Charles Purcell's Blog, page 3

Top 10 reasons you should be watching Altered Carbon right now

The concept

In the future, the human consciousness can be digitised and downloaded into new bodies – or “sleeves”.

In the future, the rich – also known as “Meths”, short for Methuselahs – can technically live forever.

In the future, morality is for the powerless and the poor.



The story

Former military officer Takeshi Kovacs is retrieved from the “stacks”, given a new body and a new assignment – to find out who killed “Meth” Laurens Bancroft.



The world

It’s cyberpunk meets detective story meets Blade Runner … but with an even darker premise.

The Singularity never happened. But AI, off-world colonisation and societies massively divided by wealth did.

The only victory the poor used to have was that the rich died along with them. Now they’ve had even that consolation taken away from them.

Death has been conquered.

But not sin.

The visuals

Primo small-screen eye candy.

“Damned if it isn’t the best-looking series Netflix has yet produced,” wrote The AV Club.

The gun show

Primo high-tech bang bang.

The source material

I’d never heard of Altered Carbon author Richard Morgan before this, but I am now bona fide HOOKED.

A staggering achievement for a first novel, Altered Carbon won a slew of prize including the Philip K. Dick award.

Read it NOW.

Actually, read it after you’ve seen the series.

The critics

“Ambitious, dense and thrilling, Netflix’s new sci-fi epic starring Joel Kinnaman, James Purefoy and Martha Higareda is a binge-worthy potential blockbuster,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter.

The actors

Did we mention James “Rome” Purefoy, Joel “RoboCop” Kinnaman and Martha “El Mariarchi” Higareda?

The binge factor

Because you’ve already watching Game Of Thrones, The Sopranos, Westworld, The Wire and everything else and you’re looking for a new series.

The satisfaction

This will go some way to filling that sci-fi-shaped hole in your heart left by the disappointment of the Blade Runner sequel.

My military thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.

Everything you’ll see on Donald Trump’s favourite TV channel The Gorilla Channel

We all know after reading the “excerpt” from Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House that Donald Trump’s favourite TV channel is The Gorilla Channel, which he allegedly watches for up to 17 hours a day.

But what exactly is on The Gorilla Channel?

Our spies at the White House managed to get a copy of the TV guide to the world’s most exclusive TV channel …

Morning Prayers With Pastor Gary

Gary, the peaceful lowland gorilla, begins the station programming each morning by reciting the Lord’s Prayer using Sign Language.

Morning Prayers is never watched by POTUS – it screens at 9am, long before POTUSES’s typical noon rising – but the station’s reclusive owners insist it is shown each and every morning for “good Christian gorillas everywhere”.

David Attenborough Presents Ultimate Gorilla Bum Fights

Hosted by the world’s leading nature documentarian – an agreement struck after POTUS threatened to frack the Amazon – homeless and cast-out beta gorillas fight each other for big cash prizes.

In a further humiliation, POTUS insists all the fighters must have a full body wax.

Shown twice a day, morning and prime time.

World Wildlife Wrestling Federation

In the wild, gorillas are peaceful creatures who form complex societies and who rarely get involved in physical violence. Of course, that wouldn’t make for very entertaining TV, particularly for the current POTUS.

Led by a mysterious Vince McMahon-type impresario who is never seen in public without a mask, the World Wildlife Wrestling Federation employs Modified Ludovico techniques and electroshock treatment to turn peaceful vegetarians into meat-eating killers. The resultant “participants” are dressed in ill-fitting wrestling outfits and are forced to battle under such pseudonyms as Donald “The Terrible” Trump, Hillary “Benghazi” Clinton “and Kim “The Killer” Jong-un.

POTUS will often call and complain about the winner of particular fights, which is why two ending are always filmed, with the “correct” ending screened after POTUS’S call.

Gorilla Friends

Six young mountain gorillas try to make it in the urban jungle of Manhattan, the classic lines from the human version “signed” by “Rachel”, “Ross”, “Joey”, “Phoebe”, “Chandler” and “Monica”.

Fun fact: Beta “David” is often killed by silverback alpha “Joey”, leading to a hasty replacement.

