Open Hatch

Just posted yon comment (with my nickname, Alex) at yon blog.

A clown at this forum saw a visor in the weird ghosted image of my fellow actor here, and sketched it out here.

I never would have known this without looking through my often amusing traffic log file.

Someone named Nosferatu-something in some other forum recently was asking others whether they saw some mythical/sci-fi creature in the mirage - but I’m too lazy to dig up the link. People find my page searching for “hatch 360″ or some variant related to an apparent spoof viral marketing campaign for the Microsoft XBOX 360. To have even concieved that sentence there must be a part of me that is so, so geek.

Here is a link to a clip that you may find amusing:

http://leakingmedia.com/vid/525.wmv *

This is a taping of a pitch of this film concept, Extreme Mormons, to several producers in LDS film in Utah - some HaleStorm folks, and the woman who at the end says “Yeah - I doubt it” is Stin Hansen who was a producer on God’s Army and States of Grace. The folks pitching it didn’t make the trailer - they had interviewed the HaleStorm folks about LDS film for a documentary about the LDS and offshoot religions, and they were showing it as a favor to an LDS filmmaker in Australia who had used some of their equipment to make this.

The concept trailer is apparently clips from, or based on, an episode of a television show in Australia entitled “Saffron vs. God” with a premise of a (discontented?) Jew trying out various religions, this round being mormonism.

This to me is very funny - especially that the producers were very charitable and didn’t laugh: they probably see stuff that rediculous pitched all the time that is not farce. I don’t know.. if I were a producer and that was pitched to me I think I would lack the charity to not laugh my head off. Or at least, I did when I saw what was being pitched.

I wonder if the folks pitching it weren’t pulling a gag on the producers - the whole tone of thier pitch is serious, but the concept trailer they show is completely over the top. It is just way too extreme to not be farce.

If I had money to burn I’d pick this up for production in a heartbeat. It’s made me laugh my head off. But I’d market it to non-mormons.

Not offending mormons is an absolutely hurculean if not generally impossible task that Mormon neighbors often have difficulty pulling off amongst themselves. That’s another story.

*I provide a direct link to the video because the web page that shows it has content I don’t want to link to.

[This post updated]

Outpost Kaloki X, which I helped make, was reviewed by teamxbox.com with a a higher rating than any Live Arcade game available at Xbox 360 release.

They say:

“…there’s some very funny text…the Sarge’s garblespeak is damn funny”, “…a great family game”, “…Fans of tycoon-style gaming will finally feel like they have a place in the console world too.”

ign.com has rated it the number 2 game to download on the platform.

“..a pleasant surprise”, “..a totally different experience”, “..load this title up and you’ll be hooked”, and “This is one of the most unique experiences on the XBLA.”