pay for volunteering for these type of events. If we don’t organize it, who will? That being said though, do contact me if you want to help out; the more people that get involved, the more events we can organize!

One last question: what would you think of a GeekDinner hosted Chocolate Party (your “entrance fee” is a box of chocolates)?

Because of a conversation this afternoon with londonfilmgeek on Twitter, I was reminded of the brilliance that is Labyrinth. This was one of my favourite films as a kid and it still remains one of my “rainy day” or “I’m sick and want chicken soup” movies. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is one of the first movie heroines I could identify myself with (it helped that I had a younger brother named Toby too) and the movie never fails to lift my spirits. And I love the Escher inspired hallways:

So you’d think with a blog post title named ‘Return to Labyrinth’ I’d be reminiscing about the movie, going on about how much I loved it and adored it. Well, not exactly. You see, while browsing this afternoon for all things Labyrinth, I stumbled on… Return to Labyrinth. It’s an original English-language (OEL) manga based on Labyrinth. Set 13 years after the events of the movie, it centers around Toby, now a teenager, who Jareth the Goblin King still wants as the heir to his throne. The manga is supposed to be a four part series with the first two parts released in August 2006 and October 2007.

Why have I never heard of this? The first volume came out back in 2006. 2006! That’s almost 2 years ago! So why does nobody I know know about it (I’ve got some big Labyrinth fans friends)? Bad marketing or just a very bad story? I’m hoping it will be a great and worthy sequel, but if it isn’t we can always pretend it never existed (yes, Wachowski brothers, I am looking at you).

To make it better though, there’s also an online version, so you can start reading right away. I haven’t tried it out yet, so I’m not 100% sure that all of it is available, but from what I can tell it seems to be the whole thing. Three chapters are available; it’s about 60 pages from the 208. So far I’m really enjoying it and will order paperback. If you want the dead-tree version, you can get it at the TokyoPop store or Amazon.

Have you played aroung with Wordle yet? This fun tool has been popping up everywhere the past week, so I thought I’d try it out and see what all the fuss is about. It basically generates a word cloud from whatever text you provide, giving prominence to words that appear more frequently in it. You can play around with all types of setttings, like Font, Layout and Color, creating your own personal tag cloud.

This is what it came up with for my del.icio.us account.:

Pretty cool, huh? I’d love to have a T-Shirt with this on it! I’m not sure what else I’d really use Wordle for, but I can imagine you could create some pretty cool presentation slides with it. If you want to make a cool word cloud yourself, just head on over to the Wordle site.

Interesting links for June 16th:

• Can You Guess The Movie From Just One Letter? – Little game/puzzle where you have to guess the movies with only one letter cut out from the poster as a clue. I’m still working on it and I refuse to give up an check the answers (which btw is only possible by looking at the source code).
• Mystery on Fifth Avenue – A couple with 4 kids bought apartment in New York and gave the renovator full creative freedom; he secretly filled the whole place with puzzles and codes. I would looove to have a house like that (although I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I “solved” it a
• Deadly Glasses – 7 Glass designs based on the 7 Sins. I especially love the Envy and Sloth designs; they completely capture the spirit of those sins.
• Mall of misfortune – Article about an abandoned Chinese mall that was “doomed” from the start. At the time hailed as the biggest mall ever (with an indoor/outdoor rollercoaster) it just completely failed to attract customers and retailers.