Gorilla Seinfeld

The only thing that can make POTUS cry.

Gorilla Fox News

Two hours of ageing silverbacks beating their chests in an attempt to intimidate their rivals. POTUS much prefers this to the “FAKE NEWS” of rival GNN (the Gorilla News Network).

Gorilla Saturday Night Live

A right-wing rebuttal to Alec Baldwin’s left-wing simian version. Will be a “go” project once the CIA kidnap Baldwin for his live showtrial.

Gorilla Gilligan’s Island

To this day POTUS remains baffled as to why the US Navy can’t find Gilligan’s Island. SAD!

The Apprentice Gorilla

POTUS only knows two words in Sign Language: “You’re Fired”.

Jackie Collins’s The Gorilla Stud

Dallas Fontaine, a single female lowland gorilla, rises to the top of the jungle by mating with the tribe’s alpha male, Rex Acropolis, in this high-stakes, winner-takes-all thriller. This midday movie is shown at least five times a week.

Are You Stronger Than A Gorilla?

Roided-up professional MMA fighters pit their strength against male silverbacks that can bench-press over 4600 pounds. Hilarity – and dismemberment – ensues.

Gorilla Home Buyers Network

Female gorillas dressed like Southern belles sell bamboo shoots, termite nests, leaves and copies of Trump: The Art Of The Deal via Sign Language. Usually watched by First Lady Melanie Trump when POTUS announces he has to leave the room to Tweet, sabre-rattle with North Korea or “have a shit”.

The Gorilla Wellness Hour

After a full day of leading the Free World and/or watching gorillas fight, POTUS likes to wind down with 60 minutes of watching gorillas reinforce their social bonds by grooming each other.

My new thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.

See if you’re 007 material with our super-secret (amended) ASIS spy quiz

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a spy?

The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is looking for a few good men and women.

Confidently dubbed “The Most Interesting Job Interview”, its online quiz will ask you a series of questions about the qualities needed to become an ASIS operative.

We reckon the interview needs a few tweaks. Here’s the questions they should be asking.

Being an intelligence officer is an exciting profession that requires a very specific skill set. What do you think the phrase “very specific skill set” means?

a) I’m good at recognising faces in a crowd

b) I can repeat overheard conversations verbatim

c) I’m a good communicator

d) I’m like Liam Neeson’s character from Taken

Did you really think we were referring to Liam Neeson’s character from Taken?

a) Yes

b) No

c) “If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

There was a clock on the wall when you came in. Did you see what time it was?

a) Noon

b) Zero Dark Thirty

c) Quitting Time

d) That was a trick question. In the age of the iPhone, no one uses clocks any more

As an intelligence officer most of your assignments will take place in the airport. Do you find that knowledge depressing?

a) Yes

b) No

c) Yes

We need to you to persuade this flight attendant to give you an aisle seat. How will you do it?

a) Tell her you work for ASIS

b) Talk to her and read her facial reactions until she smiles at you, suggesting sympathy to your plight. Then ask her

c) Beg

d) Throw a hissy fit and threaten to put your tantrum online so it will go viral and shame the company

Now we’re on the plane. Please try to spot the terrorist on the plane. Is it?

a) Tom

b) Dick

c) Harry

d) The only person on the plane not hunched down over a smartphone. Clearly they’re an oddball

ISIS officers are good at noticing small details. Did you recognise which flight was cancelled back at the airport?

a) New York

b) London

c) Canberra

d) Bali. Totally gutted

In intelligence, it’s important to have sharp ears as well as sharp eyes. Listen to this crowded conversation and tell us what the woman on the left ordered.

a) It was too difficult to follow

b) She had linguine on Bourke Street

c) She had penne arrabiata on the Death Star

d) No need. I’ll just read her Yelp review

Can you do us a quick impression of Sean Connery as James Bond?

a) No

b) No

c) “Morning, Mish Moneypenny.”

Results

We can’t actually tell you which answers you got right or wrong (except for when you answered D – that was always right). But our overall results suggest that being a spy might be right for you. Now if you can just figure out where to send your application …

My new thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and a paperback.

Book review: Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs by Mark Corrigan

Ever since the publication of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People in 1936, the business community has been obsessed with books whose olde-worlde wisdom could allegedly be used in real-life situations.

Everything from Machiavelli’s The Prince to Sun Tzu’s Art Of War, the Tao Te Ching and even the Bible have been examined ad nauseum in the belief that it would give today’s business leaders some vague edge over the competition.

And yet, perhaps for a few faint gems of wisdom (“all warfare is based on deception”) these books have had little practical wisdom to offer  a 21st-century full of office workers rather than, say, rival Chinese warlords.

With this in mind, Mark Corrigan’s first book, Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs, can best be described as “brave”.

The first warning that Corrigan’s tome might be problematic was the fact that the publisher – who we had never heard of, and whom none of our colleagues in the publishing industry had heard of, either – spelt Mark’s surname wrong on the cover (along with the word “Pharaohs”).

Nor was it a good sign that this review copy was left in the private bathroom of our main reviewer, with a note asking if we would kindly look at this “promising author’s new wrok”.

After such an inauspicious beginning, it is perhaps not surprising that Corrigan himself doubts the power of his own words, seemingly naysaying the whole enterprise with a self-negating quote on the inside front cover.

“The first thing is to acknowledge that the ancient Egyptian era is so completely different from our own that any cultural, political and business parallels that we draw between the two eras are, by their nature, almost bound to be wrong,” he writes.

Full marks, at least, for Mark’s honesty.

Sadly, Mark lacks the confidence of other blaggers in the business self-help industry, continuing to shoot down each argument with some self-effacing, hopelessly middle-class British remark.

It’s almost as if he doesn’t believe in his heart that there really are any cultural, political and business parallels to be drawn between an agrarian civilisation ruled by godkings and a modern Britain governed by EU rules.

How else to explain his assertion that Egyptian hieroglyphics are an “ancient form of emoji?” Or that business managers should be worshipped as a type of living god?

The comparison between the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Millennium Dome in the chapter entitled “Build Something Really Big To Awe The Proletariat” can only be regarded as tongue firmly in cheek.

We sense a kind of envy in Mark at the autocratic power of the pharaohs. They knew how to “get things done”, unshackled by “Brussels bureaucracy”. Certainly, there would have been no Brexit under Ramesses I. Or unions. (He also makes unflattering comparisons with the British Government and Rommel.)

The fact that the last third of the book is written in all caps – and by all indications, in some sort of frenzied state, as if chasing some self-imposed deadline – further removes any enjoyment for the reader. (One sentence is interrupted by the comment “get out of the room and leave me alone, Jez”. Was that some flawed reference to Sedge and Bee, the symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt?).

We can’t also escape the impression that the book consists entirely of cheap-quality printouts.

Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs would have benefitted from a better editor – or, indeed, sign of any type of editor.

Still, despite everything, we detect a sliver of potential in Mark Corrigan’s work.

My military thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.

‘Goats don’t look like goats on film’ and other things I learned during my interview with Star Wars director Rian Johnson

Set the wayback machine, Sherman, to 2006, when rising director and now Star Wars imagineer Rian Johnson dropped the compelling high school noir drama known as Brick.

I recommend you check it out. Oh, and also check out my interview with him in those heady pre-Star Wars days here.

Would be awesome too if you checked out my new thriller Game Of Killers, now available as an ebook and paperback.

 

 

Dear Premier, please change the law so I can take my pet jaguar to my local pub

Dear Premier,

How are you? Are you well? Good to hear!

I’d writing to suggest an amendment to the Companion Animals Act 1988 that prevents me from bringing my jaguar Terrence to my local pub. I feel that Australia is behind the rest of the world for not allowing Terrence and his man-skull-crushing jaws into public life.

If dogs and other companion animals are allowed into pubs and clubs – a move that is also long overdue – surely my bloodthirsty stalk-and-ambush predator that lives at the very top of the food chain should be allowed to accompany me out at night, sans leash.

He’s already a feline rock star with the public. You can just imagine their delight (and, yes, horrified surprise) when they spot Terrence lurking in the fake rainforest settings in RSLs near the pokies. Sadly, police have been called on three separate occasions to enforce the draconian Companion Animals Act. I myself have been Tasered twice (once in the buttocks – no, that is not funny).

I know of at least two countries that already allow citizens to take wolverines, honey badgers and African lions  into public eateries. So far the casualties have been in the low double digits … but the amount of joy delivered is unmeasurable.

I know Terrence suffers from my absence during the day – apart from the times he escapes through the screen door and leaves the bodies of unidentified small animals up the backyard tree – and would welcome the chance to accompany me in public.

I can’t necessarily claim that my jaguar is technically an “assistance” animal by the strict letter of the law. However, when people see Terrence out in public I find him of invaluable assistance when jumping ahead of queues/finding suddenly empty tables at fast-food venues/scoring parking spaces hastily vacated by drivers.

Jaguars and other deadly cats are a valued part of our community and enhance our lives in myriad, possibly unquantifiable ways.

Surely the next move once dogs are inevitably admitted into pubs and clubs is to broaden the range of permitted animals.

As mentioned before, wolverines – pound for pound, the most aggressive animal in the world, but quite sweet once you get to know them – are already roaming the boulevards and buffet lines of the finest eateries of the far east.

Now it is time to allow other creatures such as komodo dragons, wolves, poison dart frogs, deathstalker scorpions, birds of prey and other beloved companions into the moribund city scene, already suffering due to the Lock Out laws.

I know Terrence has no objection to other non-apex creatures such as handbag dogs and toy poodles in his vicinity – why, he lets out a low, friendly and in-no-way sinister growl when he sees them! He’s so friendly he practically salivates!

I for one would be delighted to see someone with a killer python around their neck (making new friends, ha ha) at pub trivia. Or a pokie patron “tussling” with a Kodiak bear. Fun!

And yes, I am a responsible pet owner. I always clean up after Terrence. I carry a variety of black bags of several shapes and sizes for storing Terrence’s remains (scat, antelope, dead hobo parts).

While we are talking, dear Premier, I would also like to see an “off-the-leash jaguar park” for the inner city. Our last experience at an “off-the-leash” dog park was problematic to say the least, owing to the hurtful comments of the dog owners – far more hurtful, in my mind, than Terrence’s own alleged “rampage” (currently before the courts).

So yes, Mrs Premier (or do you prefer Miss?), once we change the Companion Animals Act 1988 to accommodate dogs in pubs and cafes, it would be great if we could just go a little further and let my pet jaguar Terrence in, too. He can’t wait to join the party … he’s a party animal!

Lots of love,

Terrence’s owner

My new thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is now available as an ebook and paperback

Book Review: Game of Killers by Charles Purcell

Cristian Mihai

The perfect assassin’s tool has been stolen from America’s high-tech labs. Only Tier 1 soldier the Spartan can prevent it from killing the US President.

It was one word.

Spartan.

A name.

Spartan.

A call sign.

Spartan.

A blood oath.

Spartan.

A way of life.

Spartan.

And America’s only hope.

Spartan.

Millions died in the United States when a weaponized plague was unleashed upon the world.

Now a new menace threatens the country just as it begins to recover.

View original post 237 more words

Ten ways to improve the already awesome Gone Riffin’

More improvisation

I feel that Rich and Abed follow their script too rigidly. I want to hear more crazy, off-the-wall improvisation, preferably featuring dead and/or possibly dying celebrities, the benefits of jarts, movie screenplay pitches, lovemaking advice columns, unpopular condiments and gamehows from hell. 

Abed should stop talking over Rich

Let the man talk already!

Introduce a third host

I think we all agree that you need more than two hosts to make a hit show. They should introduce a third character/host. Maybe someone hip and edgy like Poochy, the wisecracking dog that enlivened moribund Simpsons dramaturgical dyad Itchy and Scratchy. I wonder what Poochy is up to right now?

Female guests

You’re batting zero for zero – or whatever sporting analogy fits here; in Australia we don’t have baseball and gridiron, only cricket and rugby.

Particularly as, according to your latest figures, women make up 90 per cent of your listeners.

Remove the fourth wall Does Rich need to suddenly go to the crapper? Tell us all about it!

Less references to “balls” Or should that be “fewer” references to balls?

Wacky sound effects

Like a drum roll or that musical instrument that goes “wah-wah”. Maybe even a kazoo. Wacky sound effects also tell us when we are allowed to laugh.

A comedy bibliography at the end of each episode that explains the origin of each joke and why it was funny

Could the title “Gone Riffin'” even be some type of pun itself?

Merchandising

You need to release Rich and Abed action figures just in time for Christmas. Sure to fly off the shelves!

Make the show three hours long each week

With intermission, so people can grab a coffee or go to the crapper (that’s what you call it in America, isn’t it?). Without an intermission Lawrence Of Arabia would never have won all those Oscars … and would have been primarily remembered for making the bladders of all those Academy members explode.

My military thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.

Mr Turnbull – tear down that fence!

Us versus them.

That’s what fences are all about.

Whether it’s the Berlin Wall, Hungary’s anti-refugee razor wire or even Trump’s mean-spirited US-Mexico wall, walls and fences serve to emphasise the difference between peoples.

They say: the people on the other side of the fence aren’t like us. They’re different. Strange. Perhaps even dangerous.

They also create a false moral dichotomy: that the people on one side of the fence are more worthy than others.

That is why the optics of the new fence being installed on the grassy slopes of Parliament House are terrible. No more will visitors to our nation’s capital be able to walk on the top of the “people’s house” unobstructed.

That famous green grass is now partially restricted (“stop the goats?”, anyone). Now greeting them is a 2.5-metre fence preventing access to the roof, part of a $126.7 million security upgrade. Gum trees have been cut down and replaced with steel. Discrete surveillance technology has been ignored in favour of one giant “f— you” fence. Optimism has been replaced by fear of terrorist attack.

Last year Senator Derryn Hinch said during the Senate debate over the fence that “it would be like wrapping the Sydney Opera House in barbed wire”.

“I know that since 9/11 the world has changed,” he later wrote. “We have lost whatever innocence we had left. I know the public and our staff must be protected. But, excuse the pun, this is over-kill.”

He was one of only a handful of MPs who voted against the fence, including Greens leader Richard Di Natale.

“Most politicians want to wall themselves off from ordinary people as much as humanly possible, and this fence is just a physical representation of that trend. It’s everything that’s wrong with the political establishment,” said Di Natale.

I remember as a child the immense pride I felt the first time I visited the nation’s capital. My heart soared as I took in the Old Parliament House; the War Memorial; even the baffling (to my eight-year-old eyes, at least) National Carillon.

If Canberra was the nation’s soul, then that soul was one of hope and optimism.

Now I look at Parliament House and I don’t see a proud, hopeful soul. Instead I see fear and loathing. I see a political elite that wants to turn its back on the world, to retreat to the comfort of the echo chamber and the safety bunker and the gated community. I imagine future busloads of tourists peering out at the once-magnificent lawns, wondering why the fence is there.

Politicians are often described as being “out of touch”. Now this is just a physical manifestation: as if Parliament has shook our hands en masse and then reached for the hand sanitiser.

A study by the Australian National University last year found that trust in politicians was at its lowest level since it was first measured in 1969.

The construction of this fence couldn’t have come at a worst time. It feels, in fact, like a massive own goal.

In time, no doubt, the outcry will die down. In time, we will grow used to the fence, as we have with all the other horrors of the modern world. In time, the way things used to be will just be a wistful tale told by older tour guides to busloads of young tourists.

Us versus them. And this time, outside of the gilded halls of our modern Versailles, we’re the “them”.

My new thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.

Never mess with the dramaturgical dyad … aka what’s wrong with this year’s season of Rick And Morty

What’s wrong with this year’s season of Rick And Morty?

It can be summed up in six words.

Never mess with the dramaturgical dyad.

Or, to put it another way: the “Poochie Syndrome” strikes again.

Set the wayback machine, Sherman, to that classic episode of The Simpsons where the creators of subversive cartoon-within-a-cartoon Itchy And Scratchy are grappling with the malaise affecting the show. Lisa Simpson gives the best insight where she says that after so many episodes, it’s hard to have the same effect on viewers. The show has simply lost its novelty value.

But the creators decide to tweak with the formula – to tweak, as it were, the “dramaturgical dyad” behind Itchy And Scratchy.

Enter Poochie: the skateboarding dog with attitude. He’s extreme. He’s edgy. He’s whatever buzzwords the focus groups behind capturing the younger demographic want him to be.

Poochie proves to be a disaster and is soon written out of the show (much to Homer’s chagrin).

Yet I can’t help but think that some of the problems of Poochie’s brief stardom also plague the story of Rick And Morty.

Was season three a good season? Yes.

Is R&M still one of the best shows on TV and the best animated comedy, exceeding even Archer and Bojack Horseman in their prime? Yes.

Was S3 as good as the past two seasons? No.

Are we as disappointed as those loyal fans who flocked to McDonald’s outlets to sample the legendary Mulan Szechuan sauce, only to discover that outlets had only stocked a few dozen samples rather than enough rations to feed a Roman legion? Yes.

Why? For a start, the dramaturgical dyad at the heart of the show has been messed with. There are fewer typical adventures with Rick and Morty alone and more ensemble pieces. Some are excellent (Pickle Rick!!!). Some are simply great. And some make us yearn for the good old days when it was just Rick and Morty taking on the universe’s infinite dimensions.

It is here that I must quote writer and comedy expert Steve Kaplan’s straight line/wavy line theory of comedy: “It arises from one person being blind in regard to their own actions, and the other seeing, but having no idea what to do with that knowledge. One is struggling to understand, while the other is blithely ignorant.”

Rick is the one blind or oblivious (or, more likely, just doesn’t care) about the results of his actions.

Morty can see that what Rick is doing is morally wrong but lacks the knowledge (in this instance, the genius-level scientific IQ) to fix the problem. Plus he’s the kid in the relationship. He can’t tell the adult what to do.

Together they form the straight line-wavy line dynamic.

I remember Kaplan quoting during his excellent class in Sydney a particular adventure comedy where both characters were essentially the same person: devil-may-care heroes who were too similar to bounce off of each other. You can’t have two straight lines or two wavy lines for comedy to work.

Rick and Morty, the scientific sociopath and his anxious teen grandson, are the most dissimilar people on the show, the real Abbott and Costello act.

Beth has inherited her father’s brains (and, as one episode suggests, some of his ruthless amorality): Summer, though a worthy sidekick, is too knowing and less willing to put up with grandpop’s shit: while Jerry is just everyone’s punching bag, more beta than even Morty.

The other thing I want to add is that Rick shows disturbing signs of having learnt valuable moral lessons this season – in particular, during the oddly unsatisfying finale.

That doesn’t gel with the Rick we’ve grown to love over the past two seasons. He’s a world wrecker who doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions. He’ll build a world just to power his spaceship battery. He’ll kill versions of himself from other galaxies. He even exiled his own son-in-law because he crossed him.

At heart, we want Rick to remain the magnificent amoral bastard he has always been. We want him always on the verge of being thrown out of the family home due to his asshole actions. We want the smartest mammal in the universe to remain unwilling or unable to figure out how his actions threaten his family and even Earth itself.

Rick’s world is a world where “nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere and everybody’s gonna die”.

We want the Seinfeld rule to remain in effect. No one every learns anything. No one becomes a better person.

The genius of Seinfeld is that it clove true to its own dramaturgical quartet. At any given time and in any given situation, we knew how Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer would react. By the end of the show, none of them had learned enough to know that it was wrong to laugh at a portly man being mugged, let alone not intervene. (In today’s world, they would have filmed it on their iPhones and uploaded it onto YouTube).

So yes, give us more of our classic dramaturgical dyad, please.

And more Szechuan sauce.

My new military thriller Game Of Killers: The Spartan is out now as an ebook and paperback